No, not name calling. it is a valid term according to many definitive references, this one from Webster's Online Dictionary:
"The terms Pathological skepticism and Pseudoskepticism were coined, by Marcello Truzzi (sociology professor at Eastern Michigan University), in the early 1990s in response to the skeptic groups who apply the label of "Pathological Science" to fields which Truzzi thought might be better described as protoscience." http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definitions/Pathological+skepticis m?cx=partner-pub-0939450753529744%3Av0qd01-tdlq <http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definitions/Pathological+skeptici sm?cx=partner-pub-0939450753529744%3Av0qd01-tdlq&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=UTF-8&q=Pa thological+skepticism&sa=Search#906> &cof=FORID%3A9&ie=UTF-8&q=Pathological+skepticism&sa=Search#906 Bill Beaty, the founder and administrator of vortex-l, has his take on it as well: http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/pathskep.html If a person has only recently (past 12 months) learned about lenr-canr.org, or New Energy Times, or read Eugene Mallove's expose of MIT's fraudulent publication, then I'd consider them 'LENR-under-informed'. I would include you, Mary, in that category; NOT the patho-skeptic group. Sorry if you got than impression. You are a newbie when it comes to LENR, as many here are, and yes, you have apparently made an attempt to bring yourself up to speed on LENR research. Great! But all of the 'regulars' here on Vortex have been following and discussing LENR for 22 YEARS; first on the usenet newsgroup, sci.physics.fusion, and then on vortex after it was created. I still have some dot-matrix printouts of CF conversation threads from way back in 1989/1990. And regarding name-calling, I believe you have made more than one reference to those who choose to bring up the positive side of the Rossi/DGT soap-opera as being 'true believers'. "Sort of like what happens to indiscriminate believers?" http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg56672.html Which is a sarcastic jab at anyone who is on the supportive side of the 'battle'. So who is doing the name calling? I think I took the high road and used the term, 'under-informed', which is an accurate description, and it at least gives credit to those people, such as yourself, who have started to read the immense amount of material that is out there and at least begun to come up to speed on the past 22 years of LENR research. -Mark From: Mary Yugo [mailto:maryyu...@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, December 11, 2011 11:56 AM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: Re: [Vo]:Rossi plans to muzzle the university project for at least a year On Sun, Dec 11, 2011 at 10:58 AM, Mark Iverson-ZeroPoint <zeropo...@charter.net> wrote: Mary, and many LENR-under-informed or patho-skeptics, point to things like this as evidence to support their beliefs Name calling now? Nice. What, exactly is a patho-skeptic? Someone who doubts a convicted felon who makes extravagant claims and then won't provide definitive proof that is extremely easy, safe and cheap to come by? "Nor is there any evidence that Defkalion, as they claimed, provided devices to the Greek authorities for safety and efficacy testing and certification. A member of the Greek Parliament from Xanthi attempted to find the relevant agencies and ask them about it and everyone he asked about it said they never heard of any such tests." First, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." As it turns out, you're the one who is "under-informed". The reference to the lack of application within the Greek administration is here: http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg51035.html <http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg51035.html> If the Greek government bureaucracy is anything like the US, inquiries from members of Parliament get the highest priority because Parliament controls much of the funding for the agencies. And the inquiry did not reveal any application which strongly suggests that the application does not exist. Defkalion was also asked repeatedly in their forum to give the name of the agency, a contact person within an agency who can confirm that an application was filed, a copy of the application, ANYTHING demonstrating that they filed as they claimed. They have not produced one iota of evidence. Absence of evidence is in fact evidence of absence when a proper search has been made and evidence should have been uncovered if it existed. Where did that phrase you apparently quoted out of context come from anyway? Second, How many people did this person ask? I can't imagine that a member of the Greek Parliament is posting on Vortex or any other 'discussion group', so what do we know about the person who made that statement? Do they PERSONALLY know the member of Parliament? Is this second-hand, third-hand, or even fourth-hand information? Your assertions are wrong. See the above reference. Some here are so eager to grasp onto and repeat supportive statements to their position REGARDLESS of who they come from, and regardless of what can be confirmed about the veracity and factualness of those statements. they simply repeat them as fact when I seriously doubt that has been conclusively established. MY POINT IS, ALL THIS DISCUSSION, WHETHER YOU THINK ITS FOR OR AGAINST, IS ABSOLUTELY A WASTE OF TIME AND BANDWIDTH. NOTHING CAN BE CONCLUDED FROM IT. You're the one wasting bandwidth by not checking or Googling to find the appropriate reference in this very forum! Whenever you question my integrity or the evidence I cite, I plan to reply! If you want to discuss anything, stick to the technical results for which we *DO* have evidence. or else, just don't post anything (increase SNR), or only when something NEW happens (increase SNR). you should all be asking yourselves BEFORE you hit Send, "Does this increase the SNR?" Far as I know, you don't own this forum and you are not an administrator. If someone who is objects to my posts, I'll be happy to comply with their recommendations. I've read the guidelines and I'm pretty sure I'm within them. Your post above? Maybe not. If you have some credible evidence that Defkalion has a factory, employs a large work force, is preparing to make large numbers of cold fusion/LENR devices for sale or has applied for a license from the Greek authorities to do so, I'd love to read it. Otherwise, I'd rather not believe them because they lied repeatedly on their forum about their accomplishments before --multiple times. Even giving them every benefit of language issues which could be resolved simply by asking an English speaking person, they grossly misled if they didn't outright lie. One only has to spend some time with forum posts they made on their own web site from May and June. Nothing they predicted for Q4 2011 has happened -- not one test, not one device shown in public, no factory shown, no heating of the Police Academy of Xanthi (LOL) ... nothing.
