Essay:Crackpot

The term crackpot is used perjoratively against a person, who writes or speaks in an authoritative fashion about a particular subject, often in science or mathematics, but is alleged to have false or even ludicrous beliefs. Such a person may also be termed a crank.

Ideas held by such people are called crank ideas or crackpot theories.

True Crackpots usually have some formal training in science but are often unattached to any university, college, or research institute, and have usually reached a point where their papers and commentaries are refused by standard scientific journals as being of little interest. They form a "fringe" in any field, and it is often difficult to distinguish crackpots from bona fide scientists who hold minority views because the distinction is usually based primarily on behavior rather than on scientific contributions. The consequence is that a bona fide scientist with a minority view is unfortunately sometimes called a crackpot merely due to peculiar or disruptive behavior. Often crackpots are experts in one field but choose to make authorative assertions outside their area of expertise.

Some distinguishing characteristics of crackpots are:

1. The crackpot has usually lost interest in new experiments and will defend to his theory or viewpoint, even though it may have been rejected by the scientific community as invalid or useless. Any objective view of reality becomes less important than his own personal view.

2. As a consequence of continuing peer rejection, the crackpot becomes more and more strident with advancing age, until eventually one finds him doing vigorous vocal battle in fringe arenas, open forums, anti-science mailing lists, and magazines devoted to fringe ideas and readers who thrive emotionally on fringe ideas.

3. In any serious discussion of a scientific issue, the crackpot will usually offer polemics rather than reason, invective rather than fact, and a harangue that he's a "revolutionary" against an "establishment". Sometimes he makes accusations of a conspiracy against him. At other times, the accusation is of "social control" of the minds of scientists. He appoints himself as the avant-garde of a paradigm shift.