Phil’s Dad wrote:
…
Therein lies my only problem with the article itself; that it identifies the scientific community as an homogeneous entity; whereas there are differing opinions within it (as Mr Learner would testify regarding the origins of the universe for example). I would have liked within the passage at least the level of honesty that recognises that you can reject a scientific argument without rejecting the whole of science. Without it the author of the piece falls into the very trap so eloquently described
….

Yes of course it is possible to turn (almost) any weapon or argument to defend or attack (almost) any position. A denialist, might consider the whole scientific community as “scientific impotents”. He might be even right in some cases by chance or otherwise. Still I think some characters in GW denial community would be very surprised to find out that they were right – even the oil businessmen are not trying to disprove GW anymore, at least publicly.

I believe in this because I see a lot easy to spot dirty tricks from the deniers side, but nothing of the sort from advocates (or alarmists if you want to call them so). While the scientists do make some mistakes, they do threat the aggressive attackers harshly, maybe some people loose jobs over their position on GW unfairly (nothing concrete), they are not trying to misrepresent the data, methods, credentials or results when doing science. On the other side I see a lot of press misinformation, credential misrepresentation, association with political-scientific organizations, funds from vested-interest organizations, association with other type of denialisms (tobacco,ozone,aids,evolution), FUD over uncertainties, reiterating attack from every possible angle, ignorance of reliable results, mistake exaggeration, probably more, but I don’t remember now.

So this is why I believe Mr. Lerner is doing sound science – I think he is not employing any shady methods. Although the mainstream fusion community might not like it they will have to validate his results.