But mathematics is about the only field where merit is clear-cut enough that there's no outsider mathematics, even if crank mathematics is clearly recognizable by professionals and even by college calculus-educated adults. If, as often is the case, someone draws a sketchy proof for an ambitious conjecture that seems promising enough, entire communities of professionals spend thousands of man-hours fixing the holes.
What's more, mathematics has consistently avoided the "Lakatos trap" of chasing "narrow-minded" research programs that it might be argued that plague science in general. Even physics: Alan Sokal's mock article accidentally zooms in on how we have failed to understand (and persist on failing to working on, at least since the Kolmogorov formalism) the everyday phenomenon of turbulent fluid dynamics even as we've grown to astounding heights in esoteric reductionist physics that are spuriously compared to a new metaphysics. And don't get me started on economics or even econometrics -- just the vast swaths of subjects we've given up on.
What's more, mathematics has consistently avoided the "Lakatos trap" of chasing "narrow-minded" research programs that it might be argued that plague science in general. Even physics: Alan Sokal's mock article accidentally zooms in on how we have failed to understand (and persist on failing to working on, at least since the Kolmogorov formalism) the everyday phenomenon of turbulent fluid dynamics even as we've grown to astounding heights in esoteric reductionist physics that are spuriously compared to a new metaphysics. And don't get me started on economics or even econometrics -- just the vast swaths of subjects we've given up on.