On Aug 29, 2008, at 12:28 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Edmund Storms wrote:
I hope you are right, Jed. But I can hear the response to any
request. "I
agree, evidence for CF exists, But you have no idea why or how it
works and
you can't make it work very often. We have an energy problem we
need to
solve right now using methods that are better understood. So come
back when
you have more understanding". How would you respond to such a
rejection?
I would ignore it and look for someone else who understands how
science and research work. There are many unhelpful people. We need to
ignore them and continue looking for enlightened people.
Yes, but where do you find such people in the government?
Until someone can show how the effect can be
made to occur every time on demand, I don't think we can get much
public
funding. Meanwhile, slow progress is being made using private
funding.
Most funding for cold fusion is public, especially DARPA and the Navy
in the U.S., and the Italian national nuclear laboratories.
Yes, but this work is tightly focused on replication in the US. The
Italian work as well as that done in Russia is broader. We need
efforts that are designed to understand the process rather than just
prove that it is real.
I do not think it is necessary to make cold fusion occur every time on
demand. I think that with the experiments we already have we could
convince more people if only we presented the experiments and the data
in a more convincing fashion to a wider audience. I believe that cold
fusion researchers have often failed to take advantage of the
opportunities they have been granted.
A phenomenon can not be investigated unless it can be made to occur on
demand. No one will put a large amount of money into an effect that is
seldom observed. That is why the funding levels are small as they
should be.
This
is the right approach and will eventually provide the information
demanded
by public funding agencies.
We have public funding; we need more. We have often maligned the
government in this business but actually it has done more for cold
fusion than industry, universities or other institutions.
True. However, most of this money was spent trying to learn whether
the effect was real, not to understand the mechanism. As a result,
the effect was shown to be real. We now need to understand the
mechanism. This will take a lot of money. Unfortunately, money for
such basic science in the US is hard to find.
Ed
- Jed
