Re: [Vo]:Amusing analysis of CF/LENR in the world
On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 11:44 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.comwrote: Never ascribe to evil what can be ascribed to stupidity. Better and usually more applicable is the trope: Never ascribe to mere stupidity that which can be ascribed to unenlightened self-interest.
Re: [Vo]:Amusing analysis of CF/LENR in the world
One of the common pseudoskeptical arguments is that cold fusion believers believe that cold fusion was suppressed. The picture conveyed is that of wild-eyed conspiracy theorists. However, with *very little conspiracy,* cold fusion *was* suppressed, and the story is out in the open, in the historical record, readily accessible if you know where to look, and analyzed in the academic press, particularly in Bart Simon's Undead Science, Rutgers University Press (2002). But few people will actually look at the record, people want their facts predigested, i.e., no longer fact, but interpretation and conclusion. What Jed describes happened. The effect was massively chilling. Why it happened is less clear. Most players, I assume, believed that they were simply serving science, protecting it from bogus claims, or perhaps protecting valuable programs, crucial -- they thought -- to the future of major institutions -- from suffering loss of funding to a wild-goose chase. Science got lost in the shuffle. The question of cold fusion being worth massive funding (as is what was actually being considered in both DoE reviews, not scientific reality) was an entirely separate question from the reality of the effect. As we know, the heat effect discovered by Pons and Fleischmann (or rediscovered, we don't really know if earlier observations were this effect or artifact) was confirmed. It was a difficult experiment, contrary to expectations. However, researchers who persisted eventually observed it, and this was not confirmation bias, the perception of an effect in the noise. It was well above noise. There was *some* effect, for sure, something was causing heat that chemists were unable to explain. The pseudoskeptics said, This must be chemistry, and, in that, they were just as much outside their own fields as were Pons and Fleischmann when they measured neutrons incorrectly. Once heat/helium was found, and particularly when it was widely confirmed -- one confirmation would ordinarily be enough! -- we knew that not only was this not a known chemical effect, it was actually a nuclear reaction, even though it only rarely produced neutrons or other clear radiation effects, and that the levels of radiation were very low was a huge red herring. To the physicists, this proved the effect -- considered in bulk -- could not be fusion, since the known and well-studied fusion reactions always produced copious radiation. However, helium is a nuclear product, and once helium production was correlated with heat, we knew, and by the mid-1990s, that cold fusion was a nuclear reaction, and very likely deuterium fusion. And there is more. Nickel-hydrogen results are spotty, scattered, but strong enough to suspect that other reactions can take place, other than deuterium fusion. Scientifically, NiH does not have the level of scientific proof that PdD has, but because of all the recent commercial effort, it's reasonably possible that there will be at least demonstration devices available soon. (The commercial efforts, because of the enormous implications, are mostly secret, and cannot be confirmed openly. However, at some point, if NiH effects are real and robust, someone is going to figure out that they can sell demonstration devices *even if they are not particularly reliable,* especially if they are *initially* reliable, but the effect dies out, which is my speculation as to the cause of delay with the various players. At 04:00 PM 11/9/2012, Jed Rothwell wrote: Jeff Berkowitz mailto:pdx...@gmail.compdx...@gmail.com wrote: We have the naysayer scientists who just know it isn't possible, and dismiss anything without such inspection, just as I wouldn't spend too much time looking over a new perpetual motion machine. Can't be done, don't waste anyone's time. They cause little harm. The rejection of cold fusion, as it came down, was so unjust that it created contrary reactions. Cold fusion researchers circled the wagons, defending each other, even defending poor research and premature conclusions. Poor research, however, may simply be underfunded research. Researchers only have some much time in the day, week, month, year. There really isn't a problem if we all return to normal science: careful observation of results, lack of belief in theory but seeking to falsify one's own hypotheses, the use of controls and correlated observation, and, very important, general trust in experimental results as being valid. Experimental results, the actual data, is not at all the same as conclusions from results. Perhaps the results are artifact, perhaps not, but the reason why scientific fraud, the *faking* of results, is so serious an offense is that it can cause massive waste of time, lots of running down blind alleys. Mere error in interpretation doesn't do this, if it's accurately reported. The biggest single offense I can find in the history of cold fusion was the
