3 ms·

What you're left with is something you don't understand. That's often been a precursor to real breakthroughs. If you don't understand it, it's not surprising t

What you're left with is something you don't understand. That's often been a precursor to real breakthroughs. If you don't understand it, it's not surprising that you can't make it useful. That doesn't say much about what you'll be capable of, after you do understand it. While it's true that the onus was on F&P to prove their results, it's also true that if someone else is claiming to replicate the experiment, the onus is on them to do it correctly.

simonh 6y ago
F&P were unable to replicate their results. People have been trying for decades, with their help and the best they get is some occasional anomalies. The contention that the experiment has never been ‘properly’ replicated comes from the fact that they made some errors in their experimental design and description. How can you ‘properly’ recreate an experiment if the given design is known to be inaccurate? If you follow the known to be inaccurate description people will complain you’re not doing what the actually did. If you do what they actually did (or seem to have done as best we can tell), people will complain you didn’t follow their published description. Meanwhile F&P still couldn’t get reliable results themselves.
willis936 6y ago
Muon-catalyzed fusion is well understood and F&P are well known frauds. There isn’t something interesting here.
kergonath 6y ago
> What you're left with is something you don't understand. That's often been a precursor to real breakthroughs. Sometimes. Often, what you’re left with is unusable experimental results because you don’t have a clue. The proper way to resolve that is what they did with faster-than-light neutrinos: ask for collaboration with other labs and try to replicate the result. This whole thing is not science, it’s cargo-culting the way science is described in pop culture.
prox 6y ago
The most exiting phrase in Science is not “Eureka!” but “That’s funny...”
- sgt101 6y ago
  Which is when (if you do Science much) your heart sinks because you become absolutely certain that you have made (another) mistake and will now spend days/weeks/months trying to pin it down.

simonh 6y ago

F&P were unable to replicate their results. People have been trying for decades, with their help and the best they get is some occasional anomalies. The contention that the experiment has never been ‘properly’ replicated comes from the fact that they made some errors in their experimental design and description. How can you ‘properly’ recreate an experiment if the given design is known to be inaccurate? If you follow the known to be inaccurate description people will complain you’re not doing what the actually did. If you do what they actually did (or seem to have done as best we can tell), people will complain you didn’t follow their published description. Meanwhile F&P still couldn’t get reliable results themselves.

willis936 6y ago

Muon-catalyzed fusion is well understood and F&P are well known frauds. There isn’t something interesting here.

kergonath 6y ago

> What you're left with is something you don't understand. That's often been a precursor to real breakthroughs. Sometimes. Often, what you’re left with is unusable experimental results because you don’t have a clue. The proper way to resolve that is what they did with faster-than-light neutrinos: ask for collaboration with other labs and try to replicate the result. This whole thing is not science, it’s cargo-culting the way science is described in pop culture.

prox 6y ago

The most exiting phrase in Science is not “Eureka!” but “That’s funny...”

sgt101 6y ago
Which is when (if you do Science much) your heart sinks because you become absolutely certain that you have made (another) mistake and will now spend days/weeks/months trying to pin it down.