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"Crank" (or kook, crackpot, or quack) is a pejorative term for a person who writes or speaks in an authoritative fashion about a particular subject, often of a scientific or pseudo-scientific nature, but is perceived as holding false or even ludicrous beliefs. Crank is also used as a noun to describe the opinions of such people (see American Heritage Dictionary 2000 - noun definition 3). Usage of the label is often subjective, with proponents of competing theories labeling each other cranks, but the term principally refers to someone who occupies a position outside of widely accepted beliefs or mainstream opinion on a matter, as well as a person of dubious mental stability.

The belief that the earth revolves around the sun was once considered a crank belief, so the mainstream consensus on crank beliefs can change. On the other hand, while most cranks think of or portray themselves as a new Galileo whose superior insight will be vindicated, for every Galileo there are thousands of cranks who are just plain wrong.

Crank tactics

Regardless of whether they are acting in good faith, cranks in all subject areas use similar tactics in their attempts to persuade the general public. The following set of tactics are deployed by science cranks:

• The (apparent) offering of cash rewards to anyone who disproves a (scientific) theory
• Grandiose claims for the validity and scope of the theory
• Stated belief that a conspiracy by the scientific establishment is hindering uptake of their own theory
• Use of neologisms without proper definition
• Comparison of the originator with Einstein, Newton, Galileo, or Copernicus
• Direct communication of the idea to the media, typically holding a press conference before going through the usual peer review process of publishing in scholarly journals (this was one reason for criticism of cold fusion, the discoverers of which held a press conference before their claims had been replicated)
• Observable effects of the theory are at or beyond the limits of detection (see N-rays; some skeptics also associate this tactic with superstrings)
• Lack of a working prototype where one might expect it to convince a skeptical audience (see perpetual motion)
• Extensive use of testimonials, e.g. in advertising, where testimonials by users of a crank therapy make claims that would be against FDA anti-fraud regulations if the purveyor were to make the claims outright
• Claims that something is proved to work because there is a patent on it, when the patent is actually a design patent, which protects only ornamentation, rather than a utility patent, or when the patent only covers an insignificant aspect of the patented subject matter
  • Related: Claims that something must work because it has a patent pending on it, when standard patent office stall tactics have been used to delay the pendency of the patent application, sometimes for up to several decades

Cranks on the Internet

Science fiction author and critic Bruce Sterling noted in his essay in CATSCAN 13 :

There's supposed to be a lot of difference between the hurtful online statement "You're a moron," and the tastefully facetious statement "You're a moron :-)". I question whether this is really the case, emoticon or no. And even the emoticon doesn't help much in one's halting interaction with the occasional online stranger who is, in fact, gravely sociopathic. Online communication can wonderfully liberate the tender soul of some well-meaning personage who, for whatever reason, is physically uncharismatic. Unfortunately, online communication also fertilizes the eccentricities of hopeless cranks, who at last find themselves in firm possession of a wondrous soapbox that the Trilateral Commission and the Men In Black had previously denied them.

Related terminology

"Kook" is a somewhat similar pejorative term that is usually used to describe a person whose areas of interest are perceived to be eccentric, fantastic, or insane. A person may be said to be a "kook" if they are seen to hold socially unacceptable beliefs, or perceptions that outrageously conflict with known scientific results, and appear to base their entire world views upon them. The term was coined in 1960 and originates from the word cuckoo, which is also the name of a bird, but which is also pejoratively associated with mental illness.

Predictably, "kooks" tend to draw criticism and generate controversy; it has been speculated that some kooks are motivated by a desire for such attention.

Topics typically associated with the "crank" label

Physics, computer science and mathematics

• Claims to have produced solutions to problems which have been proven to be unsolvable, such as the geometric construction problems of squaring the circle, doubling the cube and trisecting the angle. (It should be noted that all of these problems have solutions if one is permitted tools beyond a straightedge and compass).
• Producing unified Theories of Everything, and particularly doing so with high school or undergraduate level physics knowledge, or attempting to extend such theories to incorporate knowledge gathered by "experiments" such as astral projection.
• Lossless data compression that can always reduce the size of random data.
• Unbreakable cryptographic ciphers (other than the one-time pad).
• Perpetual motion, probably the earliest example of kookery.
• Finding a simple proof for Fermat's last theorem, the Goldbach conjecture, the four color theorem and other easy-to-understand mathematical problems
• Cold fusion. (perhaps one of the most contentious listings in this article, as a minority of researchers are convinced that they have duplicated it)
• Attempts at disproving quantum mechanics, the theory of relativity, Cantor's diagonal argument, Gödel's incompleteness theorem and other accepted but counterintuitive theories.
• Time Cube as an archetypal example of the work of a science crank.
• VMSK and other "ultra narrowband" modulation schemes whose claims violate the Shannon-Hartley theorem.
• Alchemy.
• Flat Earth Society which asserts that the earth is flat.
• Modern geocentrism.
• The Bogdanov Affair.
• Global warming conspiracy theorists, who believe that global warming is only an idea that was invented and promoted by a conspiracy.
• Creation Science proponents who ascribe scientific terminology to an otherwise wholly-unscientific philosophy.
• Claims that comets are typically composed of antimatter, and may therefore be used as a revolutionary source of fuel.

