Only one of these is any kind of potential scientific discovery: Szilard's hypothesis about the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction. However, the article vastly overstates the case: Szilard did not "solve" the problem of a nuclear chain reaction. He just guessed that a chain reaction involving neutrons might be possible if a suitable element could be found. It's also not clear how much of an inspiration Wells' novel actually was; in the novel, the "atomic power" is based on radioactivity, which was discovered a decade and a half before Wells published, and which does not produce any chain reactions. Szilard's guess was certainly inspired, no question about that, but he might well have had it without ever knowing about Well's novel; learning about the discovery of the neutron would have been enough.

The other items are just new technologies based on already known scientific principles; none of them involved any new scientific discoveries.

> even a null result is a valuable contribution to that effort.

If it's a new null result, sure. But anyone who understood what was already known about fundamental forces at the time would have known that there would be a null result without having to do the research.

> It's also an example of someone from the peanut gallery having an idea worth looking into.

Huh? Wegener was a credentialed scientist; he wasn't "from the peanut gallery".

You've moved the goalposts here quite a bit from "nobody from the [peanut gallery] has ever, in the history of science, come up with an idea worth pursuing" to "their ideas have never resulted in a new scientific discovery"

Stories of technologies that didn't exist and weren't at the time scientifically possible have inspired people to try to make fantasy reality and science has certainly progressed as a result.

I'll leave you with one other example though: https://www.otaquest.com/masahiko-inami-thermo-optical-camou...

> If it's a new null result, sure. But anyone who understood what was already known about fundamental forces at the time would have known that there would be a null result without having to do the research.

That isn't how science works. Why assume that physic abilities which seem to defy everything we know would be dependent on fundamental forces? I'm certain that physicists like Robert G. Jahn and other researchers were well aware of fundamental forces but still thought it was an idea worth pursuing, and of course many of the null results they got were new since the researchers were often doing pioneering research into topics that hadn't seen serious scientific study.

If the US government already had a mountain of prior scientific evidence showing that psychic abilities were non-existent or ineffective they wouldn't have poured such massive amounts of money into that research. What they did have was evidence that other countries (and the USSR in particular) were already doing this kind of research, but much of that was kept secret.

> Huh? Wegener was a credentialed scientist; he wasn't "from the peanut gallery".

I acknowledged that it might be stretching your definition as a scientist exploring a topic outside of his area of expertise.

I haven't moved the goalposts at all. "Worth pursuing" means "results in a new scientific discovery". That's what you are claiming: that listening to the peanut gallery will give us some new scientific discoveries. I'm simply pointing out that it never has up to now.

> Why assume that physic abilities which seem to defy everything we know would be dependent on fundamental forces?

Because everything is dependent on fundamental forces. That's why they're called fundamental. Again, read the Carroll article referenced elsewhere in this discussion.

> If the US government already had a mountain of prior scientific evidence showing that psychic abilities were non-existent or ineffective they wouldn't have poured such massive amounts of money into that research.

Bad example. The US government, like all governments, does lots of things that are stupid and guaranteed to fail.

> a scientist exploring a topic outside of his area of expertise.

It wasn't outside his area of expertise. Many scientists in the course of their work gain expertise outside the narrow area in which they are credentialed.

It is also not impossible for a person with no scientific credentials to become an expert in a scientific field. But if they do that, they are no longer a member of the "peanut gallery". They are a working scientist. A historical example is Michael Faraday, who never had any scientific credentials at all, but made himself an expert in electricity and magnetism by intense study and experimentation.

I don't share your optimism here, and I don't think we're going to reach agreement on this point.