The Alternative-Science Respectability Checklist

[Link]/the-sciences/the-alternative-science-respectability-checklist

Believe me, I sympathize. You are in possession of a truly incredible breakthrough that
offers the prospect of changing the very face of science as we know it, if not more. The
only problem is, you're coming at things from an unorthodox perspective. Maybe your
findings don't fit comfortably with people's preconceived notions, or maybe you don't
have the elaborate academic credentials that established scientists take for granted.
Perhaps you have been able to construct a machine that produces more energy than it
consumes, using only common household implements; or maybe you've discovered a
hidden pattern within the Fibonacci sequence that accurately predicts the weight that a
top quark would experience on Ganymede, expressed in femtonewtons; or it might be
that you've elaborated upon an alternative explanation for the evolution of life on Earth
that augments natural selection by unspecified interventions from a vaguely-defined
higher power. Whatever the specifics, the point is that certain kinds of breakthroughs
just aren't going to come from a hide-bound scholastic establishment; they require the
fresh perspective and beginner's mind that only an outsider genius (such as yourself) can
bring to the table. Yet, even though science is supposed to be about being open-minded,
and there's so much that we don't understand about how the universe works, it's still
hard for outsiders to be taken seriously. Instead, you run up against stuffy attitudes like
this:

If there are any new Einsteins out there with a correct theory of everything all LaTeXed
up, they should feel quite willing to ask me for an endorsement for the arxiv; I'd be happy
to bask in the reflected glory and earn a footnote in their triumphant autobiography. More
likely, however, they will just send their paper to Physical Review, where it will be
accepted and published, and they will become famous without my help. If, on the other
hand, there is anyone out there who thinks they are the next Einstein, but really they are
just a crackpot, don't bother; I get things like that all the time. Sadly, the real next-
Einsteins only come along once per century, whereas the crackpots are far too common.

And that last part is sadly true. There is a numbers game that is working against you. You
are not the only person from an alternative perspective who purports to have a dramatic
new finding, and here you are asking established scientists to take time out from
conventional research to sit down and examine your claims in detail. Of course, we know
that you really do have a breakthrough in your hands, while those people are just
crackpots. But how do you convince everyone else? All you want is a fair hearing.
Scientists can't possibly pay equal attention to every conceivable hypothesis, they would
literally never do anything else. Whether explicitly or not, they typically apply a Bayesian
prior to the claims that are put before them. Purported breakthroughs are not all treated
equally; if something runs up against their pre-existing notions of how the universe
works, they are much less likely to pay it any attention. So what does it take for the truly
important discoveries to get taken seriously? Happily, we are here to help. It would be a
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shame if the correct theory to explain away dark matter or account for the origin of life
were developed by someone without a conventional academic position, who didn't really
take a lot of science classes in college and didn't have a great math background but was
always interested in the big questions, only for that theory to be neglected because of
some churlish prejudice. So we would like to present a simple checklist of things that
alternative scientists should do in order to get taken seriously by the Man. And the good
news is, it's only three items! How hard can that be, really? True, each of the items might
require a nontrivial amount of work to overcome. Hey, nobody ever said that being a
lonely genius was easy. So let's begin at the beginning:

1. Acquire basic competency in whatever field of science your discovery belongs to.

In other words, "get to know what is already known." If you have a new theory that unites
all the forces, make sure you have mastered elementary physics, and grasp the basics of
quantum field theory and particle physics. If you've built a perpetual-motion machine,
make sure you possess a thorough grounding in mechanical and electrical engineering,
and are pretty familiar with the First Law of Thermodynamics. If you can explain the
cosmological redshift without invoking an expanding universe, make sure you know
general relativity and have mastered the basics of modern cosmology and astrophysics.
Just as an example, if fundamental physics is your bailiwick, Gerard 't Hooft has put
together a list of subjects you should get under your belt, complete with bibliography!
Many of them are online lecture notes; some of them are by me. So start reading! It may
seem like a daunting collection at first; but keep in mind, this kind of curriculum is
completed by hundreds of graduate students every year. Most of whom are not singular
geniuses who will transform the very face of science. Now, you may object that steering
clear of such pre-existing knowledge has played a crucial role in your unique brand of
breakthrough research, and you would never have been able to make those dazzling
conceptual leaps had you been weighed down by all of that established art. Let me
break it down for you: no. There may have been a time, in the halcyon days of
Archimedes or maybe even Galileo and Newton, when anyone with a can-do attitude and
a passing interest in the fundamental mysteries could make an important contribution to
our understanding of nature. Those days are long past. (And Galileo and Newton, let us
note, understood the science of their time better than anybody.) We've learned a
tremendous amount about how the universe works, most of which is "right" at least in
some well-defined regime of applicability. If you haven't mastered what we've already
learned, you're not going to be able to see beyond it. Put it this way: it's a matter of
respect. By asking scientists to take your work seriously, you are asking them to respect
you enough to spend their time investigating your claims. The absolute least you can do
is respect them enough to catch up on the stuff they've all made a great effort to master.
There are a lot of smart people working as scientists these days; if a basic feature of your
purported breakthrough ("the derivation of the Friedmann equation is wrong"; "length
contraction is a logical contradiction") is that it requires that a huge number of such
people have been making the same elementary mistake over and over again for years,
the fault is more likely to lie within yourself than in the stars. Do your homework, first,
then get back to me.
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 2. Understand, and make a good-faith effort to confront, the fundamental objections
to your claims within established science.

