Harry Veeder wrote:
Perhaps detractors help to maintain interest in the subject,
but they are dying off too.
Perhaps they do help maintain interest, but they do not increase to
the number of peer-reviewed papers published per year, which is the
metric Leitz measured. By that standard there is no question cold
fusion is dying.
The late anti-cold fusion skeptic Douglas Morrison made a big deal
about decline in the number of papers. He thought that meant the
subject is pathological.
He also made a big deal about what he called the "Regionalization of
results" and what I called "Arian Science Numerology." Not to put too
fine a point on it, he believed that only white Northern European
people do real science, and he said that positive cold fusion results
were all those garlic eating Souther European Italians and Greeks,
and by Orientals and other unwashed hoards.
He didn't put it quite like that, but that was the message.
He was banging that drum long before cold fusion came along. Gene
Mallove sent me some snippets of Morrison's pre-cold fusion lectures
on the intellectual superiority of the White Northern European races.
To be fair, such attitudes were common decades ago. Morrison was no
worse that many people of his generation.
- Jed
