"Everyone is slowly being infected by irrationally by the examples we see
in the world in general."
That's the main point, and the media, having undertaken to be the
intellectual guardians and leaders of public morality and thinking, are
leading the pack.
Philip.
At 10:24 AM 3/11/2006 -0700, you wrote:
skip
Ed Storms was baffled by the brouhaha in the press. He said: "Naturally
the detected amounts are wrong because the measurements are not sensitive
enough to see the expected ratio. What is the advantage to anyone to mix
these two phenomenon?" As I said, the advantage is that you crush the
opposition by associating them with cold fusion. But Storms, in an
uncharacteristically naïve moment, said he does not understand why anyone
would attack research in the newspapers in the first place. "This
situation makes no sense." If these other researchers feel there is a
problem with the experiment, they should discuss it by e-mail, or publish
papers showing an error.
Here is my take on the situation:
Think Zeitgeist. This is the kind of age we live in. This is what science
has come to. When people publish experimental results that contradict
theory, instead of debating the issues according to logic and textbook
knowledge, academic rivals spread false rumors, they threaten lawsuits,
they meddle, and they conduct witch hunt investigations to derail the
research and destroy careers. It worked with cold fusion, so now they do
it every time something new comes along.
Taleyarkhan is being investigated for "academic misconduct" because a
theoretician thinks the experiment contradicts theory. It is now
officially "misconduct" to do experiments that challenge textbook theory.
Theoreticians have appointed themselves the high priests of science, and
an experimentalist who does anything to upset them is not merely mistaken
or foolish, as they said back in 1989. Now he is unethical, and he must
be "investigated" and crushed.
Perhaps, as Schwinger predicted, this will be the death of science.
Science is at a low point, and no one can say when, or if, it will
recover. But I expect it will. Valuable, vital institutions seldom
collapse completely. Usually after they reach an dysfunctional extreme, a
crisis occurs, and then the problems are fixed.
I still think something is odd about the approach taken by the press to
bubble fusion. All fields of science have internal conflict and questions
about the data. These issues are routinely resolved in the pages of
scientific journals and in discussion between scientists. The press does
not get involved and the general public never knows or cares about the
issues. In recent times, the press has taken notice of emotional
scientific issues such as stem cell research and global warming. General
interest in these issues is understandable. However, why would bubble
fusion get press attention and be of interest to anyone except the few
people working on the subject? That is what seems strange to me. In
addition, why would an important university such as Purdue risk its
reputation for academic freedom by initiating a formal investigation of a
minor conflict between professors? Rejection of cold fusion made sense
because the phenomenon has the potential to disrupt science as well as
industry. Bubble fusion has neither possibility. Of course, Jed might be
right. Everyone is slowly being infected by irrationally by the examples
we see in the world in general.
Ed
- Jed
