A crank is someone who doesn't believe
in the idiotic conclusions of Mathematical Physics

    One arrogant fellow of the establishment who pokes fun at dissidents is John Baez. Some time in the 90’s this individual
    created his Crackpot Index, a site that is mirrored in many conspicuous places and is read by tens of thousands worldwide.
    On his page, Baez suggests a grading system to determine who should be called a crank or a crackpot. A crank is a person
    with such eccentric ideas which supposedly have already been debunked, but who against all odds insists on them.

     “ cranks so often seem to represent, not individuals with an exceptional degree of knowledge,
         but rather individuals with an exceptional degree of ignorance concerning the subject of their  
         cranky belief.”

    In other words, the words crank and crackpot are at best synonyms of ignorant and at worst synonyms of crazy and lunatic.
    The crank is more than a dissident or an eccentric. He or she is treated as a demented person.

    Mr. Baez’s tactics and opinions wouldn’t bother anyone if they were kept anonymous and personal. However, his Physics
    FAQ is a highly visible part of the official website of the Department of Mathematics at the University of Riverside in Southern
    California (UCR). This means that the University of Riverside officially endorses this practice of ridiculing skeptics who don’t
    agree with mainstream ideas. Mr. Baez apparently has set himself up as the standard and the university puts its weight behind
    him. The univer-sity's leaders and Mr. Baez seem to have concluded that they know everything there is to know about the
    Universe and that there is no reason for anyone to even question the foundations painstakingly disco-vered over the last
    century. So they resort to this underhanded method to silence the opposition.

    With the Baez-like circus atmosphere on one side and the Relativity Peer Inquisition on the other, it is simply impossible to
    publish a new theory. Certainly, not one editor of Science or Nature Journals even touches a paper that attacks relativity or
    proposes classical solutions to old problems. The editors are more concerned with keeping the readers happy with stuff
    that is mainstream than with publishing critical papers. For thousands of papers that these so-called ‘scientific’ journals
    publish about such crap as time travel, black holes, space-time, and anti-particles, they publish perhaps one dissenting
    paper about something worthwhile. The magazines have space for nonsense, but not for dissenting papers. These are
    very important factors for why the religions of relativity and quantum are still around today.

    Schwinger predicted that something like this would happen one day:

     " The replacement of impartial reviewing by censorship will be the death of science." [4]

    Will be? It is and has been for a while! Dissidents are marginalized and forced to voice their opinions in personal websites.
    And that’s when goons like Baez come in for the final kill with crackpot indexes and heckling. The strategy is to hound the
    dissident into oblivion.

    I became acquainted with Riverside’s website a few years ago when one of those mathematical idiots from Cambridge used
    Baez’s grading system on something I wrote. I had no idea what this fellow was talking about until I zeroed-in on Baez’s site.
    I instantly thought that Baez had a nerve to create a crank grading system considering the ridiculous theories he espouses.
    If you want to meet a real crank, I recommend you read Baez's paper titled 'Quantum Gravity and the Algebra of Tangles.'
    Of course, you will excuse yourself saying that you don't understand any of it because you are not an expert, but that's not
    the point. I want you to concentrate solely on the idiot-language that relativists had to concoct to communicate their irrational
    and supernatural ideas to a microscopic global brotherhood, none of whom can explain to you how a simple magnet works.
    Yet this crank believes he knows so much that he goes the extra mile and appoints himself as judge and jury. Not only did I
    believe Baez to be quite arrogant in publishing his index, but I instantly thought that he must also be a great fool. Baez never
    knows when his grading system is going to be used on him.

    If the University at Riverside is serious about high scientific standards it should stimulate rather than hinder communication.
    Whatever the strange ideas of dissidents may be, brainstorming beats dictatorship any day. Who’s to say that the crackpot
    may actually have a point? The flurry of ideas, even if they clutter the board sometimes, stimulates dialogue and this
    contributes to science. After all, journals such as Science and Nature routinely clutter the reading space with such garbage
    as time-travel and annihilation. So what's the risk? If the proposal is false, we don’t have to worry. It will die a natural death.
    No one needs to kill it, much less in its infancy.

    Mr. Baez has done and is doing a lot of damage to science because of his site's visibility. Meanwhile, Riverside is benefiting
    from the prestige and the traffic the Physics FAQ is creating for the university. I think that it’s time to stop this mechanism.
    If Riverside is receiving government funds, this should be looked at as well.

    Why pick on Baez and Riverside? Aren’t other individuals and colleges doing the same thing?

    I am not limiting the witch hunt to Baez and to Riverside. Indeed, I firmly believe that ALL the mathematical physicists of the
    world should be hanged from the highest trees or telephone poles available. I believe that we should go after those
    conspicuous individuals who use official websites of institutions to do their dirty work while the institution looks the other
    way. I believe that all institutions of higher learning which have such websites should do something exemplary about
    individuals who poison the atmosphere, something that gives the public a high level of awareness that this is a problem in
    Science. Mr. Baez is a good place to start as any. He has committed and is still committing a crime. He needs to recall his
    arrogance and repent in public. Nothing less will do. In sports, when a player has unsportsmanlike conduct, he and his team
    are penalized in some way. In Science, what Mr. Baez and Riverside are doing is morally 'illegal' and also demands that
    appropriate action be taken. Mr. Baez and Riverside are colluding in a scheme to eliminate or discourage dissent. There is
    an obvious conflict of interests. If I had to vote, I would vote for expulsion from the game!
J. Baez, The Crackpot Index, UC Riverside (1998).

the peer reviewers finally put Bill in his rightful place
Adapted for the Internet from:   Why God Doesn't Exist

    " the Crackpot index, intended to "diagnose" cranky beliefs regarding contemporary physics" [1]

    " 10 points for each claim that quantum mechanics is fundamentally misguided" [2]

    " The term crank is often applied to persons ... who deny extremely well established physical
       theories, such as the special theory of relativity." [3]

      [Well, yes... under these criteria, I am a fanatical crank by definition (...and proud of it too!)]
Crazy Bill

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