Pretty soon some crackpot is going to tell us that solar flares cause the Northern Lights or that the continents can move!
For those skeptics out there, the article did not say they had "proved" star eruptions caused earthquakes. The said there was a correlation. Of course correlation is not enough. Strong and frequent correlation is required. Sure there were people who farted before the earthquake, but there are billions of farts that were not followed by quakes (other than in the same room!). These guys are proposing an hypothesis (NOT a theory). The job of science is to determine if the hypothesis is correct. It often takes quite a while.
Remember when people laughed at Dick Tracy's wrist radio? Did you ever see a picture of the first transistor? If a picture of something like that were published today, those guys would be laughed off the planet. The computer you are typing on right probably has over 50 million of them.
Science would get nowhere without people with the guts to propose that which is unusual and open it to examination by competent people. Thankfully they don't mind being laughed at. They laughed at Wegener (or despised him). http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/wegener.html
Now THEY just look stupid.
Laughter often preceeds success. I'm sure we would have laughed loud and long at a newsman (even Dan Rather) who told us a loony in a cave could bring down the WTC.
That is a well written post making some excellent points.
Excellent link. I'm bookmarking it right now as a good reference. Thank you!