The War on Free Speech in Academia.

    Quote from Alan Smith

    Bruce. Nowhere in the article or in my post was LENR ever mentioned. Mike McCullough is not a LENR researcher. If that was not clear to you maybe you should pay more attention.


    Indeed, this was not clear to me. You introduced the article by saying "I think it covers some of the same turf as scientists working on cold fusion have experienced." Also, McCulloch is an LENR researcher, as I noticed upon reading the article itself (it cites McCulloch's 2018 articel "Can Cold Fusion be Explained by Quantised Inertia" in Progress n Physics vol14 p63).


    I thought I was paying pretty close attention.


    Note added in edit: Sorry, I have realized that McCulloch's LENR paper was not cited directly by the target article in The Critic. Instead, I found it after googling "quantised intertia".

    Bruce_H: How many times you've been told, that war on free speech in academia has nothing to do with LENR, yet it touches LENR scientists too? Not accidentally LENR researchers are mostly "privileged white men": one cannot find too much progressive liberals and "minors" between them. See ICCF 10 Group Photo, for example:


    9XtDGep.gif


    "In a huge, grandiose convention center I found about 200 extremely conventional-looking scientists, almost all of them male and over 50. In fact some seemed over 70, and I realized why: The younger ones had bailed years ago, fearing career damage from the cold fusion stigma".


    "I have tenure, so I don't have to worry about my reputation," commented LENR physicist George Miley, 65. "But if I were an assistant professor, I would think twice about getting involved."

    Quote from Shane D.

    Here in the west, say something not approved by the PC police and you will lose your job, and reputation.


    That depends on who you are, and where you work. Mr. Trump and many other Republicans often say things not approved of by the PC police. They say these things to "own the libs." That is, to goad liberals and win support from their base. So, if you are right wing or you work for the White House or Fox News and you say something not approved by the PC police, your job and your reputation will be enhanced. *


    I have heard there is a great deal of anti-PC, anti-liberal material on Facebook and Twitter. There must be many people who post it. They are not all losing their jobs and reputations.


    There are many other people, such as me, who would never be fired or bothered by the PC police no matter what we say. I am not on Facebook. I don't do social media. I do not know what the PC police are saying, and I don't give a fart what they say. I have been attacked by countless "skeptics" who are opposed to cold fusion. I have been accused of being a criminal, a fraud and a lunatic trying to scam people for money in the guise of doing cold fusion research which "everyone knows is a fraud." Everyone involved in this field has been attacked. This started long before Facebook and other social media was invented. Heck, it started the morning after the 1989 announcement. Many researchers actually were thrown out of labs, including distinguished people such as Mel Miles. See p. 153, https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanlettersfroa.pdf


    Cold fusion researchers have been seriously persecuted, with real world consequences. I have not, because I am untouchable. I do not have an academic job. No skeptic can harm me. So, for me, the attacks are water off a duck's back. I couldn't care less about them. If I felt like spouting anti-PC stuff on Facebook, or atheism in a religion forum, or evolution in a Creationist forum, I would. I don't do that because I am not petulant. Plus I don't care what those people think.


    Read the history of science and you will see that persecution and unfair politics are normal in science. They have been happening since modern science emerged in 1600. "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low." - attrib. Woodrow Wilson and many others.




    * Perhaps a reporter on Fox New who says something liberal will lose his job and his reputation. I wouldn't know about that. I do not know the extent to which Fox News is a the mirror image of the partisan liberal press. I have never watched Fox News, or any other TV news in English since the day Walter Cronkite retired. I only watch Japanese National NHK news. For language practice, not because I trust the Japanese government.

    Quote from Zephir_AWT

    Not accidentally LENR researchers are mostly "privileged white men": one cannot find too much progressive liberals and "minors" between them.


    No minors. I am the youngest person in that photo, standing next to the tallest person in that photo, Tadahiko Mizuno. For the most part those people are not liberals. They are not unorthodox. As Martin Fleischmann said, "we are painfully conventional people." Most are distinguished scientists such as the Chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission. 'Cause if you aren't distinguished, mainstream, tenured, well-funded and powerful, they will toss you out for talking about cold fusion, never mind doing it!


