One of the common pseudoskeptical arguments is that cold fusion
"believers" believe that cold fusion was "suppressed." The picture
conveyed is that of wild-eyed conspiracy theorists.
However, with *very little conspiracy,* cold fusion *was* suppressed,
and the story is out in the open, in the historical record, readily
accessible if you know where to look, and analyzed in the academic
press, particularly in Bart Simon's "Undead Science," Rutgers
University Press (2002). But few people will actually look at the
record, people want their "facts" predigested, i.e., no longer fact,
but interpretation and conclusion.
What Jed describes happened. The effect was massively chilling. Why
it happened is less clear. Most players, I assume, believed that they
were simply serving science, protecting it from bogus claims, or
perhaps protecting valuable programs, crucial -- they thought -- to
the future of major institutions -- from suffering loss of funding to
a wild-goose chase.
Science got lost in the shuffle. The question of cold fusion being
worth massive funding (as is what was actually being considered in
both DoE reviews, not "scientific reality") was an entirely separate
question from the reality of the effect.
As we know, the heat effect discovered by Pons and Fleischmann (or
rediscovered, we don't really know if earlier observations were this
effect or artifact) was confirmed. It was a difficult experiment,
contrary to expectations. However, researchers who persisted
eventually observed it, and this was not confirmation bias, the
perception of an effect in the noise. It was well above noise. There
was *some* effect, for sure, something was causing heat that chemists
were unable to explain.
The pseudoskeptics said, "This must be chemistry," and, in that, they
were just as much outside their own fields as were Pons and
Fleischmann when they measured neutrons incorrectly.
Once heat/helium was found, and particularly when it was widely
confirmed -- one confirmation would ordinarily be enough! -- we knew
that not only was this not a known chemical effect, it was actually a
nuclear reaction, even though it only rarely produced neutrons or
other clear radiation effects, and that the levels of radiation were
very low was a huge red herring. To the physicists, this proved the
effect -- considered in bulk -- could not be "fusion," since the
known and well-studied fusion reactions always produced copious
radiation. However, helium is a nuclear product, and once helium
production was correlated with heat, we knew, and by the mid-1990s,
that "cold fusion" was a nuclear reaction, and very likely deuterium fusion.
And there is more. Nickel-hydrogen results are spotty, scattered, but
strong enough to suspect that other reactions can take place, other
than deuterium fusion. Scientifically, NiH does not have the level of
scientific proof that PdD has, but because of all the recent
commercial effort, it's reasonably possible that there will be at
least demonstration devices available soon.
(The commercial efforts, because of the enormous implications, are
mostly secret, and cannot be confirmed openly. However, at some
point, if NiH effects are real and robust, someone is going to figure
out that they can sell demonstration devices *even if they are not
particularly reliable,* especially if they are *initially* reliable,
but the effect dies out, which is my speculation as to the cause of
delay with the various players.
At 04:00 PM 11/9/2012, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Jeff Berkowitz <<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]> wrote:
We have the naysayer scientists who just know it isn't possible, and
dismiss anything without such inspection, just as I wouldn't spend
too much time looking over a new perpetual motion machine. Can't be
done, don't waste anyone's time.
They cause little harm.
The rejection of cold fusion, as it came down, was so unjust that it
created contrary reactions. Cold fusion researchers circled the
wagons, defending each other, even defending poor research and
premature conclusions.
"Poor research," however, may simply be underfunded research.
Researchers only have some much time in the day, week, month, year.
There really isn't a problem if we all return to normal science:
careful observation of results, lack of belief in theory but seeking
to falsify one's own hypotheses, the use of controls and correlated
observation, and, very important, general trust in experimental
results as being valid.
"Experimental results," the actual data, is not at all the same as
"conclusions from results." Perhaps the results are artifact, perhaps
not, but the reason why scientific fraud, the *faking* of results, is
so serious an offense is that it can cause massive waste of time,
lots of running down blind alleys. Mere error in interpretation
doesn't do this, if it's accurately reported.
