Why the Prevalence of Crackpots in Physics?

[elfmotat]

On every science board and physics-related video comments section, there is invariably a plethora of crackpots willing to endlessly spew their personal brand of buzzword-salad. They usually have virtually no math, physics, or even general science knowledge. They usually think they're smarter than everyone else. Attempting to correct them is like arguing with a wall. And they're always talking about physics. If there's crackpottery around, you can bet it's physics-related. But why is this?

 

My guess would be that some of it is because of popsci books and documentaries that romanticize "the elusive quest for the theory of everything." That would explain the people who seem to enjoy making up nonsensical diagrams and equations and then passing them off as some deep theory. But that doesn't explain a bunch of other types of crackpot: the relativity deniers, the quantum deniers, the new-age quantum people, and the people who hate math and try to do physics without it. Worst of all is the occasional crackpot with just enough genuine physics knowledge to actually be dangerous.

 

Any thoughts on what draws the loonies to physics in particular?

[CaptainPanic]

Crackpots focus on physics.

Religious people focus on biology (and sometimes physics but most now accept that we go around the sun, not the other way around).

Terrorists and drug dealers focus on chemistry (but you don't see those here since that is against our rules). I guess that the alchemists are out of fashion nowadays.

 

What these poorly chosen examples are supposed to show is that all fields have their nut cases.

 

Anyway, it could be worse: in Economics, the nut cases are in charge!

[studiot]

 

Anyway, it could be worse: in Economics, the nut cases are in charge!

 

 

 

First class. +1

[StringJunky]

It seems more like a free-for-all in physics because it's less immediately tangible or tactile than other subjects so the potential scope for arm-waving is greater.

[swansont]

QM and relativity are remote from everyday experience, and very different, to the point of being weird, especially to the ignorant. I think that's the common, fertile ground available for physics crackpottery.

 

Some crackpots are the sort that demand that they should be able to understand, and they don't, thus QM and/or relativity are wrong.

 

Some have no clue as to the process of science and are unfamiliar with most experimental results. Those are the ones who have an "idea" of the sort one has after many beers or the equivalent (what if every atom is a tiny universe? Could I buy some pot from you?) but lack the skills to apply any sort of rigor to the problem and see how quickly one can rule out the idea.

 

One commonality, I think, is that most of us have no idea of the details of how to do a job with which we are unfamiliar. Many people think e.g. running a particular business is easy, because they've never done it and only see the end result — they have no idea what goes on in the background. So they operate on that veneer that they see — pop sci stories that make predictions and have explanations, but no math, and emulate that. But that's not actual science. Add to that the confidence of ignorance (Dunning-Kruger effect); they lack the experience and skill to see how wrong they are. They are convinced they understand something, but that is a complete illusion.

[hypervalent_iodine]

In addition to swansont's post, I think that the broader picture of physics and the questions it answers about the world have a certain appeal to lay-people that something like chemistry doesn't seem to. It is much more accessible and interesting for the same big-picture reasons and in being so, attracts a lot more people to the cause who think they can use limited specific knowledge and conventional logic to answer the same questions. The avenues of research other disciplines are involved in are perhaps not as obviously relatable to the real world and too complicated in their appearance to achieve the same status in public discourse. One exception to that might be evolution.

[Ophiolite]

Although at heart I am an arrogant elitist, when I check myself against reality I find I am not really that exceptional. Therefore those incredible ideas I have are most likely quite mundane and arise out of my ignorance. Thus I conclude that crackpots are just like me, except they forget to check themselves against reality.

 

I remain unclear as to why this should predominantly effect people in relation to physics.

Edited October 2, 2014 by Ophiolite

[CaptainPanic]

Ok, let me try to give an actual contribution to this thread.

 

Why do crackpots focus on physics, and not on other fields? It may have something to do with this:

 

 

Physics is the most fundamental field while still being about something tangible (albeit sometimes tangible, yet many lightyears away). Maybe that is where all the dark matter is hiding? In physics? And that's what attracts all the crackpots?

 

That said, there are crackpots who venture into the field of obscure number tricks (e.g. draw a bunch of lines, and claim there is a deeper thing there) and are essentially going into the pseudo-maths field, and there are those who claim cars will run for free if you add some water, which is related to chemistry and conspiracy theories. So I guess there are so many crackpots in physics that they spill over on both ends of the spectrum. Some hawking radiation of the giant central crackpot, I guess...

 

-- I am glad we are discussing crackpots, so I don't have to come up with any evidence.

 

[edit] I am not sure that this was an 'actual contribution'.

