Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia about Schwinger: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Schwinger
"After 1989 Schwinger took a keen interest in the non-mainstream research of cold fusion. He wrote eight theory papers about it. He resigned from the American Physical Society after their refusal to publish his papers. He felt that cold fusion research was being suppressed and academic freedom violated. He wrote: "The pressure for conformity is enormous. I have experienced it in editors’ rejection of submitted papers, based on venomous criticism of anonymous referees. The replacement of impartial reviewing by censorship will be the death of science."
I am interested to know whether there are other famous accomplished scientists experiencing peer pressure or scientific journal or community suppression, when those scientists performed extraordinary independent research. Examples of accomplished scientists they are edged out from certain communities but still stick to their independent research. And what are those (controversial) research topics and results that they were pursuing at the time?
(ps. It may smell like an analogous nostalgia feeling for some of us who have been banned from Physics SE...)
(ps. the beat of a different drum is from Schwinger comments on Feynman: An honest man, the outstanding intuitionist of our age, and a prime example of what may lie in store for anyone who dares to follow the beat of a different drum.)
Please feel free to close the question if it is off the topic. : )