2 ms·
Despite what you may hear in breathless news articles, there was no point at which a substantial number of physicists believed (1), (2), (4), (5), (6), or (7).
by knzhou 7y ago
Despite what you may hear in breathless news articles, there was no point at which a substantial number of physicists believed (1), (2), (4), (5), (6), or (7). In some cases it was basically 99% against. People weren't rushing to "confirm" these findings, as if they were true by default -- they were rushing to check them, which is extremely different.
- dhimes 7y agoLol. You're splitting hairs: confirm/check/verify all mean the same in this context. It was exciting, controversial and thrilling. I was there. Of course the default mode was skepticism. Even for (3). But you are fooling yourself if you don't think these things were the main topics of conversation. It had a lot to do with the reputations of the scientists involved. Fleishman and Pons were very well respected, for example, so while people question how they lived through the experiments (based on expected byproducts), they were pretty sure something new must be going on.