    Yes, they are now outcasts. Because they had the bad luck to discover things that most of the scientific establishment thinks is fraudulent garbage. Many people who replicated cold fusion in 1989 had the good sense to shut up about it. They did not tell anyone because they knew what would happen. They were more concerned about their reputation than science. A few lied about their results. The people in that photo were so conventional, or so naive, they went ahead and published. They believed that is what you are supposed to do. That's how science is supposed to work. They follow the rules and do things by the book. They resemble goody-two-shoes boy scouts who drive on interstate highways at the speed limit. Others zoom by them, honking and giving them the finger.


    Martin Fleischmann was a cynical person who knew history. He saw a lot. He saw his father killed by the Gestapo. He came to England with nothing. He knew that he and Stan Pons would be persecuted and thrown out of the establishment. Others in the field did not realize that.


    When scientists go on talk shows they say science is all about the truth, and exploration, and honesty, it is self-correcting, it always works in the end, and blah, blah, blah. All of which is nonsense. Or, to the extent it is true, it is no less true of programming, engineering, farming, mechanics or any job where you work with machinery and other unforgiving inanimate objects. If you believe scientists are all honest, you will believe that bankers never steal money, and Boeing engineers would never think of making an airplane with lousy software that crashes into the ground from time to time. Because they are not supposed to, right? Academic scientists are not inherently more moral or honest than any other group of people. In actual practice they are less honest than programmers and engineers, because for the most part their work is inconsequential. It is never replicated. It is forgotten. Whereas a program is run by customers. If the program screws up, the programmer gets into a world of trouble at 3 in the morning and is fired the next day.


    Peter Hagelstein described the true nature of science and scientists, in one of the best essays on that subject I have read:


    https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Hagelsteinontheoryan.pdf

    Quote from Max Nozin

    Question is can everyone be right. And how science supposed to move in the right direction without censorship?


    Did you mean to say with censorship? There is censorship in academic science, but it does not help. It only hurts. There is no censorship in some other technical disciplines such as programming. Anyone can say or publish anything, or any program, or code snippet. There is complete freedom. It never hurts. To be sure, there are official standards and things like Linux with a controlling board that decides what gets into the language, but you are free to invent your own language anytime.


    Quote from Max Nozin

    Ether, aether, sterile neutrinos, wimps, information etc. Somebody must be mistaken here.


    Some people are mistaken, but most are right. Even when their views conflict. That just means some are more right than others. Most theories and models are sort of right, sort of wrong, and always incomplete. They are a work in progress. Even ones that we have known for centuries are "wrong" are still sort of right, in some contexts. As long as it is useful and gives the correct answer, it is right enough. For example, Ptolemy's model of the solar system with the earth in the center is wrong, but it was still used for navigation in the 1940s. (I don't know about now.) Guy Murchie taught celestial navigation during World War II, and he pointed out that Ptolemy’s astronomy is still valid, and still “right” for practical purposes: “Ptolemy had almost no idea where or what or how big the sun is. Yet his basic calculations are the most convenient ever devised for navigation. . . . [I]t is still true (relatively speaking) that all the celestial bodies revolve around the earth. To a practical navigator remaining on the earth, it is a lot easier to let it go at that and keep the old simple earth view . . .” – G. Murchie, Song of the Sky, (The Riverside Press, 1954).

    I respect this post 👊🏽.

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    Quote

    Question is can everyone be right. And how science supposed to move in the right direction without censorship? Ether, aether, sterile neutrinos, wimps, information etc. Somebody must be mistaken here.


    Science is based on falsification, not on censorship. But there is no serious falsification in cold fusion research. I'm aware that even cold fusionists itself only rarely are doing replications of former experiments - not to say about mainstream scientists, not to say in mainstream way: in peer-reviewed journals. For example, we still have no replication of one century old Wendt and Irion experiments with exploding wires, peer-reviewed replication the less. Under such a situation it's too easy to refrain to censorship and anecdotal misinterpretation of "anomalies". Under such a situation cold fusion research resembles dark matter of mainstream research: a sporadic field of individualist discoveries attracted to mainstream but kept away from it at safe distance.

    • Official Post
    Quote from JedRothwell

    Did you mean to say with censorship? There is censorship in academic science, but it does not help. It only hurts. There is no censorship in some other technical disciplines such as programming. Anyone can say or publish anything, or any program, or code snippet. There is complete freedom. It never hurts. To be sure, there are official standards and things like Linux with a controlling board that decides what gets into the language, but you are free to invent your own language anytime.



