Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
Simon is a *sociologist,* Jed, not a chemist or physicist. Opinions (especially collective opinions) and process are what the book is about, not "cold fusion." Or calorimetry.
If it is about opinions then we can conclude that opinions have no bearing on cold fusion. Plus we can conclude that sociologists are unqualified to write about calorimetry, and they make fools of themselves when they try. Anyway, I also disagree with Simon with regard to opinions and philosophy of science.
Is it your position, Jed, that the press conference was beyond any reproach? Not a mistake?
I do not think it was a mistake. I think it was necessary to call a press conference. They did the best they could, and I doubt anyone could have done a better job. These people were on the losing side of history. They were doomed, as Fleischmann well knew. It is easy to criticize people who are stuck in that situation, such as an unpopular candidate running in an election he cannot win. Any miss-step they make is apparent because it triggers dire consequences. Whereas a person on a roll, who has everything going for him, can make mistakes without causing avalanches of problems.
Regarding Labinger, he told me that my critique is unfair because his paper is about the philosophy of science, or sociology of science, and he is merely using cold fusion as an example. He feels he is not passing judgement on it, and that my technical critiques do not apply. I expect Simon would say the same sort of thing, "this book is not about the science per se." But I say it is about the science. It has to be, because the two topics cannot be separated. And in any case, these authors did not try to separate them. They piled on with the winning side. I wrote to Labinger:
. . . You are not only making assertions about the philosophy of science. You have gone far beyond that to make technical assertions. Such as:
"No cold fusion researcher has been able to dispel the stigma of 'pathological science' by rigorously and reproducibly demonstrating effects sufficiently large to exclude the possibility of error . . ."
This is nonsense. Thousands of cold fusion researchers have done this. No skeptic has challenged their results. Saying that tritium at 50 times background is not "sufficiently large to exclude the possibility of error" is preposterous. The researchers would be dead if this were an error, contamination being the only plausible source of error on this scale.
God only knows I have read these same arguments many times before, and so have the cold fusion researchers. . . . You have described the situation mainly from the skeptical point of view, which exaggerates the difficulties and makes the results seem far less certain than they are. You have made grave technical errors regarding the science itself. I wish you had asked an expert to review the manuscript.
Actually, I agree with the philosophy of science parts. If the facts about cold fusion were as you describe, and tritium at 50 times background was marginal, then you would be right about the rest.
- Jed
