Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion is book of science history by Gary Taubes about the early years (1989–1991) of the cold fusion controversy. It is not a scholarly work, but a popular retelling of the events, based on interviews with over 260 people. The book presents a timeline of the events, making the case that the cold fusion field has many examples of poorly-performed science. The actions of Martin Fleischmann, Stanley Pons, and Steven E. Jones, the scientists who made the dramatic first claims of fusion, are described in rich detail. The book then shows the worldwide reaction and later disrepute of the cold fusion field, with Taubes placing himself in the side of "good science". Taubes says at the end that cold fusion had only demonstrated that research can continue even if the phenomena doesn't actually exist, as long as there is funding available. Taubes had previously written an article for Science in which he insinuates that the cold fusion work of A&M University was fraudulent.
Read more about Bad Science: The Short Life And Weird Times Of Cold Fusion: Reception
Famous quotes containing the words bad, short, life, weird, times, cold and/or fusion:
“A good cause can become bad if we fight for it with means that are indiscriminatingly murderous. A bad cause can become good if enough people fight for it in a spirit of comradeship and self-sacrifice. In the end it is how you fight, as much as why you fight, that makes your cause good or bad.”
—Freeman Dyson (b. 1923)
“The telephone, which interrupts the most serious conversations and cuts short the most weighty observations, has a romance of its own.”
—Virginia Woolf (18821941)
“Perhaps life is just that ... a dream and a fear.”
—Joseph Conrad (18571924)
“Pregnant women! They had that weird frisson, an aura of magic that combined awkwardly with an earthy sense of duty. Mundane, because they were nothing unique on the suburban streets; ethereal because their attention was ever somewhere else. Whatever you said was trivial. And they had that preciousness which they imposed wherever they went, compelling attention, constantly reminding you that they carried the future inside, its contours already drawn, but veiled, private, an inner secret.”
—Ruth Morgan (19201978)
“I never had the sense of myself as an accomplished artist, and I always had to work three times as hard as anyone else to make my pieces as good as they could be. I am never completely satisfied. There always seems to be something just beyond my reach.”
—Toshiko Takaezu (b. 1922)
“O land of manure and mist, of dirty, cold rain.”
—Petrus Augustus De Genestet (18291861)
“No ... the real American has not yet arrived. He is only in the Crucible, I tell youhe will be the fusion of all races, perhaps the coming superman.”
—Israel Zangwill (18641926)