[Strange]

I think some of it comes from the fact that some people come up with some vague (*) notion (everything is, like, nothing and something, you know, like -1 and 1 its all so obvious to me - it explains everything) and, because they label it a "theory of everything" they think it belongs in physics. Because that is what all physyicists do, right: seacrh for the theory of everything.

 

(*) Of course there are Real Philosophers who have explored similar ideas but (a) they do it with a bit more depth of thought and (b) they acknowledge it is philiosophy and not science.

 

 

 

[edit] I am not sure that this was an 'actual contribution'.

 

Anything that includes an XKCD reference counts as a valid contribution.

[Phi for All]

Add to that the confidence of ignorance (Dunning-Kruger effect); they lack the experience and skill to see how wrong they are. They are convinced they understand something, but that is a complete illusion.

 

We see this a lot here. I think these folks look at a physics problem in a very linear way, like connecting the dots, or following a breadcrumb trail. They learn a little bit about a perplexing concept, and then jump to a conclusion and expect there to be a simple way to connect the two (and they usually look to us to provide the connection). But "the Box" they're so desperately trying to think outside of has more than two dimensions, and a breadcrumb trail doesn't work well when you need knowledge that's above your head.

[swansont]

 

We see this a lot here. I think these folks look at a physics problem in a very linear way, like connecting the dots, or following a breadcrumb trail. They learn a little bit about a perplexing concept, and then jump to a conclusion and expect there to be a simple way to connect the two (and they usually look to us to provide the connection). But "the Box" they're so desperately trying to think outside of has more than two dimensions, and a breadcrumb trail doesn't work well when you need knowledge that's above your head.

 

I remember this phenomenon from when I was teaching. After a quiz or test, there would always be a few students who got the wrong answer but insisted that they had answered the question exactly as I had described in class. That the bulk of the class had gotten it right, which contradicted their little model of reality, didn't matter to them. They were absolutely convinced they knew what was going on and that they had a good handle on the material. I didn't know what to officially call it at the time (it was well before the D-K study) but my fellow teachers and I learned to not ever give out negative examples, i.e. containing things that were wrong, with the description that they were wrong. e.g. "Perpetual motion machines don't work" because some students would just remember "perpetual motion … works". We called it the "not filter"

[Arete]

 

But "the Box" they're so desperately trying to think outside of has more than two dimensions, and a breadcrumb trail doesn't work well when you need knowledge that's above your head.

 

Precisely - often there has been decades of research invested in defining the "dimensions" of said box. In order to understand why the answer to a problem most likely is "in the box" and not outside of it, often one needs to correspondingly understand decades of prior research - which is difficult, time consuming, and extremely unlikely to lead to accolades and riches.

 

Another thing I have noticed is that a lot of crackpot posters are very assured of their own intellect - they don't need to invest time and energy into learning what is already known about subject X - they are so clearly smarter than everyone else that learning the material would be boring and useless. Their gift to the world will be a fresh way of thinking, unburdened by the "dogma" of the current understanding of the subject. So they propose something radically different from the current understanding, leading to a "There! I solved it!" thesis and seemingly an expectation that praises and accolades will rain down upon them.

 

When instead their new speculation is criticized and rejected due to (usually) obvious fatal flaws, resentment ensues. No one else is brilliant enough to understand their idea. Everyone is blindly going along with the status quo because they're dogmatic zealots... blah blah blah.

 

Good scientists generally aren't people who are unwilling to be wrong - I am, at least, constantly proving my predictions wrong, then revising them or making new ones, then proving those wrong, etc. I think that a ready acceptance of being wrong, and that being wrong is no better or worse than being right is a key part of scientific thinking. Experiments that prove predictions are completely wrong are usually far more interesting than those that do exactly what you expected them to.

 

I think physics attracts more crackpots than say, biology for 3 reasons: 1) Most cutting edge biological/chemistry research requires expensive equipment, a larger percentage of physics can be pursued through thought experiments 2) Physics is much cleaner and more elegant than biology. Biological systems are messy, noisy and often enormously complicated, which leads of complex and incomplete answers rather than the silver bullets crackpots are looking for. 3) Physics is often seen as a "higher" science and physics savants as the pinnacle of academic bigheadedness in popular culture.

