In physics it has rarely been about ideology (except for what happened to Oppenheimer) but more a brutal job market. When I was a grad student i remember one of the most famous physics professors today (then a postdoc) crying frequently from the stress of not knowing where his next job was coming from despite having written half of a very good book and being highly productive.<p>Also, Einstein made a prediction about light being bent by the sun’s gravitational field that Eddington observed in a 1919 solar eclipse.<p>There has not been a similar event in fundamental theoretical physics in a generation. Neutrino oscillations were definitely observed in 1998 after having been predicted in 1957 by an Italian physicist who defected to the Soviet Union. Just this year there were observations that may confirm a theory of black hole jets going back to the early 1980s. For all the public talk about Stephen Hawking’s work, nothing Hawking did had any contact with experimentation.<p>So a young Einstein today could not get experimental confirmation of his genius.
Yes. In physics good ideas are eventually recognized. There is just too many people in the academia who want to know the truth.<p>It's easy to forget that Einstein's ideas were not accepted instantly.<p>Special Theory of Relativity (1905) was very controversial. It was gradually accepted only because nobody could came out with better solution.<p>Main point of "On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light" was not fully accepted until 20 years later after the evidence came in. Plank wrote a recommendation letter saying that Einstein should get a position despite his crazy idea about light being quantized. Plank did not believe that himself. It took 20 years before others came around.