At 03:43 PM 9/25/2012, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Having David Kidwell to say anything unequivocally positive about
cold fusion is the fourth miracle of cold fusion. The three previous
miracles, brought to you by Huizenga, pale in comparison. The
Coulomb barrier is nothing compared to the Kidwell Attitude Barrier.
Maybe it's a miracle, but .... people with Seriously Bad Attitude
about Cold Fusion don't run cold fusion experiments, because they are
completely convinced that it's a waste of time.
No, it appears that Kidwell is a skeptic, which is not at all a bad
thing. He's obviously not a pseudoskeptic.
Now, how will pseudoskeptics take Kidwells apparent turnabout?
Putting on my pseudoskeptic hat, made of anti-tinfoil (looks exactly
like tinfoil, but coming in contact with tinfoil, vanishes in a flash
of hot air), I come up with:
Kidwell obviously was an idiot, because he was willing to waste his
time with this obvious nonsense, there is no credible theory that
explains cold fusion, so any sane scientist won't touch it with a
ten-foot-pole. We make sure they won't, because their reputations
will be deservedly trashed faster than you can say "Bockris."
Remember Joe Champion? No? Obviously you have fallen under the
influence of these fanatic die-hards, like the American Chemical
Society, those physics-deprived chemists, and like the editors of
Naturwissenschafter, what do the editors of a biology journal know
about physics? The U.S. Navy has supported cold fusion research?
Yeah, the military also supported research on killing goats by staring at them.
Nobel Prize-winners have supported cold fusion research? Obviously,
beyond their prime, losing it, dotty in their old age, like Pauling
and that Josefson fellow. Did you know he's seriously considered
telepathy? Yeah, to even think that cold fusion is possible, you have
to have drunk way too much Whacko Kool-Aid.
No, this is all a plot to divert seriously needed government funding
for hot fusion, which has already produced breakeven once, and, with
another trillion dollars of funding, is on track to produce real
power by 2050. All this attention to cold fusion is weakening this
important project, which employs hundreds of physicists and supports
major reputable institutions. Hot fusion is proven technology, it
works, and there are only a few technical details to be worked out
for commercial applications, and the radioactive waste produced can
be easily handled.
...
I really wish I was making this up. Most of these arguments I have
actually encountered, in one form or another. Mostly, they come from
physics grad students, since they now know everything and will soon
need a job applying it. They don't know chemistry and materials
science, which are the cold fusion fields. Therefore it's bogus. Physics Rules.
One little detail: experimental evidence. Feynman. Cargo Cult Science.
