To quote from the article, quoting Max Planck, "Science advances one funeral at a time." The status quo orthodoxy is always strong...a lot of physicists would be eating a lot of crow if it turns out there is anything at all to cold fusion. And they are very prideful people, and do not care for the taste of crow. I think the physics community made a big, and immoral, mistake when they denounced the field of cold fusion, as opposed to denouncing specific claims or people. I see that as a betrayal of the scientific method and the principles of skepticism and investigation that have lead to all of our understanding that we have, and will lead to all of the additional understanding that we will have some day.
If anything ever comes from cold fusion, or even 'cooler' fusion (why only room temp? Is there a way to do it at some sort of reasonably achievable industrial temperatures and pressures?), then this episode will be looked back upon as the equivalent of burning Galileo at the stake...except they should have known better.
Well, I confess to not reading the whole article, as I refuse to register for the WaPo (and yes, I know about "bugmenot"--but it appears that WaPo has found a way around it, as most of the passwords from there I've tried have not worked).
"The status quo orthodoxy is always strong...a lot of physicists would be eating a lot of crow if it turns out there is anything at all to cold fusion. And they are very prideful people, and do not care for the taste of crow. I think the physics community made a big, and immoral, mistake when they denounced the field of cold fusion, as opposed to denouncing specific claims or people. I see that as a betrayal of the scientific method and the principles of skepticism and investigation that have lead to all of our understanding that we have, and will lead to all of the additional understanding that we will have some day."
I was completely and totally disgusted by the performance of some of the "scientists" in their actions suppressing CF research. All politics--NO SCIENTIFIC METHOD. DAMN such pseudoscientists (even if they might be genius physicists, they are un-deserving to be called SCIENTIST).
Exactly. Cold fusion is the best modern example that I'm aware of where technical elitism and closed mindedness has reared its ugly head. The way many "respected" members of the scientific community have summarily dismissed and treated legitimate research in this area over the past few years has been disgraceful, IMHO. If nothing else, unexplainable phenomena are at work. How could anyone but closeminded snobs who feel threatened discourage at least looking into it?
One of the most reasonable explanations I've seen advanced for this predictably has to do with money. The most vocal "that's impossible" detractors of cold fusion are those working in the hot fusion community. Nations around the world have invested billions of dollars in trying to achieve hot fusion, but practically nothing into potential alternatives. The theory is that the money hungry hot fusion community is deathly afraid that there might actually be something to cold fusion, in which case they'll have some of their funding taken away. Loss of funding is potentially a powerful influence for those screaming the loudest that "it's impossible."