Could it be that some of so called crock pot theories in physics represent the truth =not pseudoscience?

Question

Isnt one physics theory as good as another if they can't explain things is a simple way?

Answer 1

No, and no. In that order.

Crackpot theories may represent the truth. Nonetheless they are still psuedoscience.

Being correct or incorrect doesn’t enter into it. It is perfectly possible to arrive at a correct answer through irrational, erroneous, ignorant and illogical methods through sheer luck. Consider the following example:

1)All pigs are bright purple.
2)All elephants are pastel pink.
3)Absorbed wavelengths correspond to the length of an object
4)Purple is the shortest wavelength.
5)Pink is the longest wavelength.
6)Therefore pigs are shorter then elephants

The entire theory and argument is flawed on every single point, yet the conclusion is true. That doesn’t make my theory any less crackpot or psuedoscientific. The truth of the conclusion is quite irrelevant to whether the methodology or logical or scientific. As a wise man once said, even a blind squirrel will find a nut occasionally.

That doesn’t mean that the methodology itself is valid. It simply means that someone made a lucky guess. This is precisely what science is designed to safeguard against. The entire process of science is designed to ensure that what is reported is NOT the result of random chance.

Science has certain standards that have to be met, most importantly falsifiability and replicability. Any theory that presents itself as scientific that isn’t falsifiable or replicable is by definition psuedoscience. It is masquerading as science without meeting the most basic standards of science.

All theories are not equally valid if they can’t explain things in a simple way. Theories are only equally valid if they can equally explain ALL the observations AND they are equally falsifiable. Simplicity doesn’t enter into it.

“A wizard did it” is simple and explains all things perfectly, but since it is totally unfalsifiable it isn’t in any way scientific. Special relativity is complex and explains things less well, but it is falsifiable and is thus scientific.

Answer 2

If two ideas are testable and isomorphic in their predictions, they are the same, no matter the language. If ideas are untestable, then they cannot be valid theories. There are really two kinds of problematic theory--those which are just confounded by experiment (or which respond to experiment with self-modification) and those which are not yet testable.

A crackpot theory is one of the above types which seems to require essentially infinite case-by-case modification (a tissue of excuses) or somehow denies testability in principle. This is why they are discarded and derided. They are tautological.

What do you mean by "simple?" Mathematical sophistication is not necessarily not simple--it might just be unfamiliar and counter-intuitive. There is no particular reason why the universe should appear intuitively plausible on every scale (eg high speed, small size, high mass) to the human animal. Yet a good theory is often said to "contain its own logic," which in my experience means that it can become intuitive with practice.

Answer 3

They call them 'crack pot' theories because that's what they are; made up.

Sure, they COULD be right. But you have the same odds of being right if you just make stuff up. That is to say, they're almost certainly wrong.

Answer 4

Not the theories you are thinking of. They are just junk science.