Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
Your paper on this, also based on the Britz bibliography, is at
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJtallyofcol.pdf, and, reading
numbers (approx) from your chart,
year totals cumulative totals
pos neg neutral pos neg neutral
1989 43 92 22 42 92 22
1990 75 76 41 117 168 63
1991 47 28 18 164 196 81
1992 22 13 11 186 209 94
There is a huge difference between Huizenga's numbers and yours.
What happened? Pretty obviously, the Britz database was not complete
at that time, assuming that it wasn't cherry-picked, and the claim
was that it wasn't.
Those are not my numbers. They are the totals from the Britz
database, tallied by a Pascal program I wrote. (The program may have
produced minor discrepancies but I checked it manually with a subset
of the data and it is pretty good.) Britz said that these were the
authors' own evaluations, and for the most part I agree with him. (as
I said on p. 33). Here is the spreadsheet:
Year Total Res+ Res- Res0 Undecided
1989 205 46 83 22 54
1990 248 75 76 41 56
1991 130 46 29 18 37
1992 65 22 13 11 19
1993 66 31 10 8 17
1994 42 20 3 3 16
1995 29 19 3 6 1
1996 48 24 10 7 7
1997 32 19 2 4 7
1998 33 19 2 3 9
1999 23 18 0 1 4
2000 15 10 0 1 4
2001 17 11 2 0 4
2002 18 9 2 0 7
2003 7 2 1 0 4
2004 6 4 0 0 2
2005 6 2 2 2 0
2006 6 4 0 1 1
2007 5 5 0 0 0
2008 6 2 0 0 4
2009 0 0 0 0 0
1007 388 238 128 253
I do not know what order the papers were added to the database, or
how to explain the difference between Huizenga's totals and Britz.
Huizenga tries to show that positive publications had almost ceased
by 1992. In fact, they continued, though certainly at reduced
levels. They did decline over time, later, but never to zero, and,
in fact, since roughly 2003 or 2004, they began to increase . . .
Surely the overall conclusion is correct. Cold fusion publication
dwindled almost to zero and so did the research. It is moribund even
now. There is no funding and few young researchers, and the field
will surely die sooner or later as things now stand. However, you
have to look as the causes. Huizenga, Morrison and Britz said the
total is asymptotically approaching zero for the same reason
polywater research and publications are: because the results were
proved wrong. There is nothing left to discuss. Schwinger and I say
that the research was crushed by academic politics, "venomous
criticism" and "censorship."
. . . and the numbers for 2007 and 2008 in the Britz database are
quite certainly not complete. For example, there were many
peer-reviewed papers published in 2008 in the ACS Sourcebook, enough
to practically dwarf the number shown on the chart for 2008.
The numbers are close to complete. He will never add the ACS
sourcebook for the same reason he never added the peer-reviewed
version of the ICCF-4 papers: it is too positive for his taste. Too
many solid affirmations. You have to realize that Britz is a diehard
skeptic. He holds that cold fusion does not exist and that every
single positive paper is mistaken or fraud. (He seldom accuses the
researchers of fraud, but he claimed that some Japanese researchers
and I committed fraud, at ICCF-3, so he is not shy about making
accusations.) He agrees with Huizenga. The detailed tally hardly
matters in a sense. When I wrote the paper last year he retreated
somewhat, but as far as I know he still thinks every paper is a
mistake. Quoting my paper:
[Britz] says he is: "[not] among those who totally deny that may be a
new phenomenon. I do believe there may well be." In the past he said:
"There are enough quality positives for the original F&P system
(tritium, some XS [excess] heat) to force me to give it a (small) chance."
Huizenga claims that "all marginal papers" were included, i.e.,
papers with inadequate controls, etc.
Huizenga, of course, claims any finding of no neutrons as "negative." . . .
You should not take his claims too seriously. If he were discussing
some other area of science, his assertions would be in line with
conventional thinking. People like Huizenga and Britz are good
scientists, and solid professionals. Normally they would not make up
new rules or bend over backwards to skew the data in their favor (by
rejecting the ICCF-4 and ACS book, for example). It is only with
regard to this one subject that they throw away objectivity and
reason. The reason they do this has nothing to do with science or
mental incapacity. It is politics. Pure primate power politics -- the
behavior that plays the dominant rule in both human interactions and
the behavior of our simian cousins. It dominates our thinking as much
as sex dominates literature and movies. In Huizenga's case funding
also played a major role.
I assume that Hizenga and Britz are sincere and they believe what
they say. But that does not rule out the likelihood that their
beliefs are based on self-interest and politics rather than objective
facts. Most people in most professions believe things that make no
sense because it is in their best interests to believe them,
especially when they will get in trouble if they believe anything
else. If someone like Britz or Prof. Dylla of the AIP were to come
out and declare unequivocally and publicly they think cold fusion is
real, they would land in a world of trouble. They know that! Not one
in a hundred professional scientists have the guts to do that. Even
Rob Duncan took a lot of heat, and he is powerful, well-established
guy. As for the likelihood that a high energy particle physicist or
plasma fusion researcher will say one word in support of cold fusion
. . . you might as well expect the Pope to come out in favor of atheism.
- Jed
