Lawrence de Bivort wrote:
Jed, I will leave you to your certainties regarding the person I have been apparently unsuccessfully trying to describe.
Of course I am merely speculating about this person. I am describing other people I have encountered who are similar: good, smart and credible people who are drastically wrong. History is full of such people.
It is unfair of me to speculate about this person, since obviously I cannot know anything about him, other than a few details. Still, the details you have related are telling. If I understand correctly, this person has not read the literature and yet he has a strong negative view of cold fusion. If I have that right, then he has made a drastic mistake. It is unprofessional. It is, frankly, shocking that an academic would make this sort of mistake, but I know from experience that many do. Along similar lines, they often make logical fallacies. I once naively believed that everyone learned in elementary school not to do that, but I was wrong.
I am speculating about the cause of this mistake. I believe it is often triggered by the fact that our minds are not unified. But of course I have no idea if this applies to your friend or not. Who can know? It could be, for example, that he does not apply the basic scientific method to any subject, including his own specialty. I have met a few scientists who are as bad as that. How they ever got a PhD and professorship is a mystery to me. For that matter, I have met well-paid programmers who write spaghetti code and terribly confusing, bloated applications. I have heard of doctors who routinely botch procedures and kill their patients, and of bankers who lend millions to people who cannot possibly pay the money back. There were quite a number of them in the news last year. There are dysfunctional people in all walks of life, so it is no surprise that some scientists are unscientific.
I have not read Ed's book, but have Beaudette's and yours.
My book is not intended to convince a scientist! That's what I said in the first paragraph.
I don't think books will do I what I believe needs to be done, no matter how well written -- because the book FORMAT will not get the job I envisage done. The problem is not with the content but with the format. The books do a good job at doing what they do. I am talking about a different task.
I don't know what you have in mind. The format of scientific papers and lectures is stylized and unchanging, like a Kabuki play. When you try to alter it even a little the audience complains. So I suppose your friend is looking for the standard exposition. He should read the papers by McKubre, Storms or Miles, as well as the books. He should read a lot -- dozens of papers. In experimental science, you seldom find one "Eureka!" breakthrough. It is the weight of evidence that gradually carries the day.
- Jed
