Crackpot index: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 00:50, 17 August 2009

Revision as of 07:31, 17 August 2009

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The '''crackpot index''' is a number that rates scientific claims or the individuals that make them, in conjunction with a method for computing that number. The method, proposed semi-seriously by mathematical physicist [[John Baez]] in 1992, computes an index by responses to a list of 3736 questions, each positive response contributing a point value ranging from 1 to 50. The computation is initialized with a value of −5.

Presumably any positive value of the index indicates crankiness.

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==External links==

* [[John Baez]], [http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html ''The Crackpot Index''].

* [http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/crackpot.htm [[Michael Shermer]]'s truncated version, Skeptics Society]

* [http://www.crank.net Crank Dot Net], a list of websites, roughly organized by subject area and sub-categorised by crankiness, including anti-crank sites.