Hermits and Cranks: Lessons from Martin Gardner on Recognizing Pseudoscientists | Hacker News Reader

Hermits and Cranks: Lessons from Martin Gardner on Recognizing Pseudoscientists

scientificamerican.com

This article reads more like an attack on any researcher outside the traditional scientific establishment than anything else.

It occurs to me that a skeptic should not predicate his skepticism on someone's background or how "crazy" they are. A skeptic ought to thoroughly consider something solely on its merits.

Consider, for a moment, that instead of saying that cranks are usually antisocial we said that cranks are usually black. Supposing that is true, would it be fair to say we should be more skeptical of black scientists? Of course not.

This is just prejudiced trash.

It's impossible to consider everything by its merits. There is an untold deluge of information out there, vying for our attention. We have to filter it somehow. If someone acts exactly like all the other idiots in the history of "science," then they get filtered out until they have something better to show.

I'm just wondering - how can you differentiate a crank for a lone genius?

There's examples of scientists who worked alone and were rejected by "the establishment". Darwin and Galileo are the classic examples. Though, their persecution had an obvious root.

Counter examples would include Newton, Einstein, Faraday, and above all Cavendish. Complete outsiders who had a big impact and were highly respected by their peers.

In some less scientific fields, though, it seems that the cranks have the upper hand.

I'm not convinced by some of your examples. While Darwin's work was controversial, he was buried at Westminster Abbey -- hardly a rejection by the establishment. Can a man who was Master of the Royal Mint and President of the Royal Society be considered a complete outsider? Faraday, as professor at the Royal Institution had a role both being an official scientific advisor and in expounding science to the public. Surely more the Feynman of his day than complete outsider. You are right about Cavendish, though. He was weird.

You have answered your own question, in a way; they gained the respect of their peers. This was achieved through the quality of their work which provided better explanations of experiments and predictions which others could verify.

Darwin is a good example - every crank in the world thinks that like Darwin they will be vindicated ... eventually.

I said the others were "counter examples" - outsiders who were accepted, probably due to the fact that their ideas only challenged science.

Also, Cavendish was quite well accepted by the Royal Society. They probably found him a little quiet though, and he would have had to leave the room if a female maid brought in any drinks ... but he was accepted.

Here is how: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html

For fun, pick up a copy of "A New Kind of Science" and infer Wolfram's crackpot index solely from the one book. Is he a crackpot? An outsider genius? A man who gets many things right but stumbles from time to time?

I like this page on that subject, particularly noticing how Wolfram made his own author blurb more crackpottish as time went on: http://chrishecker.com/Kurt_G%C3%B6del_is_Laughing_His_Ass_O...

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