[extropy-chat] Elvis Sightings (was: cold fusion warms up)

[Damien Broderick]

At 04:09 AM 12/26/2006 -0500, John K Clark wrote:

> > I'll respond by citing again support for the effect from the only Nobel
> > laureate physicist I'm in regular communication with.
>
>You don't mention the name but I'll bet you dollars to doenuts you're
>talking about Brian Josephson.

Correct.

>I'll bet you that an article favorable to cold fusion (not counting Muon
>fusion) will not be published in Nature or Science in the next year. If the
>article appears I will publicly admit that I was wrong and you were right.
>But if the article does not appear will you do the same?

The situation is not symmetrical. You're stating confidently that 
claims of such phenomena are "bullshit"--that it just doesn't, and 
can't, exist. All I'm saying is that some serious researchers report 
otherwise. If such an article appears--and there are well-known 
institutional reasons why it's banned from major outlets, as have 
drextech and major life-extension papers--you're blown out of the 
water. By contrast, I'm not making any claims for whether the effect 
is real (only that there's still, surprisingly, some reason to think 
it's worth investigating); as I said, my dog's not in the race. But 
applying your "next-year-or-bust" test also make SETI complete 
bullshit, and would have made black holes bullshit for decades, and 
during 2007 will almost certain make molecular nano assemblers 
bullshit, and and and.

Damien Broderick