Jed wrote: > Our national research establishment supposedly cannot spare $1 > million for cold fusion. Not even $100,000. It will not take > seriously the notion of spending $6 billion on a space elevator, > while NASA admits it has spent $25 billion on the International > Space Station, some experts estimate it is actually spent much more > than that, and > the total final cost of the Space Station is > estimated at $100 billion. In short, diversity is not allowed, new > ideas stand no > chance, spending priorities are haywire, and > knowledgeable leadership does not exist.
> But before we denounce the government and move to shut down the > federal research establishment, let us remember that U.S. private > industry and universities have done *absolutely nothing* to advance > cold fusion. The government may seem hopeless, but the alternatives > are no better. At least the Navy and has made recent contributions. I think anyone with a modicum of technical savvy and a large dose of common sense who has also read the many publications about cold fusion can tell that there's something there. It's the world scientific establishment that's at fault here. Scientists are naturally sceptical, as they should be. But whether they work directly for the government or for a university or for private industry, they almost all depend on some sort of direct or indirect government funding. They all fear for their grants or their jobs or their reputations. Therefore, they are likely to find any project or theory attractive that will never produce any testable results and will require huge amounts of funding over a long period of time. This, of course, generates lots of jobs for people who had no business becoming scientists in the first place and would have been better off as accountants or some such. Unfortunately, these enormously over-funded projects also tend to siphon off real scientific talent from fields of inquiry that might produce actual useful information or even practical devices. This phenomenon has become much worse over the last 70 or 80 years, and, in my opinion, has practically brought scientific progress to a standstill. > I was recently sorting through my late mother's papers and > publications. I found some handwritten doggerel on a memo pad, > probably dating from the 1970s, when she was chief of the Center > for Human Factors Research at the U.S. Census Bureau. Perhaps this > sheds some light on the problem: > If you write English / plain enough > Nobody wants / To read your stuff > But jargon, redundancy > Bluff & cant > Are guarantees > Of a federal grant This little ditty doesn't reflect the situation. It's much, much worse. If you write in plain English someone WILL actually read your stuff and they might even understand it. That means someone might come to a conclusion as to the validity of your research and remove your grant if they think it's wrong or if they think you are finished with it. On the other hand, if you write some of the normal incomprehensible blather one finds in scientific journals these days, no one will read it and no one will know that you should now be doing something else. Just my humble opinion. M. _______________________________________________ Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com The most personalized portal on the Web!