    Some people are mistaken, but most are right. Even when their views conflict. That just means some are more right than others. Most theories and models are sort of right, sort of wrong, and always incomplete. They are a work in progress. Even ones that we have known for centuries are "wrong" are still sort of right, in some contexts. As long as it is useful and gives the correct answer, it is right enough. For example, Ptolemy's model of the solar system with the earth in the center is wrong, but it was still used for navigation in the 1940s. (I don't know about now.) Guy Murchie taught celestial navigation during World War II, and he pointed out that Ptolemy’s astronomy is still valid, and still “right” for practical purposes: “Ptolemy had almost no idea where or what or how big the sun is. Yet his basic calculations are the most convenient ever devised for navigation. . . . [I]t is still true (relatively speaking) that all the celestial bodies revolve around the earth. To a practical navigator remaini

    Yes I meant 'with censorship'. These days the cost of making false claims is very low. If may find it easier to operate in the environment where contradicting claims are also can be right at the same time i don't know how you can engineer anything practical in such conditions.


    I agree everybody has a right to invent nitsace scientific theories but outside of mainstream scientist field on their own dollar.

    Quote from Zephir_AWT

    Science is based on falsification, not on censorship. But there is no serious falsification in cold fusion research. I'm aware that even cold fusionists itself only rarely are doing replications of former experiments - not to say about mainstream scientists, not to say in mainstream way: in peer-reviewed journals.


    Not absolutely true: P&F have been replicated by more than 50 sites. Half of them quietly like the US military labs. Also the Japanese continuously replicate their old experiments.


    But who replicates CERN? And who can verify that such a replication is a real replication...Is it already a replication if a site says we also do see a bump between 115 and 130 GeV ??


    Fact is: If you propose a fringe model like SM you can use any fringe method to uphold your fringe claims. What does replication mean in this case?


    Who will replicate ITER - just a low budget deal for 25-30 Billions.

    • Official Post
    Quote from JedRothwell

    For example, Ptolemy's model of the solar system with the earth in the center is wrong, but it was still used for navigation in the 1940s. (I don't know about now.) Guy Murchie taught celestial navigation during World War II, and he pointed out that Ptolemy’s astronomy is still valid, and still “right” for practical purposes: “Ptolemy had almost no idea where or what or how big the sun is. Yet his basic calculations are the most convenient ever devised for navigation. . . . [I]t is still true (relatively speaking) that all the celestial bodies revolve around the earth. To a practical navigator remaining on the earth, it is a lot easier to let it go at that and keep the old simple earth view . . .” – G. Murchie, Song of the Sky, (The Riverside Press, 1954).

    would you board a spaceship built by a flat earther?


    I am not claiming censorship system as it is now is effective and not corrupt. But is is absolutely essential. Things like 'emegrence of gravity from uncertanty principle' do not worth space on the cloud storage they take along with many other theories.

    Quote from Max Nozin

    Yes I meant 'with censorship'. These days the cost of making false claims is very low. If may find it easier to operate in the environment where contradicting claims are also can be right at the same time i don't know how you can engineer anything practical in such conditions.


    Here is the problem with your plan. Suppose we make you the Lord High Censor. You are in charge. Someone comes up with the masor or cold fusion. Many leading scientists tell you it is fake. They say it should be censored. How can you tell if it really is fake? By vote? How can you know the difference between a false claim, a true claim, a mistake, and a claim which is partly mistaken and partly true? Such as cold fusion produces heat and helium but the neutrons turn out to be a mistake.


    You are not omniscient. You do not have a magic touchstone that unfailingly tells you what is true, and what is a lie. No one does. No person on earth, ever in history, ever had the power you would need to be the censor. No one ever will have it. The only way to know what is true and what is false is to do experiments.

    Quote from Max Nozin

    would you board a spaceship built by a flat earther?


    This is a "slippery slope" logical fallacy. I would not board the spaceship, but I would board a steamship in 1935 even though I knew the navigator used Ptolemaic astronomy. They all did. They all knew the world was round and it it orbits the sun, but the Ptolemaic system was convenient. It did the job. It was right for that purpose.


