When I first read Pinch’s article, “Cold Fusion and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge” (1998), I was curious as to why the scientific community behaved so differently than in the ulcer bug case. In both situations, scientists made questionable claims of findings that went against the established beliefs in their field and made grandiose promises yet received completely different responses. From my research, I noticed that preconceived notions and mindsets are the main factors that make science very much a social enterprise. Although science ultimately provides the correct answer to debated issues, the path that scientists must travel to bring their results to light.
Since Pons and Fleischmann were denounced in 1989 there have been a few scientific groups brave enough over the years to announce roughly the same results. The article below talks about a couple of physics professors in Japan that have reportedly discovered cold fusion using roughly the same method as that of Pons and Fleischmann.
More recently a group of Italian scientists have been reported to achieve cold fusion using nickel cathodes as opposed to palladium, but ultimately promising the same thing.
Interestingly, the paper published by the Italian scientist was rejected by other peer reviewed journals. However, details given by the both the above groups on their experiments seem considerably more believable than the original Pons and Fleischmann experiment but have received almost no attention. So I return to my original question of why findings presented in a similar fashion can have drastically different responses. Let’s look at what’s different between these examples.
When Pons and Fleischmann announced their result, both the public and the scientific community were very hopeful that cold fusion was a real, viable source of energy. Also, “the 1986 discovery of high-temperature superconductivity had caused the scientific community to be more open to revelations of unexpected scientific results” (1). So the scientific community had adopted a more open mindset. This allowed for scientists who would usually have been skeptical of the idea of cold fusion to be almost irrationally hopeful of positive findings. Several years later, scientists reporting the same findings are met with extreme skepticism and no enthusiasm to prove them right or wrong. An incredible social stigma is now associated with “Low Energy Nuclear Reactions” which, for better or worse, affects the progress of that area.
So we have two polar opposite responses to similar finding that seem to be determined by the mindset of the public and scientific community. Regardless of whether the findings are rationally explainable, the scientific progression of a debated topic is strongly influence by social perception of the topic.
When cold fusion is reported nowadays, it is done so very skeptically. The following article very well demonstrates a duality that journalists employ such that they ensure the reader understands the exciting implications of a find IF the claims of scientists turn out to be true.
If anything it shows that the mass media has grown beyond their naïve days when they thought they could discern whether a scientific finding was legitimate allowing for a public mindset that is open to whatever the scientific community decides after it has been considered rather than before.
This sort of journalism is better for scientific progress as it allows for the public to be informed and excited without being set that one way is the truth. Since cold fusion defies modern physical theories, I would be disinclined to believe claims of such easy success. But any well performed experiment with a valid theory for cold fusion couldn’t simply be dismissed just like the theory for ulcers.
