Believe me, I sympathize. You are in possession of a truly incredible breakthrough that offers the prospect of changing the very face of science as we know it, if not more. The only problem is, you’re coming at things from an unorthodox perspective. Maybe your findings don’t fit comfortably with people’s preconceived notions, or maybe you don’t have the elaborate academic credentials that established scientists take for granted. Perhaps you have been able to construct a machine that produces more energy than it consumes, using only common household implements; or maybe you’ve discovered a hidden pattern within the Fibonacci sequence that accurately predicts the weight that a top quark would experience on Ganymede, expressed in femtonewtons; or it might be that you’ve elaborated upon an alternative explanation for the evolution of life on Earth that augments natural selection by unspecified interventions from a vaguely-defined higher power. Whatever the specifics, the point is that certain kinds of breakthroughs just aren’t going to come from a hide-bound scholastic establishment; they require the fresh perspective and beginner’s mind that only an outsider genius (such as yourself) can bring to the table.
Yet, even though science is supposed to be about being open-minded, and there’s so much that we don’t understand about how the universe works, it’s still hard for outsiders to be taken seriously. Instead, you run up against stuffy attitudes like this:
If there are any new Einsteins out there with a correct theory of everything all LaTeXed up, they should feel quite willing to ask me for an endorsement for the arxiv; I’d be happy to bask in the reflected glory and earn a footnote in their triumphant autobiography. More likely, however, they will just send their paper to Physical Review, where it will be accepted and published, and they will become famous without my help.
If, on the other hand, there is anyone out there who thinks they are the next Einstein, but really they are just a crackpot, don’t bother; I get things like that all the time. Sadly, the real next-Einsteins only come along once per century, whereas the crackpots are far too common.
And that last part is sadly true. There is a numbers game that is working against you. You are not the only person from an alternative perspective who purports to have a dramatic new finding, and here you are asking established scientists to take time out from conventional research to sit down and examine your claims in detail. Of course, we know that you really do have a breakthrough in your hands, while those people are just crackpots. But how do you convince everyone else? All you want is a fair hearing.
Scientists can’t possibly pay equal attention to every conceivable hypothesis, they would literally never do anything else. Whether explicitly or not, they typically apply a Bayesian prior to the claims that are put before them. Purported breakthroughs are not all treated equally; if something runs up against their pre-existing notions of how the universe works, they are much less likely to pay it any attention. So what does it take for the truly important discoveries to get taken seriously?
Happily, we are here to help. It would be a shame if the correct theory to explain away dark matter or account for the origin of life were developed by someone without a conventional academic position, who didn’t really take a lot of science classes in college and didn’t have a great math background but was always interested in the big questions, only for that theory to be neglected because of some churlish prejudice. So we would like to present a simple checklist of things that alternative scientists should do in order to get taken seriously by the Man. And the good news is, it’s only three items! How hard can that be, really? True, each of the items might require a nontrivial amount of work to overcome. Hey, nobody ever said that being a lonely genius was easy.
So let’s begin at the beginning:
1. Acquire basic competency in whatever field of science your discovery belongs to.
In other words, “get to know what is already known.” If you have a new theory that unites all the forces, make sure you have mastered elementary physics, and grasp the basics of quantum field theory and particle physics. If you’ve built a perpetual-motion machine, make sure you possess a thorough grounding in mechanical and electrical engineering, and are pretty familiar with the First Law of Thermodynamics. If you can explain the cosmological redshift without invoking an expanding universe, make sure you know general relativity and have mastered the basics of modern cosmology and astrophysics.
Just as an example, if fundamental physics is your bailiwick, Gerard ‘t Hooft has put together a list of subjects you should get under your belt, complete with bibliography! Many of them are online lecture notes; some of them are by me. So start reading! It may seem like a daunting collection at first; but keep in mind, this kind of curriculum is completed by hundreds of graduate students every year. Most of whom are not singular geniuses who will transform the very face of science.
Now, you may object that steering clear of such pre-existing knowledge has played a crucial role in your unique brand of breakthrough research, and you would never have been able to make those dazzling conceptual leaps had you been weighed down by all of that established art. Let me break it down for you: no. There may have been a time, in the halcyon days of Archimedes or maybe even Galileo and Newton, when anyone with a can-do attitude and a passing interest in the fundamental mysteries could make an important contribution to our understanding of nature. Those days are long past. (And Galileo and Newton, let us note, understood the science of their time better than anybody.) We’ve learned a tremendous amount about how the universe works, most of which is “right” at least in some well-defined regime of applicability. If you haven’t mastered what we’ve already learned, you’re not going to be able to see beyond it.
