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.

But I feel that he’s asking the wrong question here: “How many siblings do you have?” The question he should really be asking isn’t how many siblings. It’s whether this phenomena is limited only to siblings, or whether it’ll work with other close relatives or friends. It would be a scientific bonanza if this phenomenon can be reproduced with friends—siblings and relatives you eventually run out of, but friends, well, if you do run out of friends, you can always make more.