On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 10:11 AM, Stephen A. Lawrence <[email protected]>wrote:
> ** > > > On 11-11-16 08:59 AM, James Bowery wrote: > > On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 1:29 PM, Stephen A. Lawrence <[email protected]>wrote: > >> On 11-11-15 10:31 AM, James Bowery wrote: >> >>> The pseudoskeptics continually assert that their criticism of those who >>> are investigating Rossi's claims has nothing to do with whether Pons and >>> Fleischmann had any validity to their claims. This rhetorical maneuver >>> denies the obvious Bayesian law of prior probability distribution: If >>> P&F's cold fusion claim was not valid then any subsequent claims of >>> advances on P&F's cold fusion claim are likewise invalidated. >>> >> >> This is total nonsense. Experimental results must be judged on their >> own merit, whether or not the reason for doing the experiments in the first >> place was actually well founded. >> > > That would be true if the experimental protocol were available. In > Rossi's case, the experimental protocol is NOT available. > > > I guess you missed my point. Let me restate it, more clearly and > succinctly. > > Your blanket statement that "any subsequent claims of advances on P&F's > cold fusion claim are likewise invalidated" if P&F's result was invalid is > false, and that is the case regardless of whether Rossi's work is > scientifically impeccable, totally fraudulent, or just a mass hallucination > shared by all posters to this list. > > > Excuse my conflation of the Rossi case with the general case. Obviously, any experiment should be considered on its own merits in the scientific disciplines. However, the a priori (ie: Bayesian prior) probability of observing a particular phenomenon does relate to its having been reported before -- and the prior probability distribution does relate to expectation.
