  Certain results of observational cosmology cast critical doubt on the
foundations of standard cosmology but leave most cosmologists untroubled.
Alternative cosmological models that differ from the Big Bang have been
published and defended by heterodox scientists; however, most cosmologists do
not heed these. This may be because standard theory is correct and all other
ideas and criticisms are incorrect, but it is also to a great extent due to
sociological phenomena such as the "snowball effect" or "groupthink". We might
wonder whether cosmology, the study of the Universe as a whole, is a science
like other branches of physics or just a dominant ideology.
