On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 7:06 PM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> wrote:
Cude>> I will assert that tools do not make a carpenter, and that my views boil down to an assertion that cold fusion researchers are bad carpenters. Rothwell> For this to be the case, they would all have to be incompetent. Every last of them. To the extent they believe cold fusion is real based on existing measurements, then in the opinion of mainstream science, they are mistaken. Every last one of them. > If even one of them is correct about the calorimetry, tritium, helium and other evidence, then the effect is real after all. Now, that's just ridiculous. Of course, many -- even most, possibly even all -- of the individual measurements could be right, but if some are wrong, or if the interpretations are wrong, or if some are caused by artifacts, then the effect is not the real. Would you say the same thing about polywater? "If even one of the scientists had been correct about viscosity or the boiling point or the freezing point, then the effect was real after all." Surely, most of their measurements were right; they were just caused by artifacts, and the effect turned out not the real, in spite of many correct measurements. You find it so hard to believe that a few hundred cold fusion researchers can all be wrong, but if cold fusion is real, then far far more researchers would have to be wrong. > But there are also many hundreds of world-class experts […] I realize that you think these people have made mistakes, and they are inept, but you are wrong. World class experts do make mistakes. There were world-class experts involved with polywater and N-rays. The planet vulcan was predicted by a world-class expert to explain the precession of mercury's orbit. He went to his grave believing the many amateurs, and several eminent astronomers, who claimed to have observed it consistent with his predictions. Einstein proved that they were all wrong. Every one of them. > Let's look at just one example of the kind people we are talking about. See: > http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/EPRInsfepriwor.pdf > Look at p. 13.3, the CV of Roland A. Jalbert: > *25 years working with tritium and tritium detection […] Jalbert? According to the web of science, he has published less than a dozen papers. And except for the proceedings you cite, I didn't see any papers on cold fusion. His name doesn't appear at all in the bibliography on your site. Have you looked at the CV of someone like Steve Koonin. Why would I trust Jalbert over Koonin, and countless other experts in nuclear science who don't believe that Jalbert's measurements provide evidence for cold fusion? And in any case, whether or not his particular tritium measurements are right or wrong, they do not explain the observed heat in CF experiments. Moreover, the fact that he didn't jump headlong into the field suggests to me that he did not have a lot of confidence in cold fusion either. > You apparently believe that you know more about tritium than Jalbert does. What I know doesn't matter, but it is very clear that most people who know as much about tritium as your Jalbert, don't believe the measurements, or at least don't believe they come from cold fusion. And judging from the scatter in the tritium data by orders of magnitude (more than 10^10 if I remember), from the fact that the highest values came from BARC within weeks of the press conference (for what is supposed to be a very difficult experiment), that they have gotten smaller over the years, and don't come close to accounting for the measured heat, it is reasonable to conclude that they do not provide enough evidence to suggest nuclear reactions at room temperature in benchtop experiments create measurable heat. >If you sincerely, actually think that you know how to measure tritium better than these people, and every single one of them has made a stupid mistake, even when they measured it at 10E18 times background, then I suggest you are suffering from an extreme case of egomania. But I don't believe that, and it's not necessary to believe that to be skeptical. I know less about climate physics than Richard Lindzen does, and I'm pretty sure you do too. And yet, both of us reject his skepticism of AGW, in favor of the much larger consensus. I could say that your certainty of cold fusion means you are claiming to know more about nuclear physics than all the skeptics, and suggest that you are suffering from egomania. But that's a pointless argument. For me, if the claims were real, claims like 100 W out with zero in, or energy density a million times that of gasoline, would be very easy to demonstrate, and yet no one seems to be able to demonstrate it. > I am certain you are wrong, and these people are right. Of course you are, but your certainty is not really persuasive. A few weeks ago you were certain steam could not be heated above 100C unless it was under pressure. You ignored perfectly good arguments that air itself (nitrogen) is heated far above its boiling point at atmosphere, and stuck stubbornly to your belief, until some CF scientist (Storms probably) set you straight. In 2009, you were pretty certain that Focardi had been proved wrong, and you argued at length with Krivit about it, and you had support from Storms. Now Focardi's results are the bee's knees, and Rossi is a replication. What happens when Rossi fades away. Will you be down on Focardi and H-Ni again?
