User:Endoheretic exoheretic

Heretics
Heretics in science are people who could have Asperger syndrome.

Astronomer Carl Sagan suggested in the book "Scientists confront Velikovsky" to distinguish two kinds of "heretics" which he termed "exoheretics" and "endoheretics".

Exoheretics
According to Carl Sagan, exoheretics satisfy the following criteria:


 * they are usually non-scientists
 * they publish their heretic (pseudo-)scientific theories not in peer-reviewed scientific journals, but elsewhere such as books, preprints, esoteric magazines
 * their arguments can usually be understood by lay people
 * their theories can either easily be disproved by scientists who are experts in their fields or their statements cannot in principle be disproved (statements such as "the planet Venus is hot", "the cat is a holy animal"), because the statements are either vague or not scientific

Famous examples of exoheretics are Immanuel Velikovsky, Erich von Däniken, Charles Berlitz, Johannes Lang, Hanns Hörbiger.

Endoheretics
According to Carl Sagan, endoheretics satisfy the following criteria:


 * they are usually scientists of a related discipline (such as meteorologists who present a theory on elementary particle physics, mathematicians who present a biochemical theory)
 * they publish their heretic scientific theories in peer-reviewed scientific journals
 * their arguments are based on serious scientific research and require much know-how, so they can usually NOT be understood by lay people,
 * their theories can usually not be easily disproved by scientists who are experts in their fields

Famous examples of endoheretics are ship's doctor Robert Mayer, brewer James Joule , teacher Johann Carl Fuhlrott , Augustinian friar Gregor Mendel , meteorologist Alfred Wegener , architect Michael Ventris , physicist Rainer Kühne.

Teenagers who Published in Scientific Research Journals
Very few articles in scientific research journals have been authored by people under the age of twenty. It is a sign of the Asperger syndrome (little Professor syndrome, genius syndrome) that the highly skilled people who had this disorder started their academic career when they were teenagers.

The following list includes only people who were younger than twenty years and three months when a scientific research journal received their first article (date of submission) and subsequently published it (date of publication).

The reason for this criterion is that in the physical sciences only publications in scientific research journals are counted as scientific works. The maximum age of twenty years and three months is chosen, because after completion of a scientific research it requires typically three months to write a scientific article and to send it to a journal.