Edmund Storms wrote:
On several occasions you have opined that people in the CF field have
done a poor job of PR. Please explain how this can be done better.
Remember, this is science, not selling soap.
THAT is your first mistake! This is not science. It is selling soap,
and more to the point it is politics. Do you see any science in the
Scientific American attacks, Charles Petit's article, or the annual
plasma fusion program dog and pony show on Capital Hill?
Only certain methods are acceptable without making the claims look
like a scam, which other promoters have done, much to their discredit
The plasma fusion people have been raking in a billion dollars a year
in a scam, much to their discredit. No doubt they cry all the way to
the bank. They took out the carving knives and eviscerated cold
fusion within a few days of the 1989 announcement, in the pages of
the Boston newspapers. They demand that you use "only certain
methods," while they play by the rules of hardball politics. Frankly,
you people are good-natured patsies for going along with them.
Science requires claims be published. This has been done and
attempts are regularly made to reach a wider audience. Science
requires the work be replicated. This has been done. In addition,
contact has been made with the Media and with the general scientific
profession by giving talks at regular APS and ACS meetings. Contact
has also been made with the government.
Yes, you have done everything that scientists are supposed to do.
Yes, obviously, if this were a scientific dispute, it would have
ended 19 years ago, and every scientist on earth would accept that
cold fusion is real. Yet only a few scientists have been won over.
You have done all that is required, while the opposition has done
nothing. They have not published a single credible scientific paper
disproving any major experiment. Therefore this process has nothing
do to with science.
You have made no progress treating this like science with traditional
methods. Repeating the same actions for 20 years and expecting a
different outcome is Einstein's definitizing of insanity. It is also
unbecoming of experimentalists.
Success of these efforts depends on the willingness of the listener
to accept the information.
And on the speaker's ability to shape the message.
Until the effect can be explained in a way that is acceptable to a
normal scientist and the effect can be made so reproducible that any
competent person can demonstrate its reality, getting people to
listen will be very difficult.
Not just difficult: impossible. If that is the test we must meet, we
might as well give up. I do not think that cold fusion will ever
become easy to replicate any more than cloning, open heart surgery,
or making an integrated semiconductor will be.
But I think that history shows this test need not be met. Plasma
fusion, top quarks, lasers, masers, cloning the transistor effect
circa 1952, airplanes circa 1908 and countless other effects have
been more difficult to replicate than cold fusion, and they have met
with as much political opposition as cold fusion, yet the researchers
were able to overcome the opposition.
An "explanation" is irrelevant in my opinion. Half of the
explanations for conventional phenomena are probably wrong, or incomplete.
Nevertheless, how would you suggest the field be better promoted?
The same things I have suggested many times before:
I would summarize it by saying you should learn a thing or two from
the Obama campaign.
Trust people and give them lots of information. Appeal to youth.
Reach out. Find out what other scientists are doing these days to
promote their research. Help qualified, friendly, professional
scientists replicate. Set up an experiments somewhere they can come
and look at it. Make better use of the data we have. Make far better
use of the Internet.
Publish more information. MUCH MORE, such as thousands of pages from
complete data sets. In his 2007 review paper, Table 1, J. He
estimates that roughly 14,700 experimental runs are reported in the
literature. You will not find the complete data from a single one of
these on the Internet. You will not find a detailed description of a
single one. By that I mean schematics, photographs, a list of parts,
and so on -- the sort of thing AT&T published describing transistors
as soon as they went public: the book "Transistor Technology," two
volumes, Sept. 1951, 791 pages, (a.k.a., "Mother Bell's Cookbook")
That's TWO VOLUMES of technical information! A person would have
difficulty assembling 100 pages of that kind of specific, hands-on
technical information from cold fusion papers published in the literature.
The closest thing we have to a detailed description is your own work:
Storms, E., The Science Of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction. 2007: World
Scientific Publishing Company.
Storms, E., How to produce the Pons-Fleischmann effect. Fusion
Technol., 1996. 29: p. 261.
Unfortunately, the former is unavailable to many people interested in
the field because of the cost barrier. (The price has fallen to $56,
which is a big improvement, but it is still a barrier.)
Much more along these lines should have been published, with far more
detail, by many other researchers. Even if people do not use this
information to replicate it still gives the field verisimilitude.
Just about the only people in this field who have made an effort to
reach out to other scientists and teach them how to do this are you,
Ed, and D1 and D2 (Dennis Cravens and Dennis Letts).
Finally, let me point out that when I uploaded an appeal to the Obama
administration, roughly 40 researchers and friends supported me, and
unfortunately 10 skeptics voted down the idea. I told people far and
wide that I was doing this, including dozens of researchers. I
probably contacted a few hundred all told. I doubt that more than 10
bothered to support this effort. Perhaps they have some more direct
method of influencing the new administration and they feel that this
approach is not needed. I hope so. But I doubt it. I think is more
likely that they have given up, or they are apathetic, or they feel
that such an appeal is beneath their dignity. Some of them do not
want public support. Several researchers have told me they prefer to
work in obscurity and they do not want competition. This defeats the
purpose of science, which is to bring knowledge and the benefits of
knowledge to mankind as a whole. Sitting in the laboratory, working
by yourself and never publishing is not science.
- Jed
