Chemical Engineer <cheme...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I realize they were not all bankers. At least arrest the bankers for > negotiating a worthless instrument(s)... > Unfortunately, most of them were not committing any crime. CDOs were not subject to any oversight or regulations in 2008. You cannot make laws retroactive. That is unconstitutional. If they were a captain of a ship in the miliary that sank, they could call > for their own court martial: . . . > Many of these people were called before Congress and raked over the coals. On the other hand, they were paid $50 million a year and they they got to keep the money. This is infuriating. But what worries me about the future is that the problems have not been corrected. The situation is likely to recur. The institutions are still "too big to fail." Risky trading and moral hazard still abound. The people who caused the problems and the Republican Party together have prevented meaningful reforms. I'm sorry to introduce political subjects here but it is a fact that Romney says he wants to do away with the the reforms that have been implemented. It is not like he is hiding his agenda. He says the continuing economic weakness is caused by the reforms. I assume that Romney and the so-called masters of the universe are sincere. >From my point of view, they want another chance to destroy the economy. They think they are the experts and it must be someone else's fault, or it was caused by too many regulations, even though CDOs were not regulated. Only a few of the top people, such as Greenspan, expressed remorse for their roles. People who cause terrible problems are seldom aware of what they have done. They are seldom repentant. World War I British generals who were responsible for the disasters at the Somme, Gallipoli and elsewhere never felt they made a mistake. Why would they? They were promoted, made into knights of the realm, and Lord This or That. The highest surviving officer from the Titanic, Lightoller was appalling. He admitted no personal responsibility. He defended the system to the hilt. To the end of his life he attacked Sen. Smith, because Smith reformed the system. (See my essay for details.) Needless to say, this applies to cold fusion in spades. The people who took leading roles in suppressing it were praised by the mass media and by the establishment. They often boast about their historic role in doing this. As far as I can tell, not one of them has ever read the literature. It has never crossed their minds that cold fusion might be real, and they may have made a mistake. (Mike McKubre disagrees with me about that. He thinks several of these people are aware of the facts and running scared. He knows the situation better than I do.) Whether these people know the facts or not, they never say "cold fusion might be real so maybe we should look into it." They never say that suppressing research and destroying the careers of scientists is unethical. Park and others think this is how science is supposed to work. They say cold fusion is fraud and lunacy and it must be suppressed to preserve the integrity of science. Naturally, I think they are wrong. My point here is not to reiterate what everyone knows I think, but rather to point out that there is a *tremendous* gap in perception between people on different sides of this dispute. There seems to be no common ground. No grounds for discussion, or compromise. We do not even agree about the basic principles of the scientific method, such as the idea that experiments overrule theory. Look at Huizenga's book for proof of that. We do not agree about the definition of "replication" or whether it is necessary for an experiment to be easily replicated before you can believe it. Or whether it has to be controlled, or explained in theory before you can believe it. Some of the 2004 DoE reviewers sincerely think that an experiment that is not explained by theory cannot be believed. This is not a minor quarrel about technical details. It is not as if they have some doubts about the calorimetry in this experiment, or the mass spectroscopy in that one. The discussion never gets that far. It is not about technical issues. We define the scientific method one way, and they define it in other ways that are radically different and utterly incompatible with our definition. This is true of many other monumental disputes. There was no common ground between the WWI generals and people such as Winston Churchill who opposed them. There were no grounds for negotiation between Lincoln and the secessionists of 1860. In the Titanic dispute, Sen. Smith wanted to make it a rule that sailors assigned to lookout posts high on a mast would be issued binoculars. Who would argue with that? The testimony revealed that if lookouts on the Titanic had been given binoculars, the accident would have been avoided. What sane person would want to save the cost of few pairs of binoculars at the risk of wrecking a ship worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and killing thousands of people?!? But the shipping interests oppose him. They tried to prevent this regulation along with all the others. They ridiculed him. They attacked him and tried to destroy his reputation. Lightoller opposed this and every other idea Smith proposed. The British Board of Trade decided not to make binoculars mandatory. The dispute was not really about binoculars. It was about outsiders telling them how to run their business. It was about pride. About hubris. I doubt that people opposed to cold fusion are really worried about the integrity of science. Perhaps they think they are, but I doubt that is what drives them. Maybe they themselves do not know. Their umbrage seems far out of proportion to the issues at stake. Why should anyone care whether a few dozen retired scientists putter around with palladium deuteride? Why would anyone make late-night calls to high officials to cancel funding? Why publish books and hysterical op ed columns in major newspapers accusing them of crimes? These experiments cost practically nothing by the standards of modern physics. Perhaps opponents feel that chemists have no business doing nuclear physics. People at the center of this dispute such as McKubre, Fleischmann, Bockris and Melich have often interacted with the opposition. They have often had showdowns with them. This usually ends badly, with the researchers being bashed and funding cancelled at the last minute. Opponents resemble Lucille "Lucy" van Pelt. They are "crabby and manipulative bullies" (Wikipedia's apt description of L. v P.). Their favorite trick is to snatch away the football just at the moment you run up to kick it. The researchers who keep flying up in the air and landing on their butts do not understand what drives the opposition. They don't get why these people want to yank away the football. They do not agree about what drives the opposition. It is a mystery of human nature. I do not think there is a rational explanation for the opposition. I suppose it is an emotional response. I could be wrong. Perhaps someday e-mails will be revealed showing this is a calculated effort to preserve research funding, or to protect the oil industry. I doubt that will happen, but who knows? - Jed