Put it this way: it’s a matter of respect. By asking scientists to take your work seriously, you are asking them to respect you enough to spend their time investigating your claims. The absolute least you can do is respect them enough to catch up on the stuff they’ve all made a great effort to master. There are a lot of smart people working as scientists these days; if a basic feature of your purported breakthrough (“the derivation of the Friedmann equation is wrong”; “length contraction is a logical contradiction”) is that it requires that a huge number of such people have been making the same elementary mistake over and over again for years, the fault is more likely to lie within yourself than in the stars. Do your homework, first, then get back to me.
2. Understand, and make a good-faith effort to confront, the fundamental objections to your claims within established science.
Someone comes along and says “I’ve discovered that there’s no need for dark matter.” A brief glance at the abstract reveals that the model violates our understanding of perturbation theory. Well, perhaps there is something subtle going on here, and our conventional understanding of perturbation theory doesn’t apply in this case. So here’s what any working theoretical cosmologist would do (even if they aren’t consciously aware that they’re doing it): they would glance at the introduction to the paper, looking for a paragraph that says “Look, we know this isn’t what you would expect from elementary perturbation theory, but here’s why that doesn’t apply in this case.” Upon not finding that paragraph, they would toss the paper away.
Scientific claims — whether theoretical insights or experimental breakthroughs — don’t exist all by their lonesome. They are situated within a framework of pre-existing knowledge and expectations. If the claim you are making seems manifestly inconsistent with that framework, it’s your job to explain why anyone should nevertheless take you seriously. Whenever someone claims to build a perpetual-motion device, scientist solemnly reiterate that the law of conservation of energy is not to be trifled with lightly. Of course one must admit that it could be wrong — it’s only one law, after all. But when you actually build some machine that purportedly puts out more ergs than it consumes (in perpetuity), it does a lot more than violate the law of conservation of energy. That machine is made of atoms and electromagnetic fields, which obey the laws of atomic physics and Maxwell’s equations. And conservation of energy can be derived from those laws — so you’re violating those as well. If you claim that the position of Venus within the Zodiac affects your love life, you’re not only positing some spooky correlation between celestial bodies and human affairs; your theory also requires some sort of long-range force that acts between you and Venus, and there aren’t any such forces strong enough to be relevant. If you try to brush those issues under the rug, rather than confronting them straightforwardly, your credibility suffers greatly.
For example, imagine you say, “I have a method of brewing a magical healing potion that bypasses the ossified practices of your so-called `medicine,’ and I’ve personally known several people who were miraculously cured by it, and also there was a study once in some journal that didn’t conclusively rule out the possibility of an effect, and besides you don’t know everything.” No non-crackpot person is going to pay a whit of attention to you, except perhaps to poke fun in between doing serious work. But now imagine you say “It’s true that my claimed magical healing potion appears to violate this famous law of chemistry and that well-established principle of medicine, which have been painstakingly developed and stringently tested against experimental data over the course of many decades, and it’s natural that you would be skeptical of such a claim — but here is the empirical evidence that is dramatic enough to overcome that skepticism, and this is the reason why there might be a loophole in those laws in this particular circumstance.” People will be much more likely to take you seriously.
3. Present your discovery in a way that is complete, transparent, and unambiguous.
What we’re getting at here is that scientific discoveries, unlike sonnets or declarations of love, are universal rather than personal. They belong to everyone, and once they are presented to the world, they can be explored equally well by anybody. By almost any standard, I understand general relativity better than Einstein ever did. (Most parts of it, anyway.) Not because I’m anywhere nearly as smart as Einstein, but because we’ve learned a lot about GR since Einstein died. Once the theory was invented, he didn’t have a monopoly on it; it was out there for anyone to understand and move forward with. Even if he had repudiated his own theory, it would have had no effect on whether or not it was correct.
