At 04:22 pm 21/07/2005 -0400, you wrote: >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
You would make a good defence barrister, Jed. 8-) In the light of the above I agree I was being very unreasonable. I think Mizuno definitely deserves being awarded the Mallove medal of honour for his sacrifices - the first stage on the road to scientific beatification. ;-) Cheers, Frank Grimer
