Scientists do that?

Pseudoskepticism? I am shocked!

I found this after reading this:

Cold Fusion is a pariah field, cast out by the scientific establishment. Between Cold Fusion and respectable science there is virtually no communication at all. Cold fusion papers are almost never published in refereed scientific journals, with the result that those works don't receive the normal critical scrutiny that science requires. On the other hand, because the Cold-Fusioners see themselves as a community under siege, there is little internal criticism. Experiments and theories tend to be accepted at face value, for fear of providing even more fuel for external critics, if anyone outside the group was bothering to listen. In these circumstances, crackpots flourish, making matters worse for those who believe that there is serious science going on here.

Still, this wikipedia article claims that (just in case you have missed it reading your local science magazine):

The search of the products of nuclear fusion has resulted in conflicting evidences, leading two thirds of the DOE reviewers to exclude the possibility of nuclear reactions in these experiments in 2004. One additional reason for many to exclude a nuclear origin for the effect is that current physics theory cannot explain how fusion could occur in these experiments, and how the energy generated could be converted into heat (as opposed to radiation or other nuclear products). Still, in 2006, Mosier-Boss and Szpak, researchers in the U.S. Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center San Diego, reported unambiguous evidences of nuclear reactions, and a project has been set-up to facilitate its independent replication.

I really like the "still" in the last sentence. "Everybody knows it is bullshit, and even if it is real, these pariahs have no clue at all what it is, and still they go ahead, waste money on experiments, that seem to claim we are wrong. Unblievable."

One has to love the scientific community.

And I like the agnostic position of the US Patent Office, accepting a patent on cold fusion in 2001. Not that I like the patent system, and accepting a patent on something highly dicredited in the scientific community shows a part of the problems, but this agnostic approach has its charme.