Timeline for Why does independent research from people without formal academic qualifications generally turn out to be a complete waste of time?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
7 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 8 at 1:31 | comment | added | EvilSnack | Yes, but unlearned people hear that he was a patent office clerk and assume that this was because of his qualifications and not in spite of his qualifications. | |
| Jul 5 at 16:13 | comment | added | Rob McDonald | @EvilSnack that 'amateur' was not 'just a patent clerk', he was also a Ph.D. student at a prestigious university. People romanticize his story, but he was not an untrained outsider. | |
| Jul 4 at 23:32 | comment | added | EvilSnack | It doesn't help that the guy who developed the theories of relativity was working as a patent office clerk. The notion of an amateur who leaps beyond the professionals is firmly fixed in the minds of some. | |
| Jul 3 at 23:23 | comment | added | Simon Crase | "But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."--Carl Sagan | |
| Jul 3 at 21:18 | comment | added | anomaly | My favorite assertion from people like that (at least in physics): "I solved this big physics problem, but I just need someone to work out the math for me." | |
| Jul 3 at 21:15 | comment | added | Dave L Renfro | ignoring that the previous magnet would retard it once it was past --- I like your magnets in a circle story. A careful analysis of a similar situation often shows up in an undergraduate mechanics class in physics and is due to Newton, and apparently now called the Shell Theorem. | |
| Jul 3 at 1:13 | history | answered | Rob McDonald | CC BY-SA 4.0 |