Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris Noble 
In short - you are easily fooled by pseudoscience
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Chris,
I think that is deeply unfair to Alex - he just referenced them as alternative controversies, without claiming to have researched them or endorsing them. Whatever the rights or wrongs of those two cases, there is a real problem here in that science is so large and bureaucratic that it almost has to jump off the fence on issues far too quickly.
Perhaps the best example is 'cold fusion'. When this was announced by Fleishman and Pons, it initiated a frenzy of work to reproduce it. You had researchers at Culham (where hot fusion research is done at great expense) rushing off electrochemistry experiments (probably outside their field) to prove that the effect was false. Strangely, however, even after all these years there is extreme uncertainty as to what is going on in those palladium electrodes. See for example Brian Josephson's site or various other articles for more details. In particular, nuclear breakdown products have been found, coming from the palladium. All these years later, active research is going on in CF!
Wouldn't it have been better from all perspectives to treat the original announcement with a bit more cautious respect - rather than rushing to endorse/refute their results.
The analogy with Ψ is interesting. There are clearly many laboratories that would be equipped to repeat Dean Radin's presentiment experiment (indeed he claims some have, but are reluctant to publish positive results). Unfortunately there is a perceived fear that publishing any positive results would bring down a storm of 'poor experimental design' criticism from people who simply can't accept uncomfortable results.
The fear of being tarred with the Ψ-slur is IMHO very real. I have a website and consultancy related to a certain aspect of mathematical software, and there is absolutely no way I would even mention Ψ on there!
David