Inverse stopped clock

Part of the series on Logic and rhetoric

Key articles

Logical fallacy Rhetoric Argument Open mind

General logic

Argumentum ad baculum Causalation Continuum fallacy Liar paradox Point refuted a thousand times The Fine Art of Baloney Detection

Bad logic

Appeal to nature Association fallacy Bulverism Hindsight bias Terrorism-baiting Wronger than wrong v - t - e

An inverse stopped clock refers to a situation in which someone who is usually logical, rational, or correct does or believes something idiotic or crazy. Also referred to as "Sometimes even geniuses make mistakes," or the common phrase "Nobody's perfect."

Explanation

Due to the imperfect nature of human beings, even reasonable people — including people widely respected for being reasonable — will make a mistake every now and then, often by chance alone. Perhaps something cranky (e.g. a conspiracy theory) appeals to someone's ideology and they go with it, even if they're usually correct on other subjects. Other times they may panic and do something stupid in response to a sometimes exaggerated threat or situation. The difference between these people and other cranks is that they are usually not crazy, but every time an inverse stopped clock situation takes place their reputation becomes slightly more soiled. (The degree of stupidity also makes a difference, and if the moment is crazy enough they may never be able to live it down, with everything they say being up for question after the incident.)

The most dangerous part of the inversed stopped clock is that the crankery supported may be given much more weight than if it was supported by a known nutjob, due to the usually decent/sane reputation of the person promoting it. The opposite could also happen, and the person's one crank belief will become, again, mainly what they are known for, leaving the rest of their work marginalized by association. An example of the latter is Peter Duesberg and his HIV denialism.

Examples

• John Quincy Adams' anti-Masonic views and supporting the Hollow Earth theory.
• Buzz Aldrin: Apollo 11 pilot, second human to walk on the Moon, outspoken advocate of further space exploration, the man who gave Bart Sibrel a richly-deserved punch in the face... and a global warming denialist.
• Kingsley Amis supporting the Vietnam War and flirting with anti-Semitism at the end of his life.
• David Attenborough endorsing the aquatic ape hypothesis.
• Harry Elmer Barnes, once a respected historian, endorsing Holocaust denial.
• Norman Borlaug being a global warming denialist.
• Jean Bricmont, critic of postmodernism and relativism in the sciences along with Alan Sokal, also adheres to a form of obsessional anti-Zionism that constantly borders on antisemitism, pretends to take a hardline, consistent stance on freedom of speech while defending authoritarian and murderous regimes and is anti-environmentalist to a great extent.
• George Carlin having hostile attitudes to those with eating disorders.
• Noam Chomsky occasionally flirts with genocide denial on Bosnia, Kosovo, and Rwanda, but the worst incident is his tu quoque fallacy towards the Cambodian genocide by Pol Pot, and his insistence that the evidence at the time suggested that he was right.
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: creator of Sherlock Holmes, human rights activist, early opponent of racism, and dogmatic believer in spiritualism.
• Richard Dawkins making outlandish statements on gender, rape, Islam and even apologizing for pedophilia. (Oh, how the mighty have fallen.)
• Tommy Douglas (Canadian universal health care pioneer) writing his master's thesis on eugenics.
• Freeman Dyson outside his contributions to physics.
• Albert Einstein refusing to accept that Stalin's Soviet Union was an oppressive, totalitarian regime.
• Eisenhower, JFK, and LBJ not knowing how to restrain themselves with Containment.
• Gottlob Frege, one of the founders of modern logic and major influence on Bertrand Russell, being a Nazi sympathizer.
• Gandhi holding racist attitudes towards black South Africans during his early years of activism and sleeping beside his two nieces to test his ability to resist the temptations of the material world.
• Theodor Seuss Geisel (aka. Dr. Seuss) taking his anti-Axis propaganda too far in World War II with flamboyantly racist anti-Japanese caricatures (he did however create a rather elaborate, colorful and remorseful apology for such propaganda and its resulting policy actions in the form of Horton Hears a Who).
• Horace Greeley, journalist, publisher, and abolitionist, taking an interest in phrenology.
• Sam Harris' affinity for racial profiling, strange belief in the paranormal, and outlandishly xenophobic views on Islam (from saying fascists are the most sensible regarding Islam to saying Dick Cheney is less dangerous than Reza Aslan).
• Martin Heidegger enthusiastically supporting Nazism and Hitler in 1933, and enforcing the Nazi racial laws at the University of Freiburg.
• Bill Hicks being a JFK assassination conspiracy theorist.
• Christopher Hitchens becoming a chickenhawk, being anti-abortion and having brain farts on seemingly random things.
• Jesse Jackson, respected civil rights activist, flirts with anti-Semitism from time to time.
• Thomas Jefferson and George Washington - liberators, great political philosophers... and slaveowners.
• Michio Kaku bullshitting about UFOs and Fukushima.
• Ray Kurzweil's transhumanism and taking 150+ vitamin pills a day (and is still alive).
• John Lennon's denial of evolution, referring to the theory as "absolute garbage", and pondering, "Why aren't monkeys changing into men now?" To his credit, however, he did lambast young Earth creationism in the same interview.
• Bill Maher associating with PETA, embracing vaccine denialism, Big Pharma buffoonery and sexism.
• H.L. Mencken, for being anti-democracy, a bit of a racist and giving Ayn Rand her career.
• Harvey Milk, gay rights pioneer, first elected openly gay public official in the US... and friend and defender of Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple.
• Pretty much all of Sir Patrick Moore's non-science related work.
• Thomas Nast, a political cartoonist in the mid-19th century who opposed slavery, the Yellow Peril, attacked corrupt political bosses... and was vehemently racist against the Irish.
• Isaac Newton, physics genius, mathematics genius, astrologer, and alchemist.
• Thomas Paine believing that George Washington conspired with Maximilien de Robespierre to have Paine imprisoned during the French Revolution.
• Penn and Teller fueling global warming denialists and denying risks around second-hand smoke (though their views on AGW did later change).
• Franklin Delano Roosevelt interning hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans and attempting to pack the Supreme Court.
• Carl Schmitt, a political theorist who influenced the likes of Žižek, Hayek, and Hannah Arendt, all while embracing Nazism.
• Margaret Chase Smith, a moderate Republican who helped destroy Joe McCarthy, opposed repealing the New Deal, pushed for greater rights for women... and wanted JFK to nuke the Soviet Union.
• Barry Seidman's review in The Skeptical Inquirer of Robert J. Sawyer's novel Calculating God definitely qualifies, though to what extent is debatable.
• Michael Shermer (as with P&T, being a libertarian means one may be willing to accept a load of anti-science in an instant).
• Susan Sontag making moonbatty statements about the West early in her career.
• Mark Twain being a believer in telepathy.
• Gore Vidal being a Pearl Harbor and 9/11 truther and responding to a bad book review by blaming the Jews.
• Voltaire being a raving anti-Semite and racist.
• Alfred Russel Wallace being a spiritualist and anti-vaxxer.
• James D. Watson's race realism.
• Ted Gunderson, a well-known former FBI agent, and died claiming to be a whistleblower for every conspiracy theory under the sun.
• Cenk Uygur being an Armenian Genocide denier and anti-GMO.
• William Wilberforce, played a major role in Britain's abolitionist movement... and was an avid supporter of its colonization of India, while also believing the poor shouldn't be able to vote.
• Christiaan Barnard, the doctor who first transplanted a human heart, opposed Apartheid and... supported a worthless anti-aging product banned by the FDA shortly after he lent his support.
• Sadly it often does not take long for racist remarks and sweeping generalizations to appear on animal rights forums when China or Japan is mentioned.

See also

• Stopped clock
• Nobel disease
• Ultracrepidarian