Forteana and mainstream science

Some skeptics and critics have frequently called Fort credulous and naïve, a charge his supporters deny strongly. Over and over again in his writing, Fort rams home a few basic points that were decades ahead of mainstream scientific acceptance, and that are frequently forgotten in discussions of the history and philosophy of science:
Fort often notes that the boundaries between science and pseudoscience are 'fuzzy': the boundary lines are not very well defined, and they might change over time.
Fort also points out that whereas facts are objective, how facts are interpreted depends on who is doing the interpreting and in what context.
Fort insisted that there is a strong sociological influence on what is considered 'acceptable' or 'damned' (see strong program in the sociology of scientific knowledge).
Though he never used the term "magical thinking", Fort offered many arguments and observations that are similar to the concept: he argued that most (if not all) people are at least occasionally guilty of irrational and "non scientific" thinking.
Fort points out the problem of underdetermination: that the same data can sometimes be explained by more than one theory.
Similarly, writer John Michell notes that "Fort gave several humorous instances of the same experiment yielding two different results, each one gratifying the experimenter." Fort noted that if controlled experiments — a pillar of the scientific method — could produce such widely varying results depending on who conducted them, then the scientific method itself might be open to doubt, or at least to a degree scrutiny rarely brought to bear. Since Fort's death, scientists have recognized the "Experimenter effect" — the tendency for experiments to tend to validate given preconceptions. Robert Rosenthal has done pioneering research on this and related subjects.
There are many phenomena in Fort's works which have now been partially or entirely "recuperated" by mainstream science — ball lightning, for example, was largely rejected as impossible by the scientific consensus of Fort's day, but is now generally recognized as a genuine phenomenon. However, many of Fort's ideas remain on the very borderlines of "mainstream science", or beyond, in the fields of paranormalism and the bizarre. This is unsurprising, as Fort resolutely refused to abandon the territory beyond "acceptable" science. Nonetheless, later research has demonstrated that Fort's claims are at least as reliable as his sources. In the 1960s, American writer William R. Corliss began his own documentation of scientific anomalies. Partly inspired by Fort, Corliss checked some of Fort's sources and concluded that Fort's research was "accurate, but rather narrow" -- there were many anomalies which Fort did not include in his books.

Many consider it odd that Fort, a man so skeptical and so willing to question the pronouncements of the scientific mainstream, would be so eager to take old stories — for example, stories about rains of fish falling from the sky — at face value. It is debatable whether Fort did in fact accept evidence at face value: many instances in his books, Fort notes that he regarded certain data and assertions as unlikely, and he additionally remarked, "I offer the data. Suit yourself." In Fort's books, it's often difficult to determine if he took his proposals and "theories" seriously; however, as noted on the extraterrestrial hypothesis page, Fort did seem to hold a genuine belief in the presence of extraterrestrial visitations to the Earth.