People love to invoke Galileo on the Internet and it has given him a real boost in popularity. If you are anti-religion, you can love Galileo because you believe he was persecuted by the Church but if you are anti-science you can also love Galileo; because he was mocked by scientists but later turned out to be right, at least about one thing. And so The Galileo Gambit is a popular device in such arguments.



Chances are if you are mocked and ridiculed for your fringe beliefs about science, you are actually just wrong. If all of science is instead just wrong about you, a century from now they will apologize.

The Galileo Gambit happens a lot in physics, like when an engineer declares he has created a Theory of Everything.