Re: [Vo]:Amusing analysis of CF/LENR in the world
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.com wrote: One of the common pseudoskeptical arguments is that cold fusion believers believe that cold fusion was suppressed. The picture conveyed is that of wild-eyed conspiracy theorists. However, with *very little conspiracy,* cold fusion *was* suppressed, and the story is out in the open, in the historical record, readily accessible if you know where to look, and analyzed in the academic press . . . Exactly. Only it isn't a conspiracy. A conspiracy is surreptitious and organized. This is done openly and the opponents are not organized. I don't mind so much that people on Wikipedia ridicule the idea that cold fusion is suppressed, but it irks me when reporters do that. I tell them they should talk to Bockris or Prelas, or any other researcher. They never do. Heck, you don't even need to talk to the researchers. Talk to Park! He used to brag about how effectively he suppressed cold fusion, and how he and others rooted out and fired federal scientists who talked about cold fusion. He was as open and proud of it as a biologist who campaigns to prevent teaching creationism in biology classes would be. He thinks cold fusion is as bad as that. What Jed describes happened. The effect was massively chilling. Why it happened is less clear. It seems clear to me. Most players, I assume, believed that they were simply serving science, protecting it from bogus claims, or perhaps protecting valuable programs, crucial -- they thought -- to the future of major institutions -- from suffering loss of funding to a wild-goose chase. That's it. That is what they said. I assume they are sincere. As I said, ask Robert Park. I expect he will repeat that the researchers are lunatics, frauds and criminals. Google will turn up thousands of people who agree with him. We have the naysayer scientists who just know it isn't possible, and dismiss anything without such inspection . . . They cause little harm. The rejection of cold fusion, as it came down, was so unjust that it created contrary reactions. Cold fusion researchers circled the wagons, defending each other, even defending poor research and premature conclusions. No, they did not. Cold fusion researchers often say things about other researchers almost as bad as what the extreme skeptics say. I see no unity in the field. I wish they would unify a little. Anyway, the professors who dismissed it or ignored it did no harm. People ignore many developments in science. It only hurts when you stop other people from doing the research. That happens just about every damn time someone tries to do a cold fusion experiment! Park and his friends in Washington and in the Jasons hear about it, pull strings, make threats, and Boom! -- the funding disappears. Here's how it works -- Imagine a 30-year-old junior professor hoping to get tenure. He suggests they do a cold fusion experiment. A week later the Dean calls him in and says we've had a call from Washington, and if you don't shut up about cold fusion, our department will lose its funding, you will be fired, your name will be published in the local newspaper with claims that you are engaged in fraud. Oh and by the way, a Congressman says he might want to call you in, grill you in a Congressional Investigation of academic fraud, and demand your back taxes and personal correspondence. That has what you might call a chilling effect. Granted, that is a composite picture. It does not usually go that far. It does not have to go far, because there are not many 30-year-olds willing to sacrifice their careers and give up their dreams just to do an experiment that probably will not work. My parents worked in Russia during WWII, as U.S. embassy employees coordinating lend-lease. In the 1950s, they and many other people with knowledge of the Soviet Union were attacked by Sen. McCarthy as traitors. Fortunately, they were not harmed, but many of their friends had their careers, their lives, marriages and friendships cut to ribbons -- for the crime of speaking Russian and knowing something about the situation in Russia. I assure you, no one was more anti-communist than my parents, since they actually lived and worked in Stalinist Russia. McCarthy did not care; he attacked anyone, just because he could, just because these people knew about the subject and were vulnerable. You see the same pattern today in attacks on cold fusion. People such as McCarthy and Park are professional bullies. They accumulate political power by destroying other people, and by terrorizing people who cannot fight back, such as the imaginary 30-year-old I described. They do not give a damn what the facts are. Taubes told Storms that he did not care at all whether cold fusion is real or not. His goal was to sell books. This is about power, politics, money and influence. Science has nothing to do with it. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Amusing analysis of CF/LENR in the world
