Re: Ron Mallet tonight on Coast to Coast
Pamela,
Face it Darby. I don't think many people will fund time travel.. maybe in the selling of the book
he can fund it himself. Maybe that's his whole plan. A back- up plan.
I have already ordered a copy of his book.
I agree that getting grant funding through the University in this area is difficult. But its not impossible. But I think that this is where Dr. Mallett is really having his funding problems:
He's been a PhD physicist for almost 30 years - and he's produced exactly two published research papers. He's basically an uknown person in his field from the aspect of advancing the science of theoretical physics. If you look at the CV's for the other members of the physics department at Tulane his output is virtually zero. His peers have produced dozens or even hundreds of published works in their fields.
Why can't he get research funding? Probably because over the past three decades he hasn't been doing any research that people who fund theoretical physics projects can point to and, based on his output, make a risk/reward assessment.
And we've been talking about Art Bell and David Anderson. David Anderson is not someone that a legitimate physicist wants to have his name associated with if he's looking for respect (and funding) in his field.
Art made the Mallett/Anderson connection in his intro to the show. And that is why I brought it up on the Mallett thread. Art indirectly associated Mallett with someone whom we highly suspect of having played a hoax (or worse because money was involved) on the Internet time travel community.
Mallett did himself a huge professional disservice by appearing on Coast-2-Coast - and Art added to it. Dumb and Dummer.
It was a very smart move for Mallett to go on Art's show if his sole motivation was to promote his book. That will make him a lot of money.
But it was a very dumb move to go on to Art's show if he really wants to have any credibility in his field and obtain research grants.
Moreover, its his second very dumb move regarding this project. The first one was to jump the gun and make press releases about his work before he had even published it in a peer reviewed journal.
So you're correct. If he's going to get funded he's going to have to do it himself. I'm betting that he won't do that. But even if he does he will still be faced with the problem of credibility no matter what his research shows. That's where he will take the really big hit. If he shows positive results he's going to have to publish his work in a
major journal - and it will probably have to be Physical Letters A. And the hit willbe, "Isn't this the guy who was on Art Bell's show promoting a pop-sci book?"
He's going to need, not $250,000, but millions of research dollars if his initial results are positive. But if his peers have doubts about his credibility he's going to have the same problem only bigger (in dollars) the next go round.
And that's a shame - assuming that he ends up with positive results. But it will be no one's fault but his own.