Abstract from Josephson, annoying statements by Truzzi

[Jed Rothwell]

Josephson describing the PowerPoint slides he uploaded earlier. See:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/JosephsonBabstractfo.pdf

This document comes from the web site for the lecture series Meetings of Nobel Laureates in Lindau. See: http://www.lindau-nobel.de/content/view/19/32/

This introduces Josephson’s talk delivered in 2004. The PowerPoint slides from that presentation are here: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/JosephsonBpathologic.pdf

Incidently, Josephson's abstract links to a paper about the late Marcello Truzzi:

http://www.anomalist.com/milestones/truzzi.html

This points out that Truzzi came up with the notion that "extraordinary claims require bla, bla, bla . . ." I thought Carl Sagan invented that. Anyway, Truzzi later disavowed the notion. "In recent years Marcello had come to conclude that the phrase was a non sequitur, meaningless and question-begging, and he intended to write a debunking of his own words." Darn right. As Chris Tinsley used to say, 'extraordinary claims call for the most ordinary proof we can come up with.'

Truzzi also recommended replacing the word for extreme skeptics. These are often  called "debunkers." He thought that "scoffer" was more accurate. I agree.

Anyway this Leiter paper -- which I enjoyed very much -- points to yet another article by Truzzi where he lays out the "extraordinary" rule:

"In science, the burden of proof falls upon the claimant; and the more extraordinary a claim, the heavier is the burden of proof demanded. The true skeptic takes an agnostic position, one that says the claim is not proved rather than disproved. He asserts that the claimant has not borne the burden of proof and that science must continue to build its cognitive map of reality without incorporating the extraordinary claim as a new "fact." Since the true skeptic does not assert a claim, he has no burden to prove anything. He just goes on using the established theories of "conventional science" as usual.
that there is evidence for disproof, that he has a negative hypothesis --saying, for instance, that a
seeming psi result was actually due to an artifact--he is making a claim and therefore also has to bear a
burden of proof. . . ."

That is twice annoying! Not only is the "extraordinary" test meaningless, but I think it is ridiculous to say that a person who refuses to make up his mind gets off scot-free. What is so admirable or intellectually pure about being muddled? About not seeing the obvious true? Or not knowing basic physics? Or worse, pretending you do not know them! Dieter Britz drives me crazy with this act. He recommended the Bauer book to me. He said that is suitably "neutral" about cold fusion. I told him Bauer has some good things to say but in the end he intellectually dishonest and evasive, and frankly that goes twice for Britz himself. I told him:

"Bauer . . . is inventing reasons to deny cold fusion, such as the absurd claim there is no 'satisfactory reproducibility' after Mitsubishi reproduced it 100% of the time for six years. What could possibly be 'unsatisfactory' about that? What would satisfy him, if 100% reproducibility is not good enough? His assertion is senseless."

You have no leave to say -- as Britz does -- "I don't know, I can't decide" when you are a professional electrochemist and facts are irrefutable.

Another author who tried to pull this annoying stunt was the editor of Accountability in Research:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ShamooAEeditorial.pdf

"The process of educating myself about the [cold fusion] controversy lead me to reading the three major books about the subject, a large number of newspaper reports, and, most importantly, over sixty original papers on the subject. I do not claim that I follow the logic of the physics and mathematics in all the papers. However, I can follow the fundamentals. I am originally a physicist. I am still not making any judgement concerning the validity of the cold fusion claims."

That's outrageous. How can anyone who was originally a physicist not reach a firm conclusion after reading three books and 60 papers in the year 2000!?! I suppose he might have been confused or unwilling to reach a conclusion in 1990. What books did Shamoo read, and what papers? Taubes and Morrison? The calorimetry and mass spectroscopy of cold fusion experiments are not that difficult. To pretend that you cannot reach a conclusion after reading 60 papers is ridiculous. It is evasive and irresponsible. The evidence in favor of cold fusion is overwhelming. I would not put it too strongly to say that this resembles a historian who claims that the Holocaust may or may not have happened. The consequences of denying the reality of cold fusion have had a horrendous impact on the real world.

- Jed