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ChristianKl comments on Open thread, Oct. 03 - Oct. 09, 2016 - Less Wrong
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Is there an effective way for a layman to get serious feedback on scientific theories?
I have a weird theory about physics. I know that my theory will most likely be wrong, but I expect that some of its ideas could be useful and it will be an interesting learning experience even in the worst case. Due to the prevalence of crackpots on the internet, nobody will spare it a glance on physics forums because it is assumed out of hand that I am one of the crazy people (to be fair, the theory does sound pretty unusual).
https://aeon.co/ideas/what-i-learned-as-a-hired-consultant-for-autodidact-physicists provides payed serious feedback as a service.
Wow, that was pretty grating to read. The tribal emotions were off the charts. The author seems to derive great satisfaction from being a member of the physics section of Team Science.
A sudden side-hustle idea solidifies...
Your astrobiology blog might position you well ;)
That seems like a really good resource for making high-impact career decisions relating to concepts on the bleeding edge of a scientific discipline. I wonder how many of us have considered getting a PhD with a specific field of research in mind. There's a chicken-egg problem, because you won't be qualified to judge whether the research you want to do is worthwhile until after you've obtained the PhD.
It's probably always a good idea to get some feedback from relevant domain experts to flush out any unknown unknowns. This is especially true if you’re forming a startup or something, and lack background knowledge in the tangentially related fields of science.
Different fields have different states of development. When it comes to theoretical physics there are a lot of very smart people who spent a lot of energy in the field, so it's really hard for outsiders to meaningfully compete in the field. It's also very hard for anybody outside of the field to gather meaningful empiric data about related questions.
That's not true in the same sense in medicine. Earlier this year we discovered for example a new muscle. The study of human anatomy is still badly developed and it get's even worse when you don't talk about static anatomy but moving anatomy.
When having a breakthrough idea it might be worthwhile to ask: "Given how I arrived at the idea, what are other people who went through the same path?"