William Beaty wrote:
Suppose you stumbled across the same thing that Steorm did. Apparently those guys aren't aquainted with the history of FE fiascos. (For example, what will they do when the burglaries start, or the anonymous death threats are phoned in against their families?)
These things happened to Stan Pons and a few others, but I think such harassment is exceedingly rare, and nothing to worry about. As far as I know, all of the harassment against cold fusion researchers has come from other cold fusion researchers, and from people who do not believe the effect exists. I have never heard of anyone who is afraid it might be real and who is trying to stop it. Perhaps that is a secret motivation but I very much doubt it. Leading opponents at places like the Scientific American, Nature, Time magazine and elsewhere have repeatedly asserted that they are dead certain it is pathological nonsense, fraud, lunacy, etc. I am sure they are telling the truth about their own feelings. They also say they have read no papers about cold fusion, and I am sure that is true too.
The people at Hydrodynamics -- along with several experts and I -- are convinced that their device produces anomalous excess heat. None of us has any reason to doubt that based on extensive experiments. However, the company gave up trying to convince people of that fact many years ago, because it was more trouble than it is worth. Since the excess heat is only 10% ~ 15% it has no financial significance or practical use. As far as I know, no one ever threatened them or the people who are working on similar devices 30 years ago. The world ignores such claims.
If I found something like this, I would do exactly what I have done all along. I would publish as much detailed information about it as I can lay hands on at LENR-CANR.org, and I would encourage others to replicate. Whether this will ever have a positive effect or not I cannot say, but it seems like the most practical plan for people who have no money and no access to mainstream media.
I have been doing this for some time, and hundreds of thousands of people have downloaded the papers, including many at national laboratories, universities, oil companies and other corporations. Apparently, many people take cold fusion seriously enough to read these papers. (I doubt anyone reads them for fun.) I have never once been threatened or harassed by anyone other than a few cold fusion researchers. These few are childish, ill tempered, ill mannered, and undoubtedly they are their Own Worst Enemies. They have made more trouble for me, and for themselves, than the folks at the APS and the Scientific American.
The Steorm plans seem excessively complicated and time-consuming to me. Assuming they have something real and it can be demonstrated on a small scale who, I cannot imagine why they are going to all this trouble. If they could make a dozen prototypes and give four or five to me, or to Bill Beaty for that matter, we could probably convince the whole world in a few months.
The Steorm people, in common with many cold fusion researchers, seem to be very anxious to convince mainstream skeptics that their claims are real. They are determined to publish papers in leading journals such as Nature, which is (literally) the last place on earth that will accept these claims. I have never understood why these researchers want to do this. There are millions of friendly people out there who are convinced cold fusion is real, and you only want to know more about it. Many of these people are probably influential and if the cold fusion researchers would only reach out to them they could probably get very substantial financial and moral support. Yet instead of reaching out to these potential friends, many cold fusion researchers concentrate obsessively on trying to convince their enemies! I find their behavior incomprehensible.
- Jed
