Very readable new paper (actually a 50 page book extract) from Huw Price on arxiv, covering the social/political/scientific pressures arounf LENR under the heading:-
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2201/2201.03776.pdf
Risk and Scientific Reputation: Lessons from Cold Fusion
Huw Price1 University of Bonn and Trinity College, Cambridge UK
ABSTRACT
Many scientists have expressed concerns about potential catastrophic risks associated
with new technologies. But expressing concern is one thing, identifying serious candidates another.
Such risks are likely to be novel, rare, and difficult to study; data will be scarce, making speculation
necessary. Scientists who raise such concerns may face disapproval not only as doomsayers, but
also for their unconventional views. Yet the costs of false negatives in these cases – of wrongly
dismissing warnings about catastrophic risks – are by definition very high. For these reasons,
aspects of the methodology and culture of science, such as its attitude to epistemic risk and to
unconventional views, are relevant to the challenges of managing extreme technological risks. In
this piece I discuss these issues with reference to a real-world example that shares many of the
same features, that of so-called ‘cold fusion’.
