If science consisted primarily of "poking holes" critique science wouldn't advance. Science also and primarily consists of conducting experiments that are affordable. Notice I said "affordable". That means you literally have no chance of avoiding a determined critique "poking holes" in any given experiment. However, the universe doesn't consist of one chain of "AND" logic -- there are branches of "OR" logic all over the place the emerge and converge with the "AND" chains. Idiots and sophists like to pretend the "OR" branches don't exist and that there is infinite money to conduct experiments. Of these two pretensions, only the latter is approximately true and then only for government funded bureaucrats posing as scientists.
On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 11:49 PM, Eric Walker <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 8:00 PM, Foks0904 . <[email protected]> wrote: > > It seems to me there would have to be a tremendous conspiracy of chance >> for such pattern to emerge. Doesn't mean it couldn't, it just means that if >> our opinions are gambles (which of course they are), I'll take my chances >> that this pattern represents more than just a mere flook. >> > > You're being practical. This is the attitude of an engineer. The > physicist might say "junk in, junk out." The suggestion is that you could > be seeing a very alluring pattern that is an artifact of the poor > procedures you used for measuring. In a less-than-ironclad experiment, you > will have not done everything possible to rule out systematic error, so > your results cannot be built upon, even if they're suggestive. Many people > here did not have much of a problem with the approach that the > Elforsk-sponsored team took to evaluate Rossi's latest public test, with > the IR camera and so on. Ericsson and Pomp had a big problem with their > method, and it's probably largely due to their being physicists. There's a > cultural disconnect somewhere. Engineers are practical folks, and > physicists want apodictic knowledge. > > Engineers will show the way in the case of cold fusion, and then > physicists will try to explain things later on, after the fact. In fact, > one wonders whether it is wise to entrust the development of hot fusion to > physicists. > > Eric > >
