Michel Jullian wrote:
Now try another impersonation. Imagine yourself in the place of a
hypothetical CF experimenter who realizes years later that his past
overunity claims were erroneous for some unobvious reason, but still
believes (rightly so maybe) that there must be a way to make CF
work. Would you endanger the whole field -and therefore the world-
by admitting your error, or would you keep quiet?
I would say the likelihood of this is roughly equal to the likelihood
that scientists will discover that copper and gold are the same
element, or that the world is only 6000 years old.
The over unity claims are not based on a researchers' opinions. They
are based on replicated, peer-reviewed experimental evidence,
fundamental laws of physics, and instruments and techniques that have
been used in millions of experiments and industrial processes since
the mid-19th century, such as calorimetry, autoradiographs and other
x-ray detection, spectroscopy, tritium detection techniques and so
on. These techniques have been used to confirm the results by
hundreds of scientists in thousands of runs. If they could all be
wrong for some reason, the experimental method itself does not work,
and science would not exist.
If a cold fusion researcher were for some reason to question his own
high-Sigma result, he would be wrong. To take a concrete example,
researchers at Caltech were convinced that they did not observe
excess heat. They thought the calibration constant in their
isoperibolic calorimeter was changing instead. However, I am sure
they were wrong about that, and they did actually observe excess
heat. Their opinions to the contrary count for nothing. Just because
the people at Caltech cannot bring themselves to believe indisputable
experimental proof of cold fusion, that does not give them leave to
rewrite the laws of thermodynamics or to claim that an instrument
developed by J. P. Joule in the 1840s does not work!
Science is not based on opinions. It is based on what nature reveals,
in replicated observations and instrument readings. The bedrock basis
of the scientific method is that in the final analysis, all questions
must be settled by experiment, and experiment alone. Experiment
always trumps theory. When instruments show that a phenomenon occurs
many times, in many different labs, with different instrument types,
at a high signal-to-noise ratio, the issue is settled forever. It is
beyond any rational doubt or argument. No better proof can exist in
the physical universe. A scientist cannot "choose" not to believe the
instrument readings, any more than a pilot can choose to pretend he
is on the ground when the airplane is actually flying at 1,000 meters altitude.
Let's push it further. Imagine you lack, unknowingly, the particular
technical skill (some exotic subbranch of EE or plasma physics or
statistics, whatever) which you would need to realize your error.
Cold fusion results are not based on exotic skills or subbranches.
They are based on 19th century science that only a lunatic or
creationist would dispute. The excess heat and tritium results are
sometimes subtle, but in other cases they are tremendous and far
beyond any possible instrument error. Sigma 100 excess heat and
tritium at a million times background are not debatable, and there is
no chance they are caused by error or contamination.
I said that "people who do not believe what the instruments reveal
are not scientists." Everyone knows that some working scientists do
not believe cold fusion results, but they have temporarily stopped
acting as scientists, just as a policeman who goes on a rampage and
beats innocent people is not acting as a policeman. Skeptical
scientists who reject cold fusion fall in two categories:
1. Those who have not seen the evidence, or who refuse to look at it.
2. Those who look at the evidence, agree that it is indisputable and
then dismiss it anyway, such as the DoE reviewer who looked at
Iwamura and wrote:
"The paper by Iwamura et al. presented at ICCF10 (Ref. 47 in DOE31)
does an exhaustive job of using a variety of modern analytical
chemistry methods to identify elements produced on the surface of
coated Pd cold-fusion foils. . . .
The analytical results, from a variety of techniques, such as mass
spectroscopy and electron spectroscopy, are very nice. It seems
difficult at first glance to dispute the results. . . .
From a nuclear physics perspective, such conclusions are not to be
believed . . ."
http://lenr-canr.org/Collections/DoeReview.htm#StormsRothwellCritique
This person is not acting as a scientist, and the last sentence has
no meaning. It is not a "nuclear physics perspective"; it is an
imaginary prospective, or one based on a kind of faith, a cult, or
superstition. If you cannot "dispute" replicated results -- meaning
you cannot find a technical error -- then you must believe them.
Without this rule, no technical argument can be settled, and no
scientific progress can occur.
- Jed
