John Timmer explains some experiments in physics that have exposed some unexpected behavior by protons. Read that article to get the story, but this little bit jumped out at me as universally applicable to all science.
This may sound like a minor puzzle, but remember that the proton’s radius is tied into theories like the Standard Model, so the result suggested that there might be something wrong with our understanding of some basic physics. Theorists, naturally, responded with enthusiasm and developed some new models that added an additional fundamental force that influenced the muon’s interactions with the proton.
Show a scientist a problem, a real problem with data to back it up, and scientists naturally respond with enthusiasm. That’s the Standard Model of Scientific Behavior.
When scientists respond with a groan and a facepalm when you tell them your new theory for how humans evolved, or how chi flows through the body, or how to cure cancer with mango smoothies, or worse, announce that your scientific explanation is invalid because it doesn’t include the Bible or the Koran or the Bhagavad Gita, it’s because you don’t understand how science works. Real difficulties with an idea get us worked up and excited. Imaginary difficulties lacking in substantial evidence are uninteresting and mean we have to shoo away an annoying loon.
We’ve already confirmed that some people are irrational and ignorant. That observation has been replicated repeatedly and doesn’t enthuse anyone at all.
Related: here’s a professional physicist who consults with self-taught “theorists”.
The majority of my callers are the ones who seek advice for an idea they’ve tried to formalise, unsuccessfully, often for a long time. Many of them are retired or near retirement, typically with a background in engineering or a related industry. All of them are men. Many base their theories on images, downloaded or drawn by hand, embedded in long pamphlets. A few use basic equations. Some add videos or applets. Some work with 3D models of Styrofoam, cardboard or wires. The variety of their ideas is bewildering, but these callers have two things in common: they spend an extraordinary amount of time on their theories, and they are frustrated that nobody is interested.
She charges $50 for 20 minutes of consulting, in which she directs them towards current literature and advises them on the deficiencies in their background that they need to fill. I’ve had so many of these kinds of people harangue me with their ideas and objections to evolution, but I never realized I should be charging for the service.
Except, for $50 they’d probably expect me to be nice.
I could be reading something wrong, but that article appears to have been written by Sabine Hossenfelder , a “her”, not a “he”.
Yes, the article (which I recommend) was written by Sabine Hossenfelder, a woman, who blogs here:
http://backreaction.blogspot.co.uk/
Factoid: In the sixties, Soviet physicist Andrei Sacharov tried to get muon-induced fusion.
If it had worked, it would have been a bona fide Cold fusion, but the mun decayed Before it could “catalyse” (yes, this is an improper word) enough fusion events.
-If we could use the new knowledge about muons to bypass some of the obstacles Sacharov encountered things will get really exciting.
I’m sure the unsung geniuses she turns away are impressed with her scientific knowledge and professionalism. I’m sure they have nothing but praise for her.
Should be muon, not “mun”.
It decayed.
You could always advertise as the BDSM version – I’m sure there’s a market for creationists and biology abusers who secretly like being insulted and ridiculed and would pay for the experience!
Actually, there are probably those who’d expect (even want) the ‘haughty scientist’, an arrogant, gruff man (yes, man), who berates them, lectures them about how obvious their mistakes are and how trivial it would have been for them to figure this out by themselves.
Oddly enough, all I can think of now is ‘physicist’. Unfair stereotype and, perhaps, bad luck on my part. Nonetheless,
Apparently the muon still managed to catalyse the fusion of a sentence remnant in my previous post before it went.
So charge them $20 and be yourself. :)
This is very, very hard to get across to people who have latched on to pseudoscience, probably because persecution of the maverick by the orthodox is structured right into the story — and they’ve fallen in love with the story as much as the claim, I think.
They’re also projecting. I once brought up a quote to a group of woos to the effect that “In science, you’re supposed to take your most cherished idea to your harshest critics and ask “okay — where are the mistakes?” That only brought up a discussion on “if someone tells you you’re wrong, the problem isn’t you — it’s them.”
And perhaps — speculating — authoritarians (or the authoritarian-minded), because it means “no one is in control!” ?
I’m surprised that she can do much to help in 20 minutes. From the e-mails that cranks send me, it would take me 20 minutes just to figure out what they’re talking about. And answering basic questions requires research, as I can’t always recall exactly the evidence for facts that we take for granted. For instance, I couldn’t tell you how we know quarks exist (the example from the article).
Siggy@12, From poopyhead’s description, “20 minutes of consulting, in which she directs them towards current literature and advises them on the deficiencies in their background that they need to fill” — nothing per se about, e.g., “figure out what they’re talking about” or even “answer basic questions”. It sounds to me more like friendly-advice to encourage the people to actually understand what they are talking about, along with basic(?) lessons / pointers in reasoning, research, and critical self-examination.
Or to put in another way, not a review of the idea (other than, perhaps, at a broadly-superficial level), but consulting from a presumably-friendly human on how to proceed, albeit at a very basic level many readers here perhaps take for granted.
I could easily be wrong!
It is perfectly legitimate for a professor to take on a small amount of outside consulting work. I submit that PZ already has hobbies, so any consulting work should be at an agreeable price. By that, I mean enough money that PZ feels fully compensated for having to be nice to the scientifically challenged. Perhaps $300-$450 per hour, with a $200 minimum would be appropriate. If that means very very few clients, that’s even better for PZ. But with even one sucker (I mean client), that will document PZ’s value to anyone curious, possibly someday including the University.
Ask oneself, what would a lawyer do? Answer: $600/hr if they can get it.
Back in the 1970’s the going rate for consulting by academic scientists/engineers was $300/hr, plus travel costs and travel time. Inflation should at least double that by now.
Sabine Hossenfelder together with Ethan Siegel and Sean Carroll are my favorite physics bloggers. She also contributes (ed?) to Starts with a Bang, Siegel’s blog, sometimes, besides her own linked in #2.
(Engineering) Consulting is not what it used to be.
I engaged for quite a while with a guy who claimed to have developed a novel cosmological theory. It all worked with basic algebra, and he wanted help to publish it and change the world.
I kept engaging and supporting him, and suggested that he very much needed to complete his education with some advanced math – at least calculus and differential equations – in order to understand things like Maxwell’s Equations that were relevant to his theory. He did actually enrol part time in a university physics degree.
I stopped when he switched his major from physics to marketing in order to better disseminate his revolutionary theory.