People distrust authority, and for good reason.
There are many examples, both historical and contemporary, of authority being abused for the advantage (whether personal or collective) of those in authority and/or belonging to the power base behind the authority, or for reasons relating to unquestioned dogma. This is true across the board, whether that authority is religious, political, economic, or even scientific in nature.
There are also many examples of upstart movements and theories, deserving of being smacked down, in each of these realms. Aside from the background of nonsense noise, this is a problem in that it can be very hard to differentiate between a quack and the next Einstein, and broad suppression of quackery risks 'throwing out the baby with the bathwater'.
But beyond that, suppression feeds people's suspicion regarding authority, which plays into the hands of the quacks.
To me this appears to be an irresolvable quandary, and that the best we can do is to insure that the public is as prepared as realistically possible to evaluate novel ideas for themselves, and to detect the whiff of quackery wherever it might turn up – even when it emanates from the halls of authority.
