On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 9:23 AM, Edmund Storms <stor...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> First of all, you and many other people made such a fuss about CF being > impossible, that the money required to advance understanding was denied. > Poppycock. The argument was that CF was highly unlikely, but in spite of that, much of the scientific world suspended disbelief to give the two distinguished scientists the benefit of the doubt. Pons was cheered by thousands, and scientists all over the world went to their labs to try to reproduce. Even Morrison, who eventually became the most vocal skeptic wrote shortly after the announcement: "… I feel this subject will become so important to society that we must consider the broader implications as well as the scientific ones […] the present big power companies will be running down their oil and coal power stations while they are building deuterium separation plants and new power plants based on cold fusion.…." Optimism ruled until the weakness of the evidence became apparent. And even after skepticism took over, money was allocated. Utah gave P&F 5 million for their cold fusion center. Then they went to France with 10 times that from Toyota. You've estimated 500M has been spent. Considering P&F spent less than 100k to make the discovery, 5000 times that should be more than enough to prove it to the world. And yet, the evidence is no better now than it was in 1989. OK, we all know that some money was provided. This amount did achieve an > increased level of understanding, which you now deny exists, but it was not > enough. > This increased level of understanding was summarized perfectly by Hagelstein when he said: "aside from the existence of an excess heat effect, there is very little that our community agrees on". And if 10 times more had been spent on cold fusion, and the same marginal results existed, if from more labs, you would still say it was not enough. Perpetual motion people could say that there has not been enough funding to prove it works. Every fringe science can make the same argument. Then you use this failure to make progress as evidence that the effect is > not real. Surely you see the problem with this kind of circular argument. > No. I really don't. Scientists look at evidence, including all the evidence that suggests cold fusion should not work, and make judgements. And those judgements include estimates on the scale of the experiment, and what would be required to establish proof-of-principle. The consensus judgement is that there is nothing to it, and that if there were, the amount of effort already spent on it would have almost certainly been much more than enough to establish proof. Your claim that it hasn't been proven because of insufficient funds simply has no end, and it applies indiscriminantly to any fringe science and therefore has no persuasive value. You say that everyone in conventional science does not believe the effect > is real. This statement is not accurate. Actually, most scientists have no > knowledge about what has been discovered. Therefore, their opinion is based > on ignorance. When I tell people what has been discovered, they are amazed > and become very interested. > Then you should have no trouble securing all the funding you need. But just above, you said funding was denied because people believed CF was impossible. So which is it? The truth is that when arms-length experts are enlisted to examine the best evidence, as in the 2004 DOE panel, or for any other grant proposals, or for submissions to prominent journals, they usually come up negative. If it weren't true that mainstream science rejects cold fusion, advocates would not spend so much time complaining that it ignores, suppresses, rejects, doesn't fund, doesn't publish, doesn't patent, doesn't replicate, doesn't test anything related to cold fusion. Most working physicists were around in 1989, and they learned enough about cold fusion and its claims to know that if it were real, it would not be so resistant to protracted experiment. That if it were real -- that if metal hydrides represented an accessible energy density a million times higher than dynamite in a table top experiment at ordinary conditions -- it would be easy to design an experiment to prove it unequivocally. It would not be necessary to read dozens of papers to believe it. It would be like the Wright brothers' 1908 flight in Paris, or high Tc superconductivity in 1986. > The series of ICCF conferences, the latest being at the Univ. of Missouri, > you must conclude were organized by fools and people outside of > conventional science. > > You and a few other people have created a myth. I can understand why > people trying to get support for their work on hot fusion would want CF to > die > Really? I can't. Unless they were quite certain there was nothing to it. They can be forgiven for objecting to their research being shut down for a pipe dream that will come to nothing. But if they thought the field had merit, they would have to be psychopaths to want to see it die for their own selfish interest. Trained physicists would find employment, maybe even working on developing cold fusion. And they would not be so naive to think that they could suppress the field indefinitely, and their inevitable failure (if CF were real) would be far worse for them than pro-active acceptance. but why do you get fun by advancing the myth? > I don't see it as advancing a myth, but anyway, why do people golf, play chess, argue about english usage or computer platforms in on-line forums? It's caught my interest. What more can I say? > Why would a sane, intelligent person spend time doing something so > worthless to society and himself? If CF is real, all of civilization would > benefit, a benefit your actions would delay. If it is not real, only a few > of us are wasting our time and do not need you to save us from this waste. > I have no illusions that my activity makes any difference one way or the other. But, I think skepticism and challenge is good for science, and if CF is so fragile that argument delays it, then it's probably because there's nothing to it. Moreover, just as a general idea, promoting science over pseudoscience is a worthwhile pursuit. There are many books on the subject. And in particular, CF appears to have become a rather fertile ground for scams and hoaxes, which the world would be better without.