Your discovery should be the same way. If it’s a revolutionary new theory, it should be a theory that anyone can use. That means it needs to be clearly expressed and unambiguous. I’ve had more than one long and fruitless discussion with alternative scientists who would say “You tell me the experimental result, and I will explain it with my theory.” That’s not the way it works. Your theory should have a life of its own; it should be a machine that I (or anyone) could use to make predictions. And if it’s a physics theory, let’s face it, it’s going to involve math. In this day and age, nobody is going to be moved by a model of elementary particles that comes expressed as a set of three-dimensional sculptures constructed from pipe cleaners.
Likewise, if your breakthrough is an experiment, it had better be a dramatically obvious one — and the more you are violating cherished scientific beliefs, the more dramatic the effect had better be. If what you’re claiming requires a re-arrangement of the energy levels in organic molecules, in flagrant disregard of the Schrödinger equation, you are going to need much more than a two- or three-sigma effect. And, equally importantly, you have to be up front about what the apparatus is, so that anyone can reproduce the experiment. No fair saying “Well, if you come into my lab, I’ll turn it on and show you how it works.” And “This experiment was done in the ’70’s in a secret underground lab in Gdansk, and the KGB has suppressed the lab notebooks” isn’t any better. If you’re actually playing the role of a scientist, share your procedure with everyone, so that they can become true believers themselves. If, on the other hand, you just want to make money, then by all means don’t tell anyone; just start producing the free energy (or amazing stretchy widgets, or whatever) and sell it on the open market. The millions of dollars that will doubtless flow your way will be very comforting as you rail against the establishment for failing to appreciate your genius.
So there you go! Modesty aside, this post might be the single greatest favor that has ever been done for the loose-knit community of non-traditional scientists. We’ve been very explicit about what is expected, if you want to get the recognition you believe is your due. Three simple items, start checking them off!
Also, one last thing. Don’t compare yourself to Galileo. You are not Galileo. Honestly, you’re not. Dude, seriously.
submitted for Seans’ approval…
a potentially crackpot TOE – all latexed up.
http://www.theoryofeverything.org/TOE/JGM/ToE.pdf
I think I’ve conformed to the above requirements (as well as Baez’s checklist)
Island –
You can be cracked up by whatever you want, but I am ultimately saying that you just haven’t made a credible case for your theory. You can complain to your content about me making the same point to dismiss your ideas (and you would admit, as has been pointed out here – we just don’t have time to investigate and properly rebut every alternative theory that we find unimpressive – so maybe it is not so bad, but I can’t take on every burden.) The problem is, you never answer my question to any substantive degree. So, is it so silly for me to keep asking it? Maybe that little carousel game cracks me up.
Neil, you’re utterly clueless and have done absolutely nothing to refute a single bit of the hard physics that I’ve given from the very beginning of my participation in this thread, which, FYI, derives every claim that I’ve made.
And just who is this “we” that would take such a cheap shot without actually addressing any points that were made?… besides your long-time crackpot self?… 😉
Please do not talk to me again about this, unless you plan to refute the hard physics that derives what I’ve actually said, rather than something that you want me to say, because I don’t need your large numbers philosophies to make my point, like you do with your own wild crackpot ideas.
I think it’s funny to see those who’ve never done anything in science except push there crackpot ideas talking about ‘hard physics’. Give me a break. These guys don’t know anything.
I think that it’s really funny that some crank thinks that the Fermi paradox is a law of physics.
Well, I think I was making a generalization rather than focusing on your specific statements. As it is, I guess I’m a crank with a Ph.D. in physics. Have you ever even had a formal physics course? If so, at what level?
Well, I think I was making a generalization rather than focusing on your specific statements
Ah, so you made an unfounded leap of faith to assume something that isn’t true, so that you could warp the truth to you own end, which was to use this false information to make the claim that I am a crackpot.
Sean, you need an anti-crackpot crackpot category to go along with your list to account for people who take potshots any given good reason.
Unlike Joe.
Correction:
Sean, you need an anti-crackpot crackpot category to go along with your list to account for people who take potshots [without giving] any given good reason.
Add, “lame, contentless, appeals to authority”, to that while I’m correcting myself… 😉
Typical rantings. It just goes to make one of the original points of the post that crackpots cannot accept any opposition to their ideas. It’s really arrogant to believe, as typical crackpots do, that they know more than those who’ve dedicated years to studying the subject. My advice to these people is stop spending their time putting out crazy theories on the internets. Noone is going to pay attention. If you want to participate, go to school and take the courses. Do some real work and publish papers in peer-reviewed journals. I’m sorry to be so blunt and impolite, but it’s simply the way it is.
