Scientific Temperament

A friend recently brought to my attention, an article on Rediff, http://us.rediff.com/news/2004/aug/03hole.htm . It is about an Indian physicist who, four years ago, tried to publish a paper proving that Hawkings theory of black holes was flawed. It resulted in a lot of ridicule being directed at him and in his isolation in his workplace, the Bhabha Atomic Research Center. I felt really sad on reading the article. Not because an Indian chap was involved and that he has been proven right, but because it reflected a deep malaise in the scientific community.
As a person who is himself pursuing a PhD and who has published and reviewed a few papers, I firmly believe that emotions have no place in scientific writing. Scientific writing should be based purely on verifiable facts, findings of repeatable experiments or simulations and indisputable logic. Ridiculing a person just because he has put forward thoughts contrary to ones propagated by a famous scientist is at best irresponsible and at worst a serious disservice to Science and Technology.
I think that the only way (atleast in the scientific community) to reject somebody's work is to find shortcomings or holes in his experiments, proofs, results etc. If you can't find any, it's ok to still disagree with him/her while keeping in mind that he/she might yet be right. But it's not ok to ridicule, reject and discourage a scientist.