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Regarding this quote from Scott Chubb about the many debacles of cold fusion:
"Although the reasons for this breakdown are not clear, the failure by particular individuals or institutions to be held accountable for past actions has been largely responsible for this problem."
I am pretty sure the individuals and institutions he has in mind are opposed to cold fusion. The skeptics have caused this debacle, and they should be held responsible. The institutions that have opposed cold fusion most vociferously include the American Physical Society, MIT, the DoE, and the Scientific American. I doubt that Chubb thinks that Fleischmann and Pons are to blame for any of this. (Beaudette, on the other hand, does apportion a small share of the blame to them.)
I can't speak for Chubb, but I know him well, and I am pretty sure that is how he sees it. I am sure that is how most cold fusion researchers feel. For example, the late Julian Schwinger resigned from the American Physical Society after their refusal to publish his papers. He felt that cold fusion research was being suppressed and academic freedom violated. He wrote:
"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."
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/SchwingerJcoldfusiona.pdf
I agreed with him 100%. There is no conspiracy against cold fusion, but there are hundreds of angry scientists who know nothing about it, and yet who claim it was never replicated, it is fraud, the researchers are lunatics, et cetera, ad nauseam. They also claim that they represent "the vast majority of scientists," but they are wrong about that, too. Unfortunately, many of these people are influential, and they have influenced public opinion, and prevent cold fusion researchers from responding in the mainstream press. Here is an example of skeptical distortions by the Scientific American:
http://lenr-canr.org/News.htm#SciAmSlam
- Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org
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RE: Response to the Cold Fusion Community
You wrote:
"> You and this author have no clue what the mainstream science community thinks about cold fusion.
To which, I must disagree. My first real encounter with cold fusion occurred at the APS Centennial meeting . . ."
I do not think you can measure the views of the mainstream science based on this one observation, at one meeting. It would be like trying to judge support for cold fusion by attending the APS cold fusion sessions. (The ~50 to 100 people who show up are mostly supporters.) You need a larger sample of people, and a questionnaire of some sort.
Actually, I think it would be good to limit respondents to people who have read 5 or more papers. You would not ask an electrochemist about plasma fusion or AIDS treatment, so you should not ask random people from other disciplines about cold fusion.
". . . I was handed a copy of Infinite Energy. At the time it read as if it was science by press release. Upon recent reflection, it seems more like a fringe community (deservedly, or not) that was desperately trying to gain recognition in the community at large . . ."
I think it would be more accurate to say they were desperately trying to get people to realize they had already gained recognition. I think it is foolish to try to convince people at the APS, which is the locus of opposition to cold fusion. The Science Policy Administrator there has said that cold fusion scientists are "a cult of fervent half-wits" The ACS and other organizations are more open to the idea.
"Simply put, if I were to ask my adviser, or any other member of my department tomorrow, I am fairly sure they would express deep skepticism about cold fusion."
Perhaps. Try it! But you should ask a larger sample of several hundred scientists before drawing a conclusion, and as I said it might be a good idea to ask them to read papers first, or to limit them to people with relevant qualifications.
"My training suggests that the Fleischmann-Pons effect should not occur, except under high pressure/temperature conditions where the wavefunction overlap is sufficient for tunneling to occur."
I do NOT understand why people even bring this up!! Yes, of course, the results are unexpected and they appear to violate theory. This was obvious to Fleischmann, Pons and every other researcher. Did you suppose they are unaware of this fact? They didn't notice? Every review of cold fusion begins by pointing out that the ratio of helium to heat is the same as plasma fusion, but the tritium and neutrons are usually 10 million times lower than plasma fusion. That is the unexplained mystery at the heart of the problem. Because they have observed the effect in hundreds of experiments, researchers assume the theory needs revision, or reinterpretation.
". . . I will eventually read the papers on LENR-CANR."
Good! That's the thing to do.
- Jed Rothwell
Librarian, LENR-CANR.org
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