Re: [Vo]:The usual garbage from a skeptical professor
That story about the difficulties the maser inventors faced is a really great argument.
Re: [Vo]:The usual garbage from a skeptical professor
Edmund Storms wrote:
Thanks Jed for trying to keep such people honest.
Thanks. I forwarded your message to the prof.
Nick Palmer wrote:
That story about the difficulties the maser inventors faced is a
really great argument.
I copied that text from a review of Townes' book that I wrote for
Infinite Energy. Nowadays, this kind of problem would never arise in
the first place. The research would be strangled before it began. If
two Nobel laureates were to tell a grad student or newly tenured
professor: don't do that experiment he would never bother to apply
for a grant.
I have found that people like Partridge, who write naive
blandishments about how wonderfully fair scientists are, are often
themselves unfair and unscientific. They exaggerate the intellectual
purity and the effectiveness of science because they are blind to its
problems, and to their own. They are not introspective. They claim
that scientists are especially objective, and that scientists must be
honest or their ventures will fail. That's true, but it is like
saying that bankers must be prudent with money. Of course, but that
does not stop some bankers from foolishly invest in stock market
bubbles and the like, and going bankrupt. Why does anyone suppose
that scientists are especially good at their jobs compared to people
in other professions? Or that they are above politics and jealousy?
Scientists must honor the truth and make a clear distinction between
what is real and what is imaginary, but so must airplane pilots,
structural engineers, farmers, and computer programmers. An academic
scientist who wanders away from reality and fudges the experimental
data will probably pay a smaller price than a pilot who ignores
instrument readings. People say that science is self-correcting.
Indeed it is, but so are most other institutions, and many of them do
a better job. When the structural engineer fails to put enough steel
into a building, people find out and they take away his license. When
Partridge or his professor friend publish nonsense about cold fusion,
no one takes away their license to practice academics or publish essays.
People who most loudly praise the value of objective thinking are
sometimes the least likely to practice that skill. One of cardinal
rules of science, that you will find in any elementary school
textbook, is that you must read original sources, think for yourself,
and muster quantitative facts to back up your arguments. Your
argument should be falsifiable. So what do Partridge and his
professor friend do? They give us a stream of fact-free opinions and
impressions! They do not cite a single fact, paper, instrument,
technique or equation.
The professor ridicules the electrochemistry jargon incubation,
saying: we're talking nuclear processes here for heaven's sake; not
chicken farming. This is not a critique of cold fusion; it is an
admission that he knows nothing about the subject. He supposes it
might be difficult to understand the papers (which he has not read),
or to perform the experiments, as if only simple, easy, quick
experiments have merit: . . .if obtaining positive results is so
exquisitely difficult ('months or years of preparation',) . . . there
seems to be little point in reading the papers . . . The top quark
experiment, a tokamak plasma fusion experiment, or a global warming
simulation are exquisitely difficult and they take years. I doubt
the professor thinks there is no point to reading about these things.
He invents this weird new standard -- the experiment must be easy! --
and he applies it to cold fusion alone.
Partridge says that comparing cold fusion to ESP or Creationism may
be unfair, but unfair or not, since he does not read about ESP or
Creationism he is magically justified in attacking cold fusion
without reading about it. In other words: cold fusion may not
resemble ESP but is okay for me to act as if it does, and I need not
glance at a paper to find out one way or the other. He speculates
about what Bill Gates would say or do about cold fusion, and he
assumes that we can trust that Gates or some other billionaire will
make an accurate technical evaluation. (As it happens, I have a
letter from Gates to A. C. Clarke about cold fusion, so I know the
extent of his knowledge, and I know that Partridge is wrong. Trusting
the wisdom insight of Bill Gates in this instance is like trusting
President Bush on global warming.) He assumes that a journal editor
at Science or Physical Review will be fair and objective toward cold
fusion, so he will believe the results only after these particular
editors accept them. The corollary is that the editors at the
Japanese Journal of Applied Physics and the Journal of
Electroanalytical Chemistry are unfair and subjective, since they
already published cold fusion papers. In any case Partridge has no
idea what the editor at Science thinks. For all he knows this editor
is a
Re: [Vo]:The usual garbage from a skeptical professor
