"Crank" is a pejorative term for a person who It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with pejoration. ...

1. holds some belief which the vast majority of his contemporaries would consider false,
2. clings to this belief in the face of all counterarguments or evidence presented to him.

The term implies that

1. a "cranky" belief is so wildly at variance with some commonly accepted truth as to be ludicrous,
2. and arguing with the crank is useless, because he will invariably dismiss all evidence or arguments which contradict his cranky belief.

Common synonyms for "crank" include kook and crackpot. The word quack is usually reserved for someone who promotes a medical remedy or practice that they know to be ineffective. The crank differs from the fanatic in that the subject of the fanatic's obsession is not necessarily widely regarded as wrong, or a "fringe" belief. Pietro Longhi: The Charlatan, 1757 Quackery is a derogatory term used to describe questionable medical practices. ... FANatic was an American TV show that was shown on the MTV network in the late 1990s. ... Look up obsession in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

Relativity of crank beliefs

The term crank is often applied to persons who contradict rigorously proven mathematical theorems, such as the impossibility of squaring the circle by ruler and compass, or who deny extremely well established physical theories, such as the special theory of relativity. More engineer-minded cranks may claim to have invented a magic compression algorithm or a perpetual motion machine. (As of the early 21st century, perpetual motion is most often called "free energy".) In mathematics, a proof is a demonstration that, given certain axioms, some statement of interest is necessarily true. ... Look up theorem in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Squaring the circle: the areas of this square and this circle are equal. ... In mathematics, theory is used informally to refer to a body of knowledge about mathematics. ... Special relativity (SR) or the special theory of relativity is the physical theory published in 1905 by Albert Einstein. ... A magic compression algorithm is an algorithm that is asserted to be able to losslessly compress any data stream, reducing its size. ... This article or section should include material from Parallel Path See also Perpetuum mobile as a musical term Perpetual motion machines (the Latin term perpetuum mobile is not uncommon) are a class of hypothetical machines which would produce useful energy in a way science cannot explain (yet). ... The second law of thermodynamics is an expression of the universal law of increasing entropy. ...

In the latter case, when scientific paradigms are overthrown, a belief previously considered cranky could in principle later be considered mainstream. Examples are rare, but they do exist; for example, the notion of continental drift proposed by Alfred Wegener was widely considered by contemporary geologists to be cranky, but was eventually dramatically vindicated (Williams 2000). Plates in the crust of the earth, according to the plate tectonics theory Continental drift refers to the movement of the Earths continents relative to each other. ... Alfred Wegeners theory of continental drift was widely ridiculed in his day Alfred Lothar Wegener (Berlin, November 1, 1880 – Greenland, November 2 or 3, 1930) was a German interdisciplinary scientist and meteorologist, who became famous for his theory of continental drift (Kontinentalverschiebung or die Verschiebung der Kontinente in his... The Geologist by Carl Spitzweg A geologist is a contributor to the science of geology, studying the physical structure and processes of the Earth and planets of the solar system (see planetary geology). ...

It appears to be even more unlikely that the opinion of the mathematical community might change concerning whether some proven theorem is true, despite nineteenth and twentieth century discoveries in mathematical logic which are often popularly misunderstood as having overthrown theorems previously regarded as true. It would be more correct to say that mathematicians have gradually become aware of subtle issues which had previously been overlooked. That is, previous mathematical knowledge has been enriched, not overthrown, by such discoveries as non-Euclidean geometry or Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Mathematical logic is a major area of mathematics, which grew out of symbolic logic. ... Behavior of lines with a common perpendicular in each of the three types of geometry The term non-Euclidean geometry describes hyperbolic, elliptic and absolute geometry, which are contrasted with Euclidean geometry. ... In mathematical logic, Gödels incompleteness theorems, proved by Kurt Gödel in 1931, are two theorems stating inherent limitations of all but the most trivial formal systems for arithmetic of mathematical interest. ...

Nonetheless, since the nature of mainstream opinion can change over time, it is useful to define crankery in terms of characteristics which are independent of the allegedly cranky belief. Indeed, it is widely accepted that the true hallmark of the crank is not so much asserting that the Earth is flat as making this assertion in the face of all counterarguments and contrary evidence. Certain authors (see the references) who have studied the phenomenon of crankery agree that this is the essential defining characteristic of a crank: No argument or evidence can ever be sufficient to make a crank abandon his belief. For the 1984 album by Thomas Dolby, see The Flat Earth. ...

Common characteristics of cranks

The second book of the philosopher and popular author Martin Gardner was a study of crank beliefs, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. More recently, the mathematician Underwood Dudley has written a series of books on mathematical cranks, including The Trisectors, Mathematical Cranks, and Numerology: Or, What Pythagoras Wrought. And in a 1998 UseNet post, the mathematician John Baez humorously proposed a "checklist", the Crackpot index, intended to "diagnose" cranky beliefs regarding contemporary physics.[1] Martin Gardner (b. ... Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (1957) was Martin Gardners second book, and has become a classic in the literature of entertaining skepticism. ... The Trisectors by Underwood Dudley Underwood Dudley (born January 6, 1937) is a mathematician, formerly of DePauw University, who has written a number of research works and textbooks but is best known for his popular writing. ... Usenet (USEr NETwork) is a global, decentralized, distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name. ... John Carlos Baez (b. ... 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. ...

According to these authors, virtually universal characteristics of cranks include:

1. Cranks overestimate their own knowledge and ability, and underestimate that of acknowledged experts.
2. Cranks insist that their alleged discoveries are urgently important.
3. Cranks rarely if ever acknowledge any error, no matter how trivial.
4. Cranks love to talk about their own beliefs, often in inappropriate social situations, but they tend to be bad listeners, and often appear to be uninterested in anyone else's experience or opinions.

Some cranks exhibit a lack of academic achievement, in which case they typically assert that academic training in the subject of their crank belief is not only unnecessary for discovering "the truth", but actively harmful because they believe it "poisons" the minds by teaching falsehoods. Others greatly exaggerate their personal achievements, and may insist that some alleged achievement in some entirely unrelated area of human endeavor implies that their cranky opinion should be taken seriously.

Some cranks claim vast knowledge of any relevant literature, while others claim that familiarity with previous work is entirely unnecessary; regardless, cranks inevitably reveal that whether or not they believe themselves to be knowledgeable concerning relevant matters of fact, mainstream opinion, or previous work, they are not in fact well-informed concerning the topic of their belief.

In addition, many cranks

1. seriously misunderstand the mainstream opinion to which they believe that they are objecting,
2. stress that they have been working out their ideas for many decades, and claim that this fact alone entails that their belief cannot be dismissed as resting upon some simple error,
3. compare themselves with Galileo or Copernicus, implying that the mere unpopularity of some belief is in itself evidence of plausibility,
4. claim that their ideas are being suppressed by secret intelligence organizations, mainstream science, powerful business interests, or other groups which, they allege, are terrified by the possibility of their allegedly revolutionary insights becoming widely known,
5. appear to regard themselves as persons of unique historical importance.

Cranks who contradict some mainstream opinion in some highly technical field, such as mathematics or physics, almost always Galileo redirects here. ... Copernicus redirects here. ... For other meanings of mathematics or uses of math and maths, see Mathematics (disambiguation) and Math (disambiguation). ... A magnet levitating above a high-temperature superconductor demonstrates the Meissner effect. ...

1. exhibit a marked lack of technical ability,
2. misunderstand or fail to use standard notation and terminology,
3. ignore fine distinctions which are essential to correctly understanding mainstream belief.

That is, cranks tend to ignore any previous insights which have been proven by experience to facilitate discussion and analysis of the topic of their cranky claims; indeed, they often assert that these innovations obscure rather than clarify the situation. ^[1]

In addition, cranky scientific "theories" do not in fact qualify as theories as this term is commonly understood within science. For example, crank "theories" in physics typically fail to result in testable predictions, which makes them unfalsifiable and hence unscientific. In mathematics, theory is used informally to refer to a body of knowledge about mathematics. ... This page discusses how a theory or assertion is falsifiable (disprovable opp: verifiable), rather than the non-philosophical use of falsification, meaning counterfeiting. ...

Perhaps surprisingly, many cranks may appear quite normal when they are not passionately expounding their cranky belief, and they may even be successful in careers unrelated to their cranky belief. Others can (charitably) be characterized as underachievers in all walks of life. An underachiever is a person and especially a student who fails to achieve his or her potential or does not do as well as expected. ...

