On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 3:09 PM, Harry Veeder <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 5:45 AM, Joshua Cude <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 4:54 PM, Alain Sepeda <[email protected]>wrote: >> >>> plate tectonics evidence where overwhelming much before they were >>> accepted. >>> there was explanation for the moving mechanisme decades before. >>> >>> >>> >> Maybe much before they were universally accepted. Support grew with the >> evidence, as might be expected. Cold fusion has stagnated at essential >> rejection for 24 years. >> >> > > Obviously the controversy isn't over. I meant it is comparable to the time > when plate tectonics was considered fringe science. It took about 45 > years from the time continental drift was first proposed in 1912 to its > acceptance. > However, the concept is really much older and was first proposed in > 1596. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift > According to Wikipedia it seems the concept of continental drift > wasn't firmly rejected until the mid 19 th century due to certain findings > and the influence of James Dana, a prominent geologist of the time. > > It's not at all comparable because of the very different scales of the phenomena. Cold fusion is a table-top experiment, in which the experimenter is control of all the parameters, and the conditions (pressure, temperature, etc) are easily accessible. Fields like geology, paleontology, and cosmology, yield evidence on a much slower time scale. The big bang theory and black holes and neutron stars were also accepted rather slowly. But it's difficult to come up with a phenomenon on the scale of cold fusion that was rejected for decades and was later vindicated. There is, as described in Hagelstein's essay, Semmelweis, and to a lesser degree there is Ohm, but both of those go back 150 years, when progress was slower, and scientific thought was different. In any case, I'd be interested in a more recent example. People have cited the laser, and quasicrystals, but those were never dismissed to the same degree, and vindication came in a very short time. Van Neumann was skeptical of the laser, but he was persuaded over a beer with paper and pencil. Those large scale theories (big bang etc) represent ordinary competition of ideas, which are resolved as the evidence improves, or a new theory is introduced that accommodates all the evidence. One of the supporters of continental drift also proposed a theory that the earth is expanding. In this, he was wrong, and the mainstream thought was right. So what do these things tell us? That mainstream thought can be wrong. Of course, we know that from the Ptolemaic solar system, and absolute time, and continuous energy, and Lamarckism etc. But surely it doesn't say that mainstream thought *must* be wrong whenever a new idea is introduced, because that rapidly leads to a catch-22. So, can we predict whether mainstream thought is right based on previous phenomena? Well, scientists should obviously make their judgements based on the evidence. As for observers trying to decide what to bet on, the consensus of experts is surely the most likely approximation to the truth. What else is there? The consensus of plumbers? The consensus of your friends? The consensus of true believers of the fringe view? Your own preference? Should we accept creationism, homeopathy, dowsing, telekinesis? Wegener's theory is different from cold fusion in another way. In the case of Wegener's theory, the objections were based largely on gut instincts that forces to move the continents could not exist. There was no scientific evidence for this line of thought, and as you point out, it was kind of recent -- continental drift of some form had been considered much earlier. But with cold fusion, the alleged phenomenon is contrary to copious experimental results that are highly consistent with a robust description of subatomic interactions. Consider this analogy as a kind of reductio ad absurdum: Mainstream thought currently has it that the solar system is Copernican, with evidence so strong as to be as close to truth as one can imagine. If someone came along now and proposed that Ptolemy was right after all, he would be dismissed unless he produced evidence at least as strong as the evidence we have for the Copernican system. It wouldn't matter that the mainstream has been wrong before; no one would believe that they're wrong now. Just as no one takes the flat-earth society seriously just because their view is now opposite to the mainstream. Now, I'm not saying that nuclear physicists are as certain that cold fusion can't happen as astronomers are that the solar system is Copernican, but they are much more certain than most casual observers understand, and their certainty is justified by much more hard evidence than the rejection of Wegener was. And cold fusion will not be taken seriously until the evidence for it is at least as robust as the evidence that suggests it won't happen. And it's not even close.
