Reply To: Animated nuclear reaction.

[jamesr]

We seem to be getting a little off-topic here but… I applaud your skepticism Dave, I too am skeptical of a lot of current scientific dogma. But I think that for something as well understood as radioactive heating it is worth towing the party line.

When we (focusfusion) are seen by the scientific community-at-large as being on the fringe and confrontational about everything I think they will not take us seriously on the subjects where we want them to listen, and take note of out paradigm shifting ideas.

It takes a lot to shift a well established paradigm, and I believe there are far too many career scientists out there these days not willing to take a step back and listen to what others are saying.

Theorys such as the standard model should be taught in school just as Newtonian gravity or any other theory is. The important thing to teach is scientific method. Theorys are useful tools to help us understand, predict and do calculations about the world. How ‘real’ something like neutrinos are is a question for philosophers, for me, they enable us to do experiments and calculations to good accuracy, and highlight (as in the solar neutrino problem) where our understanding needs improving. If someone comes up with a better theory it doesn’t mean previous calculations, such as the age of the earth, are necessarily wrong, they are just not as accurate as they could be.