Mary Yugo <[email protected]> wrote: I'm also curious if you know another earth shaking revolutionary invention > that has been brought out with such discretion and misdirection recently.
Transistor zone refining, the cause of rickets, the maser, MRI, some HTSC research, and symptoms of AIDS unique to women. Research was done in secret mainly for the usual political reasons. That is to say, if the opposition had found out what was happening in the lab, the researchers would have been fired. (The AIDS researchers were caught, and fired.) We would not have transistors if Shockley had had his way. There are hundreds of other well documented examples. In corporations and universities I have seen many products developed off budget in stealth mode for those reasons. See "Soul of a New Machine" for example. I know the discussion about the Wright brothers but that was a very long > time ago when the scientific environment was very different and the public > did not adapt to new discoveries. You must be joking. My grandmother and my parents grew up in the era when airplanes were first invented, and cars and electricity were becoming common. They were *far* more open to new ideas and discoveries than people are today! Everyone was back then. The pace of change from 1860 to 1950 was much faster than it is today, and people more open minded. People were also more appreciative of science and technology. Scientists were considered heroes, and role models. That began to change with that atomic bomb. Anyway the misdirection did not last long. And this is > the age of the iPad, webcams, instant news and the internet. > People opposed to cold fusion have successfully used misdirection, ignorance and outright lies for 22 years and counting. They managed to suppress the discovery of Helicobacter pylori well into the internet era. That discovery was worth a Nobel, but that did not stop people from trying to suppress it, because of money -- the usual reason. The internet is chock ignorant nonsense about global warming and evolution. GOP candidates have to swear allegiance to this nonsense to be nominated. This is not to suggest the people nowadays are more ignorant than they used to be. Books and newspaper from the past show that people have always been this way. It is human nature I suppose. As far as I can tell, they are as ignorant in Japan as in the U.S. despite their more rigorous education system. - Jed
