Fringe science organizations

Fringe science organizations are organizations committed to promoting theories that disagree with mainstream scientific beliefs.
Flat Earth Society
The Flat Earth Society is an organization which aims to further the idea that the Earth is flat instead of an oblate spheroid. The modern organization was founded by Englishman Samuel Shenton in 1956 and was later led by Charles K. Johnson, who based the organization in his home in Lancaster, California. The formal society was inactive after Johnson’s death in 2001 but was resurrected in 2004 by its new president Daniel Shenton.
Academy of Nations
In the 1920s the engineer and anti-relativity activist Arvid Reuterdahl and his associates founded a society called "The Academy of Nations", which was "a group of scientists and engineers... with the ostensible objective of fighting the specialization of the different branches of science so as to achieve an overall unity and uniformity of all of science. But the leading participants in this endeavor had an ulterior motive: they believed in daft pseudoscientific theories of their own..." Reuterdahl presented his objections to relativity in newspaper articles with headlines such as "Einstein Branded Barnum of Science", and "Minnesota Man Calls Relativity Bunk". In 1921 Ernst Gehrcke founded a German branch of the Academy of Nations, which promoted the publication of articles disputing relativity.
Study Group of German Scientists for the Preservation of Pure Science
This "ragtag but mysteriously well-funded" organization was formed by the German engineer (and later convicted con man) Paul Weyland in 1920, for the purpose of discrediting Einstein's theory of relativity. It is unclear if the organization ever had any actual members other than its founder. Ernst Gehrcke participated in the group meeting organized by Weyland and held in the Berlin's Philharmonic Hall on Aug 24, 1920. Einstein dubbed the organization "the Anti-relativity Company, Ltd."
=="Crisis in Cosmology" Conferences==
In a 2007 article in Cosmos Magazine, Bryan Gaensler, a professor of physics at the University of Sydney, says “there has just begun a new series of conferences, held by anti-relativity cranks, called ‘Crisis in Cosmology’. I think the first one was held in Spain and they’re planning another . It looks exactly like a legitimate scientific conference, with the difference that everyone delivering a talk there is insane.” According to Gaensler, the conference planners sent out invitations to him and hundreds of other physicists. “Before registering, you had to fill out this 10-point, bulleted manifesto, agreeing to all sorts of propositions from the start. For example, ‘I do not accept that the universe is expanding’, and so on, the kind of thing you would never see at a real scientific conference. It was hilarious.”
National Institute for Discovery Science
The National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDSci) was a privately financed research organization based in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, and operated from 1995 to 2004.
It was founded in 1995 by real-estate developer Robert Bigelow, who set it up to research and advance serious study of various fringe science, and paranormal topics, most notably ufology.
Deputy Administrator Colm Kelleher, Ph.D. was quoted as saying the organization was not designed to study UFO's only. "We don't study aliens, we study anomalies. They're the same thing in a lot of people's minds, but not in our minds."
Society for the Advancement of Autodyamics
This was a society formed to promote the pseudoscientific idea of autodynamics. David de Hilster, the founder of this "society" (although it is unclear if it ever had any members other then himself) subsequently took a leadership role in the Natural Philosophy Alliance (see below).
Natural Philosophy Alliance
The Natural Philosophy Alliance (NPA) is an organization that advocates the position that some ideas thought well-settled in contemporary science (particularly physics and cosmology) are fundamentally flawed. At its peak, the NPA had hundreds of members who worked to discredit such ideas as general and special relativity, quantum theory, the Big Bang, and plate tectonics. However, as a result of internal dissension and fragmentation, it is now a much smaller organization.
NPA was founded in 1994 by John E. Chappell Jr., a historian and anti-relativity activist. Since the beginning of 2014, the organization has been engaged in a dispute with former members who left the group due to disagreements over the NPA's direction, database of articles, and finances. This group that left has re-banded as the , seen below. Both sides have posted their versions of the nature and details of the dispute on competing websites. According to Chappell faction, prior to the departure of most members due to the dispute, the NPA counted 850 people as members, 132 of whom paid dues. with published proceedings, which provide a forum for those seeking wider distribution and acceptance for ideas excluded from mainstream scientific conferences.
Journalist Margaret Wertheim, herself an NPA member and friend and associate of one of its founding members (Jim Carter, inventor of the fringe theory of circlons), speculated in a 2012 essay that much of the interest in this area is a response to the heavy mathematical content and abstract ideas underlying conventional scientific theories, which, she says, makes them inaccessible to the general public. She compares NPA with the revolt of Martin Luther against the Catholic church.
World Science Database
A web site and database where authors can post materials not generally accepted and published by scientific journals. As of mid-2014, the database contained 6406 abstracts and 1799 papers. Note, however, that the current official NPA organization claims that some of these works are included in the data base without the consent of the authors. who also helped found the SAA and NPA, above, and the JCNPS below. According to an essay by this individual, "the mainstream believes that do not understand or study mainstream ", but that "this could not be further from the truth". Instead, the essay says, these individuals "have studied very thoroughly mainstream science", indeed "know it better than the mainstream".
John Chappell Natural Philosophy Society
The spin-off of the Natural Philosophy Alliance, above. This group was co-founded by David de Hilster, as a founder of the SAA, NPA, and World Science Database, all listed above.
General Science Journal
A journal explicitly designed without peer review, so any theory may be published. From the web site:

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