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I was struck by the viciousness of attacks against Fleischmann and Pons in the months after their cold fusion announcement. A few physicists even went out of th
by mysterypie 10y ago
I was struck by the viciousness of attacks against Fleischmann and Pons in the months after their cold fusion announcement. A few physicists even went out of their way to call them frauds and charlatans -- it wasn't enough to say that Fleischmann and Pons were mistaken.
As if two quiet, humble, respected PhD's in electrochemistry were crackpots orchestrating some kind of scam. I feel sorry for the decades of shaming they had to endure (Fleischmann died 4 years ago; Pons is still alive).
The attitude was that if their claims weren't 100% right and 100% reproducible, they're scum. When some of the results were turning out to be negative, it seemed that almost no physicist was willing to say, hey wait a minute, it's not cold fusion but maybe there's a new interesting unknown phenomenon there.
- myowncrapulence 10y agoThe attitude was that if their claims weren't 100% right and 100% reproducible, they're scum. You're describing every internet forum I've ever encountered.
- dsfyu404ed 10y agoNo, that's only true when claiming something that is not compatible with the currently prevailing social/political narrative. If you're backing up the current narrative you're free to spew falsehoods. If you're studying something nobody else cares about then it's probably wise to at least try and stick to the facts.
- wallace_f 10y agoTo respectfully offer a different point of view, I have never found an internet forum that requires the veracity of claims be held to that level of scrutiny. In fact, I've been downvoted and ridiculed for things like requesting a source be given, or quoting a mainstream textbook (which disagreed with a user. HN is better than most imho, but most internet forums seem to be characterized by groupthink rather than vehement adherence to an ability to verify the truth of what one is claiming. I'd rather be in the company of the latter, even if they do ridicule you if your claims are not verifiable.
- ZeroGravitas 10y agoI can think of one such forum, which deals with issues around audio and compression. From observing that I'd suggest it's very hard to maintain both friendliness and an adherence to the scientific method, simply because there is an endless number of people who have no understanding of or respect for what you're trying to do. They'll interpret friendly corrections as rudeness, and won't actually stop making wild unsubstantiated claims until you escalate to genuine abrupt rudeness and/or banning. Also, they'd probably be accused of "groupthink" for trying to maintain that objectivity by those who disagree with the conclusions. Humans are hard to deal with.
- amelius 10y agoI would call it the "ad hominem filter". It's a heuristic to more effectively divide one's attention. Sadly, most people's ad hominem filters are configured incorrectly and produce far too many false positives.
- RachelF 10y ago>I was struck by the viciousness of attacks against Fleischmann and Pons Sadly, mainstream science can be as vicious in persecuting heretics as the Church was.
- lsh 10y agoNo. It really,really, hasn't been.
- coldtea 10y agoWell, it might hasn't burned people, but a lot of harm has been done in its name that's nearly as bad. From lobotomy, which was a common practice back in the day, to electroshock therapy to unconventional people (not legitimately crazy, just anybody as long as their parents/guardians convinced there was "something wrong with them" e.g. from gay to wanting to live a bohemian life and having a conservative family). And of course modern science happily collaborated with all kinds of power to give us the atomic bomb, biological weapons, and other atrocities.
- omginternets 10y agoLiterally none of this is persecution.
- coldtea 10y ago>Literally none of this is persecution. Convinced, as a scientific establishment, that your theories/dogmas about being straight/gay are correct, and subjecting the "sick" into electroshock and other therapy is not persecution? What's the definition of persecution you are using that doesn't include such cases? And things such as lobotomy/heavy drugs/etc which were applied to all kind of strays/dissidents from mainstream values/conventions (and not just legitimately crazy people) is also classic persecution. And it didn't just happen behind the "Iron Curtain".
- omginternets 10y ago
- Oletros 10y ago> I was struck by the viciousness of attacks against Fleischmann and Pons in the months after their cold fusion announcement. A few physicists even went out of their way to call them frauds and charlatans -- it wasn't enough to say that Fleischmann and Pons were mistaken. Perhaps it had a lot with the fact that they never allowed to perform independent measures and they never allowed to really perform the experiment in a controlled way.
- chopin 10y agoI am curious - do you have a citation for that? AFAIR they published their results. That leaves reproduction of the experiments open to everyone with a laboratory capable of doing so.
- Oletros 10y agoFor example, http://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/0_0_0/cold_fusion_08 http://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/0_0_0/cold_fusion_08 But I think my claim has more to do with Rossi's E-Cat than with the original P&F experiments
- SeanDav 10y agoI believe it is a case of: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", although it certainly appears that some went too far with too little evidence in their criticism of the the original idea.
- Symmetry 10y agoIt was an extraordinary claim in terms of practical importance but it should only be scientifically extraordinary claims that require extraordinary evidence. We take particles at normal temperatures, accelerate them in EM fields, and fuse them all the time.
- icantdrive55 10y ago"The attitude was that if their claims weren't 100% right and 100% reproducible, they're scum." In this case, I do feel like you do, but in 99.9% of the time; I understand the rage. My biggest pet peeve is when scientists(Doctors, PhD's, etc.) don't adhere to strict scientific protocol. So many scientists will bend the truth, statistics, etc. just to keep a roof over their heads. In my world, it's beyond unethical. In the ninties, I dropped out of Chiropractic School. I just couldn't listen to the quackery anymore. I found a lot of allopathic medicine is based on some pretty lousy studies. Since then, whenever I hear conjecture, I go into a quiet rage. I really try to control the anger. I'm afraid I might have thrown the baby out with the bath water--at times? (I do hope they figure out what's going on in these, I can't even say cold fusion, experiments these men did. Or, admit complete failure to find anything. I don't see anything wrong with failure in science. I welcome failures. I just want the truth. Just writing this brought on a headache. I'm reaching for Ibuprofen now. Sorry, about the rant. I haven't felt good lately. Comming off a very addictive prescribed medication. Something I should have gotten off years ago.)
- dhimes 10y agoI was a grad student at a different U at the time, nearing my Ph.D. in non-fusion-related, but surface, physics. The issue at the time was that they released their results to the press before their results were vetted. They became instantaneous celebrities, and it wasn't clear that it was against their will. They were very coy about the setup (patent issues? I'm not sure); there was no theoretical model that fit it; and quickly nuclear physicists were pointing out that with the kind of reaction they were talking about they would have been fried by the (radiation) by-products. The field was very excited (See: "fifth force" for another tale of excitement in my grad-school days). After all, any time there is a result without even a model from which an explanation can possibly derive you are looking at a bunch of new ideas. This means people get to be imaginative, there's sure to be lot's of funding for it, etc. Great times ahead! Others tried to replicate the results, but since the full experimental setup wasn't being revealed they had to guess. Their attempts at replication failed. This was not the way physics research was conducted, and people started getting pissed off. It was time for more details and proof that they actually got the results they claimed. With that proof not forthcoming (some started claiming they had built a fuel cell rather than a fusion reactor) they faced a lot of criticism for their PR processes and closed-mouth policy. The damage to their reputation was irreparable. To my knowledge nobody has yet been able to reproduce the original claims, but I haven't followed in a while.
- imglorp 10y agoThe coy PR manipulation continued with the Rossi E-Cat project. It sounds like there have been some partial replications beyond Rossi. http://www.wired.co.uk/article/cold-fusion-energy-advances-2015 http://www.wired.co.uk/article/cold-fusion-energy-advances-2...