Regarding the Imus attack against a college basketball team . . . You
may think there is no connection to cold fusion, but there is. Here
is a message I sent to a blogger:
This is a big deal to the victims because they are a small group of
identifiable people. It is one thing for a "shock jock" to insult a
whole race of people; it is quite another to insult 10 specific young
women in college. As one of the women said, 'what if people believe
this about me?' The part about having families means: How would you
feel if someone on national radio called your daughter and nine of
her friends 'whores'?
I expect those who say this does not matter have never been the
objects of a personal attack in the mass media. They do not know how
it feels to watch helplessly while a powerful person drags your
reputation through the mud. As it happens, I do know. I work as a
volunteer librarian for retired professors who do cold fusion
physics. These include some distinguished people, such two Nobel
laureates, the retired heads of the French AEC and the Indian AEC,
and so on. They (and I) have been attacked and ridiculed by name, in
national newspapers and magazines, hundreds of times. We are
powerless to respond. For example, the Science Policy Administrator
of the American Physical Society wrote in the New Scientist magazine:
"Sometimes the faithful don't completely turn off their reason. They
become captive to a fantasy they hear in one ear, but listen for
science with the other ear. So begins a deterioration that dims the
wits but leaves a zealous heart beating - the result is a cult of
fervent halfwits. Some of them believe the Universe is only 6000
years old. Some sing praises to satellites. Some claim to fuse
hydrogen in a jar.
Cloistered in southern France are the cold fusion team of Martin
Fleischman and B. Stanley Pons. While every result and conclusion
they publish meets with overwhelming scientific evidence to the
contrary, they resolutely pursue their illusion of fusing hydrogen in
a mason jar. . . . And a few scientists, captivated by the team's
fantasy and exile, pursue cold fusion with Branch Davidian intensity."
Such ad hominem attacks repeated over 18 years will hurt any
scientist's morale, even a Nobel laureate's. It is impossible for me
to imagine how black people must feel when they and their community
have been subjected to such attacks for 400 years. It is even worse
for them because they have done nothing, and they can do nothing to
escape the attacks. The cold fusion scientists brought this upon
themselves: they did research and published papers which they knew
would invite attacks. A scientist can always retract, whereas a black
person cannot stop being black. So anytime black people manage to
shut up someone like Imus, I say kudos. I wish they would silence the
"rap artists" and other black people who say even worse things.
Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org
