At 04:25 PM 2/25/2011, OrionWorks - Steven V Johnson wrote:
Just a comment to Jed and Abd, and a few other patient participants.
[...]
Surely it has been realized by now that it's not likely to be Mr.
Rothwell, or Mr. Lomax, or anybody on this list that possesses an
arsenal of information accurate enough to blast a hole through this
particular brick wall.
I started with what is routine for me: an assumption of sincerity and
of willingness to discuss, to explore the basis for belief and
opinion. It took several posts for me to abandon that initial
assumption. There remains, then, the value of debate with a
(somewhat) knowledgeable opponent, which is that it forces me to
examine the foundations of my own opinions, and to express them clearly.
And I may do this many times; I become familiar with the arguments.
Others, with the patience to follow the sometimes long discussions,
may learn something as well.
An opponent will often discover my errors much more quickly than my
friends might. So there is value there, as well. Cude may have
corrected me in a long-term error, about the nature of the 2004 DoE
review. I'm still checking that one. Surprisingly, many sources don't
actually specify the details very well.
Cude himself, however, is indeed a brick wall, and he exposed the
"brick and mortar" right at the start, he set out, clearly, what he
needed to change his mind, and what he needed was something that,
Rossi aside, is probably impossible in the near future and which,
there is some possibility, might never be possible, *if cold fusion
is quite real but merely impractical.*
When muon-catalyzed fusion was first discovered, there was some
excitement that it might become a usable power source. Muons are
energy-expensive to produce, but this is muon catalysis, it doesn't,
in the reaction itself, consume muons. However, when it was found
that muons were only able to catalyze so many reactions, on average,
before they were captured and effectively taken out of action, it
came to be thought that practical application was impossible, or at
least would require something new and unknown.
Contrary to Cude's claim, just because something is real does not
mean that a practical application is easy to develop. There might be
something about CF that makes it impractical, such as something
analogous to the ineffeciency of muons. Perhaps it's only possible to
create so many reaction sites, and the reaction destroys these sites,
so whatever material you create to do this is quickly poisoned and
becomes unusable.
More likely, though, *once we understand what this is, as to
mechanism*, it will be possible to engineer it. That is why the
common rejection in the physics community at large is so damaging.
These are the people who might be in the best position to come up
with accurate theory, if they'd take it seriously.
The stakes are large, potentially, which is why if, indeed, there is
some Great Artifact, that explains all the experimental results that
seemed to demonstrate fusion, we need to know what it is! Because,
not knowing that, the evidence has become overwhelming, considered
together, and a great deal of research now simply assumes cold
fusion. If it's all based on artifact, a lot of time and money is being wasted.
And if it is not artifact, opportunities are being wasted.
I have no doubt, myself, any more, as to the general fusion
conclusion. Specific results? There is some shoddy research, there
are results that are marginal and questionable. It's to be expected,
and this does not discredit either the more significant work nor, in
fact, the researchers producing marginal results. Experimentalists,
properly, Try Stuff and report What They Find.
Indeed, one of the problems of the field is commonly claimed as a
problem by skeptics, that results are cherry-picked. It's true. You
try some new approach, and if you don't find anything, do you report it?
Why not? Maybe it shouldn't be in a journal, as such, but as a public
service, a record of what's been tried is very important. It saves
time for others.
How about we start a Journal of Unimportant Results? On-line, of
course, we wouldn't want to waste paper on this....
When I see results in a paper, showing the "six 'successful'
results," I want to know, "six out of what?" I'd actually want to
know the details of all the results (which could be compactly
presented, often). What's the variation? If a hundred cells were run,
with some modest definition of "success," one might get six and it
means nothing. If ten cells were run, it might be very important! And
where did the "unsuccessful" results lie?
If they are isolated from the successful cells, I'd suspect a chaotic
phenomenon, but a real one. Some major difference between the
successful and unsuccessful cells. If the results are spread,
continuously, extending for lower to higher results, I'd suspect some
random variation, no clear difference between success or failure,
with a higher probability of artifact. On the other hand, if there
are correlated variables -- such as current density and excess heat
-- I'd want to know that as well. For all the cells, not just a selected set.
