Re: Teslas Ball Lightning

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: William Beaty <billb@xxxxxxxxxx>

On Thu, 28 Jul 2005, Tesla list wrote:

> Original poster: Ed Phillips <evp@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> "1) By 1977 there were no less than 82 academic papers on ball
> lightning.  A lot of scientific interest for a so called psychological
> effect."
>
> 	Do you have a bibliography?  How many articles were in peer-reviewed
> journals?  If so, which journals?

Here's an old citation search on "ball lightning", covering I think 1989
to 1996:

  http://amasci.com/tesla/bllinspc.txt






> 	I'm convinced my personal "eye witness" event was due to retinal
> fatigue - I've convinced myself of that.

In his book on lightning, atmospheric physicist Martin A. Uman contradicts
the commonly state "fact" that Ball Lightning is a rare event.  He instead
says that the percentage of the US population who has witnessed BL is
around a few percent.  (Whether or not BL is real is not relevant:  many
authors state that eyewitnesses to BL are extremely low in number, and
they are wrong about it.)

The topic of BL illustrates our poor thinking skills and our emotional
bias when encountering the unknown.   Humans seem unable to let the
unknown BE unknown, but instead must leap to a pro/con belief and then
argue to support that belief.       Instead, neither a scoffer nor a woo-
woo be!    :)

Since BL is unproven, watch for your own emotional bias.  If you
constantly argue that BL doesn't exist, then you're not very objective.
(The same is true if you constantly argue that BL exists.)   A good
scientist should be able to take either viewpoint and present that side's
arguments without distorting them or trying to "win" a debate.