At 04:25 PM 8/4/2012, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Daniel Rocha <<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]> wrote:
I just noticed that Krivit used his death to promote WL theory...
He also put himself front and center in someone
else's obituary, which is bad form.
I'm going to disagree. If this was the only
obituary, okay, bad form. But this is Krivit's
blog, and he has a story which is important to
him. If we were to buy that New Energy Times is
some kind of neutral publication, objectively
reporting, it would be a problem. But this isn't
even a formal NET issue. It's his blog entry.
He didn't put himself front and center, quite. I
told the story from his perspective, and, as we
all know, Krivit has a perspective, a point of
view, on cold fusion theory. So by mentioning
Martin's willingness to consider alternatives to
the "fusion" theory -- as Krivit has it -- he was
simply praising the man, according to his lights.
However, this did cause me to look at what he
linked, the 2009 interview, and how he presented
it in 2010. There is definitely a problem there.
http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2010/35/SR35910fleischmann.shtml
The title of the page is "Fleischmann: It Must be Neutrons."
Really. Did Fleischmann say that? Not quite.
Krivit's transcript of the dialog shows a
discussion of how Fleischmann came to call the
reaction "fusion," even though he knew there were
problems with that. At the end, there was this interchange:
SK: Yeah, that seems understandable. I was
wondering whether you had a chance to catch wind
of the ideas in the last few years about neutron-catalyzed reactions?
MF: Yes, it must be. You know, the neutron is
not very strongly bound in deuterium so maybe
there is some substance to those thoughts.
Krivit, then, has "plausible deniability" for his
claim in the title. However, notice that the
answer "Yes, it must be" is not exactly to a
question "Is it neutrons?" Krivit apparently
heard it that way, or interpreted it that way
later, in 2010. Rather, they were talking about
what had been raised before. Here is the full relevant dialogue:
SK: I suppose you probably had no idea what the reaction was going to be like.
MF: No. It seemed to me that calling it fusion
drew attention to the type of process which it
could be, you see. It seemed reasonable to call it that at that time.
SK: I suppose there was nothing else, to your
awareness, from which to categorize it?
MF: No, it was a type of process to which one could refer.
SK: Yes, certainly. Well, 20 years later, now it
seems like that distinction is much easier to
see. Ive seen other ideas that relate to
neutron-related processes that could be not
perhaps as simple and direct as D+D > 4He but
other more-complex processes, perhaps other
alternative pathways to getting to heat and helium.
MF: Yes, it seems reasonable to have called it
that, but perhaps one shouldnt have called it that.
SK: Yeah, that seems understandable. I was
wondering whether you had a chance to catch wind
of the ideas in the last few years about neutron-catalyzed reactions?
MF: Yes, it must be. You know, the neutron is
not very strongly bound in deuterium so maybe
there is some substance to those thoughts.
Remember, Martin was about 83 when this was
recorded. His comments sound like those of a man
of 83, still clear, but slower. He was not, in
the first wors of his last comment, responding to
neutrons specifically, but to the general issue
raised before, of "other alternative pathways of getting to heat and helium."
His "it must be" is then a reference to other
pathways than the simple d+d -> 4He concept. Not
neutrons, per se. "Those thoughts," however, is
about neutrons because of his reference to the
binding of neutrons in deuterium. Krivit, in his
headline, reduces this to something that
Fleischmann did not say, quite clearly.
However, that is something Krivit did in 2010.
The death announcement is actually fine, except
for a tiny piece of this, where he repeats his error from 2010.
The last time I spoke with Martin was June 3,
2009. He expressed his regret about calling his
and Pons discovery cold fusion. He
acknowledged for the first time that neutrons
must be the key to understanding low-energy
nuclear reactions, rather than the hypothesis of
deuterons or protons somehow overcoming the
extremely energetic Coulomb barrier at room temperature.
With his "must be," he forgets that other
possibilities were raised, and that, in context,
Martin was agreeing with "other," not "neutrons"
specifically. Krivit, I'm sure, understands the
danger of collapsing what actually happened with
our interpretations of it. It leads us to then
build on our own fantasies. It leads us to
overlook alternate interpretations of text and life.
The most that one can derive out of Fleischmann's
comments, without projecting the conclusion onto
them, would be that neutrons *may* be involved.
For Fleischmann to acknowledge *must be* with
regard to neutrons would have been entirely out
of character and everything else known about his
position. Literally, with regard to neutrons,
Fleischmann explicitly said "*maybe* there is
some substance to those thoughts."
Here is what I wish Krivit would do with
Widom-Larsen theory: actually investigate it.
Solicit expert comment on all sides. There are
obvious problems with W-L theory, they've been
discussed here on Vortex and recently on the
private CMNS list. You would never know about
these problems from Krivit's reporting, he has
framed all criticism of it into being a result of
some kind of pro-fusion bias. He also doesn't
seem to understand that most researchers *don't*
think the reaction is ordinary d-d fusion. It's
got to be some new process, and theories vary
from Storms recent proposals (which could be
called d-d, but is more accurately d-e-d with a
controlled approach that I happen to think is
preposterous, but there it is) to multibody
fusion, perhaps through the formation of
Bose-Einstein Condensates. Bottom line, though,
there is no theory that can be seen to be
adequate out of the box. But Widom-Larsen theory
is worst than most, I've gone so far as to call it a "hoax."
The theory, as easily applied, would predict
results that, quite simply, are not observed, and
gammas from neutron activations are only one
aspect of this. It's a hoax because the
Widom-Larsen explanations, which Krivit presents
uncritically, gloss over the obvious problems,
especially the compound reaction rate problem,
they don't even begin to address them. W-L theory
seems to resolve the issue, but only if one wears blinders.
A good journalist, one would think, would open up
all these questions and bring the range of informed comment to us.
