Dear Vortex-L readers: Because this is my first post to this group I would like to introduce myself. My background is in communications, electrical engineering, systems theory, systems engineering, software architecture/engineering, and system integration. I got my degree (Dr.-Ing., a Doctorate in Engineering) at the Ilmenau University of Technology (http://www.tu-ilmenau.de/en/international/) in 1992, got a post-doc fellowship from the German government (DAAD http://www.daad.de/en/index.html) to carry out a one-year research project with the Computational Photonics group headed by Prof. Curtis Menyuk at UMBC (http://www.photonics.umbc.edu/) in 1996/1997. I am a co-founder of a company called VPI Systems (http://www.vpisystems.com/).
I have a soft spot for new scientific discoveries and developments in science, technology and cosmology in general. I always keep a sound portion of scepticism with regard to my own findings as well as those of others. I am not a follower of any pseudoscience, however I am open-minded (e.g. scientific LENR publications show strong evidence of nuclear transmutations so this aspect of alchemy has become science IMHO). Models/theories always reflect only some part of the reality so they are incomplete per se. Also, they are man made and thus can contain errors. Thus models/theories cannot be claimed to prove something discovered in experiments (reality) is wrong or cannot exist. I started following the Vortex-L discussions after Rossi gave a public demonstration of his E-Cat in January of last year. When searching for background information on Rossi's E-Cat and Cold Fusion/LENR in general I came across this discussion round. NOW to the subject: The Angus Miller Lecture 2011 (31st Oct 2011) http://www.bishop-hill.net/storage/ScientificHeresy.pdf was held by Matt Ridley (http://www.mattridley.co.uk/) at the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce) in Edinburgh. In this lecture he tells about six lessons on scientific heresy he learned which he is applying to the issue of *climate change* in the course of this lecture. If you prefer audio (about 56 minutes, unfortunately the quality is not very good) follow this link: http://www.theRSA.org/__data/assets/file/0005/559049/20111031MattRidley.mp3 Have a nice day Wolfgang Reimer