*Kevin Young* <https://aeon.co/users/kevin-young>
Just an interesting tidbit to add: When Pons and Fleischmann made their announcement, I was a 17-yr old high school student in Salt Lake City. With a strong interest in chemistry, I followed their demise but felt that they were being dismissed as much by envy as by real results–if it had taken them years of effort to produce their results, why should a physics lab be able to dismiss it in a few week’s time? I looked up Stanley Pons in the phone book and noticed he lived only a few blocks from me, so one day I walked over and knocked on his door. What came next surprised me–I saw a man who was truly afraid. He looked like his mind was racing and he was confused and frightened. He said he had been receiving death threats, and threats on the lives of his children. “I have to leave the country!” he said. He could not confirm it, but suspected the death threats were tied to oil companies. He talked a bit of his research and said yes, they had several units that had been producing excess heat, “but I have to leave!” And he left shortly after–disappeared basically. I have been keeping “one eye open” on LENR research ever since–my brief encounter with Pons left me convinced they had something real. I think Brillouin Energy Corporation will be the group to deliver something that runs long enough and reliably enough to show the world. I don’t know how much active suppression there has been compared to simple skepticism, but hopefully we will soon have the paradigm shift that we have been waiting for.
