"(Martin Gardner) writes about various kinds of cranks with the conscious superiority of the scientist, and in most cases one can share his sense of the victory of reason. But after half a dozen chapters this non-stop superiority begins to irritate; you begin to wonder about the standards that make him so certain he is always right. He asserts that the scientist, unlike the crank, does his best to remain open-minded. So how can he be so sure that no sane person has ever seen a flying saucer, or used a dowsing rod to locate water? And that all the people he disagrees with are unbalanced fanatics? A colleague of the positivist philosopher A. J. Ayer once remarked wryly "I wish I was as certain of anything as he seems to be about everything". Martin Gardner produces the same feeling."
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Colin Wilson, The Quest For Wilhelm Reich, pp. 2-3.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/A._J._Ayer
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A. J. Ayer
Sir Alfred Jules Ayer (29 October 1910 – 27 June 1989), more often referred to as A. J. Ayer or Freddie Ayer, was a British humanist philosopher, who was one of the leading proponents of logical positivism.
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