ZPEnergy.com - What do you think?

From yahoo free_energy group:
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2003 10:50:36 -0700
From: Phil Karn
Subject: Re: trash talker throws tantrum

> Sterling: For the most part, those who are involved in the free energy world are the "outcasts" from the mainstream, codified world of status
> quo science.

And with very good reason: they reject the scientific method, with its built-in awareness of human fallibility and the strong emphasis on reproducibility and peer review that's proven so effective in correcting for it.

The free-energy cranks are actually much worse than unscientific. Not
only do they ignore the scientific method, but they frequently let their
paranoia, egos and delusions of grandeur get in the way of simple common
sense. I'm beginning to think that most, if not all, are mentally ill to
varying degrees.

> For the most part, those who have serious credentials
> won't touch this stuff lest they loose credibility with their peers,
> who frown on it.

More mainstream scientists *should* touch this stuff, if only to debunk
it to minimize the damage it does to general scientific literacy. It is
all too common for mainstream scientists to conclude that creationists,
flat-earthers, UFOlogists, free-energy enthusiasts and other scientific
crackpots aren't worth legitimizing with responses. It certainly takes
much more effort to exhaustively debunk a crackpot claim than to
originally make it. And there's a lot less money to be made by debunking.

But this is a big mistake. The silence of mainstream science is
misconstrued by a scientifically illiterate public as an implicit
admission that mainstream science *can't* rebut these claims.

Our society is more dependent on science and technology than ever
before. Many public policy decisions require at least a basic knowledge
of how science works. Scientific illiteracy therefore comes with some
substantial costs for society. It must be reversed, and this should
start with the methodical debunking of pseudoscience.

Phil