Re: Arthur C. Clarke as skeptic

[William Beaty <billb@ESKIMO.COM>]

On Tue, 21 Sep 1999, Chuck Britton wrote:

> At 8:16 PM -0700 9/20/99, William Beaty wrote:
>
>         Here's a more 'complete' quote from A.C. Clarke
>
>         I think the word SKEPTICAL that he ends the paragraph with is
> most important.

I disagree.  "Skeptical" is important, but you've missed the rest of the
quote: the part where Clarke surrenders his skepticism and becomes a 99%
"believer" in Cold Fusion.  Why did Clarke call it a "scandal?"  Because
he thinks Pons/Fleichman are correct!  Read the rest (below).


   Presidents, Experts, and Asteroids
   http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/280/5369/1532

<snip>
        Even more controversial than the threat of asteroid impacts
   is what I would call perhaps one of the greatest scandals in the
   history of science, the cold fusion caper. Like almost everyone else,
   I was surprised when Pons and Fleischmann announced that they had
   achieved fusion in the laboratory; and surprise changed to
   disappointment when I learned that most of those who had rushed to
   confirm these results were unable to replicate them. Wondering first
   how two world-class scientists could have fooled themselves, I then
   forgot the whole matter for a year or so, until more and more reports
   surfaced, from many countries, of anomalous energy production in
   various devices (some of them apparently having nothing to do with
   fusion). Agreeing with Carl Sagan's principle that "extraordinary
   claims require extraordinary proofs" (spoken in  connection with UFOs
   and alien visitors), I remained interested, but skeptical.

   Now I have little doubt that anomalous energy is being produced by
   several devices, some of which are on the market with a money back
   guarantee, while others are covered by patents. The literature on the
   subject is now enormous, and my confidence that "new energy" is real
   slowly climbed to the 90th percentile and has now reached the 99%
   level. A Fellow of the Royal Society, also originally a skeptic,
   writes: "There is now strong evidence for nuclear reactions in
   condensed matter at low temperature." The problem, he adds, is that
   "there is no theoretical basis for these claims, or rather there are
   too many conflicting theories."

   Yet recall that the steam engine had been around for quite a while
   before Carnot explained exactly how it worked. The challenge now is to
   see which of the various competing devices is most reliable. My guess
   is that large-scale industrial application will begin around the turn
   of the century--at which point one can imagine the end of the
   fossil-fuel-nuclear age, making concerns about global warming
   irrelevant, as oil-and-coal-burning systems are phased out.

<snip>

At the end of the essay, Clarke concludes with this comment:


   Finally, another of my dubious predictions: Pons and Fleischmann will
   be the only scientists ever to win both the Nobel and the Ig Noble
   Prizes.


The above is just a fragment of the entire essay.  Interested parties
should go read the whole darned thing, and not trust that I have included
all relevant parts.  (I included only the Cold Fusion stuff.)


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