On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 10:05 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <a...@lomaxdesign.com>wrote:
Lomax>>> "Reputable scientists" won't even look at the evidence! Cude>>Most looked a long time ago, Lomax>No. Most never actually looked at it, after enough evidence had accumulated to allow some kind of reasonable decision. That didn't happen until something like the mid 1990s. The rejection happened sooner, before there was adequate evidence, but it was not based on proof of absence, rather on absence of proof. The DOE looked again in 2004, and did not find conclusive evidence then either. >> and are satisfied that if the claims (as I put it above) were real, a convincing demo would be a piece of cake to design. > Really? Below I show why that's very wrong. It's not the norm in physics, But this is a claim of heat. Most claims are not as simple as that. >> And then along comes Rossi, and all the advocates are saying *this* is what the field has been waiting for. *This* is finally the demo Rothwell and Mallove had been wishing for. > Which demo? All of them, collectively, I suppose. > When I saw the reports of the January demo, I wrote to CMNS researchers and practically begged them to not comment on it, because of the consequences if it turned out to be fraud or error. From the January demo, maybe error was still possible, but even then, I was warning about the possibility of fraud. The later reports shifted the situation. Error became quite unlikely and fraud seems unlikely too, I don't see how the later experiments, which had the same problems as the first made things any better, unless you're hanging your hat on the secret experiment. > So Huizenga knew it was important when Miles confirmed helium commensurate with heat. With no gamma rays. >>Does Huizenga believe in cold fusion now? No. > Uh, have you asked him such that you can confidently proclaim what he believes? I'm not going to repeat rumors I've heard. I was talking about 1993, almost twenty years ago, when Huizenga was very active still. He didn't believe it after Miles in 1993, so he did not consider it a confirmation. And if in the intervening period, he became convinced, I've not heard him say so. >>The 2nd part of that was done for Focardi, and some people still kept believing, and now after Rossi, I think the doubters believe in Focardi again. So that's not enough. > No, there was a single experiment done that may be interpreted as being something like that, That was interpreted exactly like that by some... Rothwell also claimed Mckubre did an experiment like that. >>It's highly unlikely to happen, because even the people who believe in CF don't seem to be doing quantitative heat-helium experiments. > Not any more. They did them in the 1990s. Look at how much research funding it gained them. They might try doing some replications of Miles (which you called crude) that pass peer review. >> Skeptics would not waste their time until someone produces evidence that impresses them -- that at least passes peer review, but probably it would need to be more than that. > Chicken and egg, and this isn't science, it's politics. Not chicken and egg. There are plenty of CF papers published under peer review. > Tell you what, Joshua, Hey, you've dropped the 3rd person. [stuff about CR-39] The results are not convincing and not replicated. >> I think it's reasonable to use previous knowledge to make reasonable predictions about certain configurations, and change them when evidence justifies it. Otherwise, progress would be impossible. I think you said this yourself. > Yes. we use previous knowledge, quite precisely, to "make reasonable predictions," but it is another step to believe in the predictions so strongly that we discard evidence without due caution, allowing for error in predictions. I agree. I'm discarding evidence because it stinks. And because evidence that smells like roses would be easy to produce if the effect were real. > […]The evidence was garbled when described by the bureaucrat summarizing, and I tracked that down to a misunderstanding by the bureaucrat of one of the reviewers, who likewise clearly misread the report.[…] And Hagelstein used it in the 2004 report. It seems to me that it was not explained well, but I'm not sure why, or how that happened. I've heard researchers say various things about it, but, I could put it this way: they did not hire experts at communication. This really says it all. Scientists talking to scientists needing to hire experts at communication to convey the identification of heat a million times higher in density than chemical heat. It shows either complete incompetence at their trade, or more likely, the absence of an effect, or both.
