New York Times 定义的“民科”

今天看关于 Cellular Automata model 的文献，自然地就看到了 Wolfram 的名字，也看到了他写的那本一千多页的 A New Kind of Science 的书名，查了一下图书馆目录，诺大的图书馆没有这本书，T大的外文书阅览室倒是有一本。

Google Scholar 上排第一的是 Applied Mechanics Reviews 上的一篇书评，看了一下，书评作者先表扬 Wolfram 少年早慧，事业有成，然后说他在这本书里自称推翻了牛顿体系的科学，又拿不出同行评议过的证据，不太地道，最后引用了 New York Times 的一段话，实在是辛辣之至：

"Cranks are an occupational hazard that every scientist eventually faces. Fortunately, these characters are usually easy to spot. If someone claims to have a grand theory that overturns centuries of scientific knowledge—especially when the theory spans unrelated fields like physics and biology and economics—the odds are good that he or she is a crank. If the author publishes not in standard scientific journals but in a book for general readers, watch out. And if the book is issued by the author rather than a conventional publisher, the case is pretty much airtight." (New York Times, May 20 2002. in M. Gad-el-hak. A New Kind of Science (book review). Applied Mechanics Reviews, Vol. 56, No. 2, pp. B18–B19, March 2003)

这句话若能早十年提出并引进到中国，许多“水变油”之类的荒谬现象也就不会发生了吧。这里说的“民科”与民间科技爱好者之不同，也就是 crank 与 hobbist 的区别── crank 是要通过自己所谓的研究成果求名求利的。而 hobbist 最大的苦恼往往是找不到专家做同行评议。 

当然，Wolfram 的 Mathematica 是货真价实的，从这个意义上说他不是 crank，不过他既然自己出书宣称推翻了整个经典科学体系又不让人检验他的理论，给这种行为泼泼冷水也无妨。