 |
The Crackpot Scientist Index
John Baez (some say her father, some say a cousin of
hers) published in Freerepublic.com a method of rating
crackpot scientists that intends to be humorous (and it
is very funny), but that also reminds us of a contemporary
characteristic of the average human being that has some
education and lives in big cities: the tendency to believe
in everything that´s written and somehow published.
|
|
The rating goes like this, for example:
"10 points for pointing out that you have gone
to school, as if this were evidence of sanity",
"20 points for suggesting that you deserve a
Nobel prize", "30 points for claiming that
your theories were developed by an extraterrestrial
civilization (without good evidence)", "40
points for claiming that the ´scientific establishment´
is engaged in a ´conspiracy´ to prevent
your work from gaining its well-deserved fame, or
suchlike", and so on for 31 items which really
unveil much of the madness and sheer dishonesty which
plague us today. As for madness, consider "40
points for comparing yourself to Galileo, suggesting
that a modern-day Inquisition is hard at work on your
case, and so on", and as for dishonesty, consider
"30 points for suggesting that Einstein, in his
later years, was groping his way towards the ideas
you now advocate". |
Commentaries posted about the crackpot index are just
as good:
and further Newton was a nut.
His THEORY on gravity is just a theory. It is not the
truth.
Everyone should know that gravity is nothing more then
microscopic white men holding everyone down.
I should say that this also applies to the heisenburg
uncertainty principal as well (putting on asbestos trousers).
Today science is analogous to the technological times
before microscopes but we are debating the behaviour of
bacteria. We would agree something is there and workable
in experiments (and public health) but one group would
say we can never know exactly what the beasts look like
and how they work, move, etc. and another group saying
"looks good so far but we have a lot more to discover
here..."
Do I qualify?
Well, you get 10 points.
Congrats on your 10 points. Well deserved.
Just to get in the ballpark, I compared your level of
abstraction with that of Alfred Korzybski, who achieved
a lifetime CI of over 6000. It will be difficult to top
Korzybski, but each journey must begin with a single step.
Another thing which gets over-looked in this smile fest
about crackpots is that now and then (I actually stopped
myself from saying "frequently") very buttoned-down
people get labeled "crackpot" even though they
score very very low (or zero) on this index! (And I'm
not even talking about Fred Hoyle!) That's just not fair!
For instance:
"It all began in the mid-1980s, when a camera aboard
a NASA spacecraft called Dynamics Explorer presented me
with data that many scientists would have ignored or overlooked.
[okay, that's a few points... mw] Curious black spots
appeared in the images of Earth's aurora, one of the phenomena
I have devoted my career to studying as an experimental
physicist. I came to realize that the black spots in the
images were not caused by "instrument noise,"
as many scientists believed, but were evidence of a remarkable
geophysical phenomenon occurring unnoticed right above
our heads.
"In the spring of 1986, I published my explanation
of the black spots in a scientific journal: The Earth's
atmosphere was being bombarded by house-sized, water-bearing
objects traveling at 25,000 mph, one every three seconds
or so. That's 20 a minute, 1,200 an hour, 28,800 a day,
864,000 a month and more than 10 million a year. Spelled
out in this way, the numbers truly boggle the mind. These
objects, which I call "small comets," disintegrate
high above the Earth and deposit huge clouds of water
vapor into the upper atmosphere. Over the history of this
planet, the small comets may have dumped enough water
to fill the oceans and may have even provided the organic
ingredients necessary for life on Earth." Louis
A. Frank
And remember: in the electronic version of the British
Medical Journal of Jan 19 2002, Stephen Senn, professor
of pharmaceutical and health statistics in the University
College London, wrote: "Despite laudable efforts
recently by various editors in employing statistical reviewers,
much still finds its way into print that is, essentially,
nonsense".
A final remark on the Crackpot Index: you have a -5 point
starting credit. Just to cheer you up... And don´t
forget to check the Ignobel Prizes at www.improb./ig/ig-top.html.
Related news:
";
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($sql_result2))
{
$news_id = $row["news_id"];
$title = $row["title"];
$url = $row["url"];
$image2 = $row["image2"];
$image_visible2 = $row["image_visible2"];
if(($colcounter=='1') && ($image_visible2=='Yes'))
{
echo "
|
|
";
}
if(($colcounter=='2') && ($image_visible2=='Yes'))
{
echo "
|
";
}
if(($colcounter=='3') && ($image_visible2=='Yes'))
{
echo "
|
";
}
$colcounter++;
}
echo "
";
//Create the SQL statement
$sql3 = "SELECT news_id, title, url, image2, image_visible2 from $NewsTable WHERE visible='$visible' AND publishing_time<'$nowtime' AND (description LIKE '%$keyword1%' OR description LIKE '%$keyword2%' OR description LIKE '%$keyword3%' OR description LIKE '%$keyword4%' OR description LIKE '%$keyword5%') AND image_visible2='$image_visible2_2' ORDER BY news_id DESC LIMIT 1,3";
//Execute the SQL statement
$sql_result3 = mysql_query($sql3, $link) or die ("Couldn't execute query: " .mysql_error() );
$colcounter = '4';
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($sql_result3))
{
$news_id = $row["news_id"];
$title = $row["title"];
$url = $row["url"];
$image2 = $row["image2"];
$image_visible2 = $row["image_visible2"];
if(($colcounter=='4') && ($image_visible2=='Yes'))
{
echo "
|
|
";
}
if(($colcounter=='5') && ($image_visible2=='Yes'))
{
echo "
|
";
}
if(($colcounter=='6') && ($image_visible2=='Yes'))
{
echo "
|
";
}
$colcounter++;
}
echo "
";
while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($sql_result))
{
$news_id = $row["news_id"];
$title = $row["title"];
$url = $row["url"];
echo "- $title
";
}
echo " ";
//Close connection
mysql_close($link);
?>
|
|
