Claes Johnson

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ERIC SCERRI

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Nov 26, 2025, 3:37:42 PM (3 days ago) Nov 26
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Mark Leach

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Nov 26, 2025, 4:49:10 PM (3 days ago) Nov 26
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Hi Eric & All,

Claes seems to cite himself a lot. I clicked the RealQM link which took me to a website which contained a link back to the first one.

Mark Leach
meta-synthesis

On 26 Nov 2025, at 20:37, ERIC SCERRI <sce...@g.ucla.edu> wrote:


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ERIC SCERRI

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Nov 26, 2025, 7:43:43 PM (2 days ago) Nov 26
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Hi Mark,

I just figured that this guy is so cranky that he would fit perfectly into this forum.

Happy Thanksgiving, as we say here.

Best
Eric



René

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6:24 AM (15 minutes ago) 6:24 AM
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On Thursday, November 27, 2025 at 11:43:43 AM UTC+11 scerri wrote:

I just figured that this guy is so cranky that he would fit perfectly into this forum.

There are some interesting aspects to the status of a crank.

Taxonomy


"Scientific theories can be classifiable to centre, frontier or fringe regions of science…


Theories at the center level are established as part of mainstream science. Examples include the theory of relativity, the Newton’s laws of motion and Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.


The frontier level is also part of mainstream science, yet there are still unresolved aspects. In other words, these theories are still being challenged by rival explanations…Evolution...[is]... an example of the frontier level of scientific theories. The amount of evidence in science now has elevated evolutionary theory to one of the center level theories of science. Likewise, the extinction of dinosaurs has moved forward from the fringe level at this time...


The fringe level is the point when theories are beginning to make entry into science. At this level, theories may be based on crank ideas or they could be sound, but in either case they are subjected to analysis. In time, they may, or may not, rise to the other two levels."


Erduran S & Dagher ZR 2014, "Scientific knowledge", in Reconceptualizing the Nature of Science for Science Education. Contemporary Trends and Issues in Science Education, vol. 43, Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9057-4_6 (p. 117)


Crank
Johnson writes:

"The mystery of the Periodic Table PT is… rows of length 2, 8, 8, 18, 18, 32, 32..., signifying number of electrons with twice repeated periods according to 2n^2 with n =1,2,3,4."

Well, no, by his own hand (2, 8, 8, 18, 18...) the first period length doesn't repeat, and he doesn’t appear to have anything to say about this. He again writes: "The actual periodicity observed is 2, 8, 8, 18, 18, 32, 32,.. with repetition of periods."


Or not a crank?
Now and then a supposed "crank" turns out to be right.

Wegener and his "nonsense" idea of continental drift is the classic example.

On the more recent history of quarks, Murray Gellmann said:

“Most challenges to scientific orthodoxy are wrong… A lot of them are crank. But it happens from time to time that a challenge to scientific orthodoxy is actually right. And the people who make that challenge face a terrible situation.”
(Science News: “The Status Quark”)

(In the late 1960s I recall one of my high school science teachers expressing disbelief that a quark could have a fractional charge i.e. 1/3rd that of an electron!)

On another note, in writing about the discovery that peptic ulcers were caused by bacteria rather than by stress or spicy food, Gorski (2010) cautioned:

"We scientists should be very careful to guard against excessive smugness."
(Science-Based Medicine, “The Case of John Lykoudis Revisited: Crank or Visionary?”)


And wasn’t it also the case that the initial reception of Mendeleev’s periodic table was cool, sceptical, and in some quarters dismissive?”

Not forgetting Gustavus Hinrichs, one of the other discoverers of the periodic system, whose "scientific interests were so far ranging, and...evidence he brought to bear on producing a classification of the elements...so diverse, as to lead some commentators to regard him as a mere crank." (Scerri 2020, p. 95)

René

Scerri E 2020, The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press


PS What are we to make of Johnson's 4,466,852 page views?
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