In other words you'd want him to repent and accept the orthodoxy, before you'll consider listening to his possibly-heretic theories.

Whether he is right or wrong is fundamentally irrelevant. TED accepted his talk, reviewed it, fact-checked it, like all other talks; and then bowed to political pressure and quietly moved away from it. That's not a good look, regardless of what the speech might be about. To be fair, it could be worse - they could have kept it completely hidden - but it's still not great.