Ed, I understand where you are coming from, but I think that you are mistaken as to this being a black and white issue. A substantial percentage of physicists, many of whom provide opinions for such things as ARPA-E, have more flexibility and open-mindedness than you are giving them discredit for.
LENR is NOT an "either-or" proposition for them. Just as in politics, where there are groups on both the left and the right and a larger percentage in the middle who lean one way of the other but who are STRONGLY swayed by current events and emerging sentiment and R&D, we have a similar situation. In politics, it may be 25% on either extreme and 50% in the middle. In LENR it is more like 40% naysayers of the Park persuation, 5% true believers, and 55% who can be swayed one way or the other, depending on the quality and quantity of evidence. We saw a taste of this recently with the rather large positive media response given to the SPAWAR stuff. I never thought 60 Minutes would get into the Act... none of it was news to us, in fact it was old-hat, but it made a fairly big splash nationally. If this had been followed with a strong presentation of the transmutation evidence, it would have been even more effective. It is important to keep hitting that "middle percentage" of fence-straddlers with every bit of strong evidence available. Why? Well ARPA-E is one reason. I suspect that you, like myself and many others, spent a good deal of time and effort getting in a proposal for the June 2 deadline. It have may be a wasted effort, but perhaps not - if they stick to the original mandate of funding "high-risk transformative" technologies, then there will be some of those funds going into LENR. There will be many people in DoE and ARPA who can be swayed by good evidence, DESPITE what the dyed-in-the-wool skeptics. They are aware of how many times the mainstream has been totally wrong before. Jones -----Original Message----- From: Edmund Storms [mailto:[email protected]] Jones, I think we need to be clear about the attitude toward CF. If a person does not accept the basic concept that a nuclear reaction can occur under CF conditions, either because they are totally committed to conventional ideas or because they are just plain ignorant, no evidence short of a huge effect will have any effect on their attitude. On the other hand, if a person accepts the basic idea behind CF, the huge amount of evidence based on production of heat, tritium, transmutation, and emitted radiation is more than sufficient. People who have reached this level and want to invest in the process are only interested in energy production. Therefore, proving that significant excess energy is produced and showing how this process can be increased is important. Transmutation is irrelevant and showing that it occurs is a waste of time. For the field to move forward, we need to understand the process that produces energy. The other reactions are at best minor secondary reactions that have no practical importance at this time. We need to keep our eye on the prize. Ed On Jul 3, 2009, at 11:02 AM, Jones Beene wrote: > Stephen - > > The only insurmountable problem with an "all erroneous" hypothesis is > *transmutation* (and/or radioactivity). Transmutation, or an isotope > imbalance, cannot be faked, and there is no valid relic in > instrumentation > or technique to account for it unless it solely in helium or hydrogen. > > If it involves new isotopes in the cathode, as is most often the case, > especially those near Pd in atomic number (45, Pd, 47, 48, etc) then > that is > proof positive of a nuclear reaction. Cadmium and silver, in > particular, are > often seen. If experimenters has a good PR man (public relations) > they would > spin everything in that direction and forger excess heat, for the time > being. > > Nuclear proof, in the form of electrode transmutation, is there. > Period. > Mainstream physics must come to terms with that fact. > > If you have nuclear transmutation in the experiment - which can be a > given, > looking at the prior published results, then you are left with only > these > possibilities: > > 1) The transmutation did not produce excess energy, or > 2) The excess energy which was produced, with so slight as to not be > significant, relative to the input. > > Usually the problem is 2) since this is a QM reaction, and of low > probability. If you look at some of the tables in Scott's old > experiments - > he does show excess on occasion in the few percent range which he > does not > try to hide or recalibrate for. > > If the problem were to turn out to be 1) instead of 2), then you > essentially > have "new physics" and can win a big prize for explaining the > situation- > i.e. that all the excess energy escaped as neutrinos, or whatever. > > My advice to companies like Energetics: hire a good PR firm and > focus on > documenting and emphasizing nuclear transmutation, as opposed to heat. > > Jones > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Stephen A. Lawrence [mailto:[email protected]] > > Jones Beene wrote: >> >> Much of this goes back to the "expectancy effect", expectation-bias >> or >> Tiller effect, which we have all commented on in the past. This is >> related >> to other delusions that afflict even the smartest of us: the Plecebo > effect, >> the self-fulfilling prophecy effect, or the Pygmalion effect: all >> of which >> are deeply ingrained into human nature. >> > > Of course the same thing applies from the "other direction", too. > > At this point, after all those null results, Scott must be *expecting* > to get a null result in each new experiment -- at least, if he's any > sort of normal human. Consequently he's more likely to be > suspicious of > the calorimetry, and work hard to fix it, if he's seeing an OU result > than if he's seeing a null result! And that'll tend to skew his > results > in the "null" direction. > > This brings up an interesting question: Suppose for a moment that the > CF results were all errors. Then, that would make me wonder -- is > there > some global, overarching reason why erroneous calorimetry would tend > to > OVERread the energy produced? And if not, if erroneous calorimetry > results should be randomly distributed, *where* are all the under- > unity > results? With all those "bogus" results, really, half of them should > have shown heat consumption, rather than heat generation! Are > heat-deficit results just thrown away out of hand, as being "obviously > wrong"? Or does this suggest that the extreme excess of excess heat > results over heat deficits must mean there's really something there, > after all? >