Medicine

• Alternative Medicine or Holistic Health practitioners who seek to completely substitute their treatment modality for mainstream medicine (and particularly in the treatment of potentially fatal conditions such as cancer and AIDS), or who practice a fortiori empirically unfounded modalities (ie: Ear candling).
• Results (and particularly purported cures) that are not reproducible by third parties.
• Mainstream Physicians who, during the mid-twentieth century, systematically dismissed mounting scientific evidence as to the effects of diet on heart disease.
• Homeopathy.
• Crystal healing.
• Anti-vaccinationist and "vaccine critics" in the Vaccine_controversy (and particularly claimed connections between vaccination and autism).
• Faith healing (see this same entry under the topic of Paranormal and spiritual).
• Phrenology, especially when used in (pseudo-)psychiatric diagnosis.
• Psychic surgery.
• Chiropractic, when considered as a total replacement for medical science or when it claims that unrelated conditions are caused by spinal subluxations, or curable by correcting the same.
• Medical illnesses neither recognised nor under consideration for inclusion by the World Health Organization into its International Classification of Diseases. Examples include Mucoid plaque.
• Psychiatric illnesses neither recognised nor under consideration for inclusion into the DSM-IV. For example, some cranks still believe that homosexuality, which was de-listed from the DSM in 1973, is a form of mental illness.
• Magnetic therapy.
• "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.
• Attempts at treatment (and particularly treatment conditions such as perceived penis size concerns which are likely to be purely psychological on the part of patients) when no attempt at prior diagnosis is made. This is another gray area — for example, physicians faced with a child with strep throat will often start antibiotics without waiting for positive diagnosis, because the potential benefit if strep throat is present outweighs any harm if the throat culture comes back negative.

Nutrition

• Diets that forbid or severely limit one or more necessary nutrients. Examples include extreme low-carbohydrate or low-fat diets.
• Those who consider common foods, such as milk or wheat, harmful or even fatal to everyone, including those with no history of food allergies or of anaphylaxis.
• Macrobiotics.
• Water fluoridation opponents.
• Raw food diets to the extent that cooked food is believed to be actively harmful (as opposed, for example, to claims that certain vitamins are lost in cooking, which are not disputed).
• Those who believe cancer is caused by deficiency of an unknown vitamin.

Politics, economics, and law

• Some conspiracy theories.
• Currency crankism.
  • Federal Reserve conspiracies.
  • Social credit.
• Tax protesters.
• Holocaust denial.
• Supporters of Lyndon LaRouche.
• Supporters of Bo Gritz.
• Supporters of the Posse Comitatus.
• Certain supporters of a gold standard as opposed to fiat money (goldbugs).
• New World Order / Trilateral Commission / Council on Foreign Relations conspiracy theorists.
• Spectral evidence in which legal testimony based on apparitions and dreams are considered admissible in a court of law.

Paranormal and spiritual

• Immortality rings.
• New Age movement adherents' denial of the laws of Physics -- examples of this denial include telekinesis and yogic flying.
• Faith healing particularly when advocating it as a replacement for regular visits to a licensed physician.
• Divine Revelation and prophecy only when it attempts to trump Science.
• Religious fundamentalism when it disguises faith as science (ie: Creationism, and Intelligent design).
• Feng Shui.
• Numerology.
• End times and end of the world prophecy.
• Anglo-Israelism and Christian Identity.
• The belief that a planet called Hercolubus or "Planet X" is drawing closer to Earth.
• flying saucers and little green men.
• Alleged Marian apparitions.

See also

• Pseudomathematics
• Pseudoscience
• Delusion
• Quackery
• Conspiracy theory
• Moonbat
• Time Cube
• Psychoceramics
• Maven

• List of alternative, speculative and disputed theories
• Snake oil
• alt.usenet.kooks
• Charlatan
• Crackpot index

External links

• Kooks Museum, a humorous collection of kook ideas, by Donna Kossy
• Crank Dot Net, a collection of Web sites related to cranks, created by Erik Max Francis
• the Almighty LART.com, more kook appreciation
• Are you a quack?, page dedicated to quacks
• John Baez' crackpot index, in the author's words: A simple method for rating potentially revolutionary contributions to physics.
• The Unofficial NANAE Kooks Kollection, a collection of articles on the Usenet kooks particular to the NANAE newsgroup.
• Quack Watch Lists varieties of quackery and health fraud.

• Pseudoscience
• Pejorative terms for people