Let’s examine the “Galileo gambit” in more detail.

If you’re a Hunter gatherer community or Neolithic farmer, the world is flat. In fact if you’re a medieval peasant who rarely goes a few miles from his village it’s flat.

But if you’re a Bronze Age mariner, it’s round.

If you’re an ancient Greek or Roman, there’s no reason to think the sun and planets don’t go round the earth. After all the earth doesn’t seem to be moving. There was no practical use of thinking the heliocentric theory was true.

Yet by the 16C mariners were circumnavigating the world and the geocentric theory was past its limits. Could planetary observations assist in long distance navigation?
Copernicus took observations over many decades and had access to those from Islam and others.

He concluded that the heliocentric theory was a better explanation. But still it didn’t quite fit. And contradicted Aristotle’s “laws of motion”.

Galileo in the late 16C showed that key elements of Aristotle were wrong. The famous leaning tower of Pisa experiments showed this.

At the same time Tycho Brahe was making much more accurate measurements of the stars and planets, aided by Kepler. The sight of the Tycho Star supernova in 1572 contradicted Aristotle’s “unchanging heavens” as did Keller’s star in 1603.

So, by 1610 when Galileo turned the newly invented telescope to the heavens, there were severe cracks in the long established science. Craters on the moon, phases of Venus, sunspots, Jupiter’s moons, and much more were all unexplained by Aristotle.

Maybe he was wrong on planetary motion too. But it was the accumulation of evidence from many lines of enquiry that supported the heliocentric theory. The clincher was Kepler whose three laws of planetary motion removed the need for contrivances such as epicycles.

Despite Galileo’s persecution by political, religious, reactionary forces the heliocentric theory was pretty well accepted by all scientists by the time of his death, and Newton’s birth. And North of the Alps was openly accepted.

It was Newton who wrapped it all up in a coherent theory supported by evidence and make predictions.

Though it was not until the early 1700s that proof was obtained that the earth actually did move.

By 1850 Newton’s Physics looked supreme. Yet cracks appeared.

The geological age of the earth was far longer than physics could explain.

The orbit of Mercury had anomalies the Newtonian physics could not explain.

The Michelson Morley experiment showed there was no Ether.

The electron and radioactivity were discovered in the 1890s.

In 1900 Planck explained the black body radiation anomaly.

Enter Einstein, Rutherford, Bohe etc who brought in a revolution leading to Quantum Mechanics and General relativity. Better explanations of reality.

Plus the idea that Galileo was some “independent thinker” operating outside the academia or scientific mainstream is nonsense. He was a fully paid up member of the early modern academic mainstream (as was Copernicus 100 yrs earlier). And the persecution he faced was religious.

Not academic. He shifted the scientific paradigm by using experiment and observation to seek the truth by gathering evidence and explain that evidence. Which is why religion, not science, was against him.

Even Einstein wasn’t a true outsider and quickly became part of the establishment after 1905.

Wegener was an outsider with novel ideas. But he still lacked evidence or an explanation of how plate tectonics worked. That came about 20 years later with deep ocean submersibles.