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Dr. Rhett Allain, an Associate Professor of Physics Education Research at Southeastern Louisiana University, brings topics each week that he finds fascinating! Join us for STEM Radio every week!
It's science.
Tyler Thomas:Hello, and welcome back to another episode of STEM Science Radio. Tyler Thomas with us, Dr. Rhett Allain. It's a new week, and we have a new topic. Rhett, what are we talking about?
Dr. Rhett Allain:We are talking about crackpot science.
Tyler Thomas:So give me give me a little definition on what that is.
Dr. Rhett Allain:How about I give you an example? And we'll go over other examples for the for the other episodes. But, you know, these ideas like, well, hey, I think the Earth's actually flat. That's crackpot science.
Tyler Thomas:Okay. Yeah. Because Earth's not flat.
Dr. Rhett Allain:No, it's totally not flat.
Tyler Thomas:Someone's so mad that we said that.
Dr. Rhett Allain:That's fine. There's a couple of key elements about what makes someone a crackpot scientist versus what we'd call established science. Okay. And so I want to talk about how you can identify crackpot science versus real science. And then we'll go over different examples of things that happen and we can say, was that a crackpot or was that not a crackpot?
Dr. Rhett Allain:How's that sound?
Tyler Thomas:I love it.
Dr. Rhett Allain:It should be like a little quiz for you. I'm in. Yeah, I knew it. So number one, crackpot scientists come up with a new idea, which happens in science, we come up with new ideas. And there's a couple of things that happen that we would say, okay, that's crackpot.
Dr. Rhett Allain:Number one is that they have an idea, and there's no way to test that idea. So you could say one example, and it's borderline, it's not really crackpot science, but we talk about string theory, and this idea that particles are actually tiny little multidimensional strings. It's not necessarily crackpot science, it's theoretical, but the thing is, you can't test it. There's no way to test it. If we go to the flat Earth example, one of the flat Earth examples, and there is a way to test this, is that the Earth is a giant disk surrounded by a wall of ice.
Dr. Rhett Allain:It's Antarctica. And so you couldn't get past Antarctica. You couldn't go to the South Pole. Of course, you can go to the South Pole. But they present it that way.
Dr. Rhett Allain:Another thing that they like to focus on with Crackpot Science is to say, established science is absolutely wrong. Not we need to change it a little bit. It's just completely and totally wrong. Okay? So again, we have established science that the Earth is around, but that's 100% wrong.
Dr. Rhett Allain:And then the other thing is when they have discussions with other scientists, a lot of their stuff, a lot of their arguments focus on semantics of words. That's just a theory. It's not a fact. Instead of what's the real idea? Theory is kind of a weird word anyway.
Dr. Rhett Allain:And then they attack other people, right? They're saying, well, your idea is wrong because you are a bad person. And I'm a good person because I'm right. They focus on the people aspect, not the science aspect. So those are some of the things that you would look at when you want to determine if someone's a crackpot or not.
Dr. Rhett Allain:They also reference famous scientists. They talk about Einstein a lot because he's famous. So those are examples of crackpot characteristics. Now I wanna look at a couple of ideas and explain them to you, and then you tell me if it's crackpot or not. And we'll look at that on the next STEM Science Radio.
Dr. Rhett Allain:It's science.
Tyler Thomas:Alright, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back. Another episode of STEM Science Radio. Tyler Thomas with doctor Renalane, and we are talking about crackpot science. Whether it's crackpot, is it crackpot, not crackpot?
Tyler Thomas:And you got a quiz for me, and sometimes I'm good, sometimes I'm not so good with those.
Dr. Rhett Allain:So let's look at a situation. This is in 1962. There was a physicist who had done a lot of stuff. He won the Nobel Prize, and he went to Egypt to look at the pyramids. And he said, Hey, look, this pyramid is really big and his son's pyramid is not as big.
Dr. Rhett Allain:And that's weird. Right? So I believe that there are hidden chambers inside the smaller pyramid in Egypt. And that's my theory. So what do you think?
Dr. Rhett Allain:Do you think that's crackpot science or do you think that's not crackpot science?
Tyler Thomas:I don't think so. I think that it's you got to think like there's honestly, the infrastructure on those pyramids is crazy. I think they had a different level of their brain at that point in time that they were using. Just to think of how to do that kind of thing, with how little they had is so awesome to me.
Dr. Rhett Allain:Well, had manpower, whether that was slave power or not, I'm not really sure, but there were definitely a lot of people working on that. But the thing is, if you want to say there's hidden chambers in the pyramid, can you test it?
Tyler Thomas:Assuming you just go inside the pyramid.
Dr. Rhett Allain:Well, mean, a hidden chamber. It's a hidden chamber. Going inside is not going to find it. Maybe it's a sealed off hidden chamber. Maybe you can't access that hidden chamber.
