Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
Simon is interested in the process of "closure." And what he comes
to with Undead Science is that there can be an apparent closure
where an apparent scientific consensus arises, but there is "life
after death," hence, undead science.
This is like saying there is no apparent scientific consensus about
evolution because the creationists disagree.
In the cold fusion "dispute," by late 1990 we had one side is playing
by the rules, publishing papers and data, and making a solid case.
The other side had run off the rails, abandoned the scientific
method, and they were engaged in academic politics or in some cases a
weird new form of religion. They have no legitimacy, and no right to
be call themselves scientists any more than the flat-earth society or
creationists do. The two sides are well represented in the debate
between Morrison and Fleischmann:
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanreplytothe.pdf
Or look at the DoE 2004 Reviewer #15.
If that sounds elitist, I make no apologies. I am an elitist when it
comes to technical expertise. Legitimate experts often disagree about
complex subjects, but this is not a particularly complex subject.
When it comes to calorimetry, for example, it makes no sense to give
equal weight and equal respect to Duncan and Garwin (as they did on
"60 Minutes"). Garwin is talking nonsense and lying though his teeth
about his own Pentagon report. See:
<http://lenr-canr.org/News.htm#CBS60minutes>http://lenr-canr.org/News.htm#CBS60minutes
It's not the job of a sociologist to determine what ratio to
background is or is not disputable.
Imagine Simon were writing about biology, and he casually mixed
together claims by biologists with those of creationists, giving them
equal weight as if both were legitimate science. His book would be
panned. He should at least make it clear that his book is not about
an actual, legitimate scientific dispute: it is about a dispute
between scientists and a group of irrational nitwits. Anyone who
takes seriously the notion that tritium at 50 times background is
marginal is more or less as ignorant as a creationist who thinks that
Darwin claimed monkeys sometimes have human children. (That is an
actual claim, albeit from the fringe of creationism. In my opinion,
the misunderstandings and ignorance of people like David Lindley of
Nature are as bad as this.)
- Jed
