Re: solution to the world's energy needs

[Joseph Bellina <jbellina@SAINTMARYS.EDU>]

The story of the Michaelson-Morley experiment was somewhat like this.
They went looking for a result, but didn't find it.  Everyone, including
themselves looked for the experimental problem.  Eventually Fitzgerald and
others began to suggest other more fantastic solutions to the problem.  By
the time Lorentz, Einstein and others had done their work, the null result
was no longer surprising.  Twenty years later, the then president of the
APS redid the experiment and got a non-null result...and of course
everyone once again looked for experimental problems, because the
acceptable theory had changed.

cheers


> > Have you read "The Golem" by Collins/Pinch?  They make the point that
> Science does not work as everyone imagines.  For the predicted phenomena
> and for the very blatent phenomena, things work OK.  Troubles arise when a
> phenomenon is weak and hard to tease out to display itself.  The problem
> is amplified a million fold if the phenomenon contradicts widely-believed
> theories, and the theories are at fault.  Under these conditions,
> disbelief can make the phenomenon vanish in the eyes of any disbeliever
> (the inverse of 'pathological science').  Cold Fusion might be
> patholociacl science... or it might have been "made invisible" because
> contemporary fusion theory has some unnoticed flaws, and because
> disbelievers are in the majority.
>
> Collins & Pinch note the existence of the following problem.  Suppose that
> a new advancement in science develops like so:
>
>      Theory says that a phenomenon is impossible, yet we observe it.
>
>      We are confident that theory is right.  Therefor our observations
>      must be faulty, and we can ignore them as mistakes/artifacts, and
>      go on to other things.
>
>      But what if our observations are correct?  But they can't be!  How
>      can we dare to even question, much less modify, such solid theory?
>
>      The phenomenon is difficult to produce.  Anyone with the slightest
>      emotional bias against it will invariably make a mistake in attempted
>      replications, or will give up prematurely before attaining success.
>
>      Nobody else believes our reports.  We barely believe them ourselves.
>      Until somebody figures out the location of the "hole" in current
>      theories which allows such phenomena to exist, Science as a whole
>      continues to insist that they are just errors in observation (or
>      maybe hoaxes!)