> the overwhelming majority of them are useless cranks I think you missed the point of the article. Most of these "cranks" are people trying to learn. They are

> the overwhelming majority of them are useless cranks I think you missed the point of the article. Most of these "cranks" are people trying to learn. They are excited about science and are trying to reconcile the bits of knowledge they have been able to accumulate from often-terrible sources (poor quality education system[1], mass media, "science journalism" that leaves out the science). Carl Sagan discusses this type of person in the beginning "The Demon Haunted World", where he talks about a cab driver who was really excited to meet "that scientist guy" (Sagan). The cab diver's excitement faded quickly when Sagan's answers about his pseudo-scientific questions tended to be "sorry, that doesn't exist". Sagan also observed that the cab driver was almost completely ignorant of the actual discoveries of modern science. "[He] had heard virtually nothing of modern science. He had a natural appetite for the wonders of the Universe. He wanted to know about science. It's just that all the science had gotten filtered out before it reached him. Our cultural motifs, or educational system, our communications media had failed this man. What the society permitted to trickle through was mainly pretense and confusion. It had never taught him how to distinguish real science from the cheap imitation. He knew nothing about how science works."[2] I commend Sabine Hossenfelder for finding a creative way to approach the difficult task of teaching people even when they seem like a "crank". This is important work because a successful democracy depends on the people having sufficient education. Instead of calling people "cranks", try to see things from their point of view and try to point them on a proper path towards a proper understanding science. Ignoring or insulting "cranks" leaves them isolated and ignorant; teaching them how to use a "baloney detection kit"[3] and maybe their enthusiasm can be reorientated to real science. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/magazine/why-do-americans-stink-at-math.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/magazine/why-do-americans-... [2] https://books.google.com/books?id=Yz8Y6KfXf9UC&pg=PT22 https://books.google.com/books?id=Yz8Y6KfXf9UC&pg=PT22 [3] http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Fine_Art_of_Baloney_Detection http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Fine_Art_of_Baloney_Detecti...