Pulse en una miniatura para ir a Google Books.
Cargando... Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusionpor Gary Taubes
Cargando...
Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Taubes, one of the best science writers out there, describes the scientific confusion (pun intended) and hard feelings between two universities after the announcement that some researchers had successfully harnessed cold fusion. Steve Jones at BYU was also working on what he thought was cold fusion. Antagonism developed between the two universities as to who came up with the idea, first and consequently deserved the credit, not to mention the patents with associated royalties estimated by local optimists to be in the billions. What was certain was that university administrators and the researchers themselves, using a Pascalian logic, took the position that they had little to lose: "You get burned if cold fusion doesn't work, but you sure get burned if you don't do anything about it and it does work. So you've just got to be smart," said the University of Utah president later. He also ignored the advice of an eminent physicist who suggested he let BYU makes fools of themselves. The rush was on. Cold fusion tempted scientists to break the rules. It became another 'Utah Effect' (a phrase derived from' the notorious X-ray laser affair of 1972 and used to describe any public relations disaster originating in Utah). The original Pons and Fleischmann study did not use a control. How, . critics asked, could they draw any conclusions from their scanty data without some sort of control to compare it against. "As E. Bright Wilson phrased it in An Introduction to Scientific Research thirty-seven years before cold fusion: 'If one doubts the necessity for controls, reflect on the statement: "It has been conclusively demonstrated by hundreds of experiments that the beating of tom-toms will restore the sun after an eclipse." , " At several scientific meetings the Asch effect was beginning to show. The Asch effect describes studies done by Solomon Asch, a psychologist, who would seat a genuine experimental subject with six confederates who were primed to give a' false answer to a question regarding which of severa1lines was longer. Before long, the experimental subject, who knew he had the right answer, wquld begin to doubt himself Three out of four subjects would side with the group's incorrect conclusion despite knowing the answer to be wrong. Other experimenters were also learning the effects of mixing speed with the press. Several who thought they had confirmed Pons' data, discovered after their preliminary confinnations were reported at press conferences were widely reported, that their hasty experiments, thrown together in order to be the first to confirm cold fusion, had been tainted or not done correctly. Chuck Martin, at Texas A&M, was one of these unfortunates: "Talking to the press is wrong, very wrong," he said, "It's too easy. And the press can't filter. They can't tell whether the 'thing I've said is bullshit or right." Taubes writes, "What cold fusion had proven, nonetheless, was that the nonexistence of a phenomenon is by no means a fatal impediment to continued research. As long as financial support could be found, the -research would continue. And that support might always be found so 'long as the researchers could continue to obtain positive results. In fact, the few researchers still working in the field would have little incentive to acknowledge negative results as valid, because such recognition would only cut off their funds. It promised to be an endless loop." sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
Premios
At 1:00 P.M., on March 23, 1989, two obscure scientists at the University of Utah announced that they had discovered salvation in a test tube - cold nuclear fusion. The technology promised sale, cheap, limitless energy, and the press played it as the scientific breakthrough of the century. It would become instead a fiasco of epidemic proportions, an unforgettable morality tale in the scientific method: what happens when reason is perverted by hope and greed. Gary Taubes's Bad Science is the vivid, dramatic, and definitive story of the astonishing quest for cold fusion, from its premature birth in a Utah turf war to its lingering and surreal death in a laboratory in College Station, Texas. It is the story of good scientists and bad, of heroes and charlatans, and of a race in which thousands of researchers spent tens of millions of dollars to prove or disprove the existence of a canard.
Drawing from interviews with over 260 scientists, administrators, and journalists, Taubes dissects the cold fusion episode with wit and clarity, tracing the untold inside story of scientific research gone awry and academic politics out of control: from the devout physicist and his Department of Energy funding agent who set the wheels of the fiasco in motion, to the University of Utah president whose sole dream was to turn his institution into an intellectual powerhouse. Taubes unveils the darker side of science, where politics, ambition, and misguided obsession can corrupt its ethics and its purpose. Bad Science is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how science functions and what can happen when the scientific method is jettisoned in the pursuit of wealth and glory. As a story of morality, philosophy, and pathology, it is destined to become a classic of science journalism. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
Debates activosNinguno
Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)539.7Natural sciences and mathematics Physics Matter; Molecular Physics; Atomic and Nuclear physics; Radiation; Quantum Physics Atomic and nuclear physicsClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
¿Eres tú?Conviértete en un Autor de LibraryThing. |
On another level, it is a description of greed and pride pushing out careful science and common sense.
I kept reading because I wanted to find out: 'When will the (insanity) end?'
In addition to the current events, there were pertinent historical quotations sprinkled in. These quotations reminded us that such madness in not just limited to our day. (See: [b:Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds|162120|Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds|Charles MacKay|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1328696270s/162120.jpg|1033191] first published 1841) ( )