Physics journals don’t give every crank a voice, and if one did, I’m sure professional physicists would stop subscribing and contributing to it, and some would loudly complain on their blogs. How is that any different from this situation?
It is similar. But in which direction are you making your implied point?
I was speaking in support of the boycotters. Status is part of what we reward scientists with, to encourage them to make useful intellectual contributions to society. It’s perfectly natural and reasonable if they don’t want to see their status diluted by association with cranks/pseudoscientists, and I don’t think we’d want that either. Nor do we want to reward cranks/pseudoscientists with status for making negative contributions to society.
Of course when you label someone a crank or pseudoscientist, there’s always a chance that you make a mistake and end up not learning something that you could have learned, but that’s just a trade-off that has to be made, and I see no evidence or argument to suggest that the boycotters have set their bar too low.
Of course when you label someone a crank or pseudoscientist, there’s always a chance that you make a mistake and end up not learning something that you could have learned, but that’s just a trade-off that has to be made, and I see no evidence or argument to suggest that the boycotters have set their bar too low.
I tend to agree. There is a trade off involved in accepting status games and power plays instead of reason. But the downsides don’t tend to come with the dramatic boycott situations. The mistakes that lose the learning are most likely to be on the positions that are simply unrewarded and marginalized, not those that must be boycotted to prove your loyalty to Science.
It is similar. But in which direction are you making your implied point?
I was speaking in support of the boycotters. Status is part of what we reward scientists with, to encourage them to make useful intellectual contributions to society. It’s perfectly natural and reasonable if they don’t want to see their status diluted by association with cranks/pseudoscientists, and I don’t think we’d want that either. Nor do we want to reward cranks/pseudoscientists with status for making negative contributions to society.
Of course when you label someone a crank or pseudoscientist, there’s always a chance that you make a mistake and end up not learning something that you could have learned, but that’s just a trade-off that has to be made, and I see no evidence or argument to suggest that the boycotters have set their bar too low.
I tend to agree. There is a trade off involved in accepting status games and power plays instead of reason. But the downsides don’t tend to come with the dramatic boycott situations. The mistakes that lose the learning are most likely to be on the positions that are simply unrewarded and marginalized, not those that must be boycotted to prove your loyalty to Science.