The Ahmed Mohamed case has swept the Internet. I hope the kid gets a normal life back. Anyway, I would like to point out something about this that clicked in my mind regarding cold fusion.
This is a technical high school, specializing in engineering. The first teacher he showed it to saw it was a clock. I expect there are dozens of other teachers there who would instantly recognize it is a clock. So, when suspicion arose, and the kid and his clock were sent the principal's office, the principal should have called in one of the engineering teachers and asked "what is this?" The misunderstanding would have been cleared up instantly. Instead, the principal called the police. As you see from the news accounts the police knew nothing about electronics or bombs. Decades ago, when a technical questions arose, technical experts were called in, and the public accepted their judgement. There were laws that all children have to be inoculated against infectious disease. No one questioned these laws. An "anti-vaxer" movement in the 1950s, when the polio vaccine had just been developed, would have been unthinkable. All adults back then understood how dangerous polio is. Perhaps respect for authority and for expertise was too high back then. There were cases of that. But I think the pendulum has swung too far the other way. The tragedy of cold fusion is not that experts were wrong, but rather that experts were ignored. Decision makers ignored the scientific literature and did not listen to experts who had actually performed experiments. They turned instead to science journalists, then to ordinary journalists, to scientists who had no knowledge of the subject and who had read nothing, and finally, to anonymous people at Wikipedia who name themselves after comic book characters. - - - - - - - - - - - The story includes one of the most stupid quotes from a police department spokesperson I have ever read: “We have no information that he claimed it was a bomb,” McLellan said. “He kept maintaining it was a clock, but there was no broader explanation.” Asked what broader explanation the boy could have given, the spokesman explained: “It could reasonably be mistaken as a device if left in a bathroom or under a car. The concern was, what was this thing built for? Do we take him into custody?” Broad?!? Call it broad or narrow, *the gadget was a clock*, and that was the one and only explanation, for crying out loud. - Jed