Neil wrote:
This is the key to the whole issue. Without a genuine inductive science, modern investigators have turned to a seemingly endless list of ad hoc inventions, which is an open door to amateurs, who have just as fertile imaginations as professionals have.
What is needed is the basis for a truly inductive science, in which theory must be constructed from the consequences of clearly stated assumptions that are consistent with observations. For instance, we can observe that time is a scalar expansion, and we can observe that space is also, at great distances from the earth. Therefore, we can reasonably assume that the two scalar expansions are related, and, since the only known relation of space and time is the reciprocal relation of motion, we conclude that this observed scalar expansion is a major player in the structure of the physical universe.
At this point, we are on solid philosophical ground, because, unlike those following Einstein, we have not resorted to our fertile imaginations, but have insisted on forming a hypothesis based on observations. This is the advantage of inductive vs. inventive science: it reduces, if not eliminates, the opportunity for crazy, non-inductive, inventions.
Now, looked at this way, the only difference between the so-called “crackpot theories” and “respected theories,” is the idea of ad hoc. Crackpots generally don’t know what is required to be invented.
This is the key to the whole issue. Without a genuine inductive science, modern investigators have turned to a seemingly endless list of ad hoc inventions, which is an open door to amateurs, who have just as fertile imaginations as professionals have.
Or, on the other hand, amateurs could be more committed to the principles of inductive science than professional physicists.
Island: I did my best to answer what I thought you were asking. I’m still not entirely sure what you meant.
Island –
I think you took my critiques and even the snark needlessly hard. I’m not saying that your argument has any particular flaws in the hard physics or that it’s a bad argument as such. And, I wasn’t being sarcastic about not having time to look it over carefully or aiming that at your theories in particular – that is just a fact of life, for me and most of “us” which means perhaps those who post here. Deriving the fundamental constants has long been considered the key or a major key to “why” theories about the universe, and “1/137” is easy to type. What I mean is, that in order to separate our universe existentially from other “model universes,” one has to in effect make a reductio ad absurdum of those other universes. That is not easy for anyone to do. It means postulating a universe or class of universes with alternative constants, and then trying to find a reason it could not be like that – not even exist in that form, in the raw material sense. Since that involves hypothetical laws of physics rather than using the ones we know, it can’t be “hard physics” no matter who does it. (Maybe we need new names for that sort of speculative comparative “physics,” as I and many others have done, for example regarding the number of space dimensions.)
As best I can tell, you haven’t accomplished and summarized that particular feat, aside from maybe related or suggestive tries, in a concise way that I have time to read. Since no one else really has either, AFAIK, that’s no failure in relative terms.
I don’t think you are a crackpot, I don’t think I am a crackpot, and you just look touchy overreacting and throwing around names. As others have noted, oversensitivity just makes one look like a crackpot!
Here’s a question: What about the path-to-tenure dropouts? They’re legion.
BSc, MA, PhD, Post grad degree, Postdoc work, teaching…maybe tenure. Mostly not. Each stage has an attrition rate of between 2:1 and 10:1, and from MA on up extracts a lot of work for little $ or recognition (*cough* pyramid scheme *cough*). Lots of people decide to drop of at some stage, not because they’re not talented enough, but due to a rational assesment of the cost and odds of making it all the way. They want to have a life, in other words.
(I work as an engineer with a BSc in physics, so I don’t count myself there. QM gave me a terrible headache. But I support the people I met in physics.)
At the MA stage of theoretical physics, having learned the basics of GR and quantum field theory, are they a “physicist”, or an “amateur”? What if, despite the unspoken social pressure to not do so they continued to read journals and work on their own, while teaching at some local college or tutoring? If they go looking for a reviewer for an idea, some 10 years after they leave the system, are they a “crackpot”?
The people who dropped out along the path to tenure are in the majority! Do they count as crackpots, or be treated as such? Are they encouraged to contribute? Isn’t it an enourmous waste if they’re not?
A colleague of mine once received a paper to review from Physical Review A, which was clearly a crackpot paper (“special relativity is wrong”). The letter of the editor accompanying the paper stated that they didn’t want to send the paper out to review, but that the author insisted on it. So if you do some really solid work, despite not being part of a recognized institution, you will be able to get your work out to referees, and into refereed journals.
