MarkI-ZeroPoint <[email protected]> wrote: Gee, how timely is this… > > > > “Dr. Judith Curry is Professor and former Chair of the School of Earth > and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She > delivered her verbal statement to last week's US Senate Commerce Committee > Hearing on "Data or Dogma? Promoting Open Inquiry in the Debate Over the > Magnitude of the Human Impact on Earth’s Climate." > >
> > > She too was then demonized and called a ‘heretic’ and ‘denier’ after she > simply expressed her *well informed* opinion and suggestions as to how > the field could improve… > Yes. As I said, no matter how well science is settled, you can always find a few experts within a field who disagree with the majority conclusions. I would not be surprised if there are some professional astronomers who do not believe the universe is expanding. A minority always starts with exactly 1 person. In rare cases, it turns out that person is right, and the other 20,000 people in the field are wrong. It usually takes a long time to convince the others. That one person is usually demonized and attacked personally. You can find examples here: http://amasci.com/weird/vindac.html#j38 This is human nature. It is politics, and politics are everywhere, in all human interaction and in all institutions. You can no more extinguish politics than you can escape from sexuality or dying of old age. However, despite all that, as an outsider you should bet on the consensus. Unless you have some deep inside connections and you know that the institution is hopelessly corrupt and run exclusively by idiots, you have to assume that for that most part the experts there are correct. It is important to understand that people can be smart about one thing and stupid about another. With regard to cold fusion the editors at the Scientific American are stupid. They are ignorant and closed minded. But with regard to other subjects they are not so stupid, and much of what they say is worth listening to. It makes me nervous reading the magazine because I can never be sure they are right . . . but that goes for every magazine you read. And every bank you deposit money into, every airline and hospital. From time to time, institutions we assume are professional and well run turn out to be a shambles. When I first met Gene Mallove, he was an insider and true believer in the nobility of science. He had PdDs from Harvard and MIT. What could be more mainstream? He had the idea that scientists are open minded, fair, and that they embrace novelty and new ideas. I told him that scientists are pretty much like everyone else -- like most people they hate and fear new ideas. (I knew that because I read a lot of history, not because I am cynical.) Gene later became so angry about the way mainstream science treated cold fusion, he swung to the opposite extreme. He began to think that any science maverick must be right, and the mainstream must be wrong. He thought all science institutions must be corrupt. I said then -- and I still say -- the situation is nuanced, and complicated. Both individual people and institutions can be a mixture of smart and stupid, fair and unfair. One day Gene said to me with a sigh, "this does not end neatly like an Arthur Clarke story, does it?" He meant there is never a time when the scientists finally all agree, doubts are resolved, progress is made, and the next great adventure begins. I think what happens more often is what Planck described: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." Regrettably, this is not happening with cold fusion. The opposite is happening: the field is dying along with the generation who did the experiments. - Jed