At 11:20 AM 11/9/2012, Jeff Berkowitz wrote: I have a friend, very smart guy, who I've been working on over time with occasional CF/LENR tidbits and arguments. Lately he wrote this, and gave me permission to send it along. Perhaps this response will help your friend. So, let's identify all the groups involved here, from the seekers to the suckers. :-) It's not necessarily easy to do. But, if one knows the science, i.e., what is scientifically know about CF/LENR, it's possible to tell who knows it and who does not. There are few people who know the science who reject it. The obvious examples that might come up, say Richard Garwin, while smart physicists, don't seem to be familiar with the breadth of evidence, and I've never seen them answer the fundamental research that demonstrates the reality of cold fusion, except with the kind of objections that one can come up with *without knowing the real evidence, confirmations, etc.* We have the seekers, people like Jeff who think this just might be real, more likely than not that LENR can be used for some good, but are aware of all the hucksters out there. There are two questions which must be kept separate, or the whole issue becomes confused. The first is the reality of cold fusion/LENR. As long as we don't imagine that fusion tells us what the mechanism is, cold fusion is confirmed. It's real. However, what has been most widely confirmed is palladium deuteride fusion, and it seems to be highly sensitive to difficult-to-control materials issues, and may not be sustainable; i.e., it's possible that the effect destroys the specific narrow environment that catalyzes it. So cold fusion is real, but *commercial applications of cold fusion* might not be real, and might never be real. But we don't have scientific evidence either way. The major research problem -- hardly anyone is doing research any more to prove that cold fusion is real, it's a waste of time -- is the mechanism. It is unknown. There are theories people are working on, and none are complete, and none can yet be used to make the kind of predictions necessary to engineer practical applications. So practical applications, at this point, will be hit-or-miss, and mostly miss. The commercial investigations are, partly because of some really bad decisions by the U.S. Patent Office, secret, and there is some motivation for entrepreneurs to make themselves look crazy, to put others off the trail while at the same time attracting enough interest to raise needed capital. How one tells the difference between a con artist and a shrewed entrepreneur who makes himself look like a con artist is ... How? Got any magic method? We have the hopefuls, like me, that hope it can be found but don't have a whole lot of faith, will be tickled to death (by a large neutron beam) if it is found to be possible. Cold fusion, it's well-known, doesn't produce neutrons. If it did, it would be very dangerous, being around a cold fusion reactor, unless heavily shielded, would be fatal. This was, in fact, one of the reasons for rejection of cold fusion in 1989, because ordinary, known fusion, produces copious neutrons. Did you hear about Fleischmann's graduate student? He's not dead. No, it's an unknown reaction, still, but what is known about the Fleischmann-Pons Heat Effect is that it produces helium, commensurate with expected ratio from heat if the reaction is the conversion of deuterium to helium, by any means, and without any significant radiation, not neutrons, and not gamma rays either (which classically would have been expected from two solitary deuterons fusing to a single helium nucleus). We have the sloppy scientists who want it to be true but are so sloppy in their work they can't tell, but claim they have actually done it and are open about how. Some want investors, some don't. Some scientists can't reproduce the results, other sloppy scientists can sort of on occasion tend to kinda verify the results. All scientists who followed the original protocol, and who dealt with problems as they arose, and who persisted as needed, eventually found the effect. There was quite ample confirmation of the heat effect, on its own, above noise, carefully measured. Some of the research was far from sloppy. But the stake was driven through the heart of pure skepticism in cold fusion when Miles found, in 1991-94 or so, that helium was being produced with the heat. Once Miles was confirmed -- and the finding is matched by the results of a dozen research groups -- this totally blows the error in measuring heat hypothesis out of the water. The effect is real. Specific methods are difficult to replicate. That's an engineering problem, not a scientific one. It does make confirmation more difficult, by we deal with erratic results all the time, for example with medicine. We can still determine if a medicine is effective, through statistics. In the case
