Why Does Everything Need Evidence Now?

[KevinG]

Cold fusion was UofU not BYU.

Fortunately I am not required to believe in your false statement of that "factoid" any more than I am required as a Latter-day Saint to believe in the personal opinions of an Apostle concerning the movement of tectonic plates or the literal location of Adam and Eves summer home.

Edited April 27, 2012 by KevinG

[altersteve]

Cold Fusion from BYU

You mean University of Utah, right?

Edit: Oops, looks like Kevin already made this correction.

Edited April 27, 2012 by altersteve

[wenglund]

Here is the difference between science and unfounded belief: within a decade or so of the time the mistakes were made in science, regardless of whether it was Piltdown man or Cold Fusion from BYU, these mistakes were rectified. I doubt that there is a professional scientist or scientifically literate individual who believes in either today.

On the other hand, some180 years after the mistakes were made, we have Apostles of the LDS Church still claiming the objective truth of the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham. From these books they still preach the truth of the global flood of Noah, separation of the continents of the Eastern and Western Hemisphere less than 10,000 years ago, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and a great deal of other such falsifiable (and falsified) nonsense.

Speaking of falsifiable and falsified nonsense, I am amazed at how many inaccuracies and fallacies you ironically packed in to this brief comment. First, it is inaccurate to characterize religious beliefs, per se, as "unfounded." Second, the apostles were stating faith-based "truths," not objective truths. Third, at the very least the spiritual meaning (e.g. the meaning that is important to religionists) of the Garden, the flood, and the divided continents, is not at this point falsifiable, nor has it been falsified, and thus cannot accurately be described as "nonsense." Fourth, it is fallacious to assess all of religion, or even a given religion, based on presumed mistakes of a few religionists, just as it would be to assess science in the same way (I believe this may have been part of Log's point). Fifth, it is fallacious to assess religion based solely on mistakes or even disagreements, without taking accomplishments and agreements into consideration. Sixth, it is fallacious to compare science with religion based on conveniently selective mistakes and the arbitrary criteria of the time it takes to make corrections. And, seventh, it is fallacious to use criteria applicable to science to assess religion, when the criteria may not be applicable to religion.

Whew.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[wenglund]

Cold fusion was UofU not BYU.

If I recall correctly, it was a BYU professor (Steve Jones) who first challenged the UofU (Ponds & Flieshman) experiment and claims. Jones had been exploring the prospects of cold fusion, and may even have been collaborating to some extent with Ponds & Flieshman, before two UofU professors went rogue.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited April 27, 2012 by wenglund

[epiginosko]

I am not sure this is a valid assumption due to how long at times it has taken for new ideas to be accepted by the mainstream.

I can accept your line of reasoning.

[thesometimesaint]

Mariner:

This implies that you believe that God communicates directly with you. Is that your belief?

Hope I didn't leave the impression that I believe scientists agree all the time. Certainly they do not. Sometimes they even take their disagreements to the open literature and duke it out for years. More often than not however, the data needed to settle the disagreement comes along and a consensus is established.

(An example here would be the observations of the apparent shift in star positions when the light from these stars passed near the sun on its way to Earth and could be observed during a solar eclipse. As you know, Einstein won that one. His early views on quantum mechanics and what he termed "spooky action at a distance" eventually demonstrated that he was not infallible, however.)

Progress would be impaired if scientists did agree all the time. What I said was that, in general, scientists do not engage in quarrels (especially for centuries over minor and irrelevant issues). Just think about the highly civilized manner in which the relatively longstanding (years not centuries) disagreement between Leonard Susskind et al., and Stephen Hawking regarding the loss of information in black holes was resolved.

I certainly hope so. Why pray to God if you don't expect an answer? For that matter; Why talk to anyone if you don't expect an answer?

From Newton to Einstein was more than a few years. From Einstein to Quantum Mechanics was more than a few years. From Mdm Curie to CERN was more than a few years. I'm not saying that we haven't learned alot, but for every answer we get it sparks five more questions that we don't have the answer to yet. Ours is but a thimbles worth of knowledge in a vast ocean of our ignorance.

No one on this planet is infallible. The way I look at it is that Newton wasn't wrong just incomplete(We still use Newton for split second timing in space travel to other planets), Eienstein wasn't wrong just incomplete(The Atomic Bomb still works). Who knows QM probably won't turn out to be wrong either just incomplete.

They just argue over substantial things like Newton for centuries? We still don't know what exactly electricity is. We still find it very useful none the less.

They'll argue over that till the cows come home. Personally I'm more interested in the information that my mind has lost over the years. Than any theoretical information lost/not lost in a Black Hole.

[Mariner]

Cold fusion was UofU not BYU.

Fortunately I am not required to believe in your false statement of that "factoid" any more than I am required as a Latter-day Saint to believe in the personal opinions of an Apostle concerning the movement of tectonic plates or the literal location of Adam and Eves summer home.

Steven Jones came to BYU from INEEL in 1985 and had a reasonable track record in low temperature (muon mediated) fusion research. His papers on the subject claimed small yield cold fusion reactions and had been published in peer reviewed journals well before Pons and Fleischmann from the University of Utah made their announcement in 1989.

If you do not believe me, look it up.

Edited April 28, 2012 by Mariner