William Beaty wrote:
Of cause the average Scientist is tied to a lecture hall more hours than he or she gets in a lab, or broke, or both. Public science is starved of funds and that isn't going to change any time soon. Half our science is public, Feynman stuff and half is private work behind closed doors. The latter only works for technology that is not disputed. It also works by doing black box demonstrations of the key technologies some times. The catch with the private secret stuff is that it can languish for decades with an unsolvable problem or a beautiful solution that can't find an application. Remember Xerox Parks invention of the graphical interface we all use today they couldn't figure out what to do with it. Public key encryption is an other example.On Tue, 29 Aug 2006, Remi Cornwall wrote:These guys are *sincere* but mistaken amateurs. If you want rich science you need to close the doors till the patents is nailed and if there is a chance that the patent will be rejected because the theory is not peer reviewable you then have to create a pool of peers that know enough to review the work. [we're that pool but Steorn did not know that did they.] Steorn's trying to push the creation of an open peer review group, the Jury and their students and friends. It might not work but its worth a try. If you want poor science go public with every thing and starve quietly like me. Beg governments for every cent they have or can get from the tax payers. Watch your best and brightest leave for greener pastures and dread every election as you hear political candidates offer up your precious research funding to pay for pensions, schools, hospitals, jails and wars. how do you pay you education loans by giving your best technology away free. We have a lot of arguments about open source but it just wont pay the bills. Makezine is paid for conspicuously with adds for PATENTED technology like I Robots floor cleaning robotic hubcaps. A few people are set up to accept donations like Wikipedia but their main donors are rich patent owners and government financed entities. Is self funding open source science possible? Yes its worth a try but no I see no working example that is not patent or tax funded somewhere in the money trail.If Steorn has a genuine discovery, that's very sad. If some science amateurs got hold of it first, we'd immediately see the plans posted at makezine.com Roentgen kept his work secret for six months. He had secret correspondence with many in the field; his Jury included Curie. He had something concrete to show the media and at that time the idea of fake photos was new and rare. He went around peer review via a Newspaper and demonstrations. As you say he refused to go down the Patent path but as a consequence he did not die rich and had to be financed by others who had filed patents for their work including Nobel.On the same topic: as a scientist, Nikola Tesla was a real slimeball, since he apparently discovered x-rays several years before Roentgen, but didn't announce the discovery. Tesla was keeping the discovery secret while working on it. Then Tesla's lab burned down, then Roentgen discovered the same thing and spread the discovery worldwide almost overnight. Tesla had excellent ideas about "open source energy" broadcast power, the Wardenclyffe Tower, but as his backer turned critic J.P Morgan noted. "Where can I put the meter?" . Tesla was a brilliant scientist but a lousy economist. We must be both to crack the energy conundrum. (((((((((((((((((( ( ( ( ( (O) ) ) ) ) ))))))))))))))))))) William J. Beaty SCIENCE HOBBYIST website billb at amasci com http://amasci.com EE/programmer/sci-exhibits amateur science, hobby projects, sci fair Seattle, WA 425-222-5066 unusual phenomena, tesla coils, weird sci |