The psychology of cranks

A widely quoted study by two Cornell University psychologists, Justin Kruger and David Dunning, is often thought to bear directly upon a striking and virtually universal characteristic of cranks: they simultaneously overestimate their own knowledge and ability and underestimate that of other persons, including that of acknowledged experts in the field.^{[Quotation from source requested on talk page to verify interpretation of source]} The brainpan effect, occasionally known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, is the phenomenon wherein people who have little knowledge think that they know more than others who have much more knowledge. ... Cornell redirects here. ...

Kruger and Dunning hypothesized that with regard to a typical skill which humans may possess in greater or lesser degree,

1. incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill,
2. incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others,
3. incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy,
4. if they can be trained to improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill.

They confirmed these hypotheses in a series of tests.

These results are taken to explain why 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.

As noted above, in addition to a general lack of ability to accurately assess their own skills and knowledge, many cranks also exhibit deficiencies in reading comprehension, logical reasoning, and other cognitive abnormalities, which may contribute both to how they arrive at some bizarre counterfactual belief in the first place, and to how they are able to cling to such a belief in the face of all objections.

Many cranks seem to exhibit certain symptoms of grandiosity or megalomania. This may perhaps also be understood, in terms of the phenomenon studied by Kruger and Dunning, as resulting from a simultaneous overinflation of their own social value and underestimation of the social value of others. This article is about the psychopathological condition. ...

Internet cranks

The rise of the Internet has given another outlet to people well outside the mainstream who may get labeled cranks through internet postings or websites promoting particular beliefs. There are a number of websites devoted to listing people as cranks. A newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users at different locations. ... A website (alternatively, Web site or web site) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that is hosted on one or several Web server(s), usually accessible via the Internet, cell phone or a LAN. A Web page is a document, typically written in HTML...

There are also newsgroups which are nominally devoted to discussing (alt.usenet.kooks) or poking fun at (alt.slack, alt.religion.kibology) supposed cranks. alt. ... J. R. Bob Dobbs The Church of the SubGenius is a satirical postmodern religion, originally based in Dallas, Texas, which gained popularity in the 1980s and 1990s subculture, with a large presence on the Internet. ... Kibology is a humorous Usenet-based satire of religion, partly parodying Scientology. ...

Etymology

Old English cranc- is preserved only in crancstæf "a weaver's instrument". It is from a Proto-Germanic stem *krank- meaning "bend". German and Dutch krank have a modern meaning of "sick, ill", evolved from a former meaning "weak, small". English crank in its modern sense is first recorded 1833, and cranky in a sense of "irritable" dates from 1821. The term was popularised in 1881 for being applied to Horace Greeley. Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon[1], Old English: ) is an early form of the English language that was spoken in parts of what is now England and southern Scotland between the mid-fifth century and the mid-twelfth century. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... Horace Greeley (February 3, 1811 – November 29, 1872) was an American editor of a leading newspaper, a founder of the Republican party, reformer and politician. ...

In 1906, Nature offered essentially the same definition which is used here: 1906 (MCMVI) was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... This article is about the physical universe. ...

A crank is defined as a man who cannot be turned.

– Nature, 8 Nov 1906, 25/2

The term "crank" (or "krank") was once the favored term for spectators at sporting events, a term latter supplanted by "fans". By implication, the "kranks in the bleaching boards" think they know more about the sport than do its participants. There is more discussion of this term in The Dickson Baseball Dictionary, by Paul Dickson.

The word crackpot apparently also first appeared in 1883: Year 1883 (MDCCCLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Saturday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ...

My aunty knew lots, and called them crack-pots.

– Broadside Ballad, 1883

As noted in Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, the terms "crackpot", "crackbrain" and "cracked" are synonymous, and suggest a metaphorically "broken" head. The terms "crazy" and "crazed" also originally meant "broken" and derive from the same root word as "cracked". The dictionary gives no indication that "pate" and "pot" have the same root, despite their apparent similarity, and implied colloquial use of "pot" to mean "head" in the word "crackpot". However, the term "craze" is also used to refer to minute cracks in pottery glaze, again suggesting the metaphorical connection of cracked pots with questionable mental health.

