At 09:41 AM 11/19/2009, Jed Rothwell wrote:
It was published by the Agency. Just not on the Internet. It was
released on Friday the 13th. Do you think I would upload unpublished
material?!? Do you think I want to get in trouble with a Federal agency?
How did you get a copy? The copy I saw was on NET, and no provenance was given.
In my opninion, if this reference is not presented, an skeptic can still
argument, with a reasonable level of doubt, that the document is a
fake/it's not official.
By that standard we would not believe the ERAB report is real, or
the comments made by the 2004 DoE reviewers. Or any of hundreds of
skeptical papers published before 2000 that are not on the web. But
the skeptics would never apply that standard to those documents
because they support the skeptical point of view.
Actually, they don't accept the reviewer comments. That's actually
part of the problem. They don't even accept the body of the 2004
review, they just want to rely on that comment at the end that the
conclusions were much the same as in 1989. Which is true, of course.
Both 1989 and 2004 came to the same conclusion, as to what the DoE
was interested in, theoretically: whether or not to fund research. No
focused program, but specific grants under existing programs to
resolve the obvious questions.
But that statement applied to the body of the report and the position
of the panel is preposterous. There was a world of difference between
the 1989 and 2004 reviews. Only a little more, and the 2004 would
have been a majority "cold fusion is likely" conclusion. In 1989,
support for CF was very weak, no more than about two panelists,
including the co-chair who demanded the relatively lukewarm
statement. Nobody had to make that demand, to threaten to resign, in 2004.
Along the same lines, at Wikipedia Hipocryte wrote:
"[The DIA document is] a primary source. Primary sources are not
notable unless they are adressed by secondary sources."
He did not dismiss the 2004 DoE report for that reason.
That's right. In any case, that report is a secondary source
analysis. It's not peer-reviewed, perhaps, though that's not clear.
It's an ordinary secondary source, better than a media source,
probably weaker than something like the ACS Sourcebook. In other
words, there is already lots of secondary source reviewing cold
fusion, but they keep making up excuses. Obviously, Marwan and Krivit
managed to hoodwink those at the American Chemical Society who are
responsible for the Symposium series. And somehow that has managed to
escape notice, so that those con artists are publishing another volume.
Really, their self-deception gets more and more complicated.
The skeptics will come up with one excuse after another to dismiss
or ignore evidence they do not want to see.
Has Denial ever been different? Religious note: this is the meaning
of "kufr," in the Qur'an. The word is translated, often, as
"unbelief," but that's a bad translation. The root means to "cover."
Denial is a good translation. Not "The unbelievers," but "the people
of denial." And denial means that they deny what they actually see or
would know if they reflected.
(Not intending any religious argument here. There is a form of
skepticism which is essential and which was, I'll assert,
characteristic of a major early sect of Islam, dominant for a short
time until the tide of politics turned, they overplayed their hand
against the other groups. The Mu'tazila, which means "the
postponers." On matters not clear, they postpone judgment. To apply
this to cold fusion, I'd raise the name of Nate Hoffman, who is, I
know, one of Jed's favorite people. Hoffman was clearly skeptical,
but didn't appear to worship his skepticism, and acknowledged the
existence of some interesting evidence. In other words, he didn't
close the book with a conclusion of bogosity, he left it open. May he
rest in peace.)
