Here’s another one: Lynn Margulis. HIV denial, weird ideas about spirochaetes making sperm tails, dismissing the whole field of population genetics, failing to understand evolution in general…it’s embarrassingly bad. Dr Margulis had a weird idea once about endosymbiosis, and she was right — and now she’s always off gallivanting towards the latest, weirdest, most untenable idea she can find. It’s such a waste.

I think someone should arrange a conversation between Margulis and Wickramasinghe. Their egos will either synergize and produce a spectacular explosion of time-cube level kookiness, or they’ll mutually annihilate each other. It’s a risk I’m willing to take, for the lulz.