The biggest single offense I can find in the history of cold fusion
was the speech of Nate Lewis before the APS, which, we must remember,
was very popular with the audience to which it was delivered. Lots of
scientists at the time knew this was a problem, but mostly kept their
heads down, and the exceptions were ignored. Long before adequate
experimental work had been done, he rejected cold fusion as the
result of incompetence and delusion. He's never retracted that, so we
have a demonstration of how science can go astray. It goes astray in
the same way that other human social structures go astray, when
delusion and assumption become fixed and difficult to challenge.
Scientists, as scientists, are theoretically trained to not jump to
conclusions like that. But scientists also must convince funding
agencies, and "we don't know" is not commonly popular. It works
sometimes for basic science, modest funding, but cold fusion was
presented -- prematurely -- as the solution to the energy crisis. The
ERAB Panel was given the wrong charge, inadequately specified. The
real long-term question was whether or not there were basic issues in
science to be resolved, but the politicians who set up the panel
wanted a fast answer, and the real answer was "We don't know yet.
Research is needed." Not a crash program, a major effort, but simple
scientific research, the kind that goes on all the time, with modest funding.
Instead, the actual result was no funding. The DoE did not follow the
recommendations of the 1989 panel, nor of the 2004 panel. The
widespread belief in the bogosity of cold fusion remained largely entrenched.
But that did not actually stop research and funding, it was merely
crippled, and the blackout in journals was only in a few journals. It
happened to be the journals that most *physicists* thought should be
places to publish CF results, but ... wait a minute! This wasn't
physics, this was *chemistry*. If there was an error in chemistry,
shouldn't that be published in a chemistry journal?
In fact, cold fusion crossed traditional lines between chemistry and
physics. The chemists said, "this is not chemistry," and the
physicists said, "this can't be nuclear physics, it's impossible."
Both were experts in their fields, but behind that debate was hidden
something unstated: "can't be *what* nuclear physics? Or, for that
matter, symmetrically, what chemistry?
The Fleischmann-Pons was not known chemistry, and it was not known
physics. So what was it? The physicists became strangely incurious.
This was never "perpetual motion," nor was it ever "free energy," as
I've seen cold fusion described by pseudoskeptics.
The harm that was done by the pseudoskeptical rejection, in part,
cannot be recovered. That harm is a delay in finding the answers
about cold fusion, and whatever might come down from what is found.
The value of that could be huge. If there was a twenty year delay,
say that cold fusion might be coming on line now, instead of, say,
twenty years from now, the value per year could be a trillion
dollars. So that little piece of fun at the APS conference cost a
mere twenty trillion dollars. Nate Lewis should be proud. That's
"making a difference in the world."
Instead, Nate Lewis should, of course, have published his results.
His results are part of the body of experimental evidence that
establishes the nature of the FPHE. More accurate studies that more
closely replicated the F-P work should have been undertaken. There
was a huge waste at the time. Probably hundreds of groups tried to
quickly replicate the FPHE, and most failed (many more failed, I'm
sure, than published; some successes were not published because of
how hostile the atmosphere became). Really what was needed was for a
few groups to confirm, and then, once the effect was established, to
explore the parameter space more thoroughly. Ordinary science. As the
DoE *actually recommended*, modest funding through existing programs.
And instead of sitting on their comfortable (and inadequately
applied) theories, physicists then would have taken on the difficult
task, figuring out what is actually going on, as to mechanism. We
still don't know. There are some, as Ed Storms stated in his 2010
review, "plausible" theories, though the word may be generous. Let's
say that no theory is complete, no theory is yet of much use in
predicting new results, i.e., for engineering the effect.
