At 09:57 PM 9/3/2009, you wrote:
I just checked Wikipedia for the first time in months. Their latest
shenanigan is to delete Dieter Britz's site. They made up some
strange sounding reason. It is kind of funny because Britz is on
their side. He is a "skeptic" who does not believe cold fusion is real.
That's transient, Jed. The removal is being shot down, I think it's
back already.
Since we cannot do anything to improve the article I hope these
people keep making it worse and worse, so that it will apparent to
unbiased readers that the article is wrong.
Yeah, you've said that. It makes you really popular on Wikipedia. Not.
I do not worry about the people who read it and believe it. They
are a lost cause. If they miss seeing Wikipedia they will be taken
in by Scientific American, the DoE or some other organization that
opposes cold fusion.
Jed, with that attitude you really missed something. The 2004 DoE
report was a stunning reversal in favor of cold fusion. By protesting
against it, you helped validate the impression that it was concluding
that nothing changed.
Sure, it concluded that. Nothing changed, but with what?
With the overall recommendation: no special program, modest funding
for specific projects to establish the science, encouragement of
publication in peer-reviewed journals. For the DoE, both panels were
really setting out to determine one question: should we pour vast
sums of money into this thing? And both panels concluded no.
But the basis, the thinking underneath that, was radically different.
In 1989 there was only one member of the panel, besides the Nobel
prize-wining co-chair, who supported cold fusion. The report that
recommended further research was only issued because the co-chair
threatened to noisily resign. In 2004, the recommendation for
research was widely supported by the reviewers, plus, as you know,
half the reviewers considered the evidence for excess heat to be
convincing, and one-third considered the evidence for a nuclear
origin to be "somewhat convincing."
That's a massive reversal from 1989, but because of our collective
disappointment about no big funding, we overlooked the silver lining.
The cold fusion community's response to the 2004 DoE harmed public
perception of it. We should have been all over the positive,
mentioning it over and over.
Consider this: If you are totally convinced that cold fusion is
impossible, you will be very skeptical about excess heat, unlikely to
accept it based on evidence that you would ordinarily, without such a
bias, accept. At least one reviewer was clearly biased, didn't give
the idea that this might be real the time of day, wrote about fraud
in the field as a problem, etc. But that reviewer was more or less
isolated. Still, clearly, most of the physicists weren't about to
change their minds based on a shallow review, it would take much more
work with them.
As far as I'm concerned, excess heat is well-established in the
literature, it's a scientific fact, so someone who doesn't accept it
is holding on to a belief in the presence of contrary evidence, or,
more charitably, for whatever reason, has not become aware of the evidence.
You know what the big evidence is, even better than claims that the
calorimetry was solid: the helium/excess heat correlation. Hagelstein
et al were not skilled politically or polemically. I don't blame
them, it's not their field. They allowed the panel to miss the most
important evidence; the correlation simultaneously validates the
calorimetry and the helium measurements. It's the stuff of high certainty.
It took me months to realize the importance of this. Why? This should
have been in my face immediately as soon as I started to read about
this topic in January. (Again, i.e., I'd been very aware of it in 1989-1990.)
So, half the panel didn't find the evidence "convincing." A great
deal depends on what questions are asked. What if they had been
asked, "Is the evidence such that you consider it "possible" that the
excess heat is real?"
If half think it convincing, unless there is some religious
difference involved, surely some of the remaining consider it possible.
However, if you don't think the excess heat evidence is convincing,
you are not going to consider a nuclear explanation necessary at all.
The second question, nuclear origin, really depends on the first as a
precondition. So, of those who accepted the excess heat evidence
convincing, two-thirds though it was likely of nuclear origin.
My guess is that if one were to go through serious consensus process
with a panel like this, it would come to a much clearer consensus,
because there are contradictions and unclarities in what they
expressed. No attempt was made to resolve these. Bad governmental
process, for sure.
There is any amount of anti-cold fusion material from mainstream
sources. It has no depth.
"Mainstream"? Jed, you've swallowed a bill of goods. There is no
mainstream. Or, rather, there are many. Is the ACS "mainstream"? Is
Oxford University Press "mainstream." Is Robert Duncan "mainstream"?
Is CBS Sixty Minutes mainstream? Mainstream *what*?
The bulk of peer reviewed publication favors cold fusion. What you
call the "mainstream" is what I'd call isolated ignorant opinion that
can't make it through peer review. Where are the peer-reviewed
reviews, the secondary sources, that rejected cold fusion? As you
know, the "negative replications" don't conflict with cold fusion
research; indeed, they represent controls. If you don't have properly
prepared palladium, if you don't get high enough loading ratio, you
don't see any effect and, proof of the pudding, you don't see any
radiation and you don't see helium and you don't see tritium. That's
*positive* research, Jed, properly reframed. Looked at this way,
almost all the peer-reviewed publication is positive in the sense of
confirming an overall cold fusion behavioral theory. I.e., theory:
cold fusion does not produce copious neutrons, only neutrons at very
low levels, not important in understandin the reaction. Right?
