Here is the comment the Blogger chopped. She cannot even tolerate
even this minor level of dissent. No sane, educated person would
disagree with what I say here EXCEPT in the context of cold fusion,
which transforms educated people into maniacs.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
You wrote:
"Seeing as how the point of the post was the media coverage of the
issue, the focus on media sources was perfectly appropriate."
Well, okay. That's a valuable service. But don't you think it would
be a good idea to fact-check the media claims? Since you are a
science writer, it seems to me you should compare the media claims
with the actual science, and tell your readers which accounts are
accurate, and which are not.
Whether cold fusion is right or wrong, a reporter should not invent
nonsensical claims that someone "amassed . . . a statistically
significant sampling of instances." That never happened. No one would
do that with calorimetry.
Some reporter dreamed up the notion that cold fusion researchers have
their own journal. (Perhaps he or she thought that "Infinite Energy"
magazine is a journal, but it is not, since it never publishes
original research.) You can fact-check this easily at a university
library or at LENR-CANR. I do not think it is "evenhanded" or
"unbiased" for you to treat all newspapers as equally credible when
some publish blatant errors while others report facts.
Most of these errors are without malice, by the way. Many newspaper
reporters have difficulty understanding the experiments, and they
have not read the papers. Some media errors make cold fusion look
better than it is.
- Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org
