A crank is someone who doesn't believe
in the idiotic conclusions of Mathematical Physics

    One arrogant fellow of the establishment who pokes fun at dissidents is John Baez. Some time in the 90’s
    this individual created his Crackpot Index, a site that is mirrored in many conspicuous places and is read
    by tens of thousands worldwide. On his page, Baez suggests a grading system to determine who should
    be called a crank or a crackpot. A crank is a person with such eccentric ideas which supposedly have
    already been debunked, but who against all odds insists on them.

     “ cranks so often seem to represent, not individuals with an exceptional degree of knowledge,
         but rather individuals with an exceptional degree of ignorance concerning the subject of their  
         cranky belief.”

    In other words, the words crank and crackpot are at best synonyms of ignorant and at worst synonyms of
    crazy and lunatic. The crank is more than a dissident or an eccentric. He or she is treated as a demented
    person.

    Mr. Baez’s tactics and opinions wouldn’t bother anyone if they were kept anonymous and personal.
    However, his Physics FAQ is a highly visible part of the official website of the Department of Mathematics
    at the University of Riverside in Southern California (UCR). This means that the University of Riverside
    officially endorses this practice of ridiculing skeptics who don’t agree with mainstream ideas. Mr. Baez
    apparently has set himself up as the standard and the university puts its weight behind him. The univer-
    sity's leaders and Mr. Baez seem to have concluded that they know everything there is to know about the
    Universe and that there is no reason for anyone to even question the foundations painstakingly disco-
    vered over the last century. So they resort to this underhanded method to silence the opposition.

    With the Baez-like circus atmosphere on one side and the Relativity Peer Inquisition on the other, it is
    simply impossible to publish a new theory. Certainly, not one editor of Science or Nature Journals even
    touches a paper that attacks relativity or proposes classical solutions to old problems. The editors are
    more concerned with keeping the readers happy with stuff that is mainstream than with publishing critical
    papers. For thousands of papers that these so-called ‘scientific’ journals publish about such crap as time
    travel, black holes, space-time, and anti-particles, they publish perhaps one dissenting paper about
    something worthwhile. The magazines have space for nonsense, but not for dissenting papers. These are
    very important factors for why the religions of relativity and quantum are still around today.

    Schwinger predicted that something like this would happen one day:

     " The replacement of impartial reviewing by censorship will be the death of science." [4]

    Will be? It is and has been for a while! Dissidents are marginalized and forced to voice their opinions in
    personal websites. And that’s when goons like Baez come in for the final kill with crackpot indexes and
    heckling. The strategy is to hound the dissident into oblivion.

    I became acquainted with Riverside’s website a few years ago when one of those mathematical idiots
    from Cambridge used Baez’s grading system on something I wrote. I had no idea what this fellow was
    talking about until I zeroed-in on Baez’s site. I instantly thought that Baez had a nerve to create a crank
    grading system considering the ridiculous theories he espouses. If you want to meet a real crank, I
    recommend you read Baez's paper titled 'Quantum Gravity and the Algebra of Tangles.' Of course, you
    will excuse yourself saying that you don't understand any of it because you are not an expert, but that's
    not the point. I want you to concentrate solely on the idiot-language that relativists had to concoct to
    communicate their irrational and supernatural ideas to a microscopic global brotherhood, none of whom
    can explain to you how a simple magnet works. Yet this crank believes he knows so much that he goes
    the extra mile and appoints himself as judge and jury. Not only did I believe Baez to be quite arrogant in
    publishing his index, but I instantly thought that he must also be a great fool. Baez never knows when his
    grading system is going to be used on him.

    If the University at Riverside is serious about high scientific standards it should stimulate rather than
    hinder communication. Whatever the strange ideas of dissidents may be, brainstorming beats
    dictatorship any day. Who’s to say that the crackpot may actually have a point? The flurry of ideas, even if
    they clutter the board sometimes, stimulates dialogue and this contributes to science. After all, journals
    such as Science and Nature routinely clutter the reading space with such garbage as time-travel and
    annihilation. So what's the risk? If the proposal is false, we don’t have to worry. It will die a natural death.
    No one needs to kill it, much less in its infancy.

    Mr. Baez has done and is doing a lot of damage to science because of his site's visibility. Meanwhile,
    Riverside is benefiting from the prestige and the traffic the Physics FAQ is creating for the university.          
    I think that it’s time to stop this mechanism. If Riverside is receiving government funds, this should be
    looked at as well.

    Why pick on Baez and Riverside? Aren’t other individuals and colleges doing the same thing?

    I am not limiting the witch hunt to Baez and to Riverside. Indeed, I firmly believe that ALL the mathematical
    physicists of the world should be hanged from the highest trees or telephone poles available. I believe
    that we should go after those conspicuous individuals who use official websites of institutions to do their
    dirty work while the institution looks the other way. I believe that all institutions of higher learning which
    have such websites should do something exemplary about individuals who poison the atmosphere,
    something that gives the public a high level of awareness that this is a problem in Science. Mr. Baez is a
    good place to start as any. He has committed and is still committing a crime. He needs to recall his
    arrogance and repent in public. Nothing less will do. In sports, when a player has unsportsmanlike
    conduct, he and his team are penalized in some way. In Science, what Mr. Baez and Riverside are doing is
    morally 'illegal' and also demands that appropriate action be taken. Mr. Baez and Riverside are colluding
    in a scheme to eliminate or discourage dissent. There is an obvious conflict of interests. If I had to vote, I
    would vote for expulsion from the game!

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    Last modified 03/01/08


        Copyright © by Nila Gaede 2008
J. Baez, The Crackpot Index, UC Riverside (1998).

the peer reviewers finally put Bill in his rightful place
Adapted for the Internet from:   Why God Doesn't Exist

    " the Crackpot index, intended to "diagnose" cranky beliefs regarding contemporary physics" [1]

    " 10 points for each claim that quantum mechanics is fundamentally misguided" [2]

    " The term crank is often applied to persons ... who deny extremely well established physical
       theories, such as the special theory of relativity." [3]

      [Well, yes... under these criteria, I am a fanatical crank by definition (...and proud of it too!)]
Crazy Bill