lpetrich
Contributor
Pathological Physics: Tales from "The Box" - YouTube - listed as 2 hours long, but it repeats itself after the first hour. So it's an hour long.
Pathological physics - slides for that talk
Since the 1990's, some physicists at the California Polytechnic State University have collected physics-crackpot letters in what they call "the box". In his talk, Dr. David Dixon described some features of the theories in those letters and the theorists who composed them.
He had a classification of physics crackpots:
Crazy: Incoherent, with lots of loose associations and making no overall sense. Could some of the authors have schizophrenia?
Naive: The authors seem to lack a science education or a recent science education. They often do a lot of concept mixing.
Stubborn: The most interesting type. "Bob" concluded that E != mc^2, and he hoped to write a book on this "discovery" which he hoped would sell very well, making him famous and rich. What they like to create and what they do:
Why all the engineers? Especially retired engineers. Not many from the natural sciences.
Teaching physics involves correcting misconceptions. Physics crackpottery is often physics misconceptions carried to an extreme. Conceptual dead ends and how to back out of them.
Some of them make good exercises for students, like calculating homeopathic dilutions.
A science vs. pseudoscience course. Formal and informal fallacies. Case studied in self-deception. Developing skills of self-assessment and self-criticism.
James Randi's Flim-Flam!, Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World.
Physics crackpots organizing: the Natural Philosophy Alliance, http://worldnpa.org complete with conferences, journals.
From audience questions:
Physics crackpots don't usually criticize each others' work, unlike mainstream scientists. However, in the NPA, the ether theorists seem to be the top dogs, getting to set the agenda and all that.
They think that physics before 1900 is OK. It's just relativity and/or quantum mechanics that they often have trouble with. A big contrast with late 19th cy. physics crackpottery, which was often anti-Newton. This could be from deficiencies in many people's science educations, covering Newtonian mechanics without getting into relativity or quantum mechanics.
They aren't very interested in experimental tests, mostly theoretical speculation: Just So Stories and cherry-picking of existing results.
They also often seem believe in the Lone Genius model of scientific progress, while the scientific community works more collectively. When they mail their stuff in, they seem to want validation, some endorsement of their results.
Pathological physics - slides for that talk
Since the 1990's, some physicists at the California Polytechnic State University have collected physics-crackpot letters in what they call "the box". In his talk, Dr. David Dixon described some features of the theories in those letters and the theorists who composed them.
He had a classification of physics crackpots:
Crazy: Incoherent, with lots of loose associations and making no overall sense. Could some of the authors have schizophrenia?
Naive: The authors seem to lack a science education or a recent science education. They often do a lot of concept mixing.
Stubborn: The most interesting type. "Bob" concluded that E != mc^2, and he hoped to write a book on this "discovery" which he hoped would sell very well, making him famous and rich. What they like to create and what they do:
- Theories of everything
- Self-aggrandizement: they often think that they are great geniuses
- Lack of disproof = proof
- Specious precision, like 30+ digits
- "Deriving" fundamental constants: the fine-structure constant is a favorite
- Convenient redefinitions
Why all the engineers? Especially retired engineers. Not many from the natural sciences.
- Creationists (Salem hypothesis)
- Conspiracy theorists
- Followers of apocalyptic cults
Teaching physics involves correcting misconceptions. Physics crackpottery is often physics misconceptions carried to an extreme. Conceptual dead ends and how to back out of them.
Some of them make good exercises for students, like calculating homeopathic dilutions.
A science vs. pseudoscience course. Formal and informal fallacies. Case studied in self-deception. Developing skills of self-assessment and self-criticism.
James Randi's Flim-Flam!, Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World.
Physics crackpots organizing: the Natural Philosophy Alliance, http://worldnpa.org complete with conferences, journals.
From audience questions:
Physics crackpots don't usually criticize each others' work, unlike mainstream scientists. However, in the NPA, the ether theorists seem to be the top dogs, getting to set the agenda and all that.
They think that physics before 1900 is OK. It's just relativity and/or quantum mechanics that they often have trouble with. A big contrast with late 19th cy. physics crackpottery, which was often anti-Newton. This could be from deficiencies in many people's science educations, covering Newtonian mechanics without getting into relativity or quantum mechanics.
They aren't very interested in experimental tests, mostly theoretical speculation: Just So Stories and cherry-picking of existing results.
They also often seem believe in the Lone Genius model of scientific progress, while the scientific community works more collectively. When they mail their stuff in, they seem to want validation, some endorsement of their results.