A good example is https://richardaragon.substack.com/p/a-universal-prime-funct... describing a supposed "universal prime function" which is simply a finite approximation using a sum of 50 sines (each applied to a linear term plus a sine-log offset). The 53 parameters are fitted to the first 10^3 or so prime numbers. This is followed by the *absolutely ridiculous* claim that if the function approximates the first 10^3 primes well, it must also fit the remaining prime numbers (of which there are infinitely more than 10^3000000000) equally well.

Then they suggest "A formal proof connecting this function to the RH would involve the following steps" using this great discovery: "1. Correspondence with the Explicit Formula: Demonstrate that the oscillatory correction term in our function corresponds to the sum over zeta zeros in the explicit formula for ψ(x) or π(x). 2. Error Bound: Prove that the error in the prime counting function derived from our function is bounded by O(√x log x). 3. Contradiction: Show that if any non-trivial zero were to lie off the critical line ℜ(s) = 1/2, the error would exceed the bound, leading to a contradiction."

This isn't even midwit math.

It's the kind of naive ideas I had as a high schooler, who was good at high school math and who knew how to code functions and plots in Mathematica, but who had no understanding of higher math. This kind of naive approach to RH signals that one doesn't even understand the problem.