(But Dr. Storms has recently come up with an *implausible* theory
that predicted X-radiation or gammas from nickel-hydrogen, and he
found it, using Geiger counters. The prediction, though, was only
very general and not adequate to make specific predictions about the
radiation (such as amount and frequency. His theory may be utterly
bogus, from the point of view of physics, but *might model the
reality in some way.*)
We may have the evil forces of the current energy cartel . . .
I do not think they have played any role. They do not know that cold
fusion exists.
I think that is mostly correct. The facade of denial is crumbling,
but it hasn't penetrated the popular press and general thought much.
My guess, though, is that there are people within the energy industry
who are looking at CF. There may be research going on that we don't
know about. Palladium deuteride techniques have very little
commercial potential, many have noted (but we won't know for sure
until we know what's happening, hence the need for basic research).
And nickel-hydrogen research was mostly neglected.
Why? Well, it seemed so implausible!
I think that's it? Who do you think shuts down discussions -- the
naysayers or the evil forces?
I know exactly who, when, where and how this research has been
derailed. Ask any researcher! They tell you the same kind of thing,
time after time. There are examples in books and in the LENR-CANR
archives, such as Melvin Miles describing how they assigned him to
the stockroom, or the time they hauled Taleyarkhan before the U.S.
Congress and demanded his tax returns and personal correspondence.
Here, let me list the ways:
Intimidation, harassment, sabotaging equipment, publishing false data.
Threatening to deport researchers.
Destroying peoples' reputations by publishing in the mass media
assertions that they are criminals, frauds and lunatics.
Destroying the reputations of professors and graduate students at
TAMU and elsewhere with false accusations of fraud.
Threat of firing people, actually firing people, cutting funding,
telling researchers that if they publish results or attend meetings
they will be summarily fired.
Canceling meetings, canceling publications at the last minute,
interfering in normal funding.
Ridicule, character assassination, and misinformation and nonsense
in the mass media, Wikipedia and elsewhere.
Outright lies such as: Cold fusion was never replicated; no
peer-reviewed papers were ever published; the effect is very small;
there have been proven fraudulent experiments (other than MIT's).
All this actually happened. By the way, I doubt that there was
"fraud," as such, with MIT, but there was some careless handling of
data. Something worth a mild reprimand. And then, of course, the MIT
researchers never took responsibility for it. At most it showed a low
level of heat, much less heat than what they were looking for. I
recently looked over the MIT helium results. It's quite visible in a
lot of the early work. Almost everyone was operating under the
assumption that this must be d-d fusion, the same as with hot fusion.
So results were interpreted that way. Earlier helium findings were
dismissed as impossibly high. If they were that high, the neutrons
would have been seriously deadly.
Of course, the basic thing that happened with their helium work (as
with Caltech) was that they didn't see heat (or much heat), so they
didn't get helium, which is another reason why I consider the Caltech
and MIT work as part of the overall body of evidence that *confirms*
cold fusion.
People need to take the idea of "bad experiment" and dump it. All
experiments are useful if the data is accurately recorded and published.
If that's done, there is, then, only richer or poorer interpretation
of the data.
Perversion of the peer review system described by Schwinger: "The
pressure for conformity is enormous. I have experienced it in
editors' rejection of submitted papers, based on venomous criticism
of anonymous referees. The replacement of impartial reviewing by
censorship will be the death of science."
And so on, and so forth. This is hardly unique to cold fusion. Such
things are quite common in academic science.
Cold fusion could be the very, very expensive fiasco that leads to
reform of the whole system, to the rejection of cargo cult science.
Feynman would be proud.
This is not history. All of these activities continue unabated up to
the present moment. The people doing this include, for example,
Ouellette and the editors at Scientific American, the people I
described in the document "The DOE lies again," Richard Garwin,
Robert Park and many others. I often cite Park because he openly
brags about his role in suppressing cold fusion and destroying
people's lives and careers. Most of the others prefer to keep a low profile.
Yes, some of these people are evil. But mainly they are very, very
stupid. They are like Donald Trump and the other "birthers." Believe
me, I have met them. You can't hide stupidity, and as Schiller said,
the gods themselves contend in vain against it.
