Mary Yugo wrote:
If so, the entire scientific community must be incredibly obstinate or the proof for cold fusion isn't very good or some combination of both.
It is entirely the first. That is true of all other examples in which the scientific establishment rejected claims for years or decades. You can find hundreds of examples; this sort of thing happens all the time. The quality of the proof is never an issue. The proof of cold fusion is better than the proof of countless other claims that were instantly accepted. As I said, the only metric that counts is money. Academic funding: money and power. People oppose cold fusion because their salaries depend upon opposing it. This is Upton Sinclair's dictum: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
Others oppose it because they oppose everything.
Or maybe cold fusion has yet to be properly demonstrated and the sincere researchers are looking at errors and noise.
You can only believe that if you refuse to look at the data, or if you do not understand the concepts of errors and noise. You have convince yourself that experts cannot measure 20 W output with no input. That's a lot like saying a doctor cannot be sure if a decapitated a patient is alive or dead.
As I've said before, I have no way to choose personally between those options. My interest is focused only on Rossi because of the robustness of the claims . . .
The cold fusion claims are equally robust, from a scientific point of view. You have no way of judging that because you refuse to look at them. You also have no way of knowing whether you could understand them if you looked at them. No doubt that is why you refuse to look: it gives you "plausible deniability."
Experts such as Heinz Gerischer who looked that the results in 1990 were instantly convinced. They did not have the slightest doubt the results are real.
We agree that 20 years is a long time to wait for acceptance if cold fusion is real and if it was truly identified by P&F 20 years ago.
Every expert who has looked at these results carefully says it is real, except Britz. Some of the 2004 DoE panel members who spent a few hours looking at it in parlor game style review were not convinced, but the reasons they gave for doubting it were ludicrous.
- Jed
