Logical fallacies

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Smarter bombs, or smarter kids? Where do you stand?

Can you say «I»false dichotomy«/I» and «i»non sequitur«/I»? I knew you could!

Why do so many people attempt to insult my intelligence this way in order to get me to nod my head in agreement with nonsense positions? "Why, who could be against educating children? Are you some sort of warmongering fascist that would prefer blowing people up instead of insuring the future of our children?"

Would it be so palatable if I reversed the question? How about..."Dead citizens in the streets, or tenure for cold fusion physicists? Where do you stand?"

Speaking of cold fusion...way back when I wasn't paying attention, a couple of smart guys thought they had something, a very neat something that would have changed the world as we know it, literally, and that was tabletop fusion.

A serious thing, that. The technology as described was limited only by the availability of palladium and heavy water. Anyone could build it. Heck, wrap some U-238 around it and you could breed plutonium with it, cheap and easy and nobody could do anything about it.

Fortunately, cold fusion turned out to be utter bunk, despite the myriad varieties of pseudointellectual publications that still "report" on cold fusion's progress. They do make for amusing reading, such as reporting thermal and neutron fluxes that would kill an unshielded observer, yet these experiments are conducted in a garage. But back in the early nineties, there was some doubt.

These two scientists decided that they wouldn't publish in a peer reviewed journal. The normal process for someone in the sciences is to write up a paper or present some lecture (if it is sufficiently theoretical) and allow others in the scientific community a shot to see if the concept is of any worth. Sometimes mistakes are made in science, and peer review acts as a brake, preventing crap from passing into the bpody of accepted knowledge.

Instead of peer review, they eschewed the normal course of investigation by others and made a press release. The press ate it up. They then went to the state government, told them their tale, and requested action from the legislature. almost got it too!

It didn't last very long, however, because folks could easily replicate what was being described by the two scientists and try to get similar results. Nobody was able to replicate the experiment. Excuses were given for the lack of heat, the lack of helium, the lack of any neutrons from the supposed fusion reaction. Eventually and collectively, the mainstream scientists realized that there was no cold fusion after all. Time to put it aside.

But some cranks exist who still believe.

I was thinking of that the other day when I was watching Kerry in his 1971 testimony to Congress. Here's a guy in the Navy, a lieutenant, and officer of the armed forces, carrying credibility with his uniform, medals and his service. (Pons and Flieshmann, the two scientists who flaked on cold fusion, were also very good chemists, with credibility for their own accomplishments.) He gets in front of a bunch of cameras and talks about things, horrible things. Pushes Congress to do something about it.

But he never submitted anything to peer review. As I understand it, not a single "Winter Soldier" ever reported anything to the Navy for investigation, and when investigatede anyway, everything was mostly bunk and exaggeration.

Pons and Fleischmann would stand in front of cameras and tell you all about how their magical God water could revolutionize the power industry. Kerry sat in front of Congress and intoned "free fire zones" as if they were a bad thing. Did anyone check it? few did, but the ball was already rolling anyway, and people had made up their minds on a very subjective issue.

In the case of cold fusion, it is objective fact that there is nothing to it. Build the cell. Charge it with deuterium. You get nothing. No heat, no neutrons, no helium, no fusion, just regular old electrolysis. Peer review holds up.

According to some, however, Kerry's peer review is nothing more than slime from Karl Rove. Pons and Flieshmann tried that too, claiming that they couldn't peer review because of vendettas others would have, especially among the hot fusion cabal. What matters here is what actually happened, and we may not know exactly what that is, and its for sure we can't replicate Vietnam in the lab. But we can take an honest look at the data that is out there and try to draw conclusions that may not cater to our cherished preconceptions.

Of course, the reason so many think the Swiftvets are malign puppets of Rove is simply because the Democrats do the same with their 527 groups. It never occurs to anyone that people can join together for their own purposes. I can't say for certain if there are connections or not between the SBVT 527 and the Republicans, but it isn't outside the realm of probability that's several citizens acting on their lonesome. And its also telling that those that spout the loudest on this subject fail to consider the possibility they are wrong.

Lots of people still push for cold fusion subsidies. Without peer review, of course. Dare we play just as ignorant with the office of the president?

UPDATE: Sarah linked to me when I wasn't expecting it, and after reading over my late night incoherence, I realized I omitted the entire point, which is this:

When people try to go outside the system to make their case, be more skeptical of their claims than you otherwise would be. Yes, the system can be corrupted, be it science and academia or the Office of Naval Investigations, but even then, there is reason to pause.

Such things are direct appeals to outside the system, and while that can garner broad public support (Ooo! We're commiting atrocities in Vietnam!/Oh look, dirt cheap energy!) it's easier to mislead the public with gradiose but unverifiable claims...after all, the vast majority of the public are not scientists, and can be misled by authoritative statements from the media. The same thing applies to Vietnam, or anything political, for that matter.