In response to such attacks on physics, several physicists have produced websites to highlight the fallacies and silliness of these people and the "theories" they spew. I have already mentioned the weekly column done by Bob Park that frequently jibe at some really bad practices done by individuals, institutions, and even government agencies. He also has an article written a while back titled "The Seven Warning Signs of Voodoo Science". This was probably the precursor to his book. It certainly puts in very concise form all the warning signs that one could use to detect cranky ideas and actions.
In a more comical approach to addressing the crackpots, Warren Siegel at SUNY Stony Brook has ready-made responses to the most common complaints/whines/attacks addressed to him by these jokers in his Are You A Quack page. I think anyone who has been on the internet forums for any considerable length of time would have seen a few, if not all, of these types of comments. It gets very tiring because each one of these quacks thinks he/she is special and the first one to have uttered such words. Don't miss the note towards the very end of that webpage:
Note: Long ago a professor of mine told me that he got letters from 2 quacks, so he forwarded each's letter to the other. He got back an angry letter from one saying, "Why did you introduce me to this quack?"
That's just plain hysterical. I've always wondered why these quacks don't go after each other FIRST before bringing such crap to physicists. I guess it's honor among thieves.
Zz.
2 comments:
So which of these two is the quack:
1. The physicist such as Leonard Susskind who believes in 11 dimensions and string theory or,
2. Peter Woit/Lee Smolin who writes books like "Not Even Wrong" and the "The Trouble with Physics" and who believe string theory is babble baloney?
Clearly they are both matriculated physicists but they also pretty much label the others that disagree with them as a quack. Does disagreeing with somebody respectable make you a quack? I think not - many "respectable" physicists disagree with each other and with the huge split currently in theoretical physics over string theory, aka multiverse theory, there doesn't seem to be any real order any more. Seriously, why would one want to study this field when everybody is fighting with each other and can't agree on how to fix the standard model to account for embarrasing concepts such as neutrinos with mass?
Disagreement isn't on the list as the criteria of being a quack.
Zz.
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