Ever since John Baez wrote his delightful, very funny and insightful crackpot index (which I recalled reading this post from Sean on Cosmic Variance), the genre has undergone a small revolution. There are many reasons for that phenomena; sadly some of this has to do with the blogosphere, which provides extra exposure and encouragement for those brave and unconventional thinkers, who are tirelessly blazing new paths for us followers.
As a public service, and because the occasional rant is a good way to deal with the rigors of a new semester starting in deep snow, here are a few of my additions to the crackpot index. Apologies to all, especially to David, I promise rants and other types of controversy will not become a frequent feature on this blog.
Here goes:
5 points for each mention of your hobbies and lifestyle, 10 bonus points for each life lesson you have learned along the way.
10 points for each time you wax poetic about political science, evolutionary biology or modern architecture, or any other subject outside your field of expertise.
10 points for each unconventional use of well-known scientific terms. 10 extra points for each claim your use of the term is the correct one.
20 point if you claim your work “foundational” before making contact with any known physics (foundations of what exactly?).
20 points if you solve decade old problems in 5 pages and 3 formulas (and 28 figures), leaving details for future publication (to borrow the immortal words of Sidney Coleman, “hopefully by someone else”).
20 points if you solve decade old problems using weak or non-existent mathematics. 10 extra points if you formulate known physics in a language unrecognizable to most people working in the field.
30 points if you ignore well known results deeming your research impossible. 10 bonus points if you proudly present patently irrelevant loopholes to said results.
30 points for going on in length about the philosophy of science, including your own insights. 5 extra points for every mention of Popper or “falsifiable”.
40 points for going on in length about the failings of some other research program, though it has nothing to do with your work. 5 bonus points for every mention of hegemony or groupthink.
40 points for claiming peer review is “broken”, and the establishment cannot evaluate your work fairly. 10 extra points for suggesting some mechanism for your work to be evaluated more democratically.
50 points if your theory conflicts with everyday experience, but makes predictions for third generation gravitational wave detectors.
The list is by no means exhaustive, feel free to add your criteria in the comments. I’ll be back with something more substantial pretty soon, as soon as I dig myself out of this snow.
Hi David
Thanks! First estimation gives mine at the level of at least 60 in blog discussions
Cheers,
Dmitry.
Dmitry, only 60 points? try harder…
But, as with any other finely tuned legal document, you have to look at the fine print. I’m afraid you cannot earn any points just for shooting the breeze on your blog, it has to be in the context of presenting or promoting “potentially revolutionary contributions to physics”.
Oops, I thought that the post is by David, sorry, Moshe
Honestly, I think one can get some points for the blog, too – since it is a medium for promoting ideas. As for the number 60, I will certainly try harder.
Cheers,
Dmitry.
Moshe let’s say that a paper that meet some or all of the above criteria appears but this paper has been written by Banks, would you call him a crackpot? Of course not. On the contrary you would carefully try to make sense and figure out what the great man is trying to say. Similarly if the same paper was written by an unknown you will immediately dismiss it as crackpottery.
So another very important criterion is the reputation of the author.
People like Banks or Susskind for example have that privilege i.e. they can say boldly their hypothesis or conjectures without any mathematical work behind. People would listen regardless.
Diagnostic for cluelessness: No refereed literature citations. Ignorance is educable, stupidity is forever (religion will suffice).
http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf
2000 Ig Nobel Prize
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect
The greatest obstacle to understanding reality is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.
http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/9504.html
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/9148/title/Einstein_Unruffled_Relativity_passes_stringent_new_tests
pookie pookie, Kostelecký
String theory, quantized gravitation overall; the Higgs boson, SUSY, proton decay, axion telescopes, dark matter detection, 1/r^2 gravitation failure… Theory is repeatedly revised to elegantly elude detection. Pursue a testable test instead.
Chemically identical, opposite parity atomic mass distributions offer an Equivalence Principle violation. Resolved extremal opposite parity mass distributions do not naturally occur. (Biological homochirality is composition based, to which gravitation is empirically blind). Nature plus an autoclave grow extremal opposite parity test masses to spec (pdf) as enantiomorphic crystallographic space groups P3(1)21 versus P3(2)21: quartz for light atoms, cinnabar for heavy atoms as an Eötvös experiment. Do it with paired calorimeters with P3(1)21 and P3(2)21 benzil, mp = 95 C.
20 years of empirically inert theory. One experiment in existing apparatus that answers the question. “Autoritätsdusel ist der größte Feind der Wahrheit,” Albert Einstein (then… quantum mechanics).
Have you looked at Goggle search today? They now have a way of eliminating unorthodox and crackpot sites from the search rankings.
Hi Mark:
Can you give us a link to some info on that?
How many points for Mariah Carey?
http://www.nme.com/news/mariah-carey/41837
David,
I have no link on that. Google must have been doing some kind of test run on this earlier today and pulled it. Beside each result were two boxes labeled promote and pull (or remove). When you pressed a button (voted) it shows a tabulation of the number of votes for the button you clicked on. According to additional information that I could garner this would possibly enable the popular vote sites to compile at the top with the sites voted down going down in their ranking. I kid you not. I went back to check it out again this afternoon and this function was gone. This could change the landscape of the Web if it is true.
mark
You might want to check this out:
http://arxiv.org/abs/0812.0537
Ah, that is a real gem, thanks. I’d trade you with another one, but I am sure you don’t need that.
More on the Google queries.
It appears that the promote and remove function exists only (for now) on your Google search results when you log in under a Google gmail account. A comment box is also allowed so that you may publicly comment on the site. An arrow box for promote shows up and a x box for remove shows up. Every result has this function. I would see this as future opportunity for professional groups to regulate and tighten the compendium of orthodox knowledge on the web.
Please ignore everything I said above. It appears to be a method of collating and managing sites for something called a search wiki in Google. It does change the ranking for your searches. I do not think it does this globally.
oh, crud
You can have some fun with this by playing Crackpot Bingo
http://blogs.scienceforums.net/swansont/archives/296
LOL, a fine effort, Moshe. I suspect it was more than the snow that provoked this; must have been something “exceptional”, heh heh.
One thing I don’t remember seeing in either yours or Baez’s list is responding to criticism by loudly “reminding” the critic of the 3 steps that a breakthrough supposedly goes through to become accepted. (First it is dismissed as wrong, then declared to be trivial, and then finally acknowledged as the great advance that it is, or something like that.) Surely that deserves some points!
Another crackpot characteristic is their absolute, unwavering certainty.
Not necessarily in the correctness of their “theory” as a description of nature, but certainly in its value compared to “competing theories”.
In contrast, sensible people who occasionally get and put forth an outlandish idea acknowledge the likelihood that it is silly/crappy/useless and let their peers decide whatever value it might or might not have. So I think there should be separate points for that as well if it is not taken into account somewhere already.
Woo hoo, I win! Thanks Moshe.
Nah, not even close, but keep on trying…
(only item I think you are really in the wrong is the peer review thing. Cannot imagine any system of systematically acquiring knowledge without strong measures of quality control)
….how many points for a theorist who likes to create a kaleidescope?:) Coxeter would roll over in his grave:)
I agree that peer review is important, I just think it can be done better.