As Mr. Beene has pointed out here and elsewhere, the claims by
the
opposition were preposterous.
Terry
Let me clarify that the only preposterous claim was the one made
by Putterman's graduate assistant - where he stated that the
spectrum 'looked like 251-Californium's or something to that
effect. And this was from a crude computer simulation.
Cf251 is an strong alpha emitter. RT claimed to be seeing only
neutrons. When Putterman echoed the grad student's idiotic claim,
he threw himself into the arena without stating that he was a
competitor for funding doing similar work, and that he had failed
to duplicate RT's results with his own half-hearted experiment.
Yet in his own alternative experiment, which was not replicated by
anyone, Putterman was claiming even grander things. This is an
egregious lapse of good judgment and professionally unforgivable.
RT still could have been faking his findings - make no mistake
about that - but there is not enough information to tell from the
public record.
However, the involvement of Putterman was ethically wrong - even
if RT did fake the findings (which I doubt).
Jones
