There must be a reason, Jed, even if we don't know what it is. The only thing
that I can think of is that cold fusion is a threat in some sense to people.
If a BigFoot flying a saucer should land on the White House lawn and say (in
broken English), "Howdy", it would cause a lot of excitement, but there would
be no paradigms and no funds threatened. LENR threatens paradigms, reputations
and funding. And ruined reputations threaten funding. And when people start
to oppose something by making pronouncements against it, they put their
reputations more at risk, so it snowballs.
Compare the resistance to say juicing for health and juicing to heal cancer
(Gerson Therapy). No one bothers trying to prove that juicing for health is
useless. But if people say that Gerson therapy heals CANCER, which is mostly
and basically just juicing, the opposition goes absolutely, positively
ballistic and even tries to put people in jail. All of the Gerson therapists
have to practice in Mexico. (Of course, it is as easy as banana cream pie to
learn how to do it from the Internet and do it at home.) This virulent
opposition is because of reputations and money.
If you go to some health forum you will see skeptopaths trying to oppose just
about everything, including juicing. But the opposition are not real
scientists, the skeptopaths are few and far between. But if Dr. Oz did a
segment about how great Gerson Therapy is and how it works, well, imagine a
huge pile of human excrement being dropped on a gigantic and very powerful fan
that was facing up, once every hour for a week. Dr. Oz would be off the air
and removed from his profession. Billions and billions of dollars are at stake
with cancer therapy, and billions and billions of dollars are at stake with
fusion. There is a difference. Medical doctors are more practiced at
protecting their turf; fusionists are new at the game.
With Respect,
Roger Bird
Colorado Springs
Date: Wed, 5 Jun 2013 13:35:12 -0400
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Why are pseudoskeptics so relentless in their mission to
debunk?
From: jedrothw...@gmail.com
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Here is what I don't get about these people. Suppose cold fusion is a mistake,
or fraud. It is inconsequential. The worst that can happen is that a few
retired professors waste their time and Rossi steals some money.
I can understand why people get worked up about other scientific controversies
which have large consequences, such as the fights over global warming or
vaccinations. But I cannot understand why anyone who thinks that cold fusion is
wrong would spend any time fretting about it or discussing it, or trying to
prevent research.
Science is full of mistakes, dead ends and wacky theories. But you never see
Nature magazine calling for mockery and vituperation in opposition to these
things. They only reacted this way to cold fusion. I will never understand why.
- Jed