Andrew wrote:
Good point. I think Smolin’s insistence that the most important aspect of GR is it’s background independence is a good illustration of this. Einstein never was part of the scientific establishment. He was an amateur who was accepted, even adopted, by the establishment, but he always remained aloof in his search for what Smolin calls a “coherent theory of principle.” Indeed, he abandoned his own theories in the search for such a thing.
However, even though Einstein’s uncompromising “demand for a coherent theory of principle” is not understood in terms of the need to follow inductive science, but rather in terms of a need for “moral” invention that satisfies a “demand for clarity and completeness,” the consequence is the same.
If we don’t recognize this, then we will fail to conclude, as Smolin concludes, that, to truly follow the amateur Einstein, we must not attempt to add ad hoc invention upon ad hoc invention, but instead to search for genuine inductive principle. As Smolin writes:
The obvious point is that only amateurs are in a position to do this.
As a fairly frequent recipient of nutter mail of one kind or another, I am often struck by the huge amount of time and effort that has clearly gone into producing the work, with reams of carefully typeset equations and illustrative figures. Presumably, even though the people responsible are demonstrably incapable of doing science, they could do a lot of good if they only focussed these mammoth efforts on something worthwhile for society, like campaigning for human rights. Has anyone ever done the order-of-magnitude calculation as to quite how much effort is going to waste, and thought about how one might tap into this wealth of mis-spent potential?
Mind you, much the same could be asked about blogging, and a calculation of the IQ points wasted here would presumable be truly scary.
Ok, let’s stop this rubbish right here. Way too many people claim that Einstein was an amateur (since he worked in a patent office) which is blatantly false. Yes he did work in a patent office because he had trouble finding a teaching job. What seems to be neglected is that he completed a PhD in the middle of 1905, his ‘annus mirabilis’.
So it took a few years for him to find an academic job, what does that matter? It has happened to many people, and will no doubt continue to happen. This doesn’t make them amateurs.
Professional vs. amateur status has nothing to do with degree of education. It only has to do with the nature of one’s employment. When one is employed to think as a physicist, he/she enjoys professional status. When one is not so employed, he/she is an amateur, regardless of the degree of education.
Doug, when one is doing a PhD it seems wholely improper to be refered to as an amateur and to be claimed to be outside of the scientific establishment.
There are two definitions for amateur:
1) a person who engages in an activity without payment (nonprofessional activity);
2) [pejorative sense] a person considered inept at some activity.
So it seems Doug is using the first definition, whereas Joe Fitzsimons is using (at some extent) the second one.
Christine, B, and Sean
How heavy is the burdon of amateurs or even crackpots who ask you to consider their ideas? All of you spend quite a lot of time in blogging and outreach activity. It seems that occasionally dealing with such claims maybe more fruitfull than trying to find magic formulas (which will not work) to drive them away.
Gina:
Yesss! These pros take plenty of time telling us about crackpotism and how they don’t have time to read crackpot theories, but do they do enough to look for interesting material from amateurs that could be useful? Remember that even a well-posed question or challenge is helpful, not just entire new theories etc. There is lots of talent out there, that is not being tapped, IMHO.
Hi Gina,
How heavy is the burdon of amateurs or even crackpots who ask you to consider their ideas?
I had some few annoying crackpot cases back in my previous blog. In fact, crackpots can be annoying or not, it is a case of self-awareness. However, I have noticed some correlation: a high Baez crackpot index usually indicates a low sense of self-awareness. In such cases, the best thing is to ignore them.
Concerning amateurs, of course there are many out there far clever than I am and it is a pleasure to exchange emails/talk with them.
Physics research is a very difficult career per se. So imagine amateurs (not in the pejorative sense) trying to do a serious research in their free time.
All of you spend quite a lot of time in blogging
I usually spend a very tiny fraction of my time blogging. I usually blog over lunchtime, or when I arrive very early at my office.
Christine
I think it would not be a bad idea that amateur physicists attempt to create an association. It appears to exist many of those associations for amateur astronomers in the US. If the association proves to be serious enough, with their own journal, publishing interesting, original or expository material (non-crackpot papers), which could be refereed by a board of PhD physicists (that happen not be professionally involved in research), perhaps it could be a start for making the best ideas and works of amateurs promulgated.