Talk:Crank (person)/Archive 1

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Does listing persons who have been called cranks violate WP:NPOV?

This isn't NPOV. I'd fix it up, but I don't have the time at the moment.

--Furrykef 07:26, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I think that this page is too harsh. There shouldn't be such a negative connotation with regards to trying to think out of the box. Just because someone gets arbitrarily called a "crank" does not make it so.

--TheMaXX 22:22, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Yes, this page needs a healthy dose of skepticism. A lot of alleged cranks turn out to be right, and a lot of alleged "experts" turn out to be fighting rearguard actions defending mainstream but quickly-becoming-indefensible theories. --Delirium 00:28, Jun 24, 2004 (UTC)

I agree that it's still a bit harsh. - Omegatron 16:00, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)

Let's get examples of those journalists quoting kooks, and those that're schizophrenic. lysdexia 17:51, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)

There's a few terms here I'd like to define that might help this page.

Quack: A person who knowingly promotes falsehoods to gain personal benefit. For example, someone who tries to sell you a perpetual motion machine he knows doesn't work. Crank: A person who holds a belief despite that belief being demonstratably wrong. For example, someone who insists that his perpetual motion machine works even though it would contradict known and well-established principles of physics. Iconoclast: A person who holds an unpopular belief that is not (yet) demonstratably wrong. For example, someone who asserts that it may be possible to get usable energy from quantum fluctuations in a vacuum, as in Zero point energy.

How is a low-carbohydrate diet "crank"??

How is veganism "crank," and how is its inclusion here even remotely NPOV? This well-intended carnivore thinks it should be omitted. Tell me why I'm wrong. GeeZee 00:02, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

  • Well, since there are no responses, I've deleted that listing. Veganism is a lifestyle choice, not a belief in something that can or cannot be proven demonstrably wrong. Simply put, there's nothing to "prove"; either one eats animal products or one doesn't. GeeZee 19:58, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Should This Article Be Deleted?

Does it serve as nothing more than a clearinghouse for ideas that are unpopular and disagreeable? Some of the entries don't fit the definition above (and I realize that the definition was suggested by one user and is not a wikipedia standard) that a crank is a "person who holds a belief despite that belief being demonstrably wrong." For example, a supporter of Lyndon LaRouche doesn't fit that definition. Neither does a researcher seeking a cure for cancer. The "religious fundamentalism" listing also is curious; why not list each and every religion, since none can be proved? Instead of just listing low-carb diets (which do promote weight-loss, albeit in an unhealthy manner), why not list every diet? Some homeopathic cures do in fact work, so why is that listed? Etc.

Of course, there are some listings on this page to things that are indeed impossible; e.g., perpetual motion and squaring the circle. But is anyone really trying to square a circle these days? Does anyone (except possibly Gene Ray) have a belief in Time Cube?

We could have a list of proven scientific and mathematic impossibilities--such as the perpetual motion machine. Just about everything else, though, is POV and the article itself is nothing more than an invitation to bash unpopular ideas. Galileo would have been a crank, according to this article.

Before I list it on VfD, I want to solicit feedback. GeeZee 17:24, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Absolutely keep Bubba73 (talk) 19:44, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
Absolutely keep. It is a phenomenon which many most people encounter on the web at some point, and also one which is unfortunately extremely relevant to the problems of maintaining the Wikipedia itself. ---CH 19:50, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Please keep

Either this or **some** article needs to characterize the human behavior of making intentionally or unintentionally false or unsubstantiated scientific or health claims. It should list examples as was done here. It should be done to keep history from repeating itself, as in criminal convictions based on spectral evidence, phrenology and other forms of pseudoscience rather than on empirically verifiable forensic science.

Unfortunately the article is tough on the person (ie: Crank, Quack, or Fraud), yet not tough on the problem of human gullibility. In this sense, it is harsh. Yet, few people will look up gullibility which may refer to themselves. Instead they will look up examples of where gullibility went out of control in others (ie: the Crank).

Religious belief, no matter how different from the one I hold, makes neither scientific nor health claims. Religious fundamentalism is a different matter. It was included in this article because Fundamentalists of all faiths seek to impose religious beliefs onto all walks of life, including the practice of science and science education. Please see the article: "Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science" authored by the National Academy of Sciences (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1998).

False health claims (quakery) deserves special attention. It preys on the sick amongst us with completely fraudulent and unsubstantiated claims. If the scientist finding the cure for cancer publishes his results in refereed jounals with results that can be replicated, he fits the definition of a scientist. If, however, none of what he does is published so that a peer can replicate his results, then the 'researcher' mentioned above is a quack.

