At 03:23 PM 2/27/2011, Charles Hope wrote:
There is no mathematical definition of fringe. A topic is fringe if
the majority of scientists subjectively feel it is. Wikipedia is an
excellent tool for judging such mass subjectivity.
In a way, this is correct. Wikipedia did classify Cold fusion as
"fringe." However, that only works to the extent that Wikipedia
editors, and particularly administrators, would represent a
cross-section of "scientists." They don't. Nonetheless, there are
quite a few Wikipedia administrators who are, indeed, scientists of
some kind or other. Mostly they are young, often grad students. Think
about who else would have the insane amounts of time it takes to
sufficiently impress the Wikipedia community that you'd make a good
administrator.
The problem is that there is another category, called "emerging
science." Emerging science might not be recognised by the "majority,"
and emerging science may be "emerging" from the "fringe." When that
is happening, we will see increasing publication, recognition of the
topic as worthy of research and publication by peer-reviewers at
mainstream journals, and other signs of acceptance among those
*actually familiar with the research.*
Cold fusion is, in fact, quite an unusual case. It is difficult to
classify by normal standards.
If all that "fringe" means is that "the majority of scientists" (who
are "scientists"? All people with a degree in a science?) think that
a topic is fringe, regardless of the level of their knowledge of the
specific topic, it means little except that controversy exists --
assuming that there are some scientists think it isn't "fringe."
And most cold fusion researchers do think that Cold fusion is
"fringe." I.e., that "most scientists subjectively feel it is." It's
been pointed out that many of the secondary source reviews of cold
fusion are defensive, and that this is a sign of "fringe science." It is.
It means nothing about the science itself. As Jed has pointed out,
there is a definition of "mainstream" that's different. Judging
"mainstream" has to do with publication by independent publishers who
are dedicated to general science or to some particular science (or
engineering.)
Thus, given the two definitions, cold fusion is a mainstream fringe science.
Cool, eh?
