A very amusing observation about crackpots. The last line is a classic. I wonder what occupation (besides physicists!) has the highest number of physics crackpots?
O brave new quantum world!
O brave new quantum world!
A very amusing observation about crackpots. The last line is a classic. I wonder what occupation (besides physicists!) has the highest number of physics crackpots?
I guess bankers, the kind of smart guys that studied physics and loved it but even loved money more and kept on reading books of Feynman et al. in their sparse sparetime.
I enjoyed the humor in the dot product story, but I totally disagree with the reason given for the abnormally high frequency of crackpots in physics. The writer claims that electrical engineers possess a “working knowledge” which “is rarely comprehensive or well-founded”, contrary to those clever physicists. My phd is in physics, but I beg to differ: Pam Dirac, John von Neumann, Claude Shannon, John Bardeen, Eugene Wigner… all Doctors in Engineering.
I think one can safely (though unfortunately) say that the Diracs, von Neumanns, Shannons, Bardeens and Wigners of the world are, in fact, rare.
No one is going to guess patent clerks are they?
Instead of “all Doctors in Engineering”, I should have said “all did an undergraduate degree in Engineering”. (Strictly speaking, some of those listed didn’t get a phd in Engineering.)
And, for the record, von Neumann and Wigner’s degrees where in chemical engineering, not electrical engineering 😉
But, as for my nomination, and I’m sure I’ll get hell for this, I say that electrical engineers and medical doctors are the most likely to become physics cranks.
May be wise to draw a clear line between cranks (otherwise technical capable people who believe nonsense) and kooks (remove ‘technically capable’).
But what about the juicy topic of physics cranks!
Umm… Brian Josephson?