Years ago, Peter Hagelstein wrote one of the best essays I know of about science and human nature:
https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Hagelsteinontheoryan.pdf He wrote another wide-ranging paper in JCMNS 35: "Theory and Experiments in Condensed Matter Nuclear Science" https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BiberianJPjcondensedzh.pdf#page=55 It is mostly technical, about theory, but it ends with this paragraph about human nature. I recall a conversation that I had in 1989 with a well-known skeptic, who explained to me that it would be really nice if the excess heat in the Fleischmann-Pons experiment was real. The key problem, he said, was that he just didn’t believe measurements done with isoperibolic calorimetry. If there were even one measurement done with a better calorimetric technique, such as flow calorimetry, then he assured me that he would become a believer in the effect. Some time later I informed him that some very nice positive excess heat results had been obtained at SRI in a flow calorimeter. He immediately became angry. He explained that the only way he would believe that energy had been produced would be if a commensurate number of neutrons were measured. This is called "moving the goalposts." I wonder if this person even realized he was doing that. Did he realize he was contradicting his earlier statements? Surely he knew that cold fusion -- if real -- does not produce "commensurate" neutrons in the same ratio to the heat as plasma fusion does. That was one of the first things revealed about it. I have often encountered similar attitudes. The 2004 DoE panel members opposed to cold fusion had only irrational, emotional, factually wrong arguments, listed here on p. 43: https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJresponsest.pdf These arguments violate junior high school textbook science. It is shocking that professional scientists would make such mistakes. I cannot read minds. I do not know if the person Peter spoke to and the DoE reviewers sincerely believed what they said, or whether they were being disingenuous trolls. I usually assume that people mean what they say. I assume these people were irrational because they were ruled by emotion. Their scientific training went out the window. If they had examined some other experiments, they would not make such mistakes.
