The mathematical physicist John Baez proposed a “crackpot index”[1] [snip]
Mathematician Chris Caldwell was inspired by Baez’s list and devised a mathematical version. Some (lightly edited) examples from Caldwell’s list are
1 point for each word in all capital letters;
5 points for every statement that is clearly vacuous, logically inconsistent, or widely known to be false;
10 points for each such statement that is adhered to despite careful correction;
10 points for not knowing (or not using) standard mathematical notation;
10 points for expressing fear that your ideas will be stolen;
10 points for each new term you invent or use without properly defining it;
10 points for stating that your ideas are of great financial, theoretical, or spiritual value;
10 points for beginning the description of your work by saying how long you have been working on it;
10 points for each favorable comparison of yourself to established experts;
10 points for citing an impressive-sounding, but irrelevant, result;
20 points for naming something after yourself;
30 points for not knowing how or where to submit their major discovery for publication;
30 points for confusing examples or heuristics with mathematical proof;
40 points for claiming to have a “proof” of an important result but not knowing what established mathematicians have done on the problem.
Some points in that list are deeply rooted in human psychology. I will comment on some of them I have hit in the past:
> 10 points for not knowing (or not using) standard mathematical notation;
I personally hate non-standard notation so I switch to the standard when I know about it, but at first, when moving out of well known waters you may be using non-standard notation.
> 10 points for expressing fear that your ideas will be stolen;
Ha ha, I don't express fear, but who is not afraid a little?
> 10 points for stating that your ideas are of great financial, theoretical, or spiritual value;
A lot of papers I have read starts with this actually, not to mention PhD or MSc thesis.
> 10 points for each favorable comparison of yourself to established experts;
Most papers boast about how they beat the baseline that everyone uses. I do it myself although I try to be honest about the circumstances when this happens and when it's better the alternative.
> 30 points for not knowing how or where to submit their major discovery for publication;
Sometimes it happens
> 40 points for claiming to have a “proof” of an important result but not knowing what established mathematicians have done on the problem.
It has happened lot of times, since the beginning of time that some people rediscover previous results, sometimes famous people on famous and important results. To put an example the FFT, but there are a lot of them. And besides, who likes to read others people code?
I think the difference between a crackpot and other people is not accepting the mistake. It's curious it happens so much to engineers. I'm an engineer myself and if I learnt something during my studies is how little I actually know. I usually say that one thing STEM education gives you is the certainty that most of your ideas are wrong.
Edit: The second link has a scanned advert at the end from 1983 for “The Science of Programming” by David Gries: the title of the book amuses me.