Horace Heffner wrote: In the past, Jones has disavowed any connection to cold fusion as we know >> it. >> >> - Jed >> > > He does have at least 4 papers on LENR-CANR.org . . . >
Yup. He and I do not get along. But I thanked him for those papers, and I sincerely appreciate the contribution. I meant that he disavowed the larger field of cold fusion and all claims of excess heat. He probably still does. This paper: www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/JonesSEchasingano.pdf . . . is, in my opinion, an egregious attack on the work of others. I consider it intellectually dishonest. Heck, I consider it plain-old dishonest, dishonest. But I am glad it is in the collection. It gives everyone a chance to evaluate Jones' claims and compare them to the papers he is critiquing. Unlike certain people at places such as, oh, Wikipedia, I would *never *censor people I disagree with, or refuse to upload their papers. On the contrary I would be happy to upload attacks on cold fusion by people like Huizenga. I have asked some leading skeptics for contributions, but they have not granted permission. I have papers by Shanahan, which I appreciate. I wish he would let me upload others. I have asked him a couple of times. Speaking of Shanahan, his latest claim is that heavy water and light water behave differently, and heavy water produces local elevated temperatures which are false indications of excess heat, because there are differences in "viscosity and adhesion" between them. This hypothesis fails for four main reasons: 1. Many calorimeter types are immune to the problems he thinks can occur. 2. The difference are very slight and adhesion would, if anything, make light water cells produce more apparent heat. 3. Excess heat also depends on the choice of cathode material, no only on the water. Viscosity and adhesion of the water will not be different with palladium versus platinum. 4. The effect occurs with deuterium gas but not hydrogen gas. Although based on Krivit's latest paper perhaps I need to take a closer look at Kitamura on this issue. In any case, the effect is much larger with deuterium. Shanahan strikes me as honest, unlike Jones. He sincerely believes his own work. But he is grossly mistaken. Frankly, with regard to this subject, he has very poor scientific skills. He ought to know the four points I listed above. They are elementary. He, along with Britz and Jones, tends to look at one piece of evidence at a time, ignoring the others. While he is busy thinking up a contrived reason to explain away the difference between heavy water and light water, he studiously ignores the fact that deuterium gas and hydrogen gas show the same properties, and his explanation does apply to them. Then, when he turns his attention to gas phase experiments (assuming he has) he will think up some other contrived reason to doubt these results. You cannot keep coming up with one ad hoc explanation after another, when there is a single, unifying and obvious explanation that works for all experiments: the excess heat is real. It could be that his judgment is much better with regard to other subjects. Many people have compartmentalized skill and judgment. Jones is even worse. He repeatedly claims that all results can be explained as recombination. When you ask "what about closed cells?" he refuses to answer. I mean it! In conversation or in a lecture, he adamantly refuses to answer. He changes the subject, or pretends he did not hear. Send him an email with this question and he will not reply. Most skeptics will at least come up with some strange assertion such as "no closed cell experiments have been performed." In my case, Jones, McKubre and I have all sat a the same table and discussed this. Jones knows he can't get away with telling me that. He tells that to people who know little or nothing about the research. On several notable occasions, Huizenga and Morrison also developed severe, sudden and transient problems with their ears, eyes and ability to speak when confronted with evidence they did not appreciate. Srinivasan described a hilarious occasion when Morrison was at BARC: "Those chips are still preserved by us -- and they still give this signal. For instance, when Douglas Morrison visited us at the time around August 1990, I showed him that. The moment we loaded one of those chips into the detector, the count rate indicated a very high level of activity, giving a beautiful beta [electron energy] spectrum. I showed him this beta spectrum, and asked him to speculate as to where it could come from. I even gave him copies of the spectrum. He has never talked about it anywhere, or mentioned it in any of his writings." I was with Huizenga when the people from Amoco showed him their data at ICCF-4. To make a long story short, he turned green around the gills, fled the room, and has never said one word about it. - Jed
