I'm only suggesting that the behavior of the system, as represented by the outspoken skeptics, needs to be understood and handled in a potentially successful way. Anyone who writes successful grant proposals to the government knows this kind of approach is an essential requirement. In contrast, claiming to look for transmutation products in a proposal to the government will not get funding because this kind of evidence is not consistent with any theory and can be confused by normal processes. In the same way, a proposal written to a venture capitalist will not get funding unless it promises to make useful energy. You need to use an approach that fits with the needs and preconceptions of the funder. This requirement is black and white as any salesman knows.
None of this matters to a skeptic who is unwilling to review what is already known. No amount of additional result can add significantly to what has already been published if the person is unwilling to read the literature. If they read the literature, they would no longer be a skeptic and would not be in this discussion. What is the point of writing more papers that are going to be ignored as have all the other work? Success requires a different approach. The 60 minutes program provided part of this requirement, i.e,. it explained to the ordinary person the potential for the effect being real. We need more of this. The other requirement is a useful theory that can be used to guide successful research toward a reproducible effect. I predict that no funds will go to LENR unless this requirement is part of the proposal.
Ed On Jul 3, 2009, at 3:29 PM, Jones Beene wrote:
Ed,I understand where you are coming from, but I think that you are mistaken asto this being a black and white issue. A substantial percentage ofphysicists, 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 andquantity of evidence. We saw a taste of this recently with the rather large positive mediaresponse 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 moreeffective.It is important to keep hitting that "middle percentage" of fence- straddlerswith 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 goodevidence, DESPITE what the dyed-in-the-wool skeptics. They are aware of howmany 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 instrumentationor 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 wouldspin everything in that direction and forger excess heat, for the timebeing. 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 ondocumenting 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 Pleceboeffect,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 theCF 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! Areheat-deficit results just thrown away out of hand, as being "obviouslywrong"? Or does this suggest that the extreme excess of excess heat results over heat deficits must mean there's really something there, after all?