I'd be careful about "lie." Never ascribe to evil what can be
ascribed to stupidity. Entrenched stupidity is a kind of evil,
though. It can be trapped, but it takes time. Human beings are
heavily defended against domination, and so will resist efforts to
"change their minds." It's natural, but it is also highly limiting.
The one positive thing I can say is that most of them are sincere.
They honestly believe that cold fusion is criminal fraud and lunacy,
and it was never been replicated or published, etc. blah, blah. I
suppose if I believed that I might be in favor of suppressing it.
However I hope that I would have enough sense to check the
peer-reviewed literature first before publishing such extreme
accusations in the Washington Post or the Scientific American.
There is a lesson in this. In science, don't "suppress" anything.
Test it, refute it with controlled experiment, fine.
Yes, you'd think Ouellette would be willing to read the research.
However, Jed, you didn't give her a fair chance. Instead of telling
her to read lenr-canr.org -- which is huge, where does one begin? --
and someone like her is not going to trust some random paper or paper
written especially for lenr-canr.org -- she should have been
referred, immediately, to a peer-reviewed review of the field, in a
major mainstream journal, and there is one that stands out, "Status
of cold fusion (2010)" by Ed Storms in Naturwissenschaften.
Pseudoskeptics can come up with stuff about that, but it starts to
become obvious, then, how political all this is. They will say:
1. Naturwissenschaften is a biology journal. The implication is that
peer review of "physics" there will be pitiful. The truth: yes, NW
publishes papers mostly about the life sciences; however, it has
always been (since what, 1910?) a multidisciplinary journal,
including physics, and it has access to the best peer review
resources. It's the "flagship multidisciplinary journal" of the
second largest scientific publisher in the world, Springer-Verlag,
and the largest, Elsevier, is also publishing in the field (articles
by Krivit in an encyclopedia). The abstract should give anyone who
thinks the "scientific consensus" is against cold fusion some pause.
Where is the "scientific consensus" found? On blogs? In my circle of
no-nothing friends (who might know a great deal about standard
physics but nothing about cold fusion chemistry).
2. Ed Storms is an editor at Naturwissenschaften. The implication is
that then he was able to bypass peer review. That's preposterous, and
an unfounded slam at the publisher and the editor of the journal. In
fact, they engaged Storms at the end of 2009 because they needed a
LENR editor, and that they needed one shows how far the field has
come. The review was solicited, Storms had submitted a narrower paper
on heat/helium, and they requested he come back with an overall
review. No major publisher would allow an editor to bypass peer
review, unless for an editorial, perhaps. This was not an editorial,
it was clearly labelled as a review, and prominently featured in the issue.
3. The paper is by a "believer." That is, of course, circular. What
do they expect, a major review by someone who thinks the effect
doesn't exist? Sure. If it could pass peer review. The only published
highly-skeptical commentary on cold fusion published in a mainstream
journal since about 2004 was the Letter of Kirk Shanahan, published
in the Journal of Environmental Monitoring, in response to the review
of cold fusion published there by Krivit and Marwan. That Letter got
a major response from most of the researchers in the field,
demolishing his arguments -- they really are preposterous, almost all
of them -- and Shanahan tried to respond to them and the editors
refused. Now, that journal *was* peripheral, but ... even in a
peripheral journal, the point of view that Ouellette thinks is
"mainstream" can't get published. And the reason is obvious. There is
no there there.
A major review in Naturwissenschaften, one might think, if it
contained bogosity, would find an answer. Nope. I think skeptical
papers have been written but rejected, though I certainly can't prove
that. Naturwissenschaften is right beside Scientific American in
impact factor. Scientific American has never published an actual
review of FPHE cold fusion, just editorial stuff, fluff. And, as a
result, long-term, other publishers are eating their lunch. Natural
consequences.
History is watching.
