Our chief consultant writes:
Some weeks ago I mentioned paradoxers, those people from outside a certain science who come up with some amazing or important result that, sadly, is not accepted by those inside–mostly because it’s not true. I promised to describe the outstanding characteristics of this fascinating species; here are two.
Our chief consultant writes: an occupational hazard of working in a Physics or Astronomy Department, or at an Observatory, is the occasional receipt of an unsolicited paper from someone outside these sciences. One of these typically presents a new theory, more or less sweeping in its results, that corrects (perceived) errors now being made by scientists.
Physicists and astronomers generally spend little time on them. It is highly unlikely that someone with a minimal or mistaken grasp of the sciences (as these invariably display) will stumble upon something useful that many very capable scientists have missed. It also requires a lot of time and concentration to get through an often torturous piece of writing. (It is a good exercise for teachers, however, in distinguishing poor presentation from genuine error. Sometimes they’re passed on to graduate students to hone their thinking.) In the nineteenth century the authors of this kind of thing were squaring the circle and disproving Newton. Augustus de Morgan made a study of them, calling them “paradoxers” (using the word “paradox” in a different sense than we do today), and Five Colors S&T has adopted this term. (It’s worthwhile dipping into de Morgan’s A Budget of Paradoxes if you can find a copy. The writing is dense, but often entertaining.)