Crackpots and outsiders
December 13th, 2009
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Yes, scientific process is treacherous. There are crackpots tilting at windmills—I see at least one at every large APS conference I’ve been to; I’ve listened to them and looked at what they have, but it turns out some of them can’t even do simple algebra—and then there are outsiders who have given plenty of time to learning the state of the art and either improving on it or fixing mistakes in it.
That’s why we have peer review. However, once that process has been corrupted either for political reasons or other reasons, we are back to square one: every claim must be examined as if it were serious claim, because we can’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.