Ed Storms wrote me a not saying we should not re-hash stale debates in the Knol article, and we should not try to make the skeptics case for them, because that's like trying to make the case for the Flat Earth Society. I agree, but that is not quite what I had in mind. My response to Ed --
I was thinking of the "history" section in an encyclopedia article. I will leave the physics part to you -- or use your old text. An encyclopedia should cover not only the science, but also the history and social effects of a phenomenon, in different sections of course. Not all mashed together the way they are in Wikipedia! For example, an article about evolution will be mainly devoted to modern evolutionary theory, but to be comprehensive it should also a section about the development of the theory, how it has changed since Darwin with the discoveries of Mendel and then DNA, and so on. It might also discuss, or link to, articles about Darwinian social theory and capitalism, and creationism as the social backlash to evolutionary theory. It is not directly relevant of course, but someone who wants an overview may be looking for it. People looking up cold fusion may want to know what all the fuss is, and why it is so controversial. We should tell them. If we write anything about the history of the field, I think we should mention the NHE program, and say that it failed. . . . Also it wouldn't hurt to say that many experiments did fail in the early days, and some still do, but for the most part we know why. I do not think that fact ever reached the Wiki article before it was trashed. It is okay to talk about technical difficulties. It is not a weakness. Storms himself has spotlighted more bad cold fusion calorimetry than all the skeptics combined, in this paper: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEcalorimetr.pdf That's what I meant by making the skeptical case. - Jed
