on the kid story, this is not new, and Bruce Schneier explain well that it is security theater, and that there is serious way to manage security. I advise to read Beyond Fear https://www.schneier.com/books/beyond_fear/ great book, as all his books on cryptography are.
I remember of a case of some big advertising panel for a movie, with blinking LIGN that was accused of frightening people... on experts, even if i'm the first to moan on academics (not on scientists, and sometime nor fairly) I follow the position of beaudette in Excess Heat http://iccf9.global.tsinghua.edu.cn/lenr%20home%20page/acrobat/BeaudetteCexcessheat.pdf#page=35 The problem of cold fusion was incompetence of the particle and plasma physicist in calorimetry. These people were in fact not totally incompetent, just not enough to understanf Fleischmann&pon and trust calorimetry, but too much to be modest and not to imagine artifacts from their armchair. more generally i see a great problem, around pathological skepticism on anything, as much as scaremongering and pseudo medicines, as more and more people are enough educated to beigin to understand scientific conceptsz, but not enough to understand their own limits. I see that in cryptography, where experts, except an expreme minority, are aware that they have to use known and standard scheme and implementation, because designing it yourself is too dangerous. Modesty is something you have when you are totally incompetent, or enough experienced. unexperience mid-competent people can be fooled easily. this is today most of the population, on most of questions. another point, even worst , and which even, explain the distrust for authorities, is that we name as "experts" sometime people who are not. Physicist were said expert in LENr, while only chemist and material physicist should be allowed to talk on that subject. worst of all, full science domain may be run by people whose competence are exaggerated, and whose modesty facing to the uncertainty is insufficient. more generally I see a problem of modesty, which is a characteristic of experience, and anticorelated with education. 2015-09-17 2:57 GMT+02:00 Jed Rothwell <[email protected]>: > 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 > >
