History of Crackpot Ideas 1

The History of Crackpot Ideas

Naja Isabelle Webb

Southern University A&M College

History of Crackpot Ideas 2

Scientists have been coming up with absurd and out of the ordinary ideas for centuries.

Eventually these ideas became known as “crackpot ideas”. The term crackpot has been used

since the 1880s (World Wide Words), and originally it was used to describe a person who people

thought was “stupid” (World Wide Words). It wasn’t until recent that the new meaning for the

word crackpot was formed; pot slang for skull and crack for a person who was crazy. Now

according to Dictionary.com, the word crackpot is defined as “a person who is eccentric,

unrealistic, or fanatical”. Therefore, the saying “crackpot idea” actually means “a so called

deranged” idea from “a so called deranged” person.

There have been many ideas and experiments labeled as being crackpot, such as the

Project Pelican experiment that was conducted during the time frame of World War II.

According to Skinner in “Pigeons in a Pelican”, this experiment was conducted to attempt to

“use living organisms to guide missiles”—and in this case Pigeons. This project was brought

upon when it was noticed that lower organisms had a better sense of responding to patterns.

During this time of war, people were not much concerned about experiments in general being

ethical, especially with the fighting and the number of casualties increasing. American airplanes

were also unable to hold explosives due to the lack of space or other required material that had to

be loaded in the planes. These factors made it even more appealing to use lower organisms,

because they were also seen as being cheap, more compact, and using lower organisms such as

pigeons was deemed a being “readily expendable (Skinner, 1960, p. 29).”

With all of the positive outlooks for Americans from a war standpoint, Project Pelican

was initiated in the spring of 1940. Pigeons were tested on their ability to steer, with the use of

grains, and they were quickly conditioned to “reach any target within reach of the hoist, no

matter what the starting position and during fairly rapid approaches (Skinner, 1960, p. 29).”
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Now you would think with the success of the experiment that other scientists would

approve of the project without hesitation, but that was not the case. The project was first rejected

in 1941, because scientist did not see a need for further development of the project based on the

proposal. After this the project was later modeled to use a more simple harnessing system, but

even this did not lead to an approval and the project was rejected for a second time by the Office

of Scientific Research and Development. There reason was that they felt there was no need for

the experiment since the United Stated did not have any missiles during this time that had the

ability to be guided towards a target.

The project was next picked up by a man named Victor, who contributed a new advanced

system, the device’s ability to respond to pattern, the device’s ability to only use visible

radiation, and the device’s ability to resist jamming. These new updates did give the experiment

somewhat of an approval finally in 1943, but even this did not make the experiment completely

successful. Even with undeniable proof of the experiments capabilities, it was rejected a third

time in January 1944, because of the “lack of information of the signal required to steer the

pelican (Skinner, 1960, p. 33).” But the project was given one more chance, where multiple

scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reviewed the work of Project Pelican.

Even though there were a few who saw the information as interesting, and one who was

completely for the approval of the experiment, there was one man who thought the results were

impossible to achieve despite observation. Once again, the experiment was rejected and

discontinued.

Just like many other crackpot ideas, Project Pigeon was deemed as crazy at the time, but

later it was recognized as being genius. During this time it was probably hard to find researchers

who were firm believers in the project and who found the results and demonstrations to be valid.
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It is very common for people to reject ideas that they are unfamiliar with or that go completely

against their own beliefs. Because from the information I read on the experiment, the project was

successful from the beginning, and was only rejected for small reasons that did not discredit the

project results. Since being ethical was not a concern or policy of this time for experiments, the

treatment of the animals was not the reasons the project kept being rejected, but people’s

inability to open their minds and accept that the project was in fact genius.

Project Pelican did lead to other projects using animals, which I believe was a huge factor

in the development of behaviorism— “scientific approach that limits the study of psychology to

measurable or observable behavior (Gerrig & Zimbardo, 2002).” Before projects like Project

Pelican were conducted, behaviorism was more focused on human behavior and not animal

behavior. I think these projects made people realize that animals are smarter than what people

give them credit for, and that just like humans they can be conditioned. Although conducting

projects to use animals in unordinary ways are genius, especially using pigeons to guide missiles,

it was simply unethical. Just because animals do not have a voice and are “expendable” as

Skinner said, does not allow people to do experiments with them. If the experiment would not be

conducted on a human, than it should not be conducted on an animal. Just like humans, animals

have feelings, they have rights to freedom, and they deserve to be treated with respect.
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References

crackpot. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved April 16, 2016 from Dictionary.com

website http://www.dictionary.com/browse/crackpot

Gerrig, R. J., Zimbardo, P. G. 2002. Psychology and Life. Boston, MA. Ally and

Bacon.

Skinner, B. F. 1960. Pigeons in a pelican. American Psychologist, 15(1), 28-37.

World Wide Words: Crackpot. (n.d.). Retrieved April 18, 2016, from

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-cra2.htm