In Stritmatter’s case, my understanding is that his peer reviewed publications tend to be “stealth Oxfordianism”; for example, one of the obstacles to Oxford’s authorship is that he died in 1604, and at least ten of Shakespeare’s plays are generally agreed to have been written after that date. So Stritmatter’s modus operandi is to argue for an earlier date for one of these works in a peer-reviewed journal (an idea that most mainstream Shakespeare scholars might consider unlikely, but not inherently nutty), without directly arguing that somebody other than Shakespeare wrote it – and then make the Oxford connection in a non-peer-reviewed venue. Or to argue in a peer-reviewed venue that a passage in Shakespeare alludes to a particular Biblical passage – a mainstream, non-controversial argument in itself – and then point out on his website that this passage is underlined in Oxford’s personal copy of the Bible.
Yeah, Fred Hoyle is one of the first to come to mind. Which is really sad. He richly deserved a free trip to Stockholm, but his less mainstream ideas made him unpalatable. His Steady State theory of the universe probably really made it hard. But he gave us the Big Bang as a name, and of course neucleogenesis.
There are quite a few cranks around in acedemia who push ideas outside of their area of expertese. I have personally come across a couple. One local geophysisist tries to debunk global warming, and there are a few creationalists about to say the least.
Fred Hoyle and canals on Mars immediately came to mind. I think another good example would be Lord Kelvin and his views on the age of the earth (though to be fair science was only just beginning to show how much older it was).
Wakefield’s work is no longer being published in any reputable journal, though. At the time when his original vaccination work was published in The Lancet it was seen as cutting edge rather than crazy. It wasn’t until people figured out he falsified his data that everyone (including his peer reviewers and co-authors) caught on.
Peter Duesberg certainly qualifies - well-published, and did some very valuable work on cancer and cancer-related viruses in the 1970s and 1980s. Has the certainly wrong idea that HIV is a harmless virus merely found in association with AIDS, and is not the cause of AIDS.
Meets part 1 of your #3 criteria - he was just here yesterday speaking about it (a colleague is a former student of his & keeps inviting him) - although he hasn’t published anything in respectable journals about it in years. His webpage lists a 2011 publication on AIDS in the Italian Journal of Anatomy and Embryology, which I never heard of before today and I doubt has a high level of prestige.
Lord Kelvin simply worked out the age of the Earth based upon heat transfer calculations. He was smart enough to know that the assumption that the Earth had no internal heat source was important to his analysis. He did live long enough to see radioactive sources discovered, but only just. Although devout, he was also smart enough to temper his beliefs about the world with science. Where it gets hard for him is when there were important discoveries yet to be made that invalidated some of his calculations. Nuclear fusion and thus the age of the sun being the obvious gap. But his beliefs were rooted in solid application of scientific knowledge as it was at the time. He wasn’t a crank.
That’s not remotely a good example. Gould’s views may be controversial but are not considered to be “crank levels of wrong.” And the last two “cites” are a blog and a speech by an economist. Not exactly a good indication of Gould’s reputation in the field.
I came to nominate Duesberg. We actually had him come give a talk when I was in graduate school. At this point, I think he has to know that he is wrong, but he was so invested in it, that his pride isn’t letting him backtrack.
Okay, but no comments at all on the first link? The one that said “almost every detail of his analysis is wrong”, “Ironically, Gould’s own analysis of Morton is likely the stronger example of a bias influencing results”, and "I had the feeling that his ideological stance was supreme. When the 1996 version of ‘The Mismeasure of Man’ came and he never even bothered to mention Michael’s study, I just felt he was a charlatan.”
Gould is certainly no charlatan. That’s only one of many books. He’s been a very influential figure in evolutionary biology. And being biased about a certain idea and getting an analysis wrong does not make him a crank. If so, there would be a pretty large number cranks among scientists.
Again, you are quoting a newspaper report rather than the opinion of Gould among actual scientists. And the article also contains this quote:
In this and other cases, Gould interpreted data to fit his own intellectual framework. But that’s been the case for many influential scientists. It doesn’t make them cranks.
And there are of course Phillip Lenard, Johannes Stark et al., whose campaign for “Deutsche Physik” against relativity and quantuum mechanics in Nazi Germany may, however, have been more of an act in bad faith and a sign of moral cowardice rather than genuine crankiness.
Several examples given here are/were noted scholars who published crankish stuff outside of their field, or at the fringes of their field. But OP seems to be asking, more specifically, for crankish stuff published by noted scholars within their field.
If we allow examples of scholars delving into matters beyond their field of expertise, then let’s not forget William Shockley, developer of the transistor, the man who “brought silicon to Silicon Valley” and who, later in his career, became a strong proponent of eugenics and “voluntary sterilization” for anyone with IQ under 100. IIRC, he became especially noted – and scorned – when he began pushing theories of certain races being genetically inferior to certain other races.
Came in to nominate Duesberg as well. Also Mullis.
Was this just something that Nazi ideology seemed to require?
Sounds akin to Lysenkoism in Russia, which was, at its core, a kind of ideological contortion of biological science that seemed to fit well with the Soviet concepts of communalism. Or something like that.
Is that enough to make Gould a crank? Crank ideas usually don’t come in the form: “he believed Morton was wrong.”
Crank ideas, to me, are more of the form:
**HIV doesn’t cause AIDS
Sunspots are a cause of viral disease outbreaks
Vitamin C is a cure-all medicine
The nation that controls Magnesium controls the Universe
Psychic consciousness and memory exist independent of neurons and brain chemistry
Dianetics**
I don’t think “Morton was wrong” qualifies as a “crank” idea even if Gould’s analysis was hilariously wrong, or even dishonest.
There are a number of biologists who study aging that, IMHO, dance right on the line separating paradigm-breaking research and crankdom*, or pharmaceutical research and snake-oil sales.
Specifically, I’ll mention Aubrey de Grey as crank-ish. He’s the subject of many breathless articles in the popular press about how we will Cure Aging Forever! But the vast majority of ["]his academic publications](de Grey AD - Search Results - PubMed[Author) have been commentaries and review articles, mostly in a journal that he runs. However, he also runs a small research foundation that does does plenty of legitimate, if unconventional, research.
*The easiest way I’ve found to find candidate cranks is on TED talks. Even the more grounded scientists (whose work I am very familiar with) that give such presentations are encouraged to make ever more grandiose and unsupported claims… I now assume similar phenomenon happen in just about every other subject of a TED talk, where some core nugget of truth is stretched and distorted beyond all recognition, all in the service of empty intellectual preening.
Well, Einstein and Max Born were Jews. And any Jewish theory must be wrong, right? See the logic?
And yes, I think the short and ugly history of Lysenkoism is a totally parallell phenomenon.
What about all the late 19th century scientists who bought into spiritualism, such as Crookes, Pierre Curie and Alfred Russell Wallace?
He started out as one of the most readable scientists out there, but then started beating one drum very very loudly and constantly (as evidenced in your first link) which got very tiresome.
Are you thinking Percival Lowell? 