Eric, You're right about critiques of theory generally speaking. Those within the field who are most able (i.e. academic theoreticians) to critique theory are often silent about others work. Storms is not a physicist-theoretician by profession, but his comprehensive reviews and critiques (and his NAE + hydroton theory) are very well thought out and important in that they often fill a void bereft of comprehensive critique. Honestly I think Takahashi's TSC-Theory is better developed than Kims, and Meulenberg-Sinha Lochon Model is thorough as well, and of course Hagelstein is heavy on the math and thoughtfulness, but my opinion is of little importance as to which is better than which. But the major issue as you likely know is that theorists are suffering from lack of data, most notably from NiH systems (ash, etc.).
Naturwissenschaften is a reputable journal with a decent impact factor. And considering chemistry undergirds biology, the marriage between CF and a largely biology-centered publication is not crazy. Biology and chemistry are also both bedfellows in that they are "messy" non-linear sciences. I think its rather obvious they are not asking biologists to peer review the submissions. With that said, people like Franks don't even think the heat effect is real, so his and their complaints about theory are pointless. As with all pseudo-skeptics they do everything to avoid the elephant in the room: that the heat effect is real. They have no meaningful objections to that fact, all they can criticize are neutron detection and theory. It's a sad joke. All the best, John On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 9:54 PM, Eric Walker <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 4:29 PM, Foks0904 . <[email protected]> wrote: > > Yeah Goodstein even commented how good the work of Scaramuzzi was, but >> just avoided the question of whether excess heat was real or not. >> > > I rather like Goodstein's piece. The question facing him (whether he > perceived it or not) was: do I want to really embarrass myself and/or > continue to have a promising career? I do not blame him for speaking > equivocally about cold fusion. When one has colleagues like John Franks, > there is a lot of pressure to be politic. > > I hope we did not taint John Franks. His email address was sufficiently > obfuscated that hopefully his colleagues will not find out about his time > here. > > Re some points that were raised: > > - I'm personally not all that impressed by the fact that a cold fusion > article has been published in Naturwissenschaften, although it's better > than publishing in a hobby magazine, no doubt. > - Concerning this point: "From all this, supposedly all these heavy > deuterons can then condense into a BEC state. Then from this belief he > derives some bogus selection rules which favors helium production. He > derives some nuclear rate reactions that are devoid of the Gamow factor and > hails this as proof that the Coulomb repulsion has been overcome and > furthermore, since his deuterons have gone into the BEC state, the nuclear > reactions he wants then proceed with vigor." -- I wouldn't be surprised if > a lot of these complaints are good ones. I get the impression that one of > the consequences of cold fusion being a pariah field is that there is not > sufficient critique brought to bear on some theories and thought > experiments. > > Eric > >
