There are tons of cranks, certainly, but it’s a nice little racket that academia has going that you get much credibility from merely being in academia, and if you aren’t in academia no amount of being right proves anything. It was all “just chance” or you didn’t have the proper credentials…even though you were correct and those in academia were not.

These types say that if you had the right credentials you’d be taken seriously. However, having the right credentials in too many areas means that you’d have to be stylishly wrong to be given any credence.

I don’t even care that much. I’d rather be right. But it’s all sclerotic and doomed as it won’t be able to self-perpetuate for much longer.