Taylor J. Smith wrote:
Try Bible-dipping and find "By their works you shall know
them." Are they doing a terrible job? Do you think it is some
accident that there has been very little US government funding for
cold fusion research since the announcement by Pons and Fleischmann in 1989?
Of course not. Everyone knows that this research has been suppressed
since 1989. However, the people suppressing it are academic
scientists at the APS and the DoE, not secret government agents. The
methods they use include things like:
Ridicule in the mass media.
Publishing books attacking the research.
Rejecting papers without peer-review.
Reassigning distinguished scientists such as Miles to menial tasks,
and trying to fire Bockris.
The methods do not include things like Men in Black harassing me.
(With the possible exception that someone at Google may be
deliberately preventing their search engine from indexing the DIA document.)
The dispute is driven by academic politics, not national security
concerns. People at the national security and intelligence agencies,
other than the DIA, all believe that cold fusion was never replicated
and there is no truth to it. The skeptics are all convinced there is
nothing to it. It isn't as if they fear it might work after all, so
they have redoubled their efforts. The thought that they might be
mistaken has never crossed their minds. That much I am sure of, based
on many encounters with them.
>Do you think that all the savage attacks
>on cold fusion have been motivated by altruism? Or is
>it possible that some of the sceptics are hired guns?
Why would anyone bother to hire people to do this? Any number of
people such as Taubes, Huizenga, Close and Park are anxious to do it
for free. Actually, Taubes is doing it for money. That's what he told
some cold fusion researchers. The Men in Black need not pay him;
Random House did. The American Nuclear Society paid Hoffman a large
sum to write his book. I think it was $120,000. Why should the Men in
Black pay secret "hired guns" when Random House and the American
Nuclear Society are openly paying authors to trash the research? The
Scientific American, the New Scientist and Nature trash it for fun,
or to sell magazines.
Attacking cold fusion has been profitable and enjoyable to the
skeptics. It has enhanced their reputations and furthered their
careers. Taubes is a certified idiot who does not understand the
first thing about electricity, yet he persuaded four Nobel laureates
and the head of the AAAS to plug his book, in the back cover blurb.
That's a huge favor! A fifth rate hack like him would never score
these blurbs by attacking some other research. There is plenty of
motivation and opportunity to attack cold fusion. There is no need to
postulate someone behind the scenes pulling strings or paying off
people such as Taubes.
- Jed
