This is from:
http://www.newenergytimes.com/tgp/2007TGP/2007TGP-Report.htm
Charles Beaudette on Scientific Skepticism
"A few years ago," Charles Beaudette said, "I was having lunch with
Richard Oriani and Xing Zhong Li. At one point, I was discussing with
Li one of his experiments, and Oriani just looked at Li very sternly
and said, 'I have some questions.'
So Li puts down his sandwich and his glass and gets ready to answer them.
"And Oriani goes through a series of four very pointed questions:
'How did you do this? How did you know you had seen that? What about
the possibility of this? Did you check to make sure about that?'
"And for every single one, Li had a good answer. And it was very
brief, very quick. The questions were one or two sentences, and the
answers were one or two sentences. There was no long, drawn-out talk.
And at the end of that, Oriani was satisfied that Li's experiment was
done well. This kind of mutual criticism is very important, very
valuable and very correct.
"Now, if a critic goes from that to saying, 'I think it might be
this, or I think it might be that,' and they want to get into verbal
arguments, slinging half-baked thoughts around and saying things like
'I'm not going to believe that anyhow,' then they are interfering
with the procedures of science. They are disrupting the communications.
"The trouble with someone who is going to spend all their time and
money trying to defeat the experiment is that they will soak up all
the time of the experimenters, they won't get their work done and
they won't carry on the communications they should be carrying on,
because the channel seems to be full."
