Re: A hidden side of science

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>]

At 19:13 -0700 7/24/03, Ludwik Kowalski quoted:

> In the face of such obstacles, several strategies are
> available, which include mimicking science, aiming
> at lower status outlets, enlisting patrons, seeking a
> different audience, exposing suppression of dissent,
> and building a social movement.

I would say that anyone who is advising someone proposing an
unpopular theory to scientists to "mimic science" is not coming at
the problem from a scientific perspective.

And to argue that science has an "entrenched power structure," is
only looking at half the situation, and then from a very jaundiced
perspective. Science is conservative, as well it should be. New,
revolutionary ideas need to be well established before they take
over. If scientists ran after every chimera that came down the pike,
they would seldom get anything done. But when something looks
promising, even if it isn't likely, then lots of people will get
active in "checking it out." That happened in the case of cold
fusion, and what happened then is entirely characteristic of what
happens in these cases. It happened in the case of the fifth force
flap as well. That is, many labs try to reproduce the experiment, or
design their own to test the idea, and at first many get
corroborating results, but a few don't. Gradually the experiments are
more and more carefully done and as that happens the number of
corroborating results starts to decrease until only a few holdouts
remain.

In the case of high T superconductivity, just the opposite happened,
as time passed more and more of the verifying experiments were
successful, as people learned the techniques better, and before long,
the phenomenon entered mainstream science.

On the other hand, cold fusion has shown several of the
characteristics of Langmuir's "pathological science." In addition to
decreasing numbers of corroborating experiments, and a lack of
alternative experiments (neutron flux measurements, etc.), there were
lots of ad hoc explanations from the originators as to why this or
that other experiment didn't work. The originators became more and
more secretive and withdrawn. They refused to make their raw data
available for examination, or to conduct their experiments in the
presence of others, and everyone who got different results "weren't
doing it right." It seems there was only one right way to do the
experiment--change the slightest thing and it won't work, and they
were not very forthcoming on the ways to fix the experiments.

It is seldom the case that some phenomenon can be detected by only
one type of experiment and the circumstances have to be "just right"
for it to work. It's not unheard of, but when it happens it puts and
extra burden on the discoverers to be as open as possible in helping
others to make their experiments work.

It is also crucially important for the discoverers to make every
effort to find ways they could be wrong. Feynman's dictum applied
here--first, don't fool yourself. If you aren't fooling yourself, you
will not likely fool others. I don't think Pons and Fleishman carried
out this part of the "new science" regimen very well.

Of course, the "established" scientists are going to be reluctant to
give up their pet theories, but, for the most part, not "unto the
death." When something new is shown to work, scientists accept it
quickly. Only a small rear guard might hang back or resist to the
end. Something as revolutionary as cold fusion, with its incredible
potential, is not going to be suppressed for long, if it is real.
There is too much at stake. I doubt the folks in the high-energy
fusion game will be too happy to see it come, but they are a
relatively small part of the physics community, and if it worked,
others would have flocked to the fold and we would be getting energy
into our homes from that source by now, and the fusion research
program at Princeton would have been shut down by now.

The argument that "establishment science" will do its damndest to
suppress any new ideas in order to protect its own "turf" is just
nonsense put forth by the voodoo practitioners who are on the outside
looking in. They are outside because they refuse to practice science
as it should be done, instead insisting that they are a "little guy"
being kept from success by "big science" and their monied backers.

Given the economic potential of this phenomenon if it exists, the
"monied backers" would hve flocked to the cause of cold fusion if
there was any hope that it was real. In fact, I understand the Sony
did provide some funding for Pons & Fleishman at their lab in France
for a few years, until they finally tired of ever seeing a return on
their investment.

Obivously, many things that are presently thought to be not possible
will be found to be possible in the future. I am not an expert on
cold fusion and I cannot say with total confidence that it will never
be proven to exist, but if it does, at some point someone will come
up with the repeatable experiment that P&F apparently didn't have,
will demonstrate it so others can repeat and redesign the setups and
it will be shown to be real, and soon thereafter will enter
mainstream science and within a short time after that will become a
viable part of the world power grid.

But it's been, what, fifteen years since P&F burst on the scene? In
that time they have gone from front page news to a scientific
backwater. If they, or others have something, let them show it, with
papers in the archival journals of record, and not backwater
publications that might be more interested in publicity than
scientific integrity.

That's my $0.02 worth. I have better things to do with my time than
to read the ranting of an outsider, who, if your quoting of him is
characteristic, has little if any understanding or appreciation of
how science works. Its shades of Joe Newman all over again.

Hugh

--

Hugh Haskell
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<mailto:hhaskell@mindspring.com>

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