And yes, I do refer to this page regularly as a clearinghouse for ideas that are neither verifiable nor falsifiable that nevertheless make either health or scientic claims. I am now at the point of adding in Creationism and Intelligent design, even though these ideas are extremely popular amongst Americans and their Leader. It only goes to show, not all cranks are unpopular. Vonkje 1 July 2005 19:07 (UTC)

The page should define crank, and describe how various beliefs have been defined as crank beliefs at one point or another. It should give examples of those which are still not believed as well as those which are now believed. Hans Joseph Solbrig 06:00, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Hans,
I like your idea of describing crank beliefs in terms of how they evolved over time. A good place for this is beside the appropriate entry. For example, the crank belief in Phrenology did eventually direct scientific attention to ascribing particular functions to particular parts of the brain. In this sense, Phrenology can be viewed more as a protoscience than a pseudoscience. With regard to the need for a definition of crank, the first two paragraphs seem to offer this. Finally, as a matter of housekeeping I moved our comments to the end of the article in keeping with discussion pages which are all in thread mode. Vonkje 16:54, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Chiropractic

I agree that the early beliefs held by the founder of Chiropractic were the far-fetched beliefs of a crank. I also know that cloaking marketing campaigns as clinical studies as was done in some parts of the USA was not ethical. However, Chiropractic is a widely recognised modality, at least in the USA, and is regulated by most if not all of its state governments. It enjoys great client satisfaction, and seems to do many people good. My personal experience with a Chiropractor involved him refering me to a Dentist for a condition (a certain kind of headache) which Chiropractic could not treat as effectively as would a Dentist. If I were reading this article and the Wikipedia articles on Chiropractic and subluxation, I would get an impression very different from my own personal experience. This article should be about those who are way out there, not about those for which there is a legitimate empirical controversy. Vonkje A.K.A. 209.42.38.71 17:23, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Just because something "enjoys great client satisfaction" doesn't mean it is scientifically valid. The page states "Chiropractic, when considered as a total replacement for medical science" so this does not dismiss all uses of Chiropractic. Stevemiller 15:44, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

On religious fundamentalism and Scientology

Why is religious fundamentalism only a crank belief when it "disguises faith as science"? I don't understand how it could be any other way - you can't believe in both the literal interpretation of mythology and science, whether or not you promote creationism, etc.

All religious fundamentalists believe that something unprovable (or even disproven) is true. By definition, doesn't this make all fundamentalists cranks, with no caveat? Or really, all religionists altogether? Believing that God wrote a book, or incarnated on Earth, or that a man died and was resurrected, or believing in nephilim, angels, or the prophecies of Revelations... those aren't crank beliefs? It seems odd that Scientology and Creation-science would be singled out among all the other religious beliefs which are equally as unbelievable and strange.

Dear 64.171.5.116,
Most adherents to most religions, particularly the mainstream religions, do not really believe that their beliefs are a viable replacement for scientific fact. In this sense, placing all religions and all religious beliefs into the realm of crankdom is unfair to the people who see both the value of religious faith and of science. Hence I would like to replace your entry Religion with: Religious fundamentalism when it disguises faith as science (ie: Creationism, and Intelligent design). Vonkje 16:55, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Crank magnets

Dear 64.171.5.116,

I liked most of your edits, however two of them deal with what I call "crank magnets", which are subject areas rife with crank beliefs. Artifical Intelligence is one such magnet that gets alot of uninformed hype. It is a formal academic discipline with refereed conferences and publications. It has great overlap with computer science, and some of its proponents are respected and well within the mainstream of their discipline (ie: Marvin Minsky and Herbert Simon). Third party movements provide another example of a crank magnet. This entry has geographic bias favoring the two-party system of the United States, in which many if not most third-party candidates are cranks. In England, Germany, and other countries on the Parliamentary system, there may be more than three viable political parties, with only the smallest ones likely to represent crank beliefs. Vonkje 16:08, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

The controversial case of Mentifex is of interest here. This individual, who arguably is notable as a web character, was the subject of a Wikipedia article which was deleted following an AfD. See Talk:Artificial intelligence/Archive01 and the website of Mentifex and this website. ---CH 19:57, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Water Fluoridation

http://www.quackwatch.com puts water fluoridation into a favourable light. They have identified many quack remedies in agreement with the scientific community. My layman impression is that the final edict on water fluoridation has yet to materialize but it looks much better than e.g. Homeopathy. Actually many water fluoridation opponents exhibit some crank syndrome ("biggest fraud in medical history", conspiracy theories, etc.) I wonder whether the entry was meant to be "Water fluoridation opponents". But some of them have a few good arguments. In the moment no side appears to me being cranky enough to be listed here so I propose to take water fluoridation out of the list. Stevemiller 16:34, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi Stevemiller,
Thanks for catching this. I added in the word 'opponent' to the entry for water flouridation, and was also surprised to find no link to Quack Watch, which I promptly inserted under See Also. Vonkje 07:49, 27 September 2005 (UTC)


Syndrome?