The term kook appears to be much more recent. The adjectival-form, kooky, was apparently coined in 1959 as part of American teen-ager (or beatnik) slang, which derives from the pejorative meaning of the noun cuckoo. The noun-form kook, may have first appeared in 1960 in Britain's Daily Mail newspaper: In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a noun or pronoun (called the adjectives subject), giving more information about what the noun or pronoun refers to. ... Year 1959 (MCMLIX) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Beatnik is a media stereotype that borrowed the most superficial aspects of the Beat Generation literary movement of the 1950s to present a distorted (and sometimes violent), cartoon-like misrepresentation of the real-life people and the spirituality found in Jack Kerouacs autobiographical fiction. ... For other uses, see Slang (disambiguation). ... In linguistics, a noun or noun substantive is a lexical category which is defined in terms of how its members combine with other grammatical kinds of expressions. ... The Daily Mail is a British newspaper and the oldest tabloid, first published in 1896. ...

A kook, Daddy-O, is a screwball who is 'gone' farther than most

– Daily Mail, 22 Aug 1960, 4/5

See also

• Eccentricity (behavior)
• Pseudohistory
• Pseudoscience
• Pseudomathematics
• Pseudophysics and Crackpot index
• List of pseudoscientific theories
• Tallinna narrid ja narrikesed, a satirical series on cranks from 1892 by Eduard Bornhöhe
• Tax protester

Spoofs: In popular usage, eccentricity refers to unusual or odd behavior on the part of an individual. ... Pseudohistory is a pejorative term applied to texts which purport to be historical in nature but which depart from standard historiographical conventions in a way which undermines their conclusions. ... A typical 18th century phrenology chart. ... Pseudomathematics is a form of mathematics-like activity that does not work within the framework, definitions, rules, or rigor of formal mathematical models. ... Pseudophysics refers to a body of knowledge or practice which purports to be scientific or supported by physics but which asserts claims without supporting experimental evidence. ... 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. ... This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims. ... Tallinna narrid ja narrikesed (Estonian for Big Fools and Little Fools of Tallinn) is a satirical 1892 series by Eduard Bornhöhe depicting cranks in their daily activities. ... Year 1892 (MDCCCXCII) was a leap year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian Calendar (or a leap year starting on Wednesday of the 12-day slower Julian calendar). ... Eduard Bornhöhe, born Eduard Brunberg (5 February 1862 Virumaa — 17 November 1923 Tallinn), best known by his pen name Eduard Bornhöhe, was an Estonian writer. ... A tax protester is an individual who denies the obligation to pay a tax (for which the government has determined that person is liable) based on a belief that the government is acting outside of its legal authority when imposing such taxes. ...

• Psychoceramics
• Kibo

Josiah Stinkney Carberry is a fictional professor, created as a joke. ... This article or section is not written in the formal tone expected of an encyclopedia article. ...

References

• Dudley, Underwood (1987). A Budget of Trisections. New York: Springer-Verlag. ISBN 0-387-96568-8. 
• Dudley, Underwood (1992). Mathematical Cranks. Washington, D.C.: Mathematical Association of America. ISBN 0-88385-507-0. 
• Dudley, Underwood (1996). The Trisectors. Washington, D.C.: Mathematical Association of America. ISBN 0-88385-514-3. 
• Dudley, Underwood (1997). Numerology: Or, What Pythagoras Wrought. Washington, D.C.: Mathematical Association of America. ISBN 0-88385-524-0. 
• Eves, Howard (1972). Mathematical Circles Squared; A Third Collection of Mathematical Stories and Anecdotes. Boston: Prindle, Weber & Schmidt. ISBN 0-87150-154-6. 
• Gardner, Martin (1957). Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. New York: Dover. ISBN 0-486-20394-8 LCCN 57-3844. 
• Kruger, Justin, and David Dunning (1989). "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments". J. Pers. and Soc. Psych. 71: 1121-1134.  A classic paper on a common phenomenon in social psychiatry which in extreme cases is strongly associated with crackpottery.
• William F. Williams, editor (2000) Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience: From Alien Abductions to Zone Therapy Facts on File ISBN 0-8160-3351-X