Well, this is getting closer to major media.
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2010/03/23/2237165.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage
I've submitted a response about the media standard obligatory
boilerplate, "couldn't be reproduced." I suggest hammering away at
that, because it is absolutely the weakest part of the "skeptical strategy."
My 8-year-old daughter nailed it when I was explaining the history of
cold fusion to her. When I said that others couldn't get the same
results (at first), she said, "But, Daddy, they didn't try hard
enough!" Negative replications are never refutations, as a general
rule. They are properly considered, pending better understanding and
wider confirmation, failure to reproduce the experimental conditions,
not proof that nothing odd happens ever. With some effects,
particularly with chaotic phenomena, the only proof is statistical,
the effect may not be rigidly reproducible at all.
All the original negative work is now part of a large corpus of work
that shows, better, what conditions are required to demonstrate the
F-P effect, and it shows that if you don't get excess heat, you don't
get radiation or helium (or tritium). Not finding tritium, then,
wasn't at all a proof that the F-P effect was bogus. It was, in fact,
part of the evidence which shows that there is a nuclear phenomenon at work.
Once again, Krivit is prominent. This report was more accurate.
Quoting the whole thing (the part of the article about cold fusion,
most of the article is about hot fusion, several approaches.)
This week, scientists gathered at the
<http://portal.acs.org/portal/acs/corg/content>American Chemical
Society's spring meeting in San Francisco to turn the spotlight on a
highly unorthodox path: the effect known as cold fusion.
Back in 1989, cold fusion was heralded as a simple, inexpensive way
to get a power-generating fusion reaction on a desktop. But when the
experimental results couldn't be reproduced, the researchers were
driven into obscurity.
For many physicists, the term "cold fusion" became synonymous with
quackery. Chemists, however, have kept up their interest in the
effect. This
<http://portal.acs.org/portal/acs/corg/content?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=PP_ARTICLEMAIN&node_id=222&content_id=WPCP_012362&use_sec=true&sec_url_var=region1&__uuid=8fdcff2e-f711-47c1-b560-34182b3c5914>isn't
the first time the ACS has hosted a symposium on cold fusion. But
the subject's popularity seems to be rising:
<http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-03/acs-fm030810.php>This
year's session featured nearly 50 presentations - including
reports on batteries and bacteria that appear to exhibit the
cold-fusion effect.
"There's still some resistance to this field," symposium organizer
Jan Marwan, of Berlin-based Marwan Chemie, said in a
<http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-03/acs-fm030810.php>news
release. "But we just have to keep on as we have done so far,
exploring cold fusion step by step, and that will make it a
successful alternative energy source."
Nature's Katharine Sanderson
<http://blogs.nature.com/news/blog/2010/03/acs_cold_fusion_calorimeter.html>paid
a visit to the ACS's cold-fusion news conference - and came away
saying she was "still not convinced" that the effect could truly be
termed fusion. For that reason, some in the field now prefer the
term "low-energy nuclear reactions." New Energy Times' Steven
Krivit, who co-wrote a book titled
<http://www.infinite-energy.com/iemagazine/issue59/bookreview_therebirth.html>"The
Rebirth of Cold Fusion" in 2004, thinks the effect has something to
do with weak nuclear interactions but now says
<http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2010/RealityOfLENRMythologyColdFusion.shtml>"it's
not fusion."
Whatever it is, scientists will eventually have to show conclusively
that the effect produces more energy than it consumes in order for
the wider world to take it seriously as a power source. Come to
think of it, that requirement applies to all the paths to fusion ...
conventional as well as unconventional.
What do you think? How much time and money should be spent on fusion
research here on Earth, especially when you consider there's a
<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/?id=11881780&q=solar%20energy&p=1&st=2&sm=user>perfectly
fine fusion source 93 million miles away? Join the discussion by
leaving your comment below.
"It's not fusion," from Krivit, given that he's been considered a
"believer," is media-savvy in one way: it gets attention.
Unfortunately, the take-home message is different from what Krivit is
trying to promote. It's "See, they were wrong. Cold fusion is
impossible." Krivit comes off looking like a flip-flopper, and if
someone actually follows the link, they will see that his original
belief in cold fusion was based on trust in the authority of "PhDs"
he was following, not evidence. "Aha! I knew it! It was about
believing in this cheap energy nonsense! Now that I've confirmed
this, I don't need to pay any more attention."
I'm afraid that Krivit has trashed his career, over what is really a
quibble: is neutron catalyzed conversion of deuterium into helium
"fusion"? He seems to think not. "Low energy nuclear reactions" is a
vague term, and by avoiding the central issue, Krivit is hacking away
at the underpinnings of how and why I began writing, months ago, that
there is no longer any legitimate controversy over the reality of
cold fusion, and why I believe that, for those who were paying
attention, this was actually clear by the mid 1990s.
The vastly improved results of the 2004 DoE review could have been
stronger; I believe that the opportunity was, not exactly bungled,
but not as skillfully taken as might have been done. Hagelstein et al
stayed within academic traditions in their paper, but that should
have been presented in the context of skilled political rhetoric,
i.e., text or speech designed to challenge and punch through
entrenched expectations. This was one point where someone with
expertise in that might profitably have been hired.
I think it's time to start planning such a presentation.
Krivit, with his "Not Fusion" polemic, diverts attention from the
single most convincing body of evidence that not only is there (at
least one) nuclear reaction taking place, the heat/helium ratio. It's
fusion, setting aside the really nutty argument over theoretical
mechanism. It's fusion because the fuel is deuterium and the ash is helium.
Krivit acknowledges the work, but attacks the "24 MeV" conclusion,
which is a *detail*. If the pathway does not involve straight d-d
fusion, if there are other significant reaction products (such as
transmuted palladium -> ?), the actual figure could be different. But
it's clearly in that ball park. And it's a clear correlation: no
excess heat, no helium. More excess heat, more helium. Where I come
from this kind of evidence is routinely called "proof."
