For posterity: Note the shape of the crank's arguments. They are convinced that their forged artifact – in this case, a reputation-laundered whitepaper – is capable of convincing anybody, save for those who already have a bad-faith commitment towards it. This is why ZH never replies directly to my critiques of the paper; the paper must be sacrosanct and flawless.

Note also how they cannot engage with the material without a thought-terminating cliché. Instead of actually working through the symbolic constructions, each construction is labeled and analyzed in terms of how the crank feels about it. Any bad feelings are externalized into faults of others.

This is what leads to one of the telltale signs of a crank: their papers form a life raft upon which they float, avoiding direct confrontation with any of the sea creatures by carefully explaining that any sort of sea-creature attack must be performed according to the rules of the raft-papers. Other papers are added to the raft, after being ripped apart and cherry-picked, but the crank's papers are the core.

Also note the heavy focus on respectability politics, and how it is one-sided. Insults are allowed to flow freely from the crank towards established scientists, but never in reverse. In this case, I am not "professional" and therefore may be dismissed, regardless of the evidence presented. This is defensive ad-hominen, used rhetorically to avoid genuine inspection of evidence.