Re: [Vo]:Amusing analysis of CF/LENR in the world
On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 11:06 AM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax a...@lomaxdesign.comwrote: (The claims of public demonstrations by Rossi are *all* marred, so far, by possible error or fraud modes that were overlooked at the time, and Rossi has consistently refused support by people like Jed Rothwell, who would design accurate tests. However, see above. Con artist or shrewd entrepreneur. See, lots of people are uncomfortable with not knowing things, so often will make up a story, aha! *This* is what is happening, when they don't have enough evidence to do more than guess.) People are quite uncomfortable saying I don't know, e.g., about Andrea Rossi and the other entrepreneurs, even when this is the most reasonable conclusion at the moment. I think it's fine to have a hunch, even a strong one -- in the case of Rossi, one's hunch might be that he'll eventually be confirmed, or perhaps it is that he's found something weird but he can't get it to work reliably, or perhaps it's that he's nothing more than a huckster. But people want to go beyond hunches and settle the matter for good in their minds and in public venues. No one wants to be swindled by one's own gullibility, either privately or in front of others, and I suspect that this kind of cognitive pressure underlies some of the close-mindedness out there. With regard to the blogs, science magazines and scientific journals, the impression is that there are distinct groups (to zoom in a little on part of the list that Jeff's friend provided): 1. Scientists, engineers and other technically-minded people who are keeping an open mind (the large majority) 2. Capable journalists who are prepared to do careful, meticulous work, assuming their editors permit them to publish (a minority at this point) 3. Journalists and commentators who see themselves as too busy to understand the history and the nuances of the experimental record, who forgo a careful examination of the facts, and who partly as a result allow their own biases to introduce a certain spin into their articles, which end up repeating the usual tropes (the majority of journalists and commentators right now) 4. Scientists and science journalists who have been taken in by an idee fixe that has derailed an adequate examination of the matter (a vocal minority) Note that the people in group (4) are sometimes quite knowledgeable. They may have come to an erroneous conclusion about the possibility of cold fusion, but they are often too honest with the specifics to make their books completely useless. Despite Huizenga's attachment to the requirement that neutrons be observed for the PF effect to be considered non-chemical, you can still learn some interesting things from his book. I am enjoying Frank Close's book right now, and I suspect that I will Nate Hoffman's book as well. Neither Close's nor Hoffman's books appear to be polemical tracts in the way that Huizinga's book is. Gradually the facts escape the confusion and misstatement of the popular press and make it in bits and pieces to the people who matter. Eric
RE: [Vo]:Amusing analysis of CF/LENR in the world
Pretty good summary of the 'players' in this game. Given the cleverness (aka, deviousness) of the human animal, and the very high stakes that LENR involves, I think anything you can imagine happening has or will play out. -Mark Iverson From: Jeff Berkowitz [mailto:pdx...@gmail.com] Sent: Friday, November 09, 2012 8:21 AM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: [Vo]:Amusing analysis of CF/LENR in the world I have a friend, very smart guy, who I've been working on over time with occasional CF/LENR tidbits and arguments. Lately he wrote this, and gave me permission to send it along. - - - So, let's identify all the groups involved here, from the seekers to the suckers. :-) We have the seekers, people like Jeff who think this just might be real, more likely than not that LENR can be used for some good, but are aware of all the hucksters out there. We have the hopefuls, like me, that hope it can be found but don't have a whole lot of faith, will be tickled to death (by a large neutron beam) if it is found to be possible. We have the sloppy scientists who want it to be true but are so sloppy in their work they can't tell, but claim they have actually done it and