At 10:38 AM 2/21/2011, Jed Rothwell wrote:
This was all a tempest in a teapot! Good thing. I sent a message to
the Wiley editor, pointing to Krivit's article, and apologizing for
the misunderstanding.
Your letter may have done good, pointing out to Wiley that there
could be problems with agreeing to publish a textbook authored by
Krivit. At the very least, they'd make sure that there was some
knowledgeable editorial review.
If I were at Wiley, I'd start looking around for other possible
authors/editors.
What I've noticed is that the largest scientific publishers in the
world have signed on to cold fusion: Elsevier, Springer-Verlag. At
some point, the others will start playing catch-up. Jed, do you see
why I'm claiming that the corner has been turned?
It's not over, the skeptical position is probably still predominant
*as to general scientific opinion.* But not among experts, by which I
mean reviewers who actually review papers at the mainstream journals,
presented with evidence to assess in the normal scientific manner.
Given that there have been 19 positive reviews of cold fusion in
mainstream peer-reviewed journals and academic sources (i.e., the
stuff of the Britz database), since 2005, where are the negative reviews?
All that has appeared is a Letter from Shanahan to the Journal of
Environmental Monitoring, copublished with a devastating rebuttal by
Everybody And His Brother. It's obvious to me what JEM was doing.
They knew that lots of their readers, looking at the article by
Marwan and Krivit, would be sputtering, "But... but ... but," so they
published Shanahan's ravings, so that they could be clearly refuted.
They were running classic CYA, interdicting unspoken criticism from
their readers. My guess is that they got a lot of "spoken criticism,"
but not of a quality that they could publish. Shanahan gave them
something more cogent (relatively!) to bite on. And then they told
Shanahan, no more. Shanahan sputtering, himself, receding into the
history of "failed information epidemics." Ironic justice.
That's publishing politics, not science, but ... it cuts both ways!
("Failed information epidemic" is a reference to the last negative
review, from about 2006, in the Journal of Informatics, did I get
that right?, which simply analyzed publication frequency, and, in
2006, it looked like the field was dead, i.e., was following the path
predicted by Langmuir's pathological science criteria. 2005 or 2006
were the nadir, publication rates have quadrupled since then.
"Failure" was a premature judgment, an appearance, and represented no
judgment of the science itself.)
