Edmund Storms <stor...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> Initially, the idea was not rejected by many people who later found > reasons to reject. > Some of them were standing by, nursing a grudge, waiting to speak out in public. Especially the MIT plasma fusion group. That's what Gene Mallove said. They hated it from the moment they heard about it, and they began scheming to discredit it. They succeeded! This happened with other discoveries such as the laser. When it worked on occasion, I found these successes were generally ignored. > They were ignored locally at the laboratories where the studies were made > and later by the DOE panel. > This often happens. There are countless examples in history. > I can suggest three main reasons were used by normally rational, honest, > and educated men to modify what they believed. > > 1. The claim conflicted with known and expected behavior based on hot > fusion. People assumed CF and HF were the same phenomenon. Some people > still have this belief. . . . > I agree with these three main reasons. I would add a fourth reason: human nature. Most people reject most novel ideas out of instinct. People fear novelty. They fear the unknown; that is, unknown places, sights, smells and other stimuli. This is instinct. It is a product of evolution. There is a countervailing instinct explore the unknown. The two instincts are at war with one another. Some people are more inclined to fear, other to explore. You can observe the same push-pull fear and attraction in other species. In the 1970s in Japan I took part in studies in which we measured these effects in guppies, and in Japanese ground squirrels. This was masterfully described by Francis Bacon: "The human understanding, when any preposition has been once laid down, (either from general admission and belief, or from the pleasure it affords,) forces every thing else to add fresh support and confirmation; and although more cogent and abundant instances may exist to the contrary, yet either does not observe or despises them, or gets rid of and rejects them by some distinction, with violent and injurious prejudice, rather than sacrifice the authority of its first conclusions." - Novum Organum, 1620 And by William Trotter: "If we watch ourselves honestly we shall often find that we have begun to argue against a new idea even before it has been completely stated." - Jed
