I actually like Fred Hoyle—even though he DID make a mistake when he continued to support his discredited theory. Overall, he WAS a careful scientist who collected data accurately and made reasonable hypotheses.

Hey, Linus Pauling believed in and promoted crazy ideas about the healing power of Vitamin C in his later years. That doesn't mean that he should be dismissed as a bad scientist.

Neither should Hoyle. He's not the first person who had trouble admitting "I was wrong."