Hi

The use of the word syndrome in medicine is directly applicable to crank science, IMHO. The sense I'm after is a syndrome being features that often tend to occur together, but any one of which isn't enough to diagnose the disease. I've tried to put in some of the more obvious symptoms: they definitely do seem to occur together in the case of crank science. I don't think I'm expressing it particularly well, but perhaps we could build the list up a little.

best wishes Robinh 20:28, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Hi Robinh,
I hope you don't mind me moving your reply to an earlier post to a new post concerning the idea of a syndrome that cranks suffer from. One could argue that since "Crank Syndrome" per se is not in the DSM nor the ICD, that the paragraph should be removed. Such an objection misses the point. We all have known of cranks who live in our communities. Regardless of their motivations, they all seem to use similar tactics. From what I can gather, it is the listing of tactics that makes this paragraph encyclopedic. A particularly good example of a watchdog organization listing each tactic, then describing the issue at hand in terms of that tactic is in the water floridation article in Quackwatch.org. So if you don't mind, I would like to change wordings involving syndrome to wordings involving tactics. Vonkje 08:05, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
Okay Robinh,
I made the changes. I kept your list as is, but I noticed that you gave only the eight or so tactics used by science cranks. The water floridation article in QuackWatch.org lists about 4 or 5 more. I did not get to re-read that so I don't know if the missing tactics would add much more to what you have already. It might be that these missing tactics would round out the list and make the list applicable to medical cranks (quacks) as well. Vonkje 08:29, 27 September 2005 (UTC)


Hello Vonkje. I think your version is an improvement on mine. I never thought to phrase it in terms of tactics (which is an eminently objective NPOV way of discussing the issue). I don't think the DSM is relevant, though, because I was using "syndrome" in its wider (nonmedical) sense, given by the OED, of a "characteristic combination of opinions, behaviour, etc". It might be possible to include the word "syndrome" in a NPOV way but this might be difficult.

best wishes

Robinh 10:14, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Prose before lists

The explanatory prose should be up front, not shoved down the end after a loooong list. - David Gerard 23:47, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Homeopathy

I propose deleting "Homeopathy" from the Crank page:

In book "Schicksal als chance" ("Destiny as a chance" - the book is otherwise on a different topic, the homeopathy is just noted on the side...) by Thorwald Dethlefsen, there is written a reasonable explanation of how it works (shortened in my own words):

While creating homeopathic preparate, They put a chemical (mostly poisonous) into a water solution, and dilute it iterativelly, until there does not stay even one molecule of the original substance. But by the process of diluting, the substance structure is transcribed into hydrogen bonding structure of water. Then it works the same way as a well-known vaccination by delivering molecule-shape information into white-corpuscle database...
Leukocytes use antibodies and antigens for this: complex protein and enzyme structures. Where is the analogous system in a vial that you admit contains only water?

The caveat of this explanation is in the fact, that contemporary science cannot read the structure of hydrogen bridges in the water with enough precission to prove this or disprove. But they already know the fact, that hydrogen bridges can remember an inverse shape of other substance, and that white blood corpuscles can remember substances (which is used in a vaccination)...

Please show us one scientific test, one provable and repeatable empirical demonstration, that there is a measurable difference between water and water. Does the "homeopathic preparation"'s melting point change? Does its boiling point change? Is there any measurable change in its viscosity, its color, its chemical activity, its solubility, or its ability to dissolve other substances? If it has no characteristics that demonstrably and measurably differ from a control sample's, then how can you say there is a difference?

And if there is some statistical evidence that it may work to solve some health problems, then I would wait to mark it a crank, at least until scientists get into enough microscopic precission to really disprove it...

If.

There is a Murphys law, that says:

If scientist say, that something is possible, he is usually true.

If scientist say, that something is impossible, he is usually false.


Think on this a while...


The explanation of Cybernetics in early 60`s (communistic) encyclopedy in the Eastern block says:

Cypernetics: is a capitalistic (burjoise) quasi-science, that ...


Smile on this after 40 years...

Semi Psi 00:19, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

... continued on the Homeopathy discussion page when I've discovered it... Semi Psi 23:40, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Works the same way as vacination. Do you have any evidence that the immune system responds to homeopathic remedies?Geni 00:47, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Lists of cranky topics

The long list of "topics typically associated with the crank label" is in despearte need of cleanup. There ought to be a clear division between

  1. Typical topics that many cranks explore independently, such as "disproving theory of relativity" of 9/11 conspiracy theories, and
  2. Notable topice associated with individual cranks such as "comets are made of antimatter" or Time Cube. While these examples are indeniably cranky, it is not typical for cranks to rave about time cubes in particular.
  3. Strange ideas with a wider following, such as astrology or homeopathy. I'm inclined to think that using "crank" about pseudoscience in general dilutes the term, but there should probably be a list of them anyway (with a heading that acknowledges controversy) if only because otherwise people will add them in other places.