I cleaned up that essay about Partridge and sent him a copy. He may not be pleased by it. I would be astonished -- flat out floored -- if he were to upload a copy. People like him never do that. People like me, on the other hand, always do that. If someone sent me an essay shredding my work, I would instantly upload a copy here. If the essay was any good (or if it was particularly atrocious) I would probably upload it to LENR-CANR. I want all sides to be heard, which is why I uploaded the Wikipedia article here: http://csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/cf/293wikipedia.html (It seems a little off-topic and too political for LENR-CANR.) If Huizenga or Taubes ever sends me a paper I will be delighted to upload it. This trait of mine should not be mistaken for modesty, by the way. It is just the opposite. I am utterly indifferent other people's opinions. I could not care less what they say about me or my work. I do not even care what I think about my work. The only reason I quote the skeptics is to make them look bad. On the other hand, if ever one of them sends me an essay that makes my work look bad, I will instantly change my opinions and endorse his ideas instead. This is how computer programmers think. Utility, pragmatism and getting the job done are all that matters. When you find a good Pascal procedure in a textbook, you take it. You toss out the old one without a moment's thought. The only thing that counts is technical accuracy and results. People who fall in love with their own code or say Not Invented Here! are fools who will soon be crushed by the competition. - Jed
[Vo]:The usual garbage from a skeptical professor
Here is romanticized view of scientists, which includes a dig at cold fusion: http://www.crisispapers.org/essays7p/sci-morality.htm I wrote the author a letter, which he uploaded here, along with a rebuttal by an anonymous professor who buys his opinions wholesale from Robert Park. I could probably have written the Professor's side of the debate better than he himself managed to do it, since left out a few cliches such as extraordinary claims . . . bla, bla, bla. See: http://www.crisispapers.org/features/ep-blogs.htm Here is my response to the author, Dr. Partridge: Thanks for putting the messages in one place. It looks good. I agree the professor should have the last word, especially when he claims that Julian Schwinger and Heinz Gerischer were isolated and they resembled ESPers, or that Naturwissenschaften and the Japanese Journal of Applied Physics are not principal physics journals and the Japanese Institute of Pure and Applied Physics is a peripheral scientific organization. It is Japan's preeminent physics society, equivalent to the APS or the Royal Society. This is like saying Toyota is a peripheral automobile manufacturer. Such assertions speak for themselves! No rebuttal is needed. The professor illustrates why it is essential to look carefully at primary sources, and at the actual content of a claim, rather than trying to judge based on rumors and second-hand impressions, and by one's fragmentary impressions of, say, a foreign physics society one has only vaguely heard of, or never heard of. The professor dismisses the claim based on an opinion expressed by Robert Park, which in turn was based on what some other unnamed people told Park. This is a third-hand opinion, or perhaps fourth hand. No one in this chain of whispers has cited an experimental fact or figure. No one has demonstrated knowledge of what instruments were used, what was measured, what the signal-to-ratio was, or any other salient, objectively measured fact. It is hard to imagine a less scientific approach! Regarding your statements, I never asserted that there is a conspiracy against cold fusion. That's absurd. I know most of the main opponents, and they are not conspiring together in any sense. See chapter 19 of my book, which you can now read in English, Portuguese or Japanese: http://lenr-canr.org/BookBlurb.htm Also, you made an annoying technical error in your statement, and I wish you would correct it. You wrote: Mr. Rothwell will surely complain that the critics of Cold Fusion have no right to dismiss the theory if they refuse to read the published reports. Cold fusion is not a theory; it is an experimental observation. There is a world of difference. Most cold fusion researchers are experimentalists, and it irks them when people confuse them with theorists. To be more exact, cold fusion is: a set of a widely replicated, high signal-to-noise experimental observations of excess heat without chemical ash, tritium, gamma rays, helium production commensurate with a plasma fusion reaction, transmutations and other nuclear effects that have been published in mainstream, peer-reviewed journals of physics and chemistry. That's a mouthful, but anyway, please call it an experimental observation. You wrote: I feel confident that if and when Cold Fusion can come up with unequivocally and decisively replicable experiments, mainstreams physicists will take notice. In my opinion, they came out with unequivocally and decisively replicable experiments in 1990. But I do not know why you are so confident that mainstream physicists will take notice of such things. I can list hundreds of major technological and scientific breakthroughs that were ignored or denigrated for decades. See, for example, the history of marine chronometers, aviation, semiconductors, hygiene (Semmelweis), pasteurization (which was not enforced in New York City until 1917), the effects of AIDS in women, helicobacter and ulcers, amorphous semiconductors, and the maser and laser. Someone who calls himself a gadfly should know this kind of history. It shows that gadflies are important, and that people often swat at them. Regarding the maser, here are some thought-provoking quotes from the autobiography of Nobel laureate Townes: One day after we had been at it [maser research] for about two years, Rabi and Kusch, the former and current chairmen of the departmentboth of them Nobel laureates for work with atomic and molecular beams, and both with a lot of weight behind their opinionscame into my office and sat down. They were worried. Their research depended on support from the same source as did mine. 'Look,' they said, 'you should stop the work you are doing. It isn't going to work. You know it's not going to work. We know it's not going to work. You're wasting money. Just stop!' The problem was that I was still an outsider to the field of molecular beams,
