From: Dieter Britz <BRITZ@kemi.aau.dk>
Subject: RE: Yamaguchi's Paper and Resp. To S.J.
Reply-To: Dieter Britz <BRITZ@kemi.aau.dk>
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 16:16:27 GMT


Originally-From: Jed Rothwell <72240.1256@compuserve.com>

>A note about "credibility" -
>I have been very upset here because Dieter Britz called Notoya and me a
>fraud. That has absolutely, positively, nothing to do with science. It is
>way, w-a-a-a-y beyond the bounds of reasonable, acceptable discourse. You can
>call me uninformed, or a fool, or whatever you want, but if you say that I
>have deliberately and consciously perpetrated a fraud, you step over the
>line, and I will object in the strongest possible terms. Yesterday, someone
>objected to me by private e-mail, saying that I had lost "credibility." I
>don't buy that. I was publicly charged with fraud, and I made a VERY LOUD
>NOISE. I did not lose credibility, okay? Would any of you people ignore such
>a charge, or just let it slide by with a mild mannered objection? I hope not.

Jed, if you check back, it was you who used the word "fraud", not me. I agree
that it is too strong a word, and I used words like "PR", "false-front", etc.
This is not the same. The idea I am getting across here is that the demo was
set up by someone who believes in the effect, but for the purposes of the
demo, helped it along a bit, to counteract the poor reproducibility. I still
say this is the only way I can interpret an ultra-thin wire used the way it
was. Not fraud, no. I'll admit I did suggest a few more ways to help it
along. After all, if Notoya can reproduce this effect so reliably that she
can set up a public demo, then this, not Yamaguchi, should have been headline
news at the conference and elsewhere. This would be the Big One, the
breakthrough y'all have been waiting for. Why was it not taken as such?

 I am sorry if I upset you, mate - maybe I laid it on a bit hard. You bring
out the worst in me, with your almost fanatical insistence that every cnf
claim must absolutely be true, no doubt. HH Bauer has corrected us a few times
in this group on how a "real scientist" actually works; however, the average
scientist does exercise a high level of self-criticism and care, and does not
cry EUREKA everytime an experiment seems to produce a shred of evidence. If
you were to take this attitude, you wouldn't cause the hackles to go up, as
you do.
 You have some good examples among cnf researchers. As I have just posted,
Bush makes some pretty far-out claims, but does express himself very carefully
and admits some doubts. He holds back with his Eurekas, and double-checks.
Jones, too, works like this. I expect him, any day, to make a null neutron
measurement and say so in public. Unfortunately, some of the big players in
this game are not so straight, and this reflects very badly on cnf as a real,
believable phenomenon - or a bunch of real phenomena, as you'd say.
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Dieter Britz alias britz@kemi.aau.dk
Kemisk Institut, Aarhus Universitet, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.
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Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion