He did say 'stop ridiculing' and not 'stop criticizing'.
It's impossible to have a discussion on perpetual motion or cold fusion because people who don't even understand the basics will jump in and start mocking everyone. These are extreme examples, but the same thing happens to any idea that someone thinks is impossible, naive, or bad.
(I'm not saying I think they are possible. I'm saying it should be possible to have a discussion about them... Because I'm also not saying they're impossible.)
This is exactly the kind of thinking that he's talking about... No idea deserves ridicule, only an open mind and constructive criticism - after all, cold fusion and other things would have a better chance at becoming a reproducible experiment if people wouldn't mock everyone who comes up with a new idea in the field, no matter how ridiculous it sounds.
Taking ideas seriously is the only way to test them. If scientists hadn't once upon a time took the idea of perpetual motion machines and ESP, etc. very seriously, we could not be so certain today that they are not true.
Instead of mocking someone who espouses one of these notions (which I have never found to be an effective method of convincing them that the notion is false), I wonder if encouraging them to take it more seriously (e.g., look up experiments, actually run them, etc.) would be much better t convincing them its wrong.
Perpetual motion doesn't need testing, and never did. It is a gross violation of thermodynamics, all of the science that has gone into that is sufficient. The so called inventors of cold fusion machines should make perhaps even the slightest attempt to not look like skuzzballs and actually demonstrate their work, then ask for reproductions.
Now, these should be added to the 100 years plus research into all of this. Either all of the scientists involved in this research were deluded or lying, or there exist parts of the human mind that may influence the world outside themselves. Now, I suspect that these effects are quite small, but they are nonetheless interesting.
Again, I note that this is extremely controversial, but arguing that ESP has been conclusively demonstrated not to exist (which would, in any case, be impossible) it might be worthwhile to figure out what the hell is going on with these experiments.
I actually ran an experiment on this (for my undergrad thesis) but didn't demonstrate significance (my first harsh intitiation into the importance of statistical power).
On your more general point about testing ideas, no matter how crazy they seem, I totally agree, and i am saddened by the closed minded approach to many subjects displayed by scientists. I do understand though, the incentives are all wrong for this kind of unexpected research.
When I was running the aforementioned experiments, I was told by most of my lecturers that I should never publish or write about this, as it would lead to me never getting a job, which is a really sad state of affairs for a science.
Well... people don't deserve ridicule and they deserve respect.
As much as I preach "all feedback is positive feedback", I don't think that means we should stop treating people like human beings. Its just generally bad form.
He did say 'stop ridiculing' and not 'stop criticizing'
Yes, but in the example he gave when he pointed out that even himself falls for that, he says "instead of complimenting it or saying what I liked about the idea, my first comments were massive flaws I saw in the idea and how it could all fail."
It's impossible to have a discussion on perpetual motion or cold fusion because people who don't even understand the basics will jump in and start mocking everyone. These are extreme examples, but the same thing happens to any idea that someone thinks is impossible, naive, or bad.
(I'm not saying I think they are possible. I'm saying it should be possible to have a discussion about them... Because I'm also not saying they're impossible.)