I wrote:
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!
To be fair to Britz, he has also at times defended the reputations of
researchers, if not their results. He has distanced himself from the
extreme tactics of his fellow skeptics. The attached letter from
Miles to Britz describes one such incident.
I do not recall that he has engaged in ad hominem attacks, except
when he attacked me and a few Japanese researchers. I am not likely
to forget that! Since he is a political animal, I suspect this is
more a case of prudence or cowardliness than ethics. He and the other
skeptics are usually happy to kick anyone in the teeth so long as
that person is unable to kick back.
By the way, the postscript in this letter is addressed to me.
- Jed
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY
NAVAL AIR WARFARE CENTER
WEAPONS DIVISION
CHINA LAKE, CALIFORNIA 93555-6001
IN REPLY REFER TO
December 18, 1996
Dr. Dieter Britz
Kemisk Institut
Aarhus Universtet
Langelandsgade 140
8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
Dear Dr. Britz:
Thank you for your letter of 12 December 1996 and your support of
scientific fairness with respect to my response to the Jones and
Hansen paper criticizing my cold fusion publications. I understand
your position as a skeptic on this issue and have no problem with
that fact. Nevertheless, my experimental measurements convince me
that anomalous effects occur in deuterated palladium. I will mail you
a copy of my final report and recent papers that I submitted to
ICCF-6 so that you can judge this experimental evidence yourself. I
will also send you copies of letters that I have on file regarding my
request to publish a rebuttal back-to-back in the same issue of J.
Phys. Chem. as is their stated custom. Steve Jones, however, did not
want to delay his publication. Neither Steve Jones nor Dr. El-Sayed
can produce any formal letter that shows that I was officially
informed of the publication criticizing my work. I challenged Steve
Jones to publish his e-mail allegations regarding my work because I
expected to be informed and to be allowed to write a rebuttal. This
never happened.
I can document the following sequences of events: Dr. Kendall
Johnson, a post-doe, visited BYU on 3 January 1995 and was given an
early version of the paper in question. Dr. Johnson was not involved
with any publications involved in this debate and was not an
appropriate person to be given this paper. He later showed this paper
to me, but he did not know what stage this paper was in or to which
journal it would be submitted. Furthermore, I had to leave on travel
for meetings and other assignments in Washington, D.C., and I did not
return until the end of January. I was expecting to receive the final
manuscript and to be informed of the journal involved before writing
my response. I never heard another word about this manuscript until
Dr. Morrison was handing out copies of page-proofs of this paper at
the ICCF-5 conference in Monte Carlo, Monaco. The rest of the story
is found in my letters requesting a delay in publication to permit my
back-to-back response in the same journal. This was denied. I later
submitted a detailed response to J. Phys. Chem., but this response
was rejected by the editor and reviewers that were selected. Based on
the reviewer's comments, none of the reviewers that I proposed were
selected. Unfortunately, it is difficult to find unbiased reviewers
for either side of this controversy.
I remain convinced of my experimental results and that I can easily
respond to nearly all criticisms of my work.
Sincerely,
Dr. Melvin H. Miles
NAWCWPNS Fellow
P. S. Please post this letter on e-mail if you feel that it would be
informative to others regarding this matter.
copies:
Dr. El-Sayed, Editor, J. Phys. Chem.
Professor Steve Jones. BYU
