This is an amazing story. I think it is on topic here. Some lessons from it:
Naive people sometimes say that scientists never commit fraud because the stakes are too high; a scientist's only asset is truth, and eventually fraud is always found out. I see no evidence for these assertions. It seems to me there is actually less vigilance in academics than there is in other fields such as programming or banking. It is easier to fool scientists than most other groups of people, because they do not expect fraud -- thanks to the prevailing mythology that fraud is exceedingly rare in science.
The skeptics often say that cold fusion is fraud. The correct response is not to deny that fraud exists, but to point out what I mentioned a few weeks ago, that the chances of randomly picking out 200 utterly inept or fraudulent electrochemists is astronomically small. (To be sure, electrochemistry is a small world, and nearly everyone in it is in some way connected to Martin Fleischmann or John O'M Bockris.)
One of the reasons fraud is relatively easy to commit in science is that the stakes are usually low. No one checks, and no one really cares much. It is a bit like cheating at solitaire. To put it brutally, research papers in anthropology seldom have any real-world consequences or value. They gather dust on library shelves. It is often said that "academic politics is vicious because the stakes are so small." Ed Storms often says that the ICCF conference proceedings would be ignored and forgotten if we were not uploading papers from them. It seems the day after an academic conference ends, no one remembers what was said.
It may seem contradictory, but all of this notwithstanding, research is one of the most important things people do. If it were not for quiet people who tinker with odd ideas in dusty corners, the human race would still be living in caves. Individual research papers and projects are usually inconsequential, but they contribute to the whole -- and research as a whole is the most viable activity. Vital discoveries come out of research that no one expected would ever be of practical value. Sometimes discoveries made decades or centuries earlier suddenly turn out to be valuable. Overall, the "return on investment" for research is so astronomically high every effort to calculate it or to imagine how we might reward scientists for their efforts becomes absurd. We have discussed Mills, and his efforts to achieve both scientific and financial success. If his device works as claimed, and it does succeed, the consequences and financial rewards would be completely out of scale to normal business enterprise. It is almost ridiculous to be discussing them in the first place.
Consider some famous titans of business enterprise such as Charles Flint, Thomas Watson or Bill Gates. They earned billions of dollars and helped create industries that gainfully employment millions of people. But such contributions seldom outlive the people who make them by more than a few decades. Flint & Watson's creation -- IBM -- nearly collapsed in the 1980s. It is a different entity by now. I doubt that Microsoft will survive the transition to MPP microcomputer architecture (or some other radical transformation). But the work of inventors and researchers lives forever. The contributions of James Watt, or Crick and Watson are as vital today as they were 50 and 150 years ago. Assuming the human race survives millions of years into the future, the aggregate contribution by Crick and J. Watson will outweigh that of Flint and T. Watson perhaps a trillion to one. I mean the actual dollar value of these contributions, not to mention the sum of human happiness or historic consequences engendered by them.
As usual, Francis Bacon said it best in the conclusion to Novum Organum:
"Again, let anyone but consider the immense difference between men's lives in the most polished countries of Europe, and in any wild and barbarous region of the new Indies [America], he will think it so great, that man may be said to be a god unto man, not only on account of mutual aid and benefits, but from their comparative states -- the result of the arts, and not of the soil or climate.
Again, we should notice the force, effect, and consequences of inventions, which are nowhere more conspicuous than in those three which were unknown to the ancients; namely, printing, gunpowder, and the compass. For these three have changed the appearance and state of the whole world: first in literature, then in warfare, and lastly in navigation; and innumerable changes have been thence derived, so that no empire, sect, or star, appears to have exercised a greater power and influence on human affairs than these mechanical discoveries.
It will, perhaps, be as well to distinguish three species and degrees of ambition. First, that of men who are anxious to enlarge their own power in their country, which is a vulgar and degenerate kind; next, that of men who strive to enlarge the power and empire of their country over mankind, which is more dignified but not less covetous; but if one were to endeavor to renew and enlarge the power and empire of mankind in general over the universe, such ambition (if it may be so termed) is both more sound and more noble than the other two. Now the empire of man over things is founded on the arts and sciences alone, for nature is only to be commanded by obeying her."
- Jed
