The Debate that the IES Felt They Needed to Delete from their FIRES Forum

Update:  11:43 a.m E.S.T.  EdisonReport received a call from IES informing us that the paper was, in fact, not deleted from their FIRES Forum, as it was never published to begin with as it did not meet their criteria.  The complete article, as well as the title, was purely that of the author. However, the author is not claiming that the Paper was removed, he complains that the Debate was removed.  The author forwarded an email from IES dated 18 MAR 2019 that stated: “Unfortunately, since FIRES was in beta mode at the time, comments made from August – December were not able to be migrated over to the new version of our website that went live in January.  I’ll take a look in our WordPress archive to see if anything was saved,  but I am uncertain as to whether I’ll still have access.”

Editor’s Note:  Last Week, EdisonReport published our first scientific paper, “Introducing a New Structure that Directly Injects Electrons into Light Emitting Quantum Dots.”

This week we are posting a controversial paper by Scott Zimmerman, CEO of Silas, Inc.  Mr. Zimmerman’s paper is a bit unconventional and he is quick to criticize leading industry organizations, such as the Illuminating Engineering Society.   We reached out to IES to get their opinion of the paper and a spokesperson stated, “The IES Forum for Illumination Research, Engineering and Science (FIRES) has four basic requirements for publication, as found on the Policies and Submission Information Page.  These are 1) Originality , 2) Relevance, 3) Technical Merit and 4) Rigor.   In the case of Mr. Zimmerman’s article submitted to FIRES, the FIRES Editorial Board’s numerous requests for documentation to support his claims and assertions were never adequately addressed.  The FIRES Editorial Board welcomes diverse articles and opinions, but will not support articles with unsubstantiated assertions, as this is not consistent with good research, engineering or science.  To answer Mr. Zimmerman’s question, “why” his article was not published in FIRES, the answer is that his article did not meet our Editorial Board’s benchmark for rigor, in spite of many opportunities afforded him to provide evidence that might support his claims.”  

In addition, a leading expert who read the paper explained, “Mr. Zimmerman presents hypotheses as fact.  He has failed to prove that NIR is required for health.”

While EdisonReport makes no claim to the validity of the article, we do think Mr. Zimmerman views regarding NIR are fascinating and are worthy of further discussion, which is why we chose to publish his article.

Read the paper here.