At 10:31 AM 5/26/2010, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Steven Vincent Johnson wrote:
> does. Ask him! He is not shy about speculating or accusing people.
I did ask him.
Have you personally asked him that question?
I haven't asked him anything lately. He told me he has added my
e-mail address to his kill file, and unsubscribed to Vortex, so I
have no convenient way to communicate with him.
This is something that a true investigative reporter wouldn't ever
do, except for pure spam. It means that Krivit is angry about what
Rothwell says, and may consider it a waste of time, but Rothwell is a
notable figure in the field. If for no other reason, if he thinks
Rothwell is a loose cannon, he'd want to collect evidence, he'd
certainly glance at the mail.
Please point me to any published article where Krivit has made such
an official accusation.
<http://www.newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2010/ColdFusionClaimsQuestioned.shtml>http://www.newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2010/ColdFusionClaimsQuestioned.shtml
QUOTES:
"We published Issue 34 of New Energy Times on Jan. 31. In it, we
reveal how scientists at SRI International and MIT, claiming
evidence for the theory of "cold fusion," have misled the public,
their peers, the Department of Energy and the reviewers of the 2004
DoE LENR review. . . .
Contrary to what the public has heard and believed, the purported
best evidence for the theory of low-energy nuclear reactions as a
"cold fusion" reaction, specifically the highly promoted claim of
~24 MeV/4He, does not exist. . . .
The subgroup misled the public into believing that excess heat and
non-energetic helium-4 were the only confirmed evidence for LENR. .
. ." [By the way, this is preposterous. Heat and tritium are
confirmed evidence for LENR.]
Definition of "mislead": "To lead into error of thought or action,
especially by intentionally deceiving. See synonyms at deceive."
(American Heritage dictionary)
Definition of "purported": "1. To have or present the often false
appearance of being or intending; profess: selfish behavior that
purports to be altruistic. 2. To have the intention of doing;
purpose." (American Heritage dictionary -- I am sure Krivit meant
definition #1.)
As I said, changing numbers by a factor of ten or not informing EPRI
that you have re-evaluated your data would not be mistakes or
experimental errors. Those are deliberate acts.
Actually, McKubre might quite well have not told EPRI that he made a
mistake, so long after the contract. It was trivial, of practically
no consequence until these papers were released. My guess is that
there are lots of errors in them. It's like a book published fifteen
years ago. You wrote the book. You find a typographical error or
other minor error. What do you do?
Maybe, nothing. McKubre had already corrected the error in what was
being published elsewhere, this was merely Krivit digging up and
comparing the old paper. The discrepancy was worth a question,
certainly. But not more than that.
Look, Krivit is not being indirect or shy about making accusations.
You do him a disservice by not taking his words at face value. He
sincerely believes that McKubre and others are conspiring to deceive
the public and make people think that helium is a product of cold
fusion when it is not, and also to suppress the Windom-Larsen
theory. That's what Krivit says, and that is what he means. He has a
right to hold that opinion and post it on his website. It's a free
country. Heck, if I agreed with his analysis, I might write a paper
with the same accusations and upload it to LENR-CANR. I uploaded a
paper pointing out what I consider weaknesses in Arata's work. That
upset Arata to no end! I did not hesitate to upload Mallove's
accusations that the MIT work is fraudulent. Anyone can see that is
what I pointed out in the graphs published by Miles (
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MilesMisoperibol.pdf p. 23).
There is nothing wrong with criticizing people or accusing them of
fraud if you sincerely believe what you say. I am sure Krivit
believes what he says. I told him I think he is wrong. I gave him
detailed reasons why I think so. Evidently he did not agree with me.
That's all there is to it. No big deal, really. Krivit is one of
thousands of people who attack cold fusion for nonsensical reasons.
Several cold fusion researchers such as Arata attack one another for
equally nonsensical reasons.
I've seen it, among some. Not among others.
As a group people attacking cold fusion do a lot of damage, but each
individual does little harm. Even the most powerful members of the
peanut gallery, such as Robert Park or the anonymous nitwits at
Wikipedia have little influence over society. If Robert Park were to
stop attacking cold fusion today, it would have little influence
over events. It might have a large impact if he were to publicly
admit he was wrong, and publish that in the Washington Post. But
there is no chance he would ever do that. He is a political animal
with a large ego invested in his opinions. He is far out on a limb,
and he knows it. Such people sometimes shut up and go away, but they
never admit they are wrong.
(If one of the Wikipedia nitwits were to read papers or change his
mind it would have no influence because the others would quickly
throw him out.)
I disagree. Wikipedia is highly political, but the old guard gets
tossed out periodically. The administrator who banned me, originally,
is on a relatively fast track to being completely banned himself.
JzG, Jed Rothwell's friend, is back with his admin tools, but my
guess is that those days are numbered. Or not. Wikipedia politics is
very complex and difficult to predict.
The problem with Wikipedia is a serious conflict betweent the ideals,
the policies and guidelines of the project, what they say they do,
and what is actually done. That can only happen there when a faction
gains local power, and the way the place is run, it can take years to
unseat them. It's happening, but since the structure hasn't been
changed, it just pushes the problem somewhere else. I predict, in a
year, the Wikipedia article is much better. I was only pushed out of
there because of *other* political considerations, I threatened a
powerful group of administrators. But they are losing their grip. The
one who banned me, you know, lost his administrative rights, over
that. But Wikipedia isn't structured to automatically fix things that
were abusive....
Let me put it another way. If not for the outside political
considerations, the article was improving, it was making progress,
because the general community consensus, and the Arbitration
Committee's stated decision, is that "fringe science" is not to be
excluded or "debunked," but is to be presented according to the
balance in reliable sources. Jed, the reliable sources strongly favor
cold fusion, but it's hard to establish that, the way that Wikipedia
works (actually, the way it doesn't work!), because articles are
edited piecemeal. So it takes time. And it takes editors who are
knowledgeable and who understand how to work with Wikipedia. It's a
rare combination, in this field. Pcarbonn was doing it, but he was
politically assassinated by JzG, who was a master at manipulating
community opinion, he knew just what buttons to push. His last
activity with Pcarbonn might yet get him removed from being an
administrator, or under sanction himself, but Pcarbonn abandoned the
field. I'd have done something about it if he had said he wanted to
contest it. He didn't. He'd given up. I don't blame him at all. It's
entirely too hard.
There are other supportive editors and administrators, and even an
arbitrator. But they are all fairly helpless against the mob
mentality that can take over at Wikipedia, and, in the end, with both
Pcarbonn and me missing from those editing the article, there wasn't
anybody left sufficiently interested. There is a sock puppet of
Nrcprm2026 who did some good work, but he's banned as well, for
completely different reasons. Paradoxically, you may recognize the
significance, the best editor left has been ScienceApologist, who
actually did a little good work also, recently. Particle physicist,
apparently. At least he understands some of the issues, which is more
than can be said about, say, Enric Naval, whom I'm sure you remember fondly.
You do know that the dyed-in-the-wool skeptics think the article is
hopelessly biased toward cold fusion, right?