    Being right or wrong is not an absolute quality. A first approximation or a simplification can be just right enough to get the job done without making things too complicated. To give an example I just wrote up this week, you can do isoperibolic calorimetry with a simple model and single coefficient you multiply by temperature to get power. For example, with an air cooled cell you might find that when you input 1.1 W, the temperature rises 4.5°C above ambient. With 1.7 W it rises 7.2°C above ambient. Plot those points and you come up with a nice, dependable, linear calibration constant of 4.1°C per watt, or 0.24 W per degree Celsius. Like this:



    That's grand. Except it is wrong. The heat losses are actually governed by the Stefan-Boltzmann law, so they increase a great deal as temperatures go up. That curve is only linear in a narrow range of temperatures. This is a reasonable first approximation, and it it good enough to measure heat in this range of temperatures to about the nearest 0.1 W. But the laws of physics tell us this is wrong. As long as we realize this is wrong, we are fine.

    Quote from JedRothwell

    Here is the problem with your plan. Suppose we make you the Lord High Censor. You are in charge. Someone comes up with the masor or cold fusion. Many leading scientists tell you it is fake. They say it should be censored. How can you tell if it really is fake? By vote? How can you know the difference between a false claim, a true claim, a mistake, and a claim which is partly mistaken and partly true? Such as cold fusion produces heat and helium but the neutrons turn out to be a mistake.


    It is very simple to realize that cold fusion is a false claim: just follow the indications of the more representative leaders of the field and carefully look at the documentation they published.


    In 2004, CF got a second chance to be assessed by DOE. Five of the field's most representative and leading experts wrote a report on the "current status of the science of cold fusion", and selected the 7 most meaningful papers in the field (1). The first of these papers is the famous "Calorimetry of the Pd-D2O System; from simplicity via complications to simplicity," written by Fleischmann and Pons, which describes the results of the so called "1992 boil-off experiment". This F&P paper, the last to have been published in a peer reviewed journal, provides absolutely wrong claims about the alleged excess heat produced during the experiment. This wrong claim depends on a misinterpretation of what happened inside the 4 cells during the boil-off phase: the two authors simply confused the foam with liquid water.


    Nowadays, after the experiment videos were published on the internet in 2009 (2) and 2015 (3), everyone can see the foam inside the cells and account for this blatant error, committed by the 2 fathers of CF and proposed to DOE by some of the most experienced and representative scientist in the field.


    Therefore, this only F&P paper, its inclusion at the top of the list of the most significant papers of the CF field, and the availability of the related videos is more than enough, IMO, to allow the (supposed) Lord High Censor to conclude and proclaim that cold fusion is, and has always been, a sensational fake.


    (1) http://newenergytimes.com/v2/g…ent/DOE2004/7Papers.shtml

    (2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBAIIZU6Oj8

    (3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn9K1Hvw434

    • Official Post
    Quote from Max Nozin

    would you board a spaceship built by a flat earther?


    I am not claiming censorship system as it is now is effective and not corrupt. But is is absolutely essential. Things like 'emegrence of gravity from uncertanty principle' do not worth space on the cloud storage they take along with many other theories.


    I understand your point, but only if one considers LENR a fringe science like your other examples. I do not see it that way though. LENR is different. As Jed mentioned, LENR has had many successful experimental outcomes and replications by reputable scientists, and labs. I am not talking about the garage tinker types doing stuff on their own, but employees on salary for private, and government labs. Not a very fertile setting for the birth of a fringe science.


    Many of them even invited their critics to come check out what they were seeing. Tanzella/McKubre made the offer to prominent physicist, and skeptic Garwin, and his side-kick Lewis. They accepted, and then spent a day in their lab. They found nothing out of sorts, and Garwin made a report to that effect. That is not what fringe science looks like, nor how fringe scientists act.


    Then there is GEC working with NASA to develop a hybrid version of the tech, for space power generation applications. That is for real, and not some concocted fake science story. That alone puts LENR in it's own separate category, and deserving of at least some attention from mainstream science. And just last year, Google appealed to mainstream science to accept research into LENR. Not something they would do if they thought it was fringe.


    I could go on and on, but point is that the science is real. It may not meet the criteria to say it is proven yet, as last years "Team Google" thread showed, but it is not fringe.

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