[Janus]

I remember this phenomenon from when I was teaching. After a quiz or test, there would always be a few students who got the wrong answer but insisted that they had answered the question exactly as I had described in class. That the bulk of the class had gotten it right, which contradicted their little model of reality, didn't matter to them. They were absolutely convinced they knew what was going on and that they had a good handle on the material. I didn't know what to officially call it at the time (it was well before the D-K study) but my fellow teachers and I learned to not ever give out negative examples, i.e. containing things that were wrong, with the description that they were wrong. e.g. "Perpetual motion machines don't work" because some students would just remember "perpetual motion … works". We called it the "not filter"

That seems related to a phenomena I see on forums from time to time. Someone comes on with their personal theory and then provides a link which they claims supports their position. But upon reading the link it turns out that it says the exact opposite of what they think it says.

[timo]

(I wrote this 12 hours ago but somehow couldn't send it. So apologies for not taking the previous comments into account. From skimming them my thoughts go in a slightly different direction, anyways)

 

While other fields have their weirdos, I do believe that physics has some aspects that make it suitable for crackpots. I do not know for sure, but I would expect that chemistry, a very related subject with a lot of overlap, would have less, for example. There are two reasons that come to my mind: First is Albert Einstein. To many outsiders it looks like he is the prophet of physics who descended from the havens of intellectual ingenuity to bring enlightenment to the mortals. A similar even though arguably less well-known figure would be Charles Darwin. Needless to say, similar effects as denial of relativity hold true for Darwin (except that in this case religious aspects play a large role, too). Lots of contact points for crackpottery, be it disenchanting the holy being or striving to be the next avatar of human intellectual evolution.

The wording i have chosen so far already hints at a second effect, that I believe may be the most important one: Common understanding of physics often has a spiritual touch (and I probably don't have to tell you how many people you'd consider crackpots run around in the esoteric and spiritual community). Notions like physics giving you insight to "the true nature of the universe" are very common. Not only in the widest general public and among crackpots. You fill find a lot of physicists, especially younger ones and physics students, who believe the same.

Edited October 2, 2014 by timo

[StringJunky]

timo, on 02 Oct 2014 - 7:48 PM, said:

... or striving to be the next avatar of human intellectual evolution.

I like this. What a great way to put it..

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

The wording i have chosen so far already hints at a second effect, that I believe may be the most important one: Common understanding of physics often has a spiritual touch (and I probably don't have to tell you how many people you'd consider crackpots run around in the esoteric and spiritual community).

I think the key is that there is a common understanding of physics. Everyone has an intuitive understanding of the laws of motion, and everyone's heard about stars and gravity and so on. So when they start reading about relativity and quantum mechanics and find that their intuition is completely wrong, their instinct is to say "Aha! Physics is all wrong!" instead of developing new intuition.

 

Whereas if I read about some counterintuitive result in chemistry or cellular biology, I'd just think "oh, neat", because it's not counterintuitive to me -- I have no intuition for the field anyway! I can't say "no, that can't be right, it violates all common sense" because ordinary common sense doesn't have anything to say about those fields. (At least to non-experts.) But common sense does say that special relativity is absurd.

[Phi for All]

There's also confirmation bias. The less depth of knowledge you have in a particular subject, the more susceptible you are to holding on to a crackpot idea. And it's made worse because these folks have an inflated idea about their depth of physics knowledge. And even worserer when they synergize their intuition-based terminology generating quantum thought processes into salad-tossing mode.

[mississippichem]

It seems more like a free-for-all in physics because it's less immediately tangible or tactile than other subjects so the potential scope for arm-waving is greater.

Agreed. Coupled with the fact that many questions in chemistry and presumably biology (no experience here), are easily testable.

 

Crackpot: Can I make this chemical with these chemicals?

 

Chemist: No

 

It's much easier to be dodgy and intellectually dishonest with one's self and others on topics such as dark matter, bad physicsy-philosophy, string theory and such. Add in a total non-understanding of anything even related to physics or math and a crackpot is born.

Edited October 2, 2014 by mississippichem

[ajb]

Mathematics tends to have few crackpots, but they do exist. They will focus on very big and very well known problems, or indeed invent their own based on things we just know are not right.

 

Examples might be an elementary proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, 'fast' algorithms for factorization of large numbers, proof of Riemann Hypothesis using 'high school algebra', how to divide by zero and so on.

[swansont]

I think the key is that there is a common understanding of physics. Everyone has an intuitive understanding of the laws of motion, and everyone's heard about stars and gravity and so on. So when they start reading about relativity and quantum mechanics and find that their intuition is completely wrong, their instinct is to say "Aha! Physics is all wrong!" instead of developing new intuition.

