Comments on: Pet Theories

By: Lyndon

Lyndon — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 11:30:36 +0000

Thats just great, nice to see the smug self-satisfied laying it on those lacking critical facilities. My own personal theory leaves room for all of us, we create our own realities. You know its true, science is like just a series of russian dolls, we’re making it up as we go along :-)

By: Erik

Erik — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 03:50:11 +0000

A philosophy professor I had would tell people that he was a math professor and start talking about something obscure in mathematical logic in order to not have to deal with people telling him their philosophy of life. I think the problem of people using your academic field to push evil on you goes all the way down. When I was going to be a math major I had people ask me to add or multiply or divide numbers, as if I were going to college to study how to do long division, or you know, anything with actual numbers.

By: rufus

rufus — Fri, 19 Nov 2004 01:06:16 +0000

Chris, I feel your pain. I once had the brilliant idea that I was going to start telling people my field was “Cognitive Science”, instead of “Psychology”. Well, it didn’t go so well. On the first occasion I had to try this out the couple looked at me and said ‘oh, psychology’, and then I just looked like one of those insecure dorks who likes to put “science” in the name of what they do so it sounds more impressive. Now I basically just say “I teach”. And if they want further info, we can go from there. Incidentally, glad to have found your blog through your post. I’ll be adding it to my list. Yeah, that’s what I need, MORE blogs to waste time on :)

By: Tony Healy

Tony Healy — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 12:40:01 +0000

Sorry for the double post. The first one reported as an error.

By: Tony Healy

Tony Healy — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 12:37:44 +0000

Lack of credibility for academics seems to be having dire effects. A professor in Texas took eight months off to become a garbage scrounger. "The idea seemed obvious, if risky," he writes. "I’d try to survive as an urban scrounger, adopting a way of life that was both field research and free-form survival. As an academic criminologist, I’ve spent much of my adult life inside illicit subcultures, researching life on the margins, so the plan appealed. I resigned from my position as a university professor and my wife and I moved back to my home town of Fort Worth, Texas. (The Times 18 Nov 2004)

By: Tony Healy

Tony Healy — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 12:35:21 +0000

By: Francis Xavier Holden

Francis Xavier Holden — Wed, 17 Nov 2004 08:05:36 +0000

What happened to the “good old days” when we had USENET and Net Kook of the Year. And I do miss the body contact and actual police raids eminating from groups such as alt.religion.scientology. Blogs just aren’t the same contact sport.

By: jo.

jo. — Wed, 17 Nov 2004 03:40:18 +0000

Well, you can add English Professors to the list—in an odd way. A fellow turned up at my office door this afternoon, asking if I was ‘in English’. I (reluctantly) said that I was, and he produced a two-sentence rejection letter from a local small press. He wanted me to clarify it for him, as he found it ambiguous. Were they rejecting his work because it was too bad, or because it was too good? I realize that this isn’t quite the same as the “I have solved Fermat’s Last Theorem” cranks, but it was quite unnerving enough for me.

By: jo.

jo. — Wed, 17 Nov 2004 03:26:50 +0000

By: Uncle Kvetch

Uncle Kvetch — Tue, 16 Nov 2004 17:29:22 +0000

“how many languages do you speak” (linguistics) A corollary from my obscure little neck of the woods, linguistic anthropology: “So, you study the languages of the cavemen, right?”

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 16 Nov 2004 15:02:44 +0000

I can tell you from personal experience that shai has it right: non-clinical psychologists have it the worst. Questions about Freud, or discussions about everyone’s “problems” are inevitable. Can you imagine if “Mrs Paul” had been an experimental psychologist? The same emailer might have written her asking if she can help him with his “ontological problems.” I’ve reached the point at which I no longer even mention “psychology” when I tell people what I do. Of course, that means that people have no idea what I do, and when I try to explain it to them, either their eyes gloss over, or they wonder why the hell anyone would need to study what I study.

By: Dan Simon

Dan Simon — Tue, 16 Nov 2004 07:44:10 +0000

At least the cranks in most fields are used to being treated as cranks. The cranks cryptographers have to deal with are usually accomplished mathematicians (with the occasional physicist thrown in), who can’t understand why their brilliant cryptographic idea doesn’t work, since the math/physics behind it is unassailable. (Then again, it’s somehow much more satisfying to dismiss established experts in other fields as cranks, than merely to brag/gripe about all the attention one gets from mere lunatics. Eat your hearts out, pedestrian old-economy scientists!)

By: Sean

Sean — Tue, 16 Nov 2004 06:02:59 +0000

Anyone who works in cosmology or general relativity is typically deluged with crank email. Along with ordinary letters, occasional phone calls, and once in a while a knock on your office door (as I had last week). Strategies for coping are a common lunchtime conversation. A popular one is to pair off the crackpots to talk to each other. But it doesn’t work, as crankdom is highly ideosyncratic; inevitably they both come back to you and say “Why did you tell me to talk to that guy? He’s crazy!”

By: mark steen

mark steen — Tue, 16 Nov 2004 03:13:16 +0000

I’ve gotten quite a few crank emails, (being a philosopher) but I actually enjoy them. If you want to become a student of crankery, a fun place to start is http://www.crank.net “All cranks, all of the time.” Check out the crank of the day.(I don’t work for them, really. I just enjoy the site)

By: Kenny Easwaran

Kenny Easwaran — Tue, 16 Nov 2004 03:00:12 +0000

I just got my first crank proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem in e-mail last week! And he claimed to have disproved Wiles’ proof too, because it used elliptic curves, which obviously only work in the case of right triangles, which only talks about n=2!