At 03:47 PM 10/28/2010, Terry Blanton wrote:
By parsimony, maybe bubble creation rips apart water molecules and
collapse fuses the hydrogen by brute force. Xrays and energetic
neutrons resulting could make one sick. But the onset of symptoms
usually takes less than six hours.
They apparently had rapid onset of symptoms.
I don't recall, did they suffer hair loss?
Mark wrote, I quoted here: "I lost about one third of my hair."
Moving on, I've noticed another piece of the tendency to hype in
promoting this.
In his comment defending his reputation against my hoax suspicion,
Mark wrote, about the author of the examiner.com article:
Mark Albertson is the TV producer for Tech Closeup, that has 40
million viewers and did a superb job of writing the article.
I'd agree that the article was well-written, and it appears that the
author did contact sources, he did not simply depend on what Mark
LeClair told him. He talked to Storms and to David Nagel. He tried to
talk to "Media Sciences," but though there is no Media Sciences,
there is a Media Sciences International, and they make printer
cartridges. They are in New Jersey, so that's the company Albertson
tried to contact. Mark mentions that they provided the analysis of
the elements found in certain material (from the nuclear incident?),
"Media Sciences performed SEM-EDAX for us gratis." Given the nature
of Media Sciences, that seems dodgy, but perhaps they have the
equipment for some reason. I'd think that it was not "they" who
provided the analyses, but someone specific there. In any case, they
did not return phone calls from Albertson's phone calls were not returned.
Mark cites about everything he can think of to demonstrate his
reputation. He's known in the field of cavitation, that's clear. But
almost everything is pretty old.
Now, about Mark Albertson. http://www.techcloseup.com/ is his site.
From there:
Mark Albertson, Executive Producer of Tech Closeup, now has a
regular column on technology in the San Francisco Examiner.
This is less than impressive. In fact, it's misleading. There is a
newspaper called "The San Francisco Examiner."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Examiner Their web site is
http://sfexaminer.com
Albertson's column is on examiner.com. I.e, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Examiner.com
examiner.com has local editions. One of the first was in San
Francisco, and here is his author page there:
http://www.examiner.com/technology-in-san-francisco/mark-albertson
As this is the Examiner, and it is the San Francisco edition, it is
"the San Francisco Examiner"....
That fooled me once on Wikipedia, I imagined that the venerable
newspaper would be a reliable source.... not. There is no editorial
oversight, and writers are paid per view, about a penny. You can
imagine how this goes over on Wikipedia.... it's generally
blacklisted, but some of the articles on the examiner.com are quite
good, and they are occasionally whitelisted when they are the best
source available on something, and there are grounds for considering
it reliable enough. I consider this article by Albertson good, it
seems reasonably fair and it seems reasonably balanced. It isn't
perfect. Now, what does that have to do with Mark's reliability as a scientist?
I noticed one statement from the article:
If true, the two Maine-based scientists have found a process that
could revolutionize the energy industry. But, like any new
technology using unusual methods, their research has also come under
fire and is facing a good deal of skepticism from the scientific community.
I have seen no sign that the research has been announced to the
"scientific community." The first public mention I've been able to
find of this research, including the radiation accident, which
purportedly happened a year ago, was the examiner.com article. So
what is Albertson talking about? What scientists did he talk to? He
only mentions Nagel and Storms, and Storms was noncommital and Nagel
was positively skeptical, as I read the comment in the article. I've
looked, and while I could certainly overlook something, I have been
able to find nothing about their work as it relates to nuclear
reactions, beyond a LinkedIn page for Serge that mentions an
interest. The company page mentions nothing about this research.
There are no public discussions until ... vortex-l, here (since the
CMNS list, which predates this discussion by a couple of days, is private.)
Is Albertson talking only about Storms and Nagel? If so, this isn't
terribly representative of the "scientific community," this would be,
rather, the "cold fusion research community," two members of it, and
they were both quite skeptical, more than Albertson indicated, I
believe. I see no sign that Mark has convinced *anyone* of his
claims. But also no sign that he's seriously tried, in public. He may
have been rejected privately many times. And both Storms and Nagel
would not be inclined, as cold fusion researchers, to reject him out of hand.
That he might stumble across a bubble fusion technique that was
wildly stronger than anything done before isn't terribly surprising.
They are using new and powerful techniques in the cavitation field,
they would be well-placed to be the first to find something like
this. But ... that Mark would be inclined to explain his results,
with only a year of further research, much of it being, allegedly,
very ill, with fringe science word salad (pardon me, folks, but ZPE
and the relationship of the Casimir Effect to something like this is
fringe. Fringe doesn't mean "wrong," but discussions here tend to be
long on exotic theory and short on experimental fact), is a
remarkable coincidence.
He's been asked to describe the evidence for his conclusions; he
didn't, generally. He just provided more conclusions, for the most part.
I wrote to Albertson, by the way, raising some suspicions. No response.
I also sent mail to both Mark and Serge at nanospire.com. No response
from those addresses. The mail was a cc from a post to the CMNS list
and mentioned, at the time, that I was sending the ccs to allow the
Real Mark LeClair to realize that this was going on, if this was an
impersonation hoax.
At this point, the only reason to believe any of this is that Mark
says so. Ordinarily, we are inclined to accept personal reports. But
... when the personal report becomes outlandish enough, we sensibly
become a little skeptical!
This is important: Mark wrote: "David Nagel had agreed in 2005 to be
one of my Ph.D advisors"
But then Mark writes: "It was Dave Nagel described the data he saw at
the time as "a feast". Dr. Storms we have a great deal of respect
for. Dave Nagel and NanoSpire no longer see eye to eye for reasons I
would rather not discuss."
Dr. Storms hasn't made public comments on this except for the
examiner.com story. He's commented on the CMNS list, but I'd rather
not copy that here unless he gives permission. Bottom line, though,
nobody is supporting Mark's conclusions, and they are only saying
that, if this data is real, it's "a feast" or important. Nobody has
personally verified any of this, everything that might seem to be
interesting or exciting has come from Mark. Nothing has appeared, so
far, from Serge.