Dr. Rhett Allain:So what this guy did in 1962, he used approval from the Egyptian government and he put detectors in the pyramid. These detectors are called muon detectors and they detect muons, which is a particle that comes from cosmic radiation. They're here anyway. And so this is called muon photography. So you put muons inside the pyramid.
Dr. Rhett Allain:And if there's a space, there's an empty space in between the detector and the sky, then you would get a different signal than if it's solid concrete. So you can it's sort like an X-ray, right? Yeah. But you're using these muons as X rays. And what do you think he found when he did this?
Tyler Thomas:I think he found that they were secret chemtrains.
Dr. Rhett Allain:There's no secret chemtrains.
Tyler Thomas:There's no. Okay. Well, I gave him the benefit of the doubt.
Dr. Rhett Allain:Now later on, not too long ago, they did that with a different pyramid and they did find possibly a void, they don't really know what it is, the original experiment in 1962 said, nope, there's no hidden chambers in there. But it's a really cool experiment to use muons to look inside the pyramid and so it wasn't really a crackpot science. We'll look at another scientific exploration and to see if it's crackpot or not on the next STEM Science Radio. It's science.
Tyler Thomas:Alright. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of STEM Science Radio. Tyler Thomas with the host, Doctor. Renal Lane, and we are talking, Is it Crackpot or is it not Crackpot Science? And in the last episode, I was pretty far off from that one.
Dr. Rhett Allain:No, you said it wasn't Crackpot. Yeah, but You said there was things in them. Yeah, but you just said the result. Oh, yeah. But we were just saying, is it crackpot or not?
Dr. Rhett Allain:Not what's the exact result. So here's the next one. And this is not too long ago, it's kind of cool. Astronomers detected an extra solar asteroid. So that's an asteroid that came from outside of our solar system.
Dr. Rhett Allain:Do you know the name of that asteroid? It's got a name Oumuamua.
Tyler Thomas:Okay.
Dr. Rhett Allain:Have you heard of that before? No. Which is it's a Hawaiian term for scout. Oumuamua.
Tyler Thomas:Oh, I'm getting where you're coming from with this And
Dr. Rhett Allain:so there were some people that studied this asteroid to look at it and so forth, and it did some weird things and it had weird behaviors. And so one guy was like, that's an alien spacecraft. Mhmm. So right there, crackpot, not crackpot. Look,
Tyler Thomas:I think that's pretty crackpot. Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm a go with crackpot because, I mean, you gotta think, this is something you have the first thing you see, you see something from another solar system, and the first thing you think is that it's alien without any information or anything like that, I think that's pretty good.
Dr. Rhett Allain:Okay. So there's I haven't told you the whole story, of course. I mean, If you say that's an alien spacecraft, that's not necessarily crackpot science, right? But you have to have some type of scientific experiments you could do to test that. One of the things that happened was this asteroid accelerated in a way that couldn't be explained by gravity, but you could explain it if it was a comet outgassing and that makes things give it a little change in motion.
Dr. Rhett Allain:So that's one thing. The other thing is the guy that said, hey, it's an alien. You know, he did these attacks like, okay, well, you think it's not an alien spacecraft, then you're a bad person. Right? So that's really what made this very crackpotish.
Dr. Rhett Allain:Of course, we don't in the end know what this asteroid is. We don't know for sure it's not alien, but there's no evidence that says that it is alien either. So if you keep on pushing on this idea, I know it's alien, I know it's alien, then that's crackpot.
Tyler Thomas:Yeah. And I feel like any scientist who does do something like that and deals in absolutes like that, even if you're right, you're pretty much crackpot. Well, you're
Dr. Rhett Allain:right, if you're right, then
Tyler Thomas:You're right. But you seemed like a crackpot in that sense.
Dr. Rhett Allain:Right, maybe. Maybe. We'll look at another example of science to test if it's crackpot or not on the next STEM Science Radio. It's science.
Tyler Thomas:Alright. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of STEM Science Radio. Tyler Thomas with the host, doctor Renalane. We've been talking crackpot science And whether something is or isn't and what it is specifically in the last episode, we talked about a scout or an asteroid and that someone thought was alien and it may not be.
Dr. Rhett Allain:It's it's I mean, we don't have any evidence to do this. Right? So we don't know. Science doesn't tell us the truth. It just helps us build models and so forth.
Dr. Rhett Allain:The model does not have any evidence that says it's alien. But there's another really great story about science, and this is from 1980. And someone came up with this idea, hey, I think I know what killed all the dinosaurs. And he came up with this idea, and it went against established ideas about what killed the dinosaurs. Before that, they believe maybe it was things like volcanoes or even flowers, an introduction of a new type of plant, flowers.
