Re:‘Preapproved Narratives’ Corrupt Science
by im3w1l on Tuesday October 03, 2023 @09:50PM
(#37759931)
> Cranks, almost by definition, are pretty much instantly recognizable to an expert: no one needs to apply extra scrutiny to catch them.
Correct, but you are missing a wrinkle. What if I disingeniously call people cranks? What if a lot of actual experts in one camp call actual experts of the other camp cranks?
In the hard sciences we can deal with it. If one camp can build working satellites and the other cannot we know who the real deal is. But in softer sciences? It's an unsolved problem as far as I can tell.
Re:‘Preapproved Narratives’ Corrupt Science
by nradov on Wednesday October 04, 2023 @12:24AM
(#37760835)
In some scientific fields like human nutrition there are way more cranks than experts. Some of the cranks have even managed to earn PhDs and publish multiple papers. The fact that there is a lot of industry funding for this field doesn't help the situation.
Suspect industry funding is a problem in some fields, but the powers that be couldn't care less about the charge of the electron, and yet it took twenty years to correct a fairly trivial error in Millikan's original measurement.