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For example, do you know, cold fusion researchers have published ~3,500 papers, including ~1,200 in mainstream peer-reviewed journals. You can find the bibliography and ~1,000 full full text papers at http://lenr-canr.org. Comparing cold fusion to plasma fusion: cold has produced 300 MJ in a single run; plasma fusion 6 MJ. Cold fusion has achieved fully ignited, self sustaining reactions that continue for days; plasma fusion has never produced more output than input. Cold fusion is far closer to becoming a practical source of energy.

Now the best one: most of mainstream physicists are believing, could fusion cannot become viable source of energy. As such they're ignoring, if not blocking cold fusion research for more then twenty years.

Conformists may kill civilizations Lack of original ideas leaves societies vulnerable to environmental upheaval, model suggests.

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So the implication is that if conformism is bad, that one is obligated to treat all stupid ideas as if they are equal to brilliant ideas? Excellent example of obscurantist thinking!

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Originally Posted By: TheFallibleFiend
so the implication is that if conformism is bad
Richard Feynman, the brilliant physicist, in his commencement address at CalTech related a story of a famous scientist whose published result turned out to be a little bit off. As he says,

"It's interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of the electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bigger than Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher. Why didn't they discover that the new number was higher right away? It's a thing scientists are ashamed of--this history--because it's apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikan's they thought something must be wrong--and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number closer to Millikan's value they didn't look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that."

Feynman knew that learning not to fool yourself was one of the hardest parts of becoming a scientist. Conformism is completelly symmetric to voluntaristic behavior from this perspective.

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It's interesting you bring up Feynman. Among his many brilliant writings is an essay titled "Cargo Cult Science."

http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm

Excellent reading for those who are interested in understanding obscurantism.

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There is a lotta interesting stuff on this site anyway...

"I thought of how we teach physics: We have so many techniques -- so many mathematical methods -- that we never stop telling the students how to do things. On the other hand, the drawing teacher is afraid to tell you anything. If your lines are very heavy, the teacher can't say, "Your lines are too heavy," because some artist has figured out a way of making great pictures using heavy lines. The teacher doesn't want to push you in some particular direction. So the drawing teacher has this problem of communicating how to draw by osmosis and not by instruction, while the physics teacher has the problem of always teaching techniques, rather than the spirit, of how to go about solving physical problems."

[Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985)]

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It's clear enough Feynman does not mean to imply that "teaching the spirit" includes parapsychology and other forms of obscurantism as science.

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More anti-knowledge:

Quite possibly the stupidest person on the Internet (starting at about t=5:20):
http://www.youtube.com/nephilimfree#p/u/133/XCEpnfIDeE

That's what happens when people with poor science (and math) backgrounds try to interpret stuff they don't understand - see the "Unskilled an Unaware" reference mentioned earlier.

A few rough order magnitude checks should clarify a few things:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnbUd2C59x8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ibEDukaafE

The other guy is not alone!
http://redskynews.com/?page_id=300/

And here's a response:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0X1isrPVtlo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNTwNhzvPO4

But wait! There's more!
http://www.fixedearth.com/

It never ends.

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TFF,
I keep getting a message of "an error occurred; please try again later" on your links. I was not able to follow all but the last link because of this. Do you have other links, or is it just my computer that is being flaky?

Thanks for keeping up the good work.


If you don't care for reality, just wait a while; another will be along shortly. --A Rose

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Originally Posted By: TheFallibleFiend
"teaching the spirit" includes parapsychology and other forms
But you cannot serve as an arbiter of what parapsychology is and what is not. For example placebo or near death experiences can serve as a good and well tested application of parapsychology. Regarding mainstream science we're facing the same bias like at the case of cold fusion research, for example: at the moment, when results aren't completely reproducible AND THEY DOESN'T PLAY WELL WITH MAINSTREAM THEORIES, mainstream science is losing interest about phenomena.

But we can ask why, if many other phenomena studied well by science have probabilistic character. For example the yield during microprocessor production is lower, then 5% - and such microprocessors are still widely used. Many particle collisions occurs with even much more lower yields - despite of it they're studied on accelerators extensively.

Try to imagine, what would happen, if some psychophysical experiment would yield in 5% success - such results would be considered a pseudoscience by mainstream scientists immediately. Not saying about crowds of anonymous Internet crackpots, like you.

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Rose,
They worked for me just now. YT has this extremely irritating habit of being unusable for hours at a time - particularly at night. If you try again, they may work.

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Thanks, TFF. I tried them now and they are working. I never knew how much false science was out there until I started following your links. Craziness takes many forms.


If you don't care for reality, just wait a while; another will be along shortly. --A Rose

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You're welcome. Of course, obscurantism is not limited to science.

http://strongcity.info/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Our_Righteousness_Church

But the science is what is pertinent to this forum.

Interestingly, Strong City cult predicted the end of the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails

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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a brilliant writer. He created the character Sherlock Holmes who gave the illusion of being a careful observer and a meticulous logician. His skill at writing exceeded his skill at logic. I love the stories and have read them to my children (and many of them to my wife as well), but he really doesn't display much logic in them. Like most people, he found it much easier to talk about logic than to employ it.

http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/doyle.htm

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