I do not think it takes Men in Black to stop a paradigm shift. Regular people will do. They stopped continental drift for decades. They fought back and prevented the use of pasteurization in New York city from the 1860s to 1917 (when the U.S. Army stepped in to protect their soldiers). If it had been up to the Big Gun Nobel scientists, the maser and the laser would have been "strangled in the crib" as Townes put it. People say that no important scientific breakthrough has been quashed completely and forgotten, but how would they know?!? It is like the old classroom joke: "Raise your hand if you are not here." For all anyone knows, dozens of important breakthroughs and fundamental paradigm shifts have been lost. Martin F. often says we should go through the late 19th century back issues of Nature to find lost gems.
There is not need to organize or fund opposition to new ideas. It always springs up with full force. This is human nature. Even trivial innovation meets opposition. When U.S. clothing manufacturers began using zippers instead of buttons they met with ridicule from most people and carpet-chewing outrage from religious fundamentalists, who said that zippers make it easier to take off your clothes, and you where THAT leads. Zippers were still a symbol decadent free-sex in Huxley's "Brave New World" (1932). (See Friedel, "Zipper: An Exploration in Novelty") As Howard Aiken said: "Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats." I fear stupid people more than I fear clever avaricious Men in Black. I have met some prominent Men in Black, and my dad worked for them during and after WWII. In my dad's opinion, and mine, these people put on their pants one leg at a time and they have no special knowledge or omniscience. They seldom know more than you can read in the New York Times. The intelligence fiasco in Iraq did not surprise me much, and I expect it would not have surprised dad at all. He told me about many similar miscalculations and idiotic mistakes, albeit none with such enormous consequences. Dad had little faith in so called "top secret" government and corporate information, and if you read detailed, honesty history books, you will see that most of this information turned out to be wrong, except original sources such as Magic intercepts. I expect there are countless secret reports in Washington filed under "cold fusion" that come straight out of Lemonick's (of Time magazine) imagination, along these lines: "cold fusion was announced in 1995 by Ponds and Fleschman, it was never replicated, they were exposed as frauds and they ran away to Europe and have not been heard from since." Dad once told me: "If you ever get access to the most secret room in the government, and they let you open the drawer of the most top secret file, you will find an old newspaper and a rotten apple." At this moment, I would bet there are not ten of The High & Mighty in Washington have clue that cold fusion is real, or even that it is controversial. I would be astounded if our Great National Leader Dick Cheney knows anything about it, given how closed-minded he is, and how unwilling to accept information from anyone outside his closed circle of friends. His junior partner, Mr. Bush, is so out to lunch he probably has not heard of the Sunnis and Shites yet. I doubt that any oil or coal company executive realizes cold fusion is a threat to his livelihood. When Al Gore was VEEP he was told about cold fusion in detail, at a meeting attended by a friend of mine. He said, "This is too hot for me" -- meaning controversial, I gather, because as far as I know he has never said a word about it or lifted a finger to help the research. Perhaps he has forgotten about it by now. I have little regard for the man. As Eleanor Roosevelt said of John Kennedy, "he is more profile than courage." - Jed
