COLD FUSION ACCEPTABLE FOR SCIENTISTS TO DISCUSS, BUT NOT MEDIA
AT THE MARCH MEETING of the American Physical Society there will be 14
papers delivered in a session on cold fusion. This isn't the first time
there has been such a session, and cold fusion has also been considered a
respectable subject at the American Chemical Society. Reports cold fusion
advocate Ed Wall, "They have been presenting at APS for a number of years,
as well as the American Chemical Society. They generally do not generate
much of a turnout, but because the scientists doing the CF research are in
good standing in such organizations, and the methods employed are standard
stuff and quality of the work they do appears to be good, they were able to
argue (Scott Chubb, most persuasively) that they should be allowed to
present their work."
There is one place, however, where cold fusion is not permitted to be
discussed or debated: the American press. Says Wall: "Once CF started
getting treated as a serious science, not just by a strong-willed minority
of appropriately credentialed scientists, but by scientific and engineering
establishments around the world (Japan), it appeared as more than bizarre
that it was still considered heresy in the US."
Cold fusion is far from the first new scientific idea to get the cold
shoulder both from scientists, the establishment and the media. Gallileo's
problems are well known but in a Nobel Laureates talk last June titled
"Pathological Disbelief," Brian D. Josephson, a physicist from the
University of Cambridge Lecture, gave some other examples:
METEORITES: The issue: do meteorites have an extra-terrestrial origin?
Argument in favor: visual sightings, stones found at site of apparent
landing, often warm Incorrect argument against: ‘objects falling from space
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Josephson's third example: cold fusion.
In his talk he quoted Charles D. Beaudette as offering the following
characteristics of scientific skeptics:
1. They do not express their criticisms in those venues where it will be
subject to peer review.
2. They do not go into the laboratory and practise the experiment along
with
the practitioner.
3. Assertions are offered as though they were scientifically based when in
fact they are mere guesses.
4. Satire, dismissal and slander are freely employed.
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I was similarly attracted to the cold fusion issue because of political,
rather than scientific, factors. After the initial Pons-Fleischmann
experiments had proven faulty, a number of anomalies developed. Some of the
media seemed to go out of its way to beat a presumed dead horse and a
couple