Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
Which is, of course, brilliant. What is the context? This argument practically would take care of itself, all it would take is clear exposition of it. Would anyone defend it? If I'm correct, that argument depended on the absence of independent evidence regarding other signs of a nuclear reaction, and of only isolated reports, at most, showing the excess heat effect.
You are incorrect. Your analysis is much too subtle. Forget about context and nuances. Huizenga meant exactly what he said: If the claimed heat exceeds the limits of chemistry or mechanical storage it MUST BE an experimental error.
He was never shy about expressing that opinion. You can ignore the other points he made leading up to this. That part stands alone as a bold assertion.
It is, in that context, Not Quite So Stupid, provided that the conclusion is tentative. The problem is that the conclusion became, it was pretended, conclusive.
There was nothing tentative about it. He was sure as sure can be that all results beyond the limits of chemistry are wrong. He and Park both told me, in person, on more than one occasion that they are 100% certain that all cold fusion results are wrong, and not just a little bit wrong. They are all preposterous, and all the result of incompetence, lunacy or fraud. They make no bones about it. Perhaps they feel some doubts in their heart of hearts, but in their papers and what I have heard them say in person, they admit no hint of doubt. I cannot read minds but I get no sense they are speaking with false bravado, or that they have secret doubts, or that they are being assertive because of cognitive dissonance. Park is equally assertive about a broad range of subjects, to say the least.
How did Huizenga react to the helium evidence? That would be interesting! I don't know when he lost his ability to consider these issues . . .
I have the first edition of the book, published in 1992. (A signed edition "with best wishes to Jed Rothwell.") I do not have the second edition. There are 16 references in the index to helium-4 and some other references to "helium-3" and "helium." Looking at the ones for "helium-4" most describe the role of helium in conventional nuclear theory. Chapter VIII section B. Helium describes a few early efforts to find helium, by Lewis, and Williams. The longest description is of an attempt to find helium in 5 used rods from experiments by Fleischmann and Pons, undertaken by various labs. See Salamon, Nature 344 401 (1990). They did not find the helium in the rods. Neither has anyone else subsequently, as far as I know, except in such small amounts that you would not have expected to find any in the 1989 rods.
The only other description of experiments regarding helium (as opposed to theory) is in Chapter XII, p. 209:
"Believers in cold fusion will continue, at least for some period of time, to report claims of success. This pattern of continuing claims has been well established for other areas of pathological science such as N rays and poly-water. What is surprising, however, is that these far-out claims are still reported with a positive flavor by leading newspapers (Wall Street Journal, April 8, 1991 and New York Times, April 14, 1991) before the most elementary confirmation checks have been made. Both of these newspaper articles describe recent experiments by a group of chemists at the Naval Weapons Center in China Lake, California, and give some scientific respectability to the chemists claim of producing 4He in an electrochemical cell (see Chapter VIII). The human desire for a way to turn hydrogen, the most abundant fuel in the universe, into a limitless supply of clean, cheap fuel is so strong that people want to believe that there is something scientific about cold fusion."
This refers to Miles, but Miles is not mentioned by name and not referenced in the index.
- Jed
