Grimer wrote:
It was a quick reaction just as I had
hoped for, but I could no longer ignore
the fact that this research was potentially
hazardous.
=========================================
Of course it's bloody hazardous. For a scientist
to complain about hazard is like a soldier
complaining when people start shooting at him.
Mizuno has plenty of guts, and he was pulling glass shards out of his neck
now long ago, but it would have been insane to continue working with closed
steel cells after Andrew Riley's death.
Mizuno should have repeated the experiment and
taken it to completion with a full video record.
He and I agree.
It's not as though the experiment was
irreproducible, is it?
Yes, highly irreproducible. Also, extremely dangerous and expensive. I
doubt he would have seen similar results with bulk Pd even if he had
repeated it dozens of times.
He goes on to admit that
with a further 20 specimens he got 15% "clear
cases of excess heat." I'm sure an Edison would
have been delighted with such a high incidence
of reproducibility. Mizuno's failure to finish
what he started may not amount to desertion in
the face of the enemy but it certainly raises
questions about dilettantism.
This is unreasonable. It took him 5 or 10 *years* to do those additional
experiments. The materials and instruments cost him personally, out of
pocket, over $100,000. Needless to say, practically no journal will publish
these results, and he is persona non grata at the university. If he did not
have tenure they would have ridden him out on a rail. He has not been
promoted by or offered any assistance since 1989. He and the other
researchers have suffered endless harassment, ridicule and abuse from the
public, the press, and the university. He is a middle class professor with
a full time teaching load. He is obligated to do regular electrochemistry
research as well, and help grad students. How much more sacrifice do you
demand of him? What more could he do? Should he be living in a refrigerator
box on the street, having spent every his last yen on these experiments? No
matter what happens, he will never see a single yen in royalties. All
intellectual property goes to the Japanese government.
More to the point, where will you find other people willing to do what he
has done? If you insist that scientists must live like monks, and suffer
outrageous abuse just because they want to do their jobs, no one will be
willing to do research.
He is, of course, still working on other, more promising and safer
techniques. I do not think you have the right to demand that he sacrifice
the rest of his life savings, and continue to do an experiment that blew
another man's head off. Also, I do not see you or other members of Peanut
Gallery anteing up for 100 grams of Pd, a quadrupole mass spec, or any of
the other colorful toys one must have to do this research.
- Jed
