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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

• List of pseudoscientific theories
• Pseudophysics

External links

• The crackpot index questionnaire
• Crank Dot Net, a site listing hundreds of cranky websites, roughly organized by subject area
• A similar proposal for rejecting crackpot email anti-spam technologies, presented as a tick-box form

• Humor
• Usenet