This just in: Carl Brannen (here his blog) got a paper on gravitation published in a scientific magazine. Carl, who is the typical amateur who many "established scientists" in the blogosphere have labeled a crackpot in the last few years, does not actually fit the bill very well: he is a deep thinker who knows the literature of what he studies, and the fact that he is not salaried by a research institute means as little as this: he does it for Science, and not for a pay.
Some of the articles that Carl has written in the last few years have struggled to get even past the mesh of the Cornell Arxiv's screening; some have been diverted to the Limbo category of "general physics", which collects stuff nobody actually reads. But this last paper he wrote not only received a honorable mention of the Gravity Research Foundation: it actually made it in print, on the International Journal of Modern Physics.
I have written it repeatedly in the past: ideas are never crackpotty: they are just good, or bad. The style of approach of an amateur to scientific research may be dilettantesque or rigorous, but what matters is whether the ideas he or she brings to the floor are sound. In Carl's case, they are. His paper is a significant advancement in the field of classical gravitation. Congratulations, Carl! I foresee that this year you will publish more than Lubos.
