There is a serious issue with the way scientists get along with one another. Its quite obvious with the fusion “debate” when we discuss funding. The venom that some people push forth about the situation is particular destructive to diverse funding efforts, and even if everything they say is true, its the worst possible way to go about it. Learner is doing pretty dam well in that regard (at not begin venomous… but throwaway comments about ITER don’t help at all).

Bottom line scientists are really bad at politics. Even when their own funding is at stake. We see the same thing in AGW debate and man that is going to bite a lot of people in the arse when the dust settles.

What we don’t need is a “give our project money, cus *that* project is stupid”, or “they have all the funding because they stole it from us” and worst of all, “Their approach will never work, they know it and lie to steel all our funding so they can be rich scientists”. *EVEN* if these things are true (I don’t believe so), they cannot help the situation in any way. They only increase the reasons to cancel *all* research in this area.

The main reason i think even quite a lot of scientist don’t take fusion seriously is because the plasma/fusion community fight like teenagers.