are open about how. Some want investors, some don't. Some scientists can't reproduce the results, other sloppy scientists can sort of on occasion tend to kinda verify the results. We have the hucksters (used to sell water powered cars) who claim to be able to do it, but always leave out some details so no one can actually try to reproduce their results. They want investors! They almost exclusively have something they are putting energy into and claim to be getting more out (says the math). We have the naysayer scientists who just know it isn't possible, and dismiss anything without such inspection, just as I wouldn't spend too much time looking over a new perpetual motion machine. Can't be done, don't waste anyone's time. We may have the evil forces of the current energy cartel that want us to buy their gasoline and coal, the same guys that bought and buried the 150 MPG carburetor. They want no discussion And last, we may have the good scientists that really have found how to do this, and are fighting their way through all the bad press the sloppies and the hucksters create. Can't speak in public forums because they have been tarred with the same brush used on the hucksters. I think that's it? Who do you think shuts down discussions -- the naysayers or the evil forces? Do you think they even go so far as to spawn hucksters to help discredit the whole field? - - - Jeff
Re: [Vo]:Amusing analysis of CF/LENR in the world
Jeff Berkowitz pdx...@gmail.com wrote: We have the naysayer scientists who just know it isn't possible, and dismiss anything without such inspection, just as I wouldn't spend too much time looking over a new perpetual motion machine. Can't be done, don't waste anyone's time. They cause little harm. We may have the evil forces of the current energy cartel . . . I do not think they have played any role. They do not know that cold fusion exists. I think that's it? Who do you think shuts down discussions -- the naysayers or the evil forces? I know exactly who, when, where and how this research has been derailed. Ask any researcher! They tell you the same kind of thing, time after time. There are examples in books and in the LENR-CANR archives, such as Melvin Miles describing how they assigned him to the stockroom, or the time they hauled Taleyarkhan before the U.S. Congress and demanded his tax returns and personal correspondence. Here, let me list the ways: Intimidation, harassment, sabotaging equipment, publishing false data. Threatening to deport researchers. Destroying peoples' reputations by publishing in the mass media assertions that they are criminals, frauds and lunatics. Destroying the reputations of professors and graduate students at TAMU and elsewhere with false accusations of fraud. Threat of firing people, actually firing people, cutting funding, telling researchers that if they publish results or attend meetings they will be summarily fired. Canceling meetings, canceling publications at the last minute, interfering in normal funding. Ridicule, character assassination, and misinformation and nonsense in the mass media, Wikipedia and elsewhere. Outright lies such as: Cold fusion was never replicated; no peer-reviewed papers were ever published; the effect is very small; there have been proven fraudulent experiments (other than MIT's). Perversion of the peer review system described by Schwinger: The pressure for conformity is enormous. I have experienced it in editors’ rejection of submitted papers, based on venomous criticism of anonymous referees. The replacement of impartial reviewing by censorship will be the death of science. And so on, and so forth. This is hardly unique to cold fusion. Such things are quite common in academic science. This is not history. All of these activities continue unabated up to the present moment. The people doing this include, for example, Ouellette and the editors at *Scientific American*, the people I described in the document The DOE lies again, Richard Garwin, Robert Park and many others. I often cite Park because he openly brags about his role in suppressing cold fusion and destroying people's lives and careers. Most of the others prefer to keep a low profile. Yes, some of these people are evil. But mainly they are very, *very*stupid. They are like Donald Trump and the other birthers. Believe me, I have met them. You can't hide stupidity, and as Schiller said, the gods themselves contend in vain against it. The one positive thing I can say is that most of them are sincere. They honestly believe that cold fusion is criminal fraud and lunacy, and it was never been replicated or published, etc. blah, blah. I suppose if I believed that I might be in favor of suppressing it. However I hope that I would have enough sense to check the peer-reviewed literature first before publishing such extreme accusations in the *Washington Post* or the *Scientific American*. - Jed
