On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 10:46 PM, Eric Walker <eric.wal...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 10:00 AM, Jones Beene <jone...@pacbell.net> wrote: > > Then they have not considered the obvious. Unless there is fraud at the >> felony level, then Rossi has probably discovered something valid, and >> incredibly important to Society >> > > It's the implications that get people caught up in the conspiracy > theories. The implications are too much for people to handle. > I disagree. The implications of cold fusion are what got the world in a tizzy in 1989. Everyone, including many (if not most) scientists were prepared to embrace cold fusion *because* of the implications. Thousands of scientists cheered and experimented, and wanted the revolution to be true, and wanted to be part of it. It was the failure of the claims to stand up to scrutiny that caused skepticism. And I think you use the term "conspiracy theory" incorrectly. In the case of the ecat, it's really a just run-of-the-mill deception on the scale of John Ernst Worrell Keely (whose lab was full of concealed tricks) or Papp or Stoern or Madison Priest (who ran a secret cable across a river) or countless others, and on a rather smaller scale than Bre-X or Madoff. A conspiracy theory, as I usually see it used, refers to a far more comprehensive plot involving the complicity of an entire segment of society, like the alleged AGW conspiracy or the alleged cold fusion suppression conspiracy, both of which would require complicity of nearly all of academia. The ecat involves Rossi and maybe a few accomplices. That ain't no conspiracy in my books. > They make it hard to give objective, reasonable consideration to fairly > mundane experiments and to apply Occam's razor to the evidence. The most > reasonable explanation is not that there was wire fake or massive output > over-calculation or fraud or sloppy, incompetent scientists. These are all > possibilities, one presumes, but to a fair-minded observer, the most likely > explanation at this point is that there's could be some new science to be > worked out. > > That's not the opinion of the majority of observers of the case. Deception on this scale -- frauds and scams -- are utterly common. Scientific revolutions like this are very rare, especially from someone like Rossi. So, Occam's razor here favors deception as the explanation. Perhaps there was some sloppiness. Or perhaps the details we've been glued > to are the kinds of flaw that normal scientists introduce in the course of > normal scientific work and that are normally addressed behind > the scenes during peer review. I'm sure there are many papers uploaded to > ArXiv that suffer from defects, and those flaws are gradually ironed out > over the course of peer review. This paper is different, since there is a > whole industry of Rossi watchers waiting to pounce on it. Let's be fair. > How many papers subjected to this kind of scathing attention, out in the > open? > > The monitoring of the input was comically inadequate, if there is any possibility of deception, the blank run used a different power regimen, the claims of power density 100 times that of nuclear fuel without cooling and without melting are totally implausible, the lack of calorimetry is completely inexplicable. This is not some sloppiness. This is far below ordinary scientific standards, particularly for a claim like this. And all of this is assuming you accept their word. The biggest difference between this paper and most scientific literature, is that no one can check the claims. Claims of this importance will not be accepted if they can't be tested, no matter how distinguished the 7 authors are, and they're not very. The idea that an energy density of MJ/g or higher in a small-scale experiment, with a COP of 3 or higher, and hundreds of watts can't be demonstrated in a way that leaves no opportunity for the sort of objections being raised is simply too far-fetched for most scientists to accept. First, the fact that this *source* of energy thousands of times more dense than chemical has to be plugged in (to a high power line, no less) will turn most observers away. But even if it really does need to add power, then they could use some source of finite input power, and use the output to do some really visual amount of work or heating, and do it in a neutral location. Most scientists, I expect, believe that a completely unequivocal demonstration of claims of Rossi's magnitude would be a trivial thing to stage, and would bear no resemblance to the farce that we are seeing. So, once again, Occam's razor favors deception or incompetence. > The potential downstream consequences drive smart people bonkers. They > lose their cool and put in place requirements to which they would never > hold the establishment of another empirical phenomenon such as > superconductivity or cloning. > That's manifestly wrong, as was shown in 1989. The potential downstream consequences are the reason cold fusion was given the hearing it received. People really do like the idea of clean and abundant energy. This is especially true of the government, who would benefit strategically, economically, and environmentally. But it is true of nearly everyone else as well. That's why nuclear energy and fusion were so heavily promoted. Both fission and fusion promised cheap and abundant energy and in the case of fusion, clean as well. They did not live up to their promises, alas, but they show that the potential downstream consequences *did* *not* drive people bonkers, but resulted in massive funding and support. Your argument does not have a leg to stand on. > They will not suffer a revolution in physics through a demonstration that > is less than flawless. I doubt they can be persuaded out of this demand. > They would not suffer as 1989 proved, but yes, an unequivocal demonstration is needed. The thing true believers can't get their minds around is that such a demonstration would not be difficult if the claims were true. > I think it is a tactical error on our part to assume that they can be. So > either a higher bar must be cleared in the case of LENR or Rossi or one of > the other entrepreneurs will need to succeed in the market. > The bar is determined by the likelihood of the claims and the likelihood of alternative explanations, and it's determined the same way for all phenomena. In the cheese video, it doesn't matter if you don't understand the trick, anyone will be almost certain there is a trick because cheese power is too extraordinary. If (as he has argued) he replaced the cheese with some sort of alpha emitter, people might have less confidence that a trick was involved. Likewise, if one holds the view that cold fusion is as extraordinary as cheese power, then the likelihood of some other explanation is increased.