However, SPAWAR: cold fusion cells produce ample charged particle
radiation if the cell is active. Doesn't all the early work showing
no radiation in cells with no excess heat confirm this? It confirms
half of the correlation: No heat, no radiation, no helium. That's
positively helpful.
I think it's about time that the cold fusion community stop treating
itself as a victim. I have nothing but sympathy for those whose lives
and careers were ruined by the arrogant assholes who made it their
job to wreck and suppress anything connected with cold fusion. But,
in the end, in the eyes of history, the arrogant are the losers and
those who stood up for the truth and for what they had observed are
the heroes. And history matters, what our children and grandchildren
think matters. It's time we start to use our own not inconsiderable
power and resources to do what we can do, not rue and regret what we
can't do. There is nothing that can stop us if we use our own power
instead of waiting for some government agency or some angel investor
to come along and rescue us. That help might come, indeed, but you
know what they say about those who help themselves.
I want to make some money with cold fusion, because if I can't, it's
probably bogus! And I don't think it's bogus. It's real. Okay, if
it's real, let's prove it, in a way that can't be dismissed. When the
kid in the local science fair has a cold fusion project, and it's
real and it's a clear demonstration, it works, and his parents see it
-- or his parents put him up to it in the first place -- it won't be
deniable any more. Oh, they will try. But these kits are, in several
ways, an exercise in put-up or shut-up. It applies to the skeptics as
well, and I'm hoping we will get some skeptical participation.
For the "believers," if we can't engineer reliable kits, it's going
to be a challenge to the belief. For the skeptics, the challenge will
be if the kits work, if they are reliable. And, note, with uniform
kits, many made that are the same, and collected data from many
independent experiments, we could come up with definitive conclusions
even if the kits aren't "reliable." Commercially, it will be easier
if it's reliable, if every customer sees something worth seeing. But
it's still possible to do it short of that, just more difficult.
There are no studies or carefully laid out arguments or
refutations. They never challenge the experimental evidence because
they have never heard of it.
That's right. Now, lets' make that plain and clear and undeniable.
The attacks are always the same and can be summarized in a few
paragraphs: i.e., the cold fusion theory was wrong (always a
"theory"!); it was never replicated; Pons and Fleischmann were
disgraced; pathological science; bla, bla, bla. It is more like an
incantation than an argument. McKubre and others have remarked that
they could present a more convincing skeptical argument than the
skeptics themselves do.
Yes. It's been noticed. Now, what's remarkable to me is how, among
even very well-meaning and scientifically knowledgeable people, and
some of the Wikipedia editors are like this, these ideas are
astonishingly persistent. On Wikipedia Review, a site where Wikipedia
editors, including banned editors, discuss Wikipedia
(wikipediareview.com, look in the forum on Editors, then Notable
Editors, then William Connolley, then the thread on Abd-William M.
Connolley, I think it's called the Cabal Strikes Back, which is
pretty accurate as to what happened), I've been explaining the
situation to a number of editors. Some are just plain skeptical with
no sense to it, but the editor called there One, who is actually an
arbitrator on Wikipedia who recused himself for this case, Cool Hand
Luke, is also repeating nonsense after having been informed. He's
quite a good guy, so to speak. But still deluded about this.
I keep saying, Jed, it's not the people, it's the system, and how we
think is part of the system, and we need to understand how we think,
as human beings, to move beyond the limitations of our beliefs.
It takes years to change beliefs once entrenched, they become
self-reinforcing. So how to do it?
Here is the metaphor I use: I've found the fulcrum and I found the
lever, and I started pushing. The planet is really big. You can push
and push and it seems that nothing happens.
But it's suspended in free space, there is no resistance, only
inertia. Just keep pushing steadily. And after time, small movement
can be seen. And if you stop pushing, the movement continues, Jed.
Watch Wikipedia, it's changing still; I've mostly pulled back, and
stuff I was pushing for is being implemented, it's even possible that
I had to stop before people could move on. I opened up channels, made
certain ways of thinking possible. In fact, what I was doing was
promoting some of the original wiki vision that had been lost in the
stampede, so to speak, but in other ways I was extending it, bringing
in experience from other efforts.
One thing we need to do, very much, is to realize what fanaticism
looks like, and stop allowing ourselves to resemble fanatics. It's
part of waking up.