Someone comes along and says "I've discovered that there's no need for dark matter." A
brief glance at the abstract reveals that the model violates our understanding of
perturbation theory. Well, perhaps there is something subtle going on here, and our
conventional understanding of perturbation theory doesn't apply in this case. So here's
what any working theoretical cosmologist would do (even if they aren't consciously
aware that they're doing it): they would glance at the introduction to the paper, looking
for a paragraph that says "Look, we know this isn't what you would expect from
elementary perturbation theory, but here's why that doesn't apply in this case." Upon not
finding that paragraph, they would toss the paper away. Scientific claims -- whether
theoretical insights or experimental breakthroughs -- don't exist all by their lonesome.
They are situated within a framework of pre-existing knowledge and expectations. If the
claim you are making seems manifestly inconsistent with that framework, it's your job to
explain why anyone should nevertheless take you seriously. Whenever someone claims to
build a perpetual-motion device, scientist solemnly reiterate that the law of conservation
of energy is not to be trifled with lightly. Of course one must admit that it could be wrong
-- it's only one law, after all. But when you actually build some machine that purportedly
puts out more ergs than it consumes (in perpetuity), it does a lot more than violate the
law of conservation of energy. That machine is made of atoms and electromagnetic
fields, which obey the laws of atomic physics and Maxwell's equations. And conservation
of energy can be derived from those laws -- so you're violating those as well. If you claim
that the position of Venus within the Zodiac affects your love life, you're not only positing
some spooky correlation between celestial bodies and human affairs; your theory also
requires some sort of long-range force that acts between you and Venus, and there
aren't any such forces strong enough to be relevant. If you try to brush those issues
under the rug, rather than confronting them straightforwardly, your credibility suffers
greatly. For example, imagine you say, "I have a method of brewing a magical healing
potion that bypasses the ossified practices of your so-called `medicine,' and I've
personally known several people who were miraculously cured by it, and also there was
a study once in some journal that didn't conclusively rule out the possibility of an effect,
and besides you don't know everything." No non-crackpot person is going to pay a whit
of attention to you, except perhaps to poke fun in between doing serious work. But now
imagine you say "It's true that my claimed magical healing potion appears to violate this
famous law of chemistry and that well-established principle of medicine, which have
been painstakingly developed and stringently tested against experimental data over the
course of many decades, and it's natural that you would be skeptical of such a claim --
but here is the empirical evidence that is dramatic enough to overcome that skepticism,
and this is the reason why there might be a loophole in those laws in this particular
circumstance." People will be much more likely to take you seriously.

3. Present your discovery in a way that is complete, transparent, and unambiguous.

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What we're getting at here is that scientific discoveries, unlike sonnets or declarations of
love, are universal rather than personal. They belong to everyone, and once they are
presented to the world, they can be explored equally well by anybody. By almost any
standard, I understand general relativity better than Einstein ever did. (Most parts of it,
anyway.) Not because I'm anywhere nearly as smart as Einstein, but because we've
learned a lot about GR since Einstein died. Once the theory was invented, he didn't have
a monopoly on it; it was out there for anyone to understand and move forward with.
Even if he had repudiated his own theory, it would have had no effect on whether or not
it was correct. Your discovery should be the same way. If it's a revolutionary new theory,
it should be a theory that anyone can use. That means it needs to be clearly expressed
and unambiguous. I've had more than one long and fruitless discussion with alternative
scientists who would say "You tell me the experimental result, and I will explain it with
my theory." That's not the way it works. Your theory should have a life of its own; it
should be a machine that I (or anyone) could use to make predictions. And if it's a physics
theory, let's face it, it's going to involve math. In this day and age, nobody is going to be
moved by a model of elementary particles that comes expressed as a set of three-
dimensional sculptures constructed from pipe cleaners. Likewise, if your breakthrough is
an experiment, it had better be a dramatically obvious one -- and the more you are
violating cherished scientific beliefs, the more dramatic the effect had better be. If what
you're claiming requires a re-arrangement of the energy levels in organic molecules, in
flagrant disregard of the Schrodinger equation, you are going to need much more than a
two- or three-sigma effect. And, equally importantly, you have to be up front about what
the apparatus is, so that anyone can reproduce the experiment. No fair saying "Well, if
you come into my lab, I'll turn it on and show you how it works." And "This experiment
was done in the '70's in a secret underground lab in Gdansk, and the KGB has
suppressed the lab notebooks" isn't any better. If you're actually playing the role of a
scientist, share your procedure with everyone, so that they can become true believers
themselves. If, on the other hand, you just want to make money, then by all means don't
tell anyone; just start producing the free energy (or amazing stretchy widgets, or
whatever) and sell it on the open market. The millions of dollars that will doubtless flow
your way will be very comforting as you rail against the establishment for failing to
appreciate your genius. So there you go! Modesty aside, this post might be the single
greatest favor that has ever been done for the loose-knit community of non-traditional
scientists. We've been very explicit about what is expected, if you want to get the
recognition you believe is your due. Three simple items, start checking them off! Also,
one last thing. Don't compare yourself to Galileo. You are not Galileo. Honestly, you're
not. Dude, seriously.

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