LEARNING FROM A CONFRONTATIONALIST.

A surprise this morning: a well known scientific personality has joined the anti-Rossi camp , wrote about the impossibility of the excess energy claims  and declared he is very happy that the testers were not all killed by radiations:

It is this paper:

Go away, cold fusion by PZ Myers

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/10/12/go-away-cold-fusion/

The author is a famous biologist and his blog, Pharyngula, is both wise and interesting, I am a faithful reader of it. In my comment, I have asked PZ what has motivated him to enter such a hornet’s net dispute; religion/science, evolution/intelligent design are not more sufficient for him? What motivates him to say “away cold fusion”? It can be easily seen, PZ is based on the expert opinion of a physicist colleague, he cites:

The Physics of why the e-Cat’s Cold Fusion Claims Collapse by Ethan Siegel 

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/12/05/the-nuclear-physics-of-why-we/

A long paper, very successful as judged based on the number of comments: >250. Very pleasant reading, the author nixes LENR on general, based on theory; the kind of fusion reactions discussed by the author are impossible or MUST generate strong radiation fatal for the experimenters. Siegel believes knows what happens in the Rossi reactor and knows why it is impossible (Note: it was too much discussion about Nià Cu in the initial period of the E-Cat history)

Siegel does not refer to the strange analytical results of the second Rossi Report. At the end he describes a very simple electrical trick – seemingly as taken from Steve Krivit- ergo, Rossi is a fraud and so are the Professors too.

No happy ending and one more justification for the statement that “Cold Fusion is a matter too complex to be let for physicists.” This one is a good proof that well behaving physicists are good in logical and in postlogical thinking but weak supralogical thinkers: http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2011/03/modes-of-thinking-my-taxonomy.html.

They are able to go in the most logical way from the premises

to the conclusions, however they use the premises chosen and dictated by the “authorities” – people or books. And: “Logical thinking is that safe and beaten path on which you can go from one swamp to an other” (Karoly Simonyi)

Ethan Siegel uses the premise that cold fusion is actually fusion,

melting together of two nuclei while in LENR (HENI) we have less engaging nuclear interactions, somewhat similar with a sexual intercourse, a few nucleons acting as nuclear sperm.

 

Confrontationalism.

Back to the first author, PZ Myers is known as a confrontationalist- he thinks that science and religion are not compatible, they do not mix. The reason Is obvious- starting from different remote premises it is impossible to arrive to similar conclusions, therefore the dialogue is actually parallel monologs and the dispute will never end. If a scientist does not admit the inerrancy of the Bible, he cannot accept what a religious person says e.g. about Noah’s Ark. Similarly a creationist will never admit that spiritless evolution can generate the richness of complexity and variety of the natural world. But let’s go home:

-        those who have the certainty that Rossi is a scammer will be skeptics of everything he does- up to the “In mercato veritas” point with E-cats on the market;

-        a more confrontationalist attitude must be between the supporters of the old and those of the new Paradigm. It is even advisable to have different professional organizations.

Peter