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 heart will help you to a bonny face, my lad ... and a bad one will turn the bonniest into something worse than ugly.”
—Emily Brontë (1818–1848)
“The moment of victory is much too short to live for that and nothing else.”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)
“As in an icicle the agnostic abides alone. The vital principle is taken out of all endeavor for improving himself or bettering his fellows. All hope in the grand possibilities of life are blasted.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)
“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 (1920–1978)
“For one who lived among enemies so long:
If often he was wrong and at times absurd,
To us he is no more a person
Now but a whole climate of opinion.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“Sadism and masochism, in Freud’s final formulation, are fusions of Eros and the destructive instincts. Sadism represents a fusion of the erotic instincts and the destructive instincts directed outwards, in which the destructiveness has the character of aggressiveness. Masochism represents the fusion of the erotic instincts and the destructive instincts turned against oneself, the aim of the latter being self-destruction.”
—Patrick Mullahy (b. 1912)