Let me throw my two cents into this discussion. Of course some people
doing cold fusion have made mistakes and reported bad data. This is not
the issue. When this happen in normal science, people go back to the lab
and try again. In cold fusion, the error is used to discredit the whole
idea. That is the issue! Cold fusion needs to treated just like any
other science, mistakes and all.
Ed
Michel Jullian wrote:
I said imagine one CF experimenter, just one for a start, has been wrong and
won't admit it, and you keep throwing various things at me to avoid the
perspective. Why? Can't you question your beliefs even as a mere hypothesis? I
am not saying this is so, just imagine.
Michel
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jed Rothwell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <vortex-L@eskimo.com>
Sent: Friday, February 09, 2007 10:13 PM
Subject: Re: [Vo]: Empathy (was Re: More about the skeptics' mindsets)
Michel Jullian wrote:
I never asked what was the probability (which you underestimated
BTW, in all fields of science there is at least _one_ renowned
scientist who has made an error, can't you think of examples?)
Not just one! I know HUNDREDS of renowned scientists who have made
huge errors for 17 years. They think cold fusion does not exist.
People can always have wrong ideas. Throughout history most of our
ideas have been wrong, and probably still are. Furthermore,
experimental scientists often make mistakes. As Stan Pons says, "if
we are right half the time we are doing well."
However, it is the experiments which are right, not the researchers.
As I said, the researchers at Caltech did the experiment correctly,
they got the expected result, but they misunderstood their own work
and they do not realize it proves cold fusion is real.
On average, scientists doing experiments get it right. That is why we
can be sure that replicated results are real. If that were not the
case, science would not work. Individual automobile drivers do have
accidents, but when you randomly select a group of 200 drivers you
can be certain they will not all have an accident the same morning.
When you take a group of 200 electrochemists and have them do
research for 17 years, they will not all get the same wrong answers.
What scientists do is a form of animal behavior -- primate behavior.
Like any other animal behavior, it works most of the time, or they
would stop doing it. Cats are good at catching birds and mice. Even
though a cat will often fail to catch a mouse, you can be sure that
as a species cats successfully catch mice because otherwise they
would go extinct.
. . . only what you would do if you were that scientist, or how you
could distinguish that their claims are erroneous if you knew such
scientists and trusted them because of their high skills.
I do not judge claims according to whether I trust the scientists or
whether they are skilled and not. I judge the claims to be correct
when the experiment is good, and it has been replicated. I interpret
it according to the laws of physics. I know how calorimeters work. I
know a good calorimeter when I see one, and I am confident that the
laws of thermodynamics are intact, so I can be sure that cold fusion
produces excess heat beyond the limits of chemistry. I do not "trust"
researchers any more than I trust cats to catch mice. I do not need
to have "faith" in cats. I know a dead mouse when I see it, and I
know excess heat.
As for the missing skill or knowledge, nobody can know everything,
why wouldn't say a highly competent electrochemist totally lack say EE skills?
First of all, that is impossible. No one can "totally lack" such
skills and still get a degree in electrochemistry. All experimental
scientists learn to use such instruments. Second, I have enough EE
skills to recognize that a calorimeter is working -- or not. I
recognize schlock research. Third, the the EE skills, instruments and
techniques required to do cold fusion are not all that advanced. As I
said, most of the instruments were perfected between 100 and 160
years ago. Of course even ancient instruments and tools can be
difficult to use. Violins and axes were invented thousands of years
ago yet they take skill to use correctly. I cannot play a violin, and
although I have operated calorimeters, I have a lot to learn about
them. But I can tell when someone else is using a violin or
calorimeter correctly.
If cold fusion called for advanced knowledge of complex instruments,
and if the claims were extremely esoteric and subject to
interpretation, or complex mathematical analysis, like the claims of
the top quark, then perhaps hundreds of scientists working in one
group might all be wrong. But hundreds of scientists could not have
made independent mistakes measuring excess heat or tritium.
If you're satisfied now that the probability is not zero . . .
The probability of 200 professional scientists making elementary
mistakes day after day for for 17 years is as close to zero as you
can get. It would not happen in the life of the universe. As I said,
this would be like randomly selecting a group of 200 drivers every
morning for 17 years and in every single case finding that all of the
drivers you selected make a mistake and caused an accident every
single day. 1,241,000 accidents in a row! Or, as I said, it is like
randomly selecting 200 cats every month, and seeing every one of them
starve to death in a country filled with mice.
- Jed
