Actually, looking at my copy of "Excess Heat" by Beaudette, chapter "The Enigma of Discovery" you didn't even catch me on a technicality and my memory of the passage was correct:
"His early attempt at the experiment was abandoned before it was begun for lack of time and attention. After 1983, Fleischmann once again had the opportunity to try it in his pretense of retirement." Note, the use of "pretense" here is directly supportive of my thesis as he was, in actual point of fact, not being supported in his cold fusion work by the institutions which you defend. Indeed, Fleischmann's doctoral thesis-led pursuit of cold fusion was directly inhibited by the "career pressures" of institutional science and proceeded only once he was freed of those pressures. However, let's not get off topic here with a single anecdote no matter how particularly of interest to us it may be. You bring up other exemplars such as the transistor and the Internet both of which I have some direct knowledge: Bardeen, in a lecture given at Altgelt Hall at the University of Illinois<http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=100290&cid=8549664>while concerned that it might be one of his last chances to set the record straight due to his failing health, talked about the need to actually hide their work on the transistor from Bell Labs management, including Shockley. In other words, they synthesized independence to get the transistor done. Having said that, Bell Labs was never as much of a nightmare as the government-funded establishment. On the Internet you've REALLY gone and shot yourself in the foot. David P. Reed, widely regarded as the intellectual father of the Internet, was actually approached by a private company, Viewdata Corporation of America (an offshoot of Knight Ridder News) in 1982 with a proposal to set an industry standard that would have used 64 bit object identifiers with distributed hash routing tables (made practical in the initial years by temporary association of the upper 32 bits embodying a bit-reversed serial number of the host-of-origin of the object), relying on MAC addresses for the physical routing. Instead, we ended up with the nightmare of URLs. There was also a proposed migration path to include Reed's own distributed atomic action (more recently implemented in Alan Kay's "Squeak"-based "Croquet" virtual world as "teatime") as part of the industry standard. Contemporaneous companies such as Atari and Packet Cable (founded by Paul Baran) were on board. When Viewdata Corporation failed, their architect, still pursuing the advanced communication protocol, tried to set up business in San Diego using the newly marketed IBM PC as the host system -- targeting consumer email and instant messaging in the greater San Diego area. His competitor in San Diego then received free internet services from Milnet and was able to stomp out the last ray of hope for a more rational internet protocol. However, all the anecdotal evidence in the world is worthless against the argument "correlation doesn't imply causation" since each anecdote is merely a data point in a correlation. What is really needed to resolve these questions, which are really questions of sociology, is a radical reform in the way we view polity<http://jimbowery.blogspot.com/2009/07/secession-from-slavery-to-free.html>. Otherwise we are utterly confounded by the lack of experimental controls. On Sun, May 27, 2012 at 6:26 PM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> wrote: > James Bowery <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> You caught me in a technicality, Jed. The distinction between retirement >> and tenure, especially in Fleischmann's case, is specious . . . > > > It is not specious. He was doing cold fusion when he was still an acting > professor. He did not do experiments because he never did them himself. He > was not good in the lab. He always collaborated with a hands-on person, > Pons in this case. > > > >> Whether it is independence that is the foundation of scientific >> revolutions, or the "guidance" of our esteemed institutions. >> > > Both. In many case such as aviation, independent researchers brought forth > the technology. In the case of the Internet, Uncle Sam did it all. That was > developed by civil servants on the government payroll. Transistors were the > product of Bell Labs, one of the most esteemed mainstream institutions in > history. Bell Labs also invented most other important telecom technology. > > Many other important breakthroughs such as lasers were developed > independently but with government money. Most cold fusion breakthroughs are > in this category: independent, but paid for mainly by governments. The > project at U. Missouri, for example, is being paid for with private money, > but the lab facilities and much of the funding is from U. Mo.'s incubator > funding. It would never have happened if the state had not taken the > initiative, under Duncan's leadership. > > - Jed > >
