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Rejected by their own kind
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Quacks and pseudoscientists are said to be rejected by their own kind when they advance a claim so obviously bogus, even other promoters of the same pseudoscience can tell that it's bogus, and publicly go out of their way to debunk it. As Mark Hoofnagle pointed out in 2007, this is relatively uncommon; cranks/pseudoscientists/quacks tend to stand by each other and defend their claims much more often than not.[1] Such condemnation can therefore be seen as an unusual example of a crank being a stopped clock and recognizing exceptionally obvious bullshit.
Examples[edit]
- Some young-Earth creationists (notably Kent Hovind) have made claims so absurd (e.g.: that there's too much dust on the surface of the Moon for the Moon to be 4.5 billion years old) that Answers in Genesis (AIG), a young-Earth creationist organization, has debunked them and urged other creationists not to use them.[2] AIG has also disowned other thoroughly bogus creationist chestnuts like "How come there are still monkeys?"[3] Even the aformentioned Hovind acknowledges that Earth is a sphere that orbits the sun and that space actually exists, unlike some other folk.
- Judy Wood's "theory" about a Star Wars-style directed space weapons being responsible for 9/11 (yes, seriously) was so ridiculously implausible that another 9/11 truther debunked it.[4]
- The pseudoscientific claim, pushed by Mark Geier, that Lupron (used for chemical castration) can be used to effectively treat alleged vaccine-caused autism, was so bogus that even the anti-vaccine blog Age of Autism once condemned it.[5]
- NaturalNews counts as a quack site in the eyes of other quacks.[6]
- Some conspiracy theorists, such as Alex Jones, have criticized David Icke's reptilian conspiracy theory.[7]
- To some extent, when politicians condemn another politician in their own party (e.g. Republicans in the United States condemning Donald Trump or Roy Moore), this could be considered an instance of the Republican being rejected (i.e. condemned) by their own kind. Though it only counts as such a rejection if the group they're being rejected from promotes pseudoscience, which doesn't apply to Republicans… oh wait, yes it does.
See also[edit]
- Alt-righter Jared Taylor has denounced Nazi David Duke's antisemitism
- Infighting that goes on within the political horseshoe
- Stopped clock is what a lot of this boils down to.[note 1]
Notes[edit]
- ↑ Or, to put that more bluntly, the majority of cranks still have just enough awareness of reality to not accidentally dismember themselves. Emphasis on "most of them", i.e. yes, there are people who are so intensely stupid that every day they manage to not get themselves killed is a minor miracle.
References[edit]
- ↑ Cranks are rarely bothered by other cranks, Denialism Blog, ScienceBlogs, May 29, 2007, Mark Hoofnagle
- ↑ Moon Dust Argument No Longer Useful, Creation, September 1993, p. 22
- ↑ AIG's list of arguments to avoid
- ↑ "Scientific Critique of Judy Wood’s Paper 'The Star Wars Beam Weapon'", James Gourley, Journal of 9/11 Studies
- ↑ Bravo Age of Autism, LeftBrainRightBrain, 2009-05-20
- ↑ Special Report: The Legend of Mike Adams and the Reality (Thomas Corriher and Sarah Cain, The Health Wyze Report, 06 Feb 2013).
- ↑ Paul Simpson, That's What They Want You to Think: Conspiracies Real, Possible, and Paranoid (Zenith Press, 2012), p. 177.