Half-baked ideas, called conjectures in the scientific community, are essential to the progress of science. We can extend that idea into the wider realm of partly-baked ideas (PBI). But harmful ideas of negative bakedness, such as Creationism and Global Warming Denial, pose grave threats to the US and the world. Although the very negatively-baked Flying Spaghetti Monster has its uses.
Mmmm, pasticcio/pastiche. Lokshen kugel.
This is my body. Eat it in memory of me.
Sorry, where was I? Oh, yes.
The idea of a measure for partly-baked and negatively-baked ideas comes from a lovely little book, now long out of print but selling for $50 or so used. It is The Scientist Speculates: An Anthology of Partly-Baked Ideas, by I. J. Good. It included a suggestion for measuring the bakedness of ideas on a numeric scale, not just the well-known half-baked ideas. On such a scale, Creationism has a bakedness of -100 or worse and falling, like Global Warming Denial.
The bakedness of a new idea relates to what it can explain, and the plausibility of the evidence for it before it has been subjected to rigorous experiment and observation. The results of such tests can drive bakedness values up or down over time. Scientists generally reject personal or scriptural or corporate authority, no matter how much authoritarians reject science.
Let us look at the definition of bakedness, and consider some examples, positive and negative.