 

Whereas if I read about some counterintuitive result in chemistry or cellular biology, I'd just think "oh, neat", because it's not counterintuitive to me -- I have no intuition for the field anyway! I can't say "no, that can't be right, it violates all common sense" because ordinary common sense doesn't have anything to say about those fields. (At least to non-experts.) But common sense does say that special relativity is absurd.

 

And the next step is thinking, "Silly scientists. Can't they see it's just an effect on the clock?" Such simplistic objections are common in other areas of crackpottery, too. No appreciation of all of the experimentation done to rule out such obvious objections, and of the process that demands that such experimentation be done.

There are two reasons that come to my mind: First is Albert Einstein. To many outsiders it looks like he is the prophet of physics who descended from the havens of intellectual ingenuity to bring enlightenment to the mortals.

 

 

There are many who assume that scientists revere Einstein (and others) as a prophet or a god, and thus we follow every word he said religiously and everything in science is dogma. Possibly/probably based on their own life experience, extrapolated. Again, an example of having no appreciation for the process of science.

[Strange]

No appreciation of all of the experimentation done to rule out such obvious objections, and of the process that demands that such experimentation be done.

 

We had one science teacher at school who focussed on the design of experiments rather than just "memorising facts". I think it was really useful and engaged even those who weren't usually interested.

 

This also relates to getting your science education from popular sources whcih say "we did this experiement and got this result". No information about the complexities of the design and the technology (well, maybe the technology) and what has to be done, over many experiments to eliminate confounding results. Or how, sometimes, those confounding results are actually new science (which dogmatic scientists are supposedly blind to).

 

There was a great example I heard a while ago. A team was researching the damage to neurons caused by strokes. They had run various tests to eliminate various causes. One of them (the effect of interferon, I think) they said, "well, there is no way this could be a cause, but lets do the test anyway". And they found a whole new cause of brain damage and treatments to reduce it.

 

I relate to this because I used to work as a test engineer. I would come up with a test plan and people would say, "why are you testing that, it could never happen." Of course, they wouldn't thank you when it found another bug...

 

There are many who assume that scientists revere Einstein (and others) as a prophet or a god, and thus we follow every word he said religiously and everything in science is dogma.

 

And ironically, it is they who repeatedly say, "But Einstein said..." and aren't deterred even when it is pointed out that no one cares (as far as the science is concerned) what Einstein said. Or that he was sometimes wrong.

http://xkcd.com/1206/

[swansont]

 

And ironically, it is they who repeatedly say, "But Einstein said..." and aren't deterred even when it is pointed out that no one cares (as far as the science is concerned) what Einstein said. Or that he was sometimes wrong.

 

 

 

That's another class of crackpot — they will e.g. quote GR material from 1911 or 1912 and insist that you must accept it as true because Einstein said it, completely ignoring subsequent work (from Einstein and many others) that clarified, refined and expanded the ideas.

[studiot]

 

completely ignoring subsequent work (from Einstein and many others) that clarified, refined and expanded the ideas

 

 

That's a delicately political way of describing a rewrite.

(or should I have said politically delicate?)

 

Edited October 3, 2014 by studiot

[Phi for All]

 

That's another class of crackpot — they will e.g. quote GR material from 1911 or 1912 and insist that you must accept it as true because Einstein said it, completely ignoring subsequent work (from Einstein and many others) that clarified, refined and expanded the ideas.

 

This seems akin to what we see from creationists and others who dogpile on a sound byte they've heard ("If we came from monkeys, why do we still have monkeys?") and ignore the subsequent explanation because it's SOOOOOO much more tedious and hard to understand. They have profiled us as Darwinists and Einsteinists and that seems to justify not listening to any clarifications.

[physica]

I think crackpots are attracted to physics because they are not challenged by the average member of the public when physics is brought up. I was in medical research and worked in the hospital. I went back to university to study physics. I still work in the hospital one day a week to pay bills but at work people have this unrealistic respect for me because I study physics. I get the sense that they will believe anything I say about physics. Most of them go

 

"wow I was terrible at maths" or "i got biology at school but I found physics really hard".

 

Once met this girl who started telling me that she was working on a project that transported artists minds forward in time, they would then come back to the present and paint what they see. I looked at her with confusion and she said flippantly

 

"oh it's all to do with quantum mechanics".

 

You should have seen the horror on this girls face when I told her I study physics so I'd be interested in hearing what facilitates this. Crackpots are not interested in science otherwise they would actually learn science. They like the admiration of others thinking that they're smart. Over time they may delude themselves into thinking that they know what they're talking about but I think (like the girl I met) that many crackpots use physics to fob off the general member of the public when they ask questions.