Broadly speaking, I think three explanation have been offered for the astounding mass spec results:
1. Tentative acceptance, or at least acceptance for the sake of argument. That, it seems to me, is McKubre's position. As McKubre says, this result is so different from previous ones it should be considered one-off, and not yet replicated. 2. Mistake. This seems unlikely given the magnitude of the effect. On the other hand mass spectroscopy is a difficult art. The people at Mitsubishi and the National Synchrotron lab both saw pronounced isotopic shifts in Iwamura's samples. The people at the NRL looked at those samples and saw nothing. I believe they were the very same samples in some cases. 3. Fraud. Surely you jest. This has been proposed by skeptics thousands of times to dismiss cold fusion results. It is an intellectual dead end. It can seldom be tested. I cannot judge the likelihood of 1 or 2. #3 seems unlikely because, as I said, there is no motive. Rossi already has what he wants from IH. I doubt IH has any investment (fiscal or psychological) in Rossi's Ni theories. No industrialist cares about theory, except insofar as they want a theory to speed up development. - Jed