The current division based on subject areas feels more like a fallback choice; it would be better used as an internal ordering principle within those of the three categories that are large enough to warrant it. Comments? Henning Makholm 01:26, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

This sounds like a good idea. Other popular theories include single page proofs of Fermat's last theorem. Incidentally, I have seen one psychology book which defines any cranky theory with more than five adherents as a religion. Stephen B Streater 06:51, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
I have started reorganising, but it will take some time to categorize everything. Help wanted! Henning Makholm 18:52, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Somebody removed the list headings for (2) and (3) while I was sorting. That made me give up for some time. Now I have at least deleted the following entries:

Physics, computer science, mathematics, and engineering
Medicine
  • "Q-Ray" therapy, e.g. with emissions from a "Q-Ray" bracelet.
  • Mud therapy, wherein therapeutic effects are supposed to be gained by drinking mud.
Paranormal and spiritual

because they are not really typical categories of cranky subjects, but rather singular examples of individual (or alleged) crankery. If we must have a list of every particular crank theory, a category would be a much better solution (but it would probably be controversial). Henning Makholm 14:15, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Notable Cranks?

Don't the people listed need a cite? I could come up with quite a bit more but unfortunately I couldn't get a reputable source to agree with me to call them cranks. --Tbeatty 05:26, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Seriously though, I think this is really a violation of Wikipedia policy: No personal attacks as well as unsourced and also a "don't feed the trolls" type section.--Tbeatty 05:27, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I created the headning because the old, mixed list seems to hold a lot of entries that only contribute "this crank or that crank" without really telling anything essential about crankiness in general. For my money they could be removed completely, only someone would add them again in an unsystematic place. I think the list should only mention cranks with their own articles in Wikipedia, and it should fall to the linked article to source the crankiness (i.e., if there is no backlink it does not belong in the list). As for the current entries, the Time Cube website is archetypical crankery, but I have doubt that Daniel Brandt belongs. Henning Makholm 09:15, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Where is the source for all the this "crankery"? --Tbeatty 14:28, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I have started the process of deleting references to people and groups that are not supported by references. This is an extension of the Living Persons biography policy where unreferenced claims are to be deleted immediately.--Tbeatty 04:32, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

In wikibiographies of persons whose claim to notability relies upon their reputation as a noisy Internet crank, I think it is appropriate to state that a specific individual has been called a crank, provided that external links or other suitable citations are offered so that readers may verify the claim. Note that this is not the same thing as saying that some individual is a crank. The latter kind of claim should probably be avoided in WP article space.
However, I am not sure what purpose a list of persons who have been called cranks would serve here at WP, since there are already fairly extensive lists at crank.net.
WP editors should be aware that at least one individual who has often been called a crank has been inordinately troublesome here at WP. This individual has made numerous threats to
  1. sue the Wikimedia Foundation,
  2. sue individual Wikipedia editors,
  3. report individual editors to the FBI/Homeland Security for "terrorist activity",
  4. call the bosses/department chairs of individual editors,
  5. visit the homes/workplaces of individual editors,
  6. harm individual editors via remote viewing :-/
and so forth. At times he has denied making such threats, but they are well documented in various WP history pages. This particular user was permabanned by Jimbo Wales due to his persistent threats and other violations of WP policy, but continues to edit as an anon. And at least one WP user unhappy with an article on someone whose notability arises from making widely InterNet-publicized cranky claims has recently threatened (apparently) to subject the WP to denial of service attacks or vandalbot attacks.
While this kind of misbehavior certainly has amusing aspects, any WP editor contemplating mentioning a volatile individual by name way want to consider that such action might well elicit overreaction which can quickly become tiresome. Note that current WP policy seems to be to be roughly this:
  1. pursue methods of dispute resolution at WP (talk pages thru RfA),
  2. as a last resort, to consider suing individual Wikipedia editors, rather than the WikiMedia Foundation.
But bear in mind that by the very nature of their volatility and/or incompetent reading habits, many cranks are effectively incapable of
  1. following instructions for using this website,
  2. acting rationally,
  3. exhibiting sound judgement,
  4. recognizing fine distinctions, such as the difference between pointing out that someone has been called a crank and saying that someone is a crank, the difference between talk space and article space, etc.
Just some things to keep in mind when considering declaring that some living individual has been called a crank. ---CH 20:38, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Merge List of typical "cranky" topics to List of alternative, disputed, and speculative theories

This [article] section should be merged to List of alternative, disputed, and speculative theories because the former's use of the word crank tends to poison the well, and it shows. Bob A 15:35, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I think the two articles are completly different. Merging them would be a bad idea. Jefffire 15:56, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
(sorry; i've made the proposal more specific now) Bob A 18:31, 8 May 2006 (UTC)