Consider the position Park has created for himself. He encouraged the
destruction of the reputations for two scientists who made one of the
most important discoveries of this century. He delayed development of
an energy source that can solve some of the most important threats to
civilization. Now he finds that his evaluation of the CF work was
wrong. The question is, just how wrong must a person be about an
important subject before their reputation suffers? Why would you
expect Park to accelerate this loss of credibility by acknowledging
that he was wrong? Eventually, history and the cold fusion community
will insure that he gets the reputation he tried to give Fleischmann
and Pons.
Ed
On Mar 28, 2009, at 9:47 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Dave Nagel is a friend of Robert Park. I have a photo him and Scott
Chubb having lunch with Park, just before ICCF-14 . Park looking
mighty uncomfortable, having just turned down an invitation to the
conference. I wrote to Dave:
[I think you should ask Park] if he now retracts the attacks on cold
fusion he published in the WaPost and elsewhere, and his talk a the
APS when he & Zimmerman vowed to "hunt down and root out" any
federal research who believes in cold fusion.
I will bet he would say that Fleischmann and Pons were criminals,
frauds etc. but the latest group of researchers are not. That's what
that jerk Kevles said.
Seriously, it would help if he would publish a retraction in the
WaPost. The major newspapers have a lot of influence. A lot more
influence than people realize -- maybe more than you realize!
Scientists are supposed to read journals and not be swayed by
newspapers, but as Gene Mallove used to say, they put on their pants
one leg at a time and they read the paper with their morning coffee,
and it influences them as much as anyone.
- Jed