Re: [Vo]:The usual garbage from a skeptical professor
Thanks Jed for trying to keep such people honest. You do a masterful job. You might ask the dear Professor a question about honesty since his article was about moral and honest behavior in science. Clearly, to publish fraudulent information supporting a discovery is wrong. Is it also not equally wrong to report fraudulent information dismissing a discovery? Does not a respected scholar have an obligation to learn something about a subject before dismissing it? Would the professor respect a scientist who simply made up information in his publication? Why is the information he has published about cold fusion any different? Ed Jed Rothwell wrote: Here is romanticized view of scientists, which includes a dig at cold fusion: http://www.crisispapers.org/essays7p/sci-morality.htm I wrote the author a letter, which he uploaded here, along with a rebuttal by an anonymous professor who buys his opinions wholesale from Robert Park. I could probably have written the Professor's side of the debate better than he himself managed to do it, since left out a few cliches such as extraordinary claims . . . bla, bla, bla. See: http://www.crisispapers.org/features/ep-blogs.htm Here is my response to the author, Dr. Partridge: Thanks for putting the messages in one place. It looks good. I agree the professor should have the last word, especially when he claims that Julian Schwinger and Heinz Gerischer were isolated and they resembled ESPers, or that Naturwissenschaften and the Japanese Journal of Applied Physics are not principal physics journals and the Japanese Institute of Pure and Applied Physics is a peripheral scientific organization. It is Japan's preeminent physics society, equivalent to the APS or the Royal Society. This is like saying Toyota is a peripheral automobile manufacturer. Such assertions speak for themselves! No rebuttal is needed. The professor illustrates why it is essential to look carefully at primary sources, and at the actual content of a claim, rather than trying to judge based on rumors and second-hand impressions, and by one's fragmentary impressions of, say, a foreign physics society one has only vaguely heard of, or never heard of. The professor dismisses the claim based on an opinion expressed by Robert Park, which in turn was based on what some other unnamed people told Park. This is a third-hand opinion, or perhaps fourth hand. No one in this chain of whispers has cited an experimental fact or figure. No one has demonstrated knowledge of what instruments were used, what was measured, what the signal-to-ratio was, or any other salient, objectively measured fact. It is hard to imagine a less scientific approach! Regarding your statements, I never asserted that there is a conspiracy against cold fusion. That's absurd. I know most of the main opponents, and they are not conspiring together in any sense. See chapter 19 of my book, which you can now read in English, Portuguese or Japanese: http://lenr-canr.org/BookBlurb.htm Also, you made an annoying technical error in your statement, and I wish you would correct it. You wrote: Mr. Rothwell will surely complain that the critics of Cold Fusion have no right to dismiss the theory if they refuse to read the published reports. Cold fusion is not a theory; it is an experimental observation. There is a world of difference. Most cold fusion researchers are experimentalists, and it irks them when people confuse them with theorists. To be more exact, cold fusion is: a set of a widely replicated, high signal-to-noise experimental observations of excess heat without chemical ash, tritium, gamma rays, helium production commensurate with a plasma fusion reaction, transmutations and other nuclear effects that have been published in mainstream, peer-reviewed journals of physics and chemistry. That's a mouthful, but anyway, please call it an experimental observation. You wrote: I feel confident that if and when Cold Fusion can come up with unequivocally and decisively replicable experiments, mainstreams physicists will take notice. In my opinion, they came out with unequivocally and decisively replicable experiments in 1990. But I do not know why you are so confident that mainstream physicists will take notice of such things. I can list hundreds of major technological and scientific breakthroughs that were ignored or denigrated for decades. See, for example, the history of marine chronometers, aviation, semiconductors, hygiene (Semmelweis), pasteurization (which was not enforced in New York City until 1917), the effects of AIDS in women, helicobacter and ulcers, amorphous semiconductors, and the maser and laser. Someone who calls himself a gadfly should know this kind of history. It shows that gadflies are important, and that people often swat at them. Regarding the maser, here are some thought-provoking quotes from the autobiography of Nobel laureate Townes: One day