Dr. Rhett Allain:Maybe that didn't go along with the dinosaurs and they died. And so I haven't told you what this guy said. But what what do you think so far? Do you think what his idea is, brand new idea, goes against existing ideas? Is it crackpot or not?
Tyler Thomas:Well, you gotta think too, this is something that no one knows because not a single person was around and that's still alive.
Dr. Rhett Allain:That we know of.
Tyler Thomas:And that would be awesome, but there's no way to know. And so if you have an idea, science is ever evolving, I don't necessarily think this is crackpot. Think that this is something that you could nah, I haven't heard what the idea was.
Dr. Rhett Allain:I know. I'd hold that off intentionally. But
Tyler Thomas:I think that having an idea is definitely not crackpot.
Dr. Rhett Allain:So when this came out in 1980, this was very crackpot ish. People were like, this guy's crazy. He doesn't he doesn't know what he's talking about. And I'm gonna tell you the idea, and I think you'd probably say, I think that's a good idea, because 1980 was a long time ago. And so things have changed.
Dr. Rhett Allain:Ideas about the dinosaurs and what killed the dinosaurs have changed. And this guy in 1980 said, I think it was a meteor that killed the dinosaurs.
Tyler Thomas:And that's like, that's what they teach in school now. Right, right.
Dr. Rhett Allain:But that was 1980. It was a long time ago. Right. He had this idea that a meteor killed the dinosaurs. And one of the things he did was to look at different layers of dirt in the earth and find evidence of an impact from an particular element that would be from an impact, iridium, and he found this iridium dust all over the world, and he said, I think there was a giant impact and it produced dust and that killed, essentially killed the dinosaurs.
Dr. Rhett Allain:And people are like, well, we don't know anything about that. And where's the crater? Where's the crater if an impact killed the dinosaurs? And so that was one of the things, where is the crater? It turns out that maybe the crater we haven't we're not sure, but maybe the crater is in the Gulf Of Mexico and the Yucatan Peninsula.
Dr. Rhett Allain:That could be a giant crater, not the whole Gulf Of Mexico, but part of that Yucatan Peninsula could be it. And, that was it. So it turns out it seemed crackpotish because it came out of nowhere, but it could be true. And it's a very established idea now. So that's how that goes.
Dr. Rhett Allain:Wow. Yep. Okay. We'll look at another science idea and see if it's crack prone or not on the next STEM Science Radio.
Tyler Thomas:It's science. Alright. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of STEM Science Radio. Tyler Thomas with the host himself, doctor Renlain, and we have been talking about crackpot science. Is it crackpot?
Tyler Thomas:Is it not? The last episode we talked about the dinosaurs and how they died, and Rhett, a crackpot ish idea turned into what we establish as most likely our scientific truth nowadays.
Dr. Rhett Allain:Right. And the same thing is true for this last one, so I can't really quiz you on it because you already know the answer. Because this is from 1912, and that's a long time ago. Right? So in 1912, a physicist had an idea.
Dr. Rhett Allain:A German geophysicist had an idea that, hey, look, look at like Brazil and look at South Africa. It looks like they could kind of fit together like a puzzle piece. So maybe they are a puzzle piece. Maybe those two things did go together. And this is the beginning of the idea of continental drift.
Dr. Rhett Allain:So the idea that the continents move. And so in 1912, people were like, Come on, man. That's not true. They just happened to look like they'd fit together. They don't actually fit together.
Dr. Rhett Allain:If the continents are moving, we'd feel it. So that was definitely considered crackpot science. But it turns out that I'm sure you know there is continental drift, right?
Tyler Thomas:Yeah, Pangaea.
Dr. Rhett Allain:Yeah, Pangaea. See? See what happens if some crackpot stuff turns out to be just normal pot stuff. Fits together. So there's a lot of evidence that says this is indeed true.
Dr. Rhett Allain:We can actually measure continental drift with very precise instruments. The cool thing is if you look at South America and Africa, the fossils match up, right? They have the same kind of fossils on each of them, so they suggest that they were one location. The plants and stuff kind of match up, so everything matches up, and that was the beginning of that idea of continental drift, to look at how all these things move around. So again, it was considered crackpot, turned out to be not crackpot.
Dr. Rhett Allain:Now, maybe we'll go back to this 'Oumuamua spacecraft and think, that guy remember everyone thought he was a crackpot and he wasn't. I don't think that's going to happen, but it could.
Tyler Thomas:Turns out this guy had a pretty good idea, and we'll all look back on
Dr. Rhett Allain:it. Yeah, when you look back on history, it's easy to see where things went wrong and where things went right, but we're in the middle of it, it's hard to tell. But at this point, I'm going to say probably not a spacecraft for the Oumuamua asteroid. Yeah.
Tyler Thomas:I agree with you, and I don't really know much about it.
Dr. Rhett Allain:Okay. But that's what you need to know about Crackpot Science on STEM Science Radio.