Many mass media articles and blogs have claimed that the
"climate-gate" scandal resembles cold fusion. Unfortunately, all the
ones I have checked have the resemblance backwards. They think cold
fusion was wrong and never replicated, and that the cold fusion
researchers acted badly, rather than opponents.
Many articles express anger at academic politics. I find some of this
naive. Commentators seem surprised to learn that scientists who
disagree with the mainstream are locked out of prestigious journals.
I could have told them that anytime in the last 40 years. As I
mentioned, I have known this since college, where I worked with
people who disagreed with the mainstream, and paid dearly for it.
That is why, when Mallove published his book, I was not surprised to
learn that cold fusion has been suppressed.
Here are some quotes from the Atlantic that I consider naive:
They apparently tried to organize a deletion of files in order to
avoid an FOI request. This is horrifying, and I simply cannot
understand why so many of their supporters are willing to downplay it.
There is strong evidence that a small group of scientists has
inappropriate power over the process of
consensus-building. Particularly, they seem to have exercised
considerable sway over the peer review process at prominent outlets,
while simultaneously deriding their critics because . . . they
weren't being published in those peer reviewed journals.
<http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/12/climategate_iii_the_mystery_of.php>http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/12/climategate_iii_the_mystery_of.php
Horrifying? Inappropriate power? Come now, this is business as usual.
This is how academic science works. I myself consider the peer-review
system a violation of anti-trust laws. If I were in charge of the
Washington funding establishment, I would do away with it. Peter
Hagelstein told me about many incidents unrelated to cold fusion in
which the peer-review system was used to suppress ideas, and to
plagiarize ideas from young researchers. Here is how a reviewer
plagiarizes. You find a good idea from an unknown author. You deny
publication and hope that the author gets discouraged and maybe even
leaves the field (as many young academics do). As soon as the coast
is clear, you publish the idea as your own.
Peter says such chicanery is widespread in all fields of academic
science. One reason, in my opinion, is that there is little
oversight, and no way to enforce rules. As I said, if a businessman
steals an idea or conspires to keep the competition out of the
marketplace (the equivalent to failing peer-review), he may get in
trouble, but that does not happen in a university. There is a lot of
oversight to "prevent waste and fraud." What this actually boils down
to is review boards squashing any proposed experiment that deviates
from accepted textbook norms. Anything interesting is considered too
risky. This "waste and fraud" enforcement was used to clobber
Taleyarkhan, as Steve Krivit so ably showed. Things have become so
distorted and politicized that the inability of one lab to replicate
another is now considered a sign of fraud, rather than what you have
to expect in experimental science.
- Jed
