Empathy: the ability to imagine oneself in another's place and understand the other's feelings, desires, ideas, and actions... (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
Congratulations Jed, few people if any are capable of such a high level of empathy, sincerely! Now try another impersonation. Imagine yourself in the place of a hypothetical CF experimenter who realizes years later that his past overunity claims were erroneous for some unobvious reason, but still believes (rightly so maybe) that there must be a way to make CF work. Would you endanger the whole field -and therefore the world- by admitting your error, or would you keep quiet? Let's push it further. Imagine you lack, unknowingly, the particular technical skill (some exotic subbranch of EE or plasma physics or statistics, whatever) which you would need to realize your error. Then your claims are perfectly sincere aren't they, so how could anyone lacking the same skill, but admirative of what other skills you may have -say you've got a nobel prize in electrochemistry and another one in calorimetry whether such prizes exist or not-, realize your error? Now push it further, imagine that among all CF experimenters (among whom, as an aside, you can see that some such as Naudin are clearly incompetent and/or fraudulent even with your limited scientific and technical skills), there are several such people whom you highly esteem, persisting in their error, some of them knowingly (some for commendable reasons and others not) but you're not aware of that, and you believe CF would be a really good thing for mankind, rightly so. How could you distinguish false claims from legitimate ones? Michel ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jed Rothwell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, February 09, 2007 1:44 AM Subject: [Vo]: More about the skeptics' mindsets >I wrote: > >>But in the case of the NHE and Toyota, I sense that the decision >>makers do not believe the results, so they lie about them. . . . > >>Our guess, based on talking with these people, is that when they saw >>positive results emerge, they thought something like this: >> >>"Damn, that looks like excess heat. It must be some kind of crazy >>instrument error, or just noise. > > What I am trying to say is, I do not think that any opponent of CF > thinks the effect might exist. None of them is thinking: "This is > real! I'll be out of a job if people find out! They will shut down > the hot fusion program!" > > Even in the oil industry I doubt anyone would go that far, but who knows. > > As far as I can tell, no opponent imagines that he is quashing what > Michel Jullian called "important stuff." They are sure it is > unimportant. Opponents are 100% certain that it is nonsense, garbage, > fraud, or, at least, a ridiculous waste of time. They figure, "why > not lie a little or fudge the data to get rid of what is obviously a > big lie and a travesty?" Also, they think it is a good idea to employ > insults, ridicule and ad hominem attacks. As David Lindley wrote in > Nature, in March 1990: > > "All cold fusion theories can be demolished one way or another, but > it takes some effort... Would a measure of unrestrained mockery, even > a little unqualified vituperation have speeded cold fusion's demise?" > > (You can see that I am not just trying to read their minds, and I am > "not making this stuff up" as Dave Barry used to say. The skeptics > boldly go on record saying things that in normal circumstances, any > scientist would consider appalling!) > > Skeptics attack CF only to prevent a small amount of funding from > being taken away from real science and diverted to schlock science. > And to protect the public reputation of science. Not because they > fear CF might actually someday succeed and then take away their entire > program. > > Also, they attack it because they are upset that anyone would take it > seriously. They put it in the same category I put astrology or > creationism. The difference is that although I consider these things > to be nonsense, I am not upset by them. I do not care whether other > people spend time or money on them. But I would be upset if someone > got government funds to do creationist research, or if he taught it > in a public school. So I guess I can understand how the skeptics feel > about government funding for cold fusion. > > It is difficult for people who share my beliefs to understand how > these people think. You should not imagine they are evil, or they are > deliberately trying to prevent progress and quash academic freedom. > That is not how they see themselves. They commit evil acts, but it is > unintentional. > > - Jed >
