I didn't make any claims - or reject any claims - based on "gut feel." There are obviously many more potentially valuable experimental approaches than time or money to pursue them all. I believe there is insufficient information to make a completely defensible objective choice between them. In situations like this, decisions about what to pursue and what to ignore generally have to be made on the basis of "gut feel." In this context I stated mine. It's not the same as (e.g.) a belief in, or rejection of, a theoretical idea that goes beyond what can be supported by the data.
Jeff On Fri, Dec 7, 2012 at 8:50 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <a...@lomaxdesign.com>wrote: > At 06:50 PM 12/7/2012, Jeff Berkowitz wrote: > >> Despite the "thinness" of the evidence and the ever-present contamination >> concerns, my gut tells me the LENR community would benefit from more focus >> on transmutation results. For one simple reason: transmutation results are >> persistent, while excess heat is ephemeral and easier to wish away. And >> frankly, across the history of CF/LENR, has been easy to get wrong >> (numerous examples). >> > > Well, transmutation results have also been evanescent, and some have been > tracked to contamination. > > My comment about "thin," by the way, was about a theoretical explanation. > The experimental evidence for a transmutation effect in the Iwamura > experiment is looking considerably more solid than previously. > > What would be conclusive would be, in fact, transmutation or other > specifically nuclear evidence that is correlated with heat. That's only > been done with helium. > > With some reactions, there might not be any readily available nuclear > evidence. If, for example, Storms is correct and NiH reactions are > producing deuterium, this is going to be difficult to detect, given the > natural occurrence of deuterium in hydrogen. Talk about clean nuclear > power! But helium is, perhaps, even cleaner. > > Still possible to detect deuterium, though, if a reaction lasts for long > enough or enough total energy release, and if deuterium depleted hydrogen > is used. > > > On the other hand, if these results can be confirmed and understood, it >> is very likely that the underlying reaction will turn out to be exothermic. >> So this approach offers a way to reach to the desired outcome >> (controllable, cheap, clean energy) by a "back door" discovery path. >> > > Do realize that there have been transmutation reports for a long time, and > *helium* is a transmutation result that is known to be correlated with > heat. Generally, transmutation results -- other than helium -- are far > below the levels of helium. > > > It's just a gut feel. I can't defend it any better than that. But I >> believe it. >> > > I think "belief" in this stuff is a Bad Idea. Fine to hope. Fine to trust > results enough to fully support further research. > > But positive "belief" can be quite a similar error to the error of the > pseudoskeptics, who "believed" in their own skeptical hypotheses without > ever bothering to actually confirm them. > > It's also fine to be excited about possibilities. > >
