Axil Axil <[email protected]> wrote:
> The same is true when an experiment shows that gold nanoparticles can > reduce the half-life of U232 alpha emissions from 69 years to 6 > microseconds. > Absolutely! It is easy to understand the gist of the claim, and the importance if it is true. However, there might be a mistake in the technique, and that might be hard to judge. There were claims years ago of neutralizing radioactivity with something similar to ancient alchemy. Experts evaluating that determined that they were only spewing trace amounts of radioactive material into the air. Both experimentalists died of cancer so I suppose that was the case. There are some doubts about Reifenschweiller, as well. > The result in both cases is not hard to interpret. If you have been making > your living through the practice of science for decades, such results are > not hard to interpret. > Some results are easy to interpret and some are hard. I do not have the slightest idea what to make of the Higgs boson, or what significance it might have. Apart from the claim, some experimental techniques are easy and some are hard. It is very difficult to send a robot explorer to Mars, but once you get one there, many of the experimental results it sends back are easy to understand. > If such a negative opinion can be conjured, I would be interested in > hearing the opinion as proof of chronic mind lock. > I have no opinions about these particular claims. That is not the same as a negative opinion. The best reaction for the cynic is to let the subject drop in silence and > hope that the experimenter just gets so frustrated at blatant stonewalling > that he eventually gives up in the face of hopelessness. > It is not cynical to ignore something you have no interest in. There are far too many claims for any one person to evaluate. Silence does not kill a result. People who are not interested, do not kill a result. There are always enough people interested in a valuable result to carry the research forward. Anyone can see that the results you describe would be valuable. The only thing that stops good research is irrational opposition, which I believe is mainly caused by fear of the unknown. That is, by people who hate and fear novelty, and people who think they know everything. The "skeptics" opposed to cold fusion are to blame for stopping the research. Mainly the powerful skeptics such as Robert Park, and the mischievous nitwits at Wikipedia and the Scientific American, who have published lies about it, poisoning public opinion. People who have no interested in it, and who have expressed no opinion, have caused no harm. - Jed
