Crank Magnetism

Craig Shearer - 19 February 2024

You may or may not have heard the term “crank magnetism”. I had heard of the term, but I’d completely misunderstood its meaning. Yes, this item is going to be a bit of a laugh at myself as much as anything!

I re-heard the term when listening to a recent episode of The Skeptics Guide to the Universe. Astonishingly, when I went to find the episode where it was referenced - episode 970 - I found that it was in fact referred to as “Quack Magnetism”. Ah, the brain is a weird thing the way it recollects things, and as skeptics we certainly need to be aware of the foibles of our brains, our blind spots that we have difficulty discerning, but are quite obvious to others.

Anyway, it turns out I had a completely wrong concept of crank/quack magnetism. The best I can explain it is that I thought it related to cranks who were into magnets as the solution to everything. And by “cranks” I define them as people, often with some engineering or scientific background, who have come up with an alternate explanation to the prevailing mainstream explanation for some phenomenon.

At NZ Skeptics we’ve had more than our fair share of people approach us with their pet theory that supposedly explains something, and that the scientific community has got it all wrong. These people are often combative, and think the world is against them and their theory. Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to have a rational conversation with these people, and it invariably devolves into skeptics being described as closed-minded.

So, my concept of “crank magnetism” I imagined involved people making whacky claims involving magnets. I guess I’ve always been prone to taking things too literally sometimes! But to be fair, there are a few of them. People claim magnets can be used to cure all manner of ills. A quick google and I find I can buy a 100% Copper Magnetic Health Bracelet Band from The Nelson Market for just $85.

I guess being 100% copper, and copper not being a ferrous metal, it can’t be magnetised, but perhaps, there I go being too literal again!

Then there’s the “free energy” or perpetual motion machines that prominently feature magnets as an “energy source”. Of course, such claims misunderstand basic principles of physics, that magnetism is a force, and static magnetic fields can’t be a source of energy.

Anyway, this brings me to the true definition of crank or quack magnetism. This is the observation that somebody who’s into one pseudoscience is often into others as well, and such interest in one pseudoscience generally attracts (metaphorically magnetically) other pseudoscientific or crank beliefs as well. The RationalWiki page as a good starting definition:

“Crank magnetism is the condition where people become attracted to multiple crank ideas at the same time. Crank magnetism also denotes the tendency — even for otherwise “lone issue” cranks — to accumulate more crank beliefs over time. You know that old saying about not being so open-minded that your brain falls out? People with crank magnetism didn’t pay attention to that. Crank magnetism is an important stepping stone on the path towards being wrong all of the time.”

I think there are a bunch of examples of crank magnetism working in New Zealand. Just take a look at the web pages of Voices for Freedom, or Liz Gunn, and you’ll find the concept alive and well. Initially VfF started out as anti-vaxxers, but then jumped aboard various other conspiracy trains - and you can today see them being climate change deniers.

As part of reading about this and from the SGU episode, Steven Novella wrote an interesting blog post about the phenomena, which I think is worth a read. In it, I think he provides an interesting take on how quack/crank magnetism fits in well with modern social media. The blog post talks about the menace of “wellness influencers”, who cynically exploit their audience to form a narrative around extreme distrust of authority, that the government has evil plans out to exploit people.

From Steven Novella’s post:

“A conspiracy is the “get out of jail free” card for pseudoscience and sloppy thinking. For anyone pushing a belief that has the challenge of not being true, how do they reconcile their claims with logic and evidence? Just claim there is a conspiracy. The conspiracy explains the lack of evidence for the claim and the existence of evidence which seems to contradict the claim. It also explains why experts, the people who are in the best position to understand the claims, disagree with them.”

But Novella also points out that often these influencers are just exploiting the algorithms that drive social media engagement - what generates clicks ultimately is what generates revenue for the influencer. These influencers are just cynically exploiting their audience to maximise their revenue - who knows whether they actually believe what they’re spouting. (And, in the case of Alex Jones, in his court case he claimed he was just acting - a performance artist “playing a character”!)

Novella’s conclusion is, I think, pretty accurate:

“All this money, estimated to be in the trillions of dollars worldwide, fuels a cultural, business, and political movement that is highly destructive. That is the ultimate menace of “wellness”. Snake oil peddlers, con artists, and gurus operate best in a space that is free from government regulations, free from experts or institutions that provide quality control or scholarship, free from ethics or legal ramifications, or any attempt at consumer protection. They operate best in chaos, where “truth” is subjective, and the only thing you think you can trust is the influencer themselves, whose image is optimised for feel-good pseudo-intimacy.”

Anyway, I think it’s been a good lesson in where my/our brains can go wrong. I should have done more research!