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RE: Language These Days
In reference to 'cold fusion' I would suggest that any critics write a paper summarizing why they feel the cold fusion related papers from Los Alamos, BARC, Sandia, Berkley, US Navy, foreign companies and agencies, etc and other institutions of higher learning worldwide are wrong by citing specific examples of why the experimental results presented are ..plain and simply wrong as they see it. Can it get any simpler than that for a critic (with any backbone) interested in the scientific process to do?
Isn't this what Science is all about? One could argue that this is not to be done because the work presented is not capable of being published in a reputable journal, but then I'de have to say again that they haven't read the literature 'in depth' to understand why it might not have been published more formally? Possibly lacking a particular methodology?, analytical technique? Instrumentation approach?, etc. Specifics should be cited in criticisms. And, also remember that in today's networked world it is increasingly more and more common to publish results is an open web format ..just look at the Public Library of Science (PLoS) for a good example of such an open public library, or the Cornell archives on-line. Even reputable sites such as Nature, Science, Royal Chemical Society and the APS are experimenting with such on-line publishing approaches (some more than others).
There are many ways for critics (and believers) of a particular area of science to engage in a healthy dialogue (key words) following the scientific method ..courtesy of the modern world wide web - something mankind now has as a tool that Newton, Leibnitz, Lord Kelvin, Maxwell, Einstein, Fermi, and many others would probably drool over as a means to publish.
Have we scientists taken full advantage of these blessings in this modern era to engage in a proper scientific dialogue? Hardly. As one example of how fas the world is changing see the following video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHWTLA8WecI
In summary, if critics refuse to express their views citing point by point why an experiment or methodology is incorrect, or just using blanket statements to whitewash a subject deserving more detailed discussion, then I can only assume : 1) the critics do not have an understanding of the materials they are attempting to criticize as they try to filter from vast amounts of information now available on the web, 2) the subject is genuinely growing and large amounts of evidence for the science behind a subject is now evident across several fields, making simple arguments to the contrary much more difficult to maintain. 3) Their field of interest is so specialized that they are the next scientific dinosaurs about to become extinct.
Anything short of rational, measured scientific dialogue to me indicates that critics instead prefer simple flame throwing of adhominem remarks in open web sites (such as this one) with no care for science research at all, but possibly protecting old paradigms being shattered before their eyes as time marches onward to their unfortunate ignorance of a changing world.
Simple huh?
- Bob C
San Antonio, TX
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RE: Language These Days
You wrote:
"The mainstream physics community doesn't accept the conjectures surrounding the Fleischmann-Pons experiment."
That is incorrect. The mainstream physics community is divided on this question. Roughly half do accept the results, and half do not. This estimate is based on the DoE review board opinions, and on a public opinion poll of scientists and engineers in Japan. It is also based on the fact that many prominent peer-reviewed journals publish papers on this subject, especially in Japan, Italy and China, albeit not as often in the U.S.
I believe that the subset of physicists who have read the literature on cold fusion overwhelmingly agrees the effect is real. I base that on the comments and responses of the readers at LENR-CANR. They have visited 870,000 times and downloaded 1.2 million papers. Hundreds have told me they are convinced, and only a handful expressed doubts. Even if we assume that only friendly readers will contact me, it is still difficult to imagine that readers have downloaded all those papers, and that many readers download 10 or more papers, yet most of them consider these papers to be invalid nonsense. Why would they bother?
People who oppose cold fusion often claim that "a large majority" agree with them, but they have no objective evidence to bolster this assertion. There are, of course, thousands of vituperative attacks against cold fusion, which you can easily find on Google, but this tells you nothing about the opinions of experts. Nearly every attack on cold fusion that I have read was written by someone who knew nothing about the research. People who have not read the literature and cannot make a solid technical argument to support their opinion no right to an opinion. This is science, not American Idol.
". . . you present your claims as if they're accepted by the community, when they're not."
These are not my claims. They are published by professional scientists in peer-reviewed journals, in hundreds of papers. That, by definition, means they are accepted -- at least by the editors and reviewers. There have been about a dozen peer-reviewed papers by skeptics that try to disprove these claims, but in my opinion they have no merit. You can read some of them at LENR-CANR and decide for yourself; see Jones and Morrison, for example.
"For those of us who aren't physicists, the responsible interpretation of this situation is that the mainstream community is right and you're wrong. In that context, wyldeling's statement is entirely sensible."
A physicist has no special qualifications to judge public opinion. You and this author have no clue what the mainstream science community thinks about cold fusion. A physicist who has not read the literature on cold fusion is no more qualified to judge the technical issues than the cop on the corner is. A physicist who offers an opinion without a solid technical reason is not acting as a physicist.
"Now, it happens that he is a physicist, and presumably capable of evaluating the data for himself."
If he has evaluated the data, and he has a good technical reason to doubt the results, he should publish a paper describing his reasons. Otherwise, he has no business claiming that the results are wrong. All views must be held to the same standard of academic rigor. A negative opinion does not get a free ride. That is why there have been so few skeptical papers that attempt to disprove cold fusion -- because the skeptics do not have a leg to stand on. To disprove cold fusion you must first show that the laws of thermodynamics are wrong, and then you have to show why x-ray film and mass spectrometers do not work, and why tritium measured at a million times background is not real.
"Personally, I'd be happy to hear what he has to say about the stuff on your site, if he feels it's worth his time to review. To me, it looks like a pretty much archetypal pseudo-science site."
You are saying that papers published by Los Alamos, SRI and BARC are pseudo-science? Of course there are many less convincing papers, but it is a library, not a journal, so we are open to everyone -- including the skeptics, whose claims are archetypal pseudo-science, as you say.
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