On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 6:46 PM, Mark Iverson-ZeroPoint < zeropo...@charter.net> wrote:
> Joshua wrote:**** > > “… And a top academic career would be a chair at a university or director > of a research institute.” **** > > ** ** > > Well, Josh, by your own definition, Dr. Robert Duncan, Vice Chancellor of > Research at Univ of Missouri, would then most definitely qualify as “top > academic career”, and he was skeptical when CBS 60-Minutes asked him to be > their expert on the Cold Fusion piece done in 2009. His conclusions are > reasonable and in-line with the evidence: that something interesting seems > to be going on and deserves a dedicated effort; which is CONTRARY to your > position. > Sure, but the point was not that anyone at the top of an academic career is necessarily skeptical of cold fusion. I was only quibbling with Rothwell's claim that people at the top of an academic career who supported cold fusion would be relegated to warehouse work. Since Duncan is still VP research 2 1/2 years after his cold fusion support, and in the process of setting up a cold fusion lab at Missouri, that kind of contradicts Rothwell's point too. **** > > ** ** > > Oh, well, he must have all of a sudden lost his objective faculties once > he was infected with the LENR virus! > No one denies that some prestigious academics support cold fusion research. Most don't, of course, but that was not the issue, in this instance. No academic position is immune from making incorrect judgements in either direction; Blondlot claimed N-rays, Planck rejected light quanta, and so on. ** > > Josh also wrote:**** > > “A science writer is a journalist. Not that there's anything wrong with > that, but it's not usually considered academic. Some people, like Sagan, > mixed them successfully”**** > > ** ** > > You seem to be unaware of the fact that Mallove was NOT educated as a > journalist. He was a graduate of MIT and Harvard with engineering degrees, > so he was very well educated in technical disciplines; > Most of the better science writers have strong science and technical backgrounds. That still doesn't make them academics, is all I was saying. > I think Mallove’s career was very similar to that of Sagan; he just didn’t > live long enough to enjoy more journalistic successes. > > The following is taken from Wikipedia:**** > > ** ** > > “Eugene Mallove held a BS (1969) and MS degree (1970) in aeronautical and > astronautical engineering from MIT and a ScD degree (1975) in environmental > health sciences from Harvard University. He had worked for technology > engineering firms such as Hughes Research Laboratories, the Analytic > Science Corporation, and MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, and he consulted in > research and development of new energies.”**** > > > Sagan was a full professor at Cornell, and director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies there. That's an academic career. Mallove has an impressive cv, but it was not a top academic career.
