A stamp released in 1984 titled ‘The Spring of Science’. Source: Xinhua News Agency.

Zhao Xinglong, 55, technical secondary school graduate, and worker of a local electricity plant, claimed to reverse the second law of thermodynamics, that is, perpetual motion is possible. He printed thousands of materials and sent them to some teachers and students of the Chinese University of Science and Technology; he said they agreed with him. He raised a 500-thousand award for anyone who can point a wrong bit of his theory. No response. Now he is still traveling all over the country with a van decorated with banners that propagandize his scientific achievements.

Peng Dazhe, 60, after graduating from Chendu 7th Middle School, he only self-studied some university courses for one year. He has been convinced that the Universal Gravitation theory is wrong, and the correct theory is just the opposite: things repel from each other rather than attract. Peng declared that there are over 150 billion stars in the university which are constantly exploding. It is the forces generated from the explosion that drive the other objects in the space, including the dropping apple from the tree that I. Newton is said to have observed. He regards himself as the genius that overturns the whole foundation of physics. He has sent tons of mails to libraries, astronomical observatories, and universities all over the would, and of course, no positive reply received. But he did not take these as failure. ‘They don’t want to face the fact,’ said Peng, ’they’re frightened.’

Jiang Chunxuan, after the official confirmation of Andrew Wiles’s solution of Fermat’s Last Theory, claimed that he had developed a ‘new’ approach that differs from any current mathematics, by which not only the Fermat’s theory, but also Goldbach’s conjecture, Riemann Hypothesis, and other mathematic problems can be solved within only several pages of deduction. His ‘solution’ to Fermat takes only 4 pages. After the refusal by Mathematical Reviews, he is still seeking for acknowledgment.

‘Grass-root scientists’, a small yet noticeable proportion in Chinese population, have gained much public concerns these years. Most of them did not received any formal higher education or training of scientific research, but they dare to devote their entire life to the ‘missions impossible’ in science like the Fermat’s, Goldbach’s or the Second Law of Thermodynamic mentioned above. They retire or quit their job for their research; they travel a lot to propagandize their theories; they write to each professionals in the field they know on the planet. However, almost without exception, they are not accepted by the formal academic community.

In fact, scientists should not be distinguished into ‘grass-root’ and ‘official’ ones. The ‘grass-root scientists’ mentioned here are in fact science bigots. They care little or no real science, but regarded the ‘formal’ acceptance of their works as the ultimate goal of their lives. They totally refuse to discuss anything within the science context because they are strongly convinced that those propositions can never be solved with normal approaches. In most cases, these grass-root scientists develop totally ‘novel’ approaches towards their goals, which are full of new terms without clear-cut definition and logical inconsistencies. Conclusions are often drawn by merely wordy description rather than from experimental data (in fact they do few or no experiments). They don’t care the meaning of their results in the long development of science, either. Instead, they always concentrate on a single, isolated scientific issue and care nothing about the logical effects on the others within the whole discipline. They disagree the academic community, whereas they still need the community to accept and acknowledge their works. This is the very twist that drives them away from the normal life.

If we take a closer look on these bigots, another common character can be found that they are of similar ages from 40 to 60, while the proportions of younger and elder members are comparably small. This information reminds us that they may be the consequence of the society in a special time of contemporary China. They grew up in the period of Cultural Revolution, and began their careers in the 1980s when these people are at their twenties. In the Cultural Revolution, knowledge was regarded as the origin of evilness, and scientists were heavily persecuted if they did not claim their political stance and give up their work for hard labor. In contrast, after the Cultural Revolution, there is a renaissance of science across the country. Science literacy witnessed its apex. Thousands of books introducing science to the youth emerges in a short time. Science was regarded as the magic wand toward the ‘four modernizations’. However, owing to the Cultural Revolution, most of the youth at that time had lost the opportunity of formal education. They learned science only from science literacy books, where the image of science and scientist was inevitably twisted. One of the typical stories was about the invention of benzene hexachloride, a pesticide. It is called ‘six-six-six’ in Chinese, and the story told that it is so called because it was the product of the 666th experiment after 665 failures (in fact it is only because the formula of this chemical is C6H6Cl6). Another example is the story of the first purification of radium chloride by Madame Curies, four years to yield only 1 gram. Stories of this kind, emphasizing the importance of heavy, persistent labor, without mentioning the reasoning or critical thinking involved throughout the process, misled some of the youth of that time profoundly. It seemed that science could be done by only strong will and hard labor, and no special education is needed. One evidence of the influence of Chinese society of the 1980s is these glass-root scientists now mainly choose what has been introduced in the science literacy work for their goals. Because these are all of what they know about the biggest problems science is now facing – they learned from books at their twenties. They are not afraid of failure, because they believe what happened in six-six-six discovery or radium purification will also happen to them.

Unlike within the academic community, these ‘scientists’ are well appraised and appreciated by a large population of the public, mainly because the stiffness before authority and the courage to challenge they have shown in their activities. In contrast, the ‘formal scientists’ are regarded as conservative and despotic, judging people not by their ability but their diploma. The technical details (if any) of their works however are often neglected. Supporters often remind us that real science should allow suspicion, therefore the views of grass-root scientists should be taken seriously. In fact they are. Mathematician, especially famous ones always receive anonymous letters and phone calls providing their solution to Goldbach’s or something similar. But after their flaws of reasoning pointed out, these attempters will not accept or argue. They think it is time to show their ‘strong will’; they just believe they are right. One just cannot establish any form of scientific communication with them except accepting their works. But the details of these processes are too technical for the public to realize. The apparent fact is just they are refused. There is a voice that even encourage more of this kind of grass-root scientists in China.

China has witnessed a decline of science literacy after the apex of 80s, despite its achievements in research. The public cannot properly understand the phenomena of grass-root scientists, nor can the grass-root scientists properly understand their own situation. The imagine of science continue to be vague in people’s mind. We need science literacy that, not only exists but also convey the real nature of science and scientist that lead the youth into the right way, and leave the grass-root scientists in the history.