Talk:Crank (person)/Archive 1

message: This isn't NPOV. I'd fix it up, but I don't have the time at the moment.
--Furrykef 07:26, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Does listing persons who have been called cranks violate [[WP:NPOV]]? 

message: Does it serve as nothing more than a clearinghouse for ideas that are unpopular and disagreeable?  Some of the entries don't fit the definition above (and I realize that the definition was suggested by one user and is not a wikipedia standard) that a crank is a "person who holds a belief despite that belief being demonstrably wrong."  For example, a supporter of Lyndon LaRouche doesn't fit that definition.  Neither does a researcher seeking a cure for cancer.  The "religious fundamentalism" listing also is curious; why not list each and every religion, since none can be proved?  Instead of just listing low-carb diets (which do promote weight-loss, albeit in an unhealthy manner), why not list every diet?  Some homeopathic cures do in fact work, so why is that listed?  Etc.
Of course, there are some listings on this page to things that are indeed impossible; e.g., perpetual motion and squaring the circle.  But is anyone really trying to square a circle these days?  Does anyone (except possibly Gene Ray) have a belief in Time Cube?
We could have a list of proven scientific and mathematic impossibilities--such as the perpetual motion machine.  Just about everything else, though, is POV and the article itself is nothing more than an invitation to bash unpopular ideas.  Galileo would have been a crank, according to this article.  
Before I list it on VfD, I want to solicit feedback. GeeZee 17:24, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Absolutely keep Bubba73 (talk) 19:44, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Absolutely keep.  It is a phenomenon which many most people encounter on the web at some point, and also one which is unfortunately extremely relevant to the problems of maintaining the Wikipedia itself. ---CH 19:50, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Should This Article Be Deleted?

message: I agree that the early beliefs held by the founder of Chiropractic were the far-fetched beliefs of a crank.  I also know that cloaking marketing campaigns as clinical studies as was done in some parts of the USA was not ethical.  However, Chiropractic is a widely recognised modality, at least in the USA, and is regulated by most if not all of its state governments.  It enjoys great client satisfaction, and seems to do many people good.  My personal experience with a Chiropractor involved him refering me to a Dentist for a condition (a certain kind of headache) which Chiropractic could not treat as effectively as would a Dentist.  If I were reading this article and the Wikipedia articles on Chiropractic and subluxation, I would get an impression very different from my own personal experience.  This article should be about those who are way out there, not about those for which there is a legitimate empirical controversy.  Vonkje A.K.A. 209.42.38.71 17:23, 9 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Just because something "enjoys great client satisfaction" doesn't mean it is scientifically valid. The page states "Chiropractic, when considered as a total replacement for medical science" so this does not dismiss all uses of Chiropractic. Stevemiller 15:44, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Chiropractic]] 

message: Why is religious fundamentalism only a crank belief when it "disguises faith as science"?  I don't understand how it could be any other way - you can't believe in both the literal interpretation of mythology and science, whether or not you promote creationism, etc.
All religious fundamentalists believe that something unprovable (or even disproven) is true.  By definition, doesn't this make all fundamentalists cranks, with no caveat?  Or really, all religionists altogether?  Believing that God wrote a book, or incarnated on Earth, or that a man died and was resurrected, or believing in nephilim, angels, or the prophecies of Revelations... those aren't crank beliefs?  It seems odd that Scientology and Creation-science would be singled out among all the other religious beliefs which are equally as unbelievable and strange.
:Dear 64.171.5.116,
:Most adherents to most religions, particularly the mainstream religions, do not really believe that their beliefs are a viable replacement for scientific fact.  In this sense, placing all religions and all religious beliefs into the realm of crankdom is unfair to the people who see both the value of religious faith and of science.  Hence I would like to replace your entry Religion with: Religious fundamentalism when it disguises faith as science (ie: Creationism, and Intelligent design). Vonkje 16:55, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  On religious fundamentalism and Scientology 

message: Dear 64.171.5.116,
I liked most of your edits, however two of them deal with what I call "crank magnets", which are subject areas rife with crank beliefs.  Artifical Intelligence is one such magnet that gets alot of uninformed hype.  It is a formal academic discipline with refereed conferences and publications.  It has great overlap with computer science, and some of its proponents are respected and well within the mainstream of their discipline (ie: Marvin Minsky and Herbert Simon).  Third party movements provide another example of a crank magnet.  This entry has geographic bias favoring the two-party system of the United States, in which many if not most third-party candidates are cranks.  In England, Germany, and other countries on the Parliamentary system, there may be more than three viable political parties, with only the smallest ones likely to represent crank beliefs.  Vonkje 16:08, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The controversial case of Mentifex is of interest here.  This individual, who arguably is notable as a web character, was the subject of a Wikipedia article which was deleted following an AfD.  See Talk:Artificial intelligence/Archive01 and the website of Mentifex and this website. ---CH 19:57, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Crank magnets 

message: The explanatory prose should be up front, not shoved down the end after a loooong list. - David Gerard 23:47, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Prose before lists

message: I propose deleting "Homeopathy" from the Crank page:
In book "Schicksal als chance" ("Destiny as a chance" - the book is otherwise on a different topic, the homeopathy is just noted on the side...) by Thorwald Dethlefsen, there is written a reasonable explanation of how it works (shortened in my own words):
:While creating homeopathic preparate, They put a chemical (mostly poisonous) into a water solution, and dilute it iterativelly, until there does not stay even one molecule of the original substance. But by the process of diluting, the substance structure is transcribed into hydrogen bonding structure of water. Then it works the same way as a well-known vaccination by delivering molecule-shape information into white-corpuscle database...
::Leukocytes use antibodies and antigens for this:  complex protein and enzyme structures.  Where is the analogous system in a vial that you admit contains only water?
The caveat of this explanation is in the fact, that contemporary science cannot read the structure of hydrogen bridges in the water with enough precission to prove this or disprove. But they already know the fact, that hydrogen bridges can remember an inverse shape of other substance, and that white blood corpuscles can remember substances (which is used in a vaccination)...
::Please show us one scientific test, one provable and repeatable empirical demonstration, that there is a measurable difference between water and water.  Does the "homeopathic preparation"'s melting point change?  Does its boiling point change?  Is there any measurable change in its viscosity, its color, its chemical activity, its solubility, or its ability to dissolve other substances?  If it has no characteristics that demonstrably and measurably differ from a control sample's, then how can you say there is a difference?
And if there is some statistical evidence that it may work to solve some health problems, then I would wait to mark it a crank, at least until scientists get into enough microscopic precission to really disprove it...
:If.
There is a Murphys law, that says:
If scientist say, that something is possible, he is usually true.
If scientist say, that something is impossible, he is usually false.
Think on this a while...
The explanation of Cybernetics in early 60`s (communistic) encyclopedy in the Eastern block says:
Cypernetics: is a capitalistic (burjoise) quasi-science, that ...
Smile on this after 40 years...
Semi Psi 00:19, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Works the same way as vacination. Do you have any evidence that the immune system responds to homeopathic remedies?Geni 00:47, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Homeopathy 

message: This [article] section should be merged to List of alternative, disputed, and speculative theories because the former's use of the word crank tends to poison the well, and it shows. Bob A 15:35, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the two articles are completly different. Merging them would be a bad idea. Jefffire 15:56, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: (sorry; i've made the proposal more specific now) Bob A 18:31, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge List of typical "cranky" topics to List of alternative, disputed, and speculative theories