If you want to talk about contributions to the general theory of relativity, why not talk about the people that Einstein is alleged to have plagiarized, Henri Poincaré, David Hilbert and Hendrik Antoon Lorentz?
Well, that's just plain wrong. From the horse's mouth:
> As we know, this is connected with the relativity of the concepts of "simultaneity" and "shape of moving bodies." To fill this gap, I introduced the principle of the constancy of the velocity of light, which I borrowed from H. A. Lorentz's theory of the stationary luminiferous ether, and which, like the principle of relativity, contains a physical assumption that seemed to be justified only by the relevant experiments
More from here:
My point being: science doesn't happen in a vacuum, and is not totally ordered
Yes, everybody agrees, but you specifically responded to the statement that Poincaré and Lorentz had nothing to do with GR. You said that statement was wrong, but it looks more like you confused SR and GR, which are two entirely different beasts.
Anyway I don't believe we're having a discussion worth having here.
Just like there is no dispute Newton invented calculus, gutenburg invented the printing press or columbus discovered the americas...
Science is not totally ordered, the same invention can occur at two different places from the same shoulders of the same giant. Science is just partially ordered.
I.e. Einstein reading their works and copying their conclusions.
This is highly likely to have happened, regardless of the "completeness" of one work or another.
The thing I like about this is that it levels celebrity (something man-made) with rationality.
Why not reduce Einstein's celebrity? It reflects reality more accurately to do so.
Einstein's special-relativity fame comes from saying: no, actually, that is expected and they're really one explanation if you think like this rather than like that, even if the math works out the same as Lorentz's.
The author is fine, he can publish whatever he pleases. I can't stop him, as you've pointed out.
From a meta-commentary perspective, it is actually quite interesting that Einstein's alleged plagiarism covers many diverse sources.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_priority_dispute
But that's just how science work, and no ill will would have been employed by any participant; just as their fanclub want to pit them against one another.