consider this: Hagelstein -an intermediate figure at MIT- does a borderline experiment with a couple of students.
He proves something, ie something akin to 'cold fusion'. The result looks convincing, but does not enter the MIT establishment, because they would loose funding in hot fusion, which they supported for quite some time. It could have been a strategic decision of the scientific establishment, to promote both hot-fusion AND cold fusion. But this is not what happened. They rode the hot-fusion train. This was an establishment-decision, simply because of the money-flow. Now MIT is confronted, that the hot-fusion budget was seriously cut. What would the MIT-administrative establishment do? Well. obviously they decided, that the tiny plant of cold fusion, which maybe has some reality on it, has to be funded with a couple of 10k$. Just to have a foot in the issue, and not be completely ridiculed, that they missed the train. Call this clever or not. I call this opportunistic. Because other institutions do not invest a significantly larger amount, this is enough to keep a foot in the door. Sort of race to the bottom. On the other hand, if say South Korea would suddenly decide to spend a Billion, this would be a game-changer. Because everybody looks at the other, a bold move from one side would trigger a stampede. Rossi or DGT wo'nt do that. They just stir the pot. Which is better than nothing. Right?
