| Revision as of 20:48, 26 November 2006 editHal Fisher (talk | contribs)7 edits →External links: only a crank would disagree Christopher Michael← Previous edit | Revision as of 23:39, 26 November 2006 edit undoAsmodeus (talk | contribs)836 edits Tempered blatant advert for "crank.net". Next time, the link goes. (BTW, isn't it about time for somebody to block this single-purpose "Hal(dane) Fisher" account?)Next edit → | ||
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Revision as of 23:39, 26 November 2006
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. The method, proposed (most likely as a joke) by mathematical physicist John Baez in 1992, computes an index by responses to a list of 34 questions, each positive response contributing a point value ranging from 1 to 50. The computation is initialized with a value of −5.
Presumably any positive value of the index indicates crankiness.
Though the index was not proposed as a serious method, it nevertheless has often been cited in discussions of whether a claim or an individual is cranky, particularly in physics.
See also
External links
- The crackpot index questionnaire
- Crank Dot Net, a site listing hundreds of websites alleged to be "cranky" by its proprietor, roughly organized by subject area
- A similar proposal for rejecting crackpot email anti-spam technologies, presented as a tick-box form