At 10:35 AM 4/9/2010, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson wrote:
From Jed:
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/59867.Jeremy_Bentham
I find myself speculating whether Bentham, had he existed in our
century, would he have come to the same conclusion that Pigliucci
arrived at.
Pigliucci has not arrived at some conclusion, he's just reporting
what he's heard, over and over, without actually reviewing any
evidence. This is going to occur for some time, until the shift in
informed scientific opinion becomes known. By 2004, from the results
of the DoE review, it was obvious that cold fusion had come in from
out of the cold. That review absolutely did not show what Pigliuccin
is claiming, but he doesn't refer to that review, he seems totally
unaware that real scientists, including the neutral experts (and many
of them not-so-neutral, clearly knee-jerk pseudo-skeptical), think
that there is value in continued research. The key comment:
It quickly became clear that cold fusion was an illusion, and the
entire field has promptly disappeared from science. It has,
however, remained alive in the form of a subculture of devotees,
people who remain stubbornly convinced of its possibilities and who
have decided to take themselves out of the intellectual arena of
established physics. The cult of cold fusion is an example of what
happens when even respectable scientists with legitimate Ph.D.s are
allowed to dwell only on confirmatory evidence, gingerly dismissing
or rationalizing way whatever doesn't fit with their a priori conclusions.
This is nothing other than the skeptical party line, which has been
repeated over and over, like a mantra. In fact, what the field
("cult"?) shows is the damage done when an initially (and properly)
skeptical position and reaction is allowed to become a firm
conclusion, without ever actually showing that the initial research
was totally flawed, as did happen with N-rays and polywater.
"Entire field has promptly disappeared from science" is grammatically
incorrect. It would be, simply, that the field "promptly disappeared
from science."Not "has promptly," which implies a continual
disappearance, kind of an oxymoron. (If it disappeared yesterday, but
then disappeared today, too, doesn't that mean that, in between, it appeared?"
But, of course, it never disappeared, papers pro and con continued to
be published, and, after 2004, which was roughly the nadir as to
peer-reviewed publication, publication rates have increased
dramatically, and papers that reject cold fusion are now absent,
debate is over theory and mechanism and specific evidence, not the
overall evidence available.
Pigliucci probably read other books in the "field" of junk science,
like Park: he's just repeating what he's read from others.
The book is not about cold fusion, that was really a passing mention.
Ironically, the book is supposedly about how to tell pseudoscience
from science, but there is no sign that Piglucci applied the
standards to cold fusion, and, if he did, he'd have come to a
different conclusion, unless constitutionally incapable of applying
the very standards he's trying to teach.
