-----Forwarded Message-----from Akira Kawasaki >From: What's New <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Sent: Mar 23, 2007 1:30 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [BOBPARKS-WHATSNEW] What's New Friday March 23, 2007
WHAT'S NEW Robert L. Park Friday, 23 Mar 07 Washington, DC 1. MARCH MADNESS: COLD FUSION PEAKS AROUND THE VERNAL EQUINOX. On this day 18 years ago, the University of Utah announced the discovery of cold fusion without giving any technical details http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN89/wn032489.html . The peak came three weeks later when Stanley Pons received a standing ovation at the annual ACS Meeting in Dallas, but by June it was over. The Utah research was exposed as a pitiful embarrassment. For years the faithful sulked at their own annual meetings held at swank resorts around the world. There they could congratulate each other on their progress. Each year another experiment would be hailed as proof, but never survived replication. A few years ago, however, the bolder of the faithful began to reemerge from the dark, giving papers at professional society meetings. They now prefer to call their field Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR),and they held a session at the APS March Meeting in Denver. Next week they will hold a session at the ACS Meeting in Chicago. Once again, there is a new experiment that is being hailed as proof-at-last. Who knows, maybe this will be the one. 2. BUBBLE TROUBLE: CONGRESS LOOKS INTO THE OTHER COLD FUSION. Last month we predicted that Rusi Taleyarkhan's troubles aren't over http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN07/wn021607.html . You will recall that while he was at ORNL Taleyarkhan claimed in a paper published by Science that he had generated deuterium fusion in sonoluminescence. His claims were disputed by two experienced physicists, Putterman and Suslick, who repeated the work and got no indication of fusion. After Taleyarkhan joined Purdue as a Nuclear Engineering professor, another paper was published that seemed to independently verify his ORNL results. Who were the authors? Taleyarkhan's students. What were they being trained to do? They apparently had little to do with the research. When a Purdue misconduct investigation seemed headed for the wrong answer it was terminated. A second Purdue investigation cleared Taleyarkhan of misconduct. Now Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC), chair of the Science Committee's Investigations Subcommittee has requested a copy of the University's internal investigation reports. 3. WIKIPEDIA: HAS A BEAUTIFUL IDEA FALLEN VICTIM TO HUMAN NATURE? Science owes its success and credibility to openness. Findings, including details of how they were obtained, are exposed to the scrutiny of the entire scientific community. It sounds like a prescription for chaos, but it's a mechanism for self-correction. The alternative is dogma. Could openness be extended to all knowledge? With Wikipedia, it seemed to work for a time, but for those who profit from a misinformed public, including purveyors of pseudoscience, the target is too tempting to leave alone. 4. LAST WEEK: WE APOLOGIZE FOR BEING A FEW DAYS LATE WITH WN. Why do technical problems always come up on Spring Break? THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND. Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the University of Maryland, but they should be. --- Archives of What's New can be found at http://www.bobpark.org What's New is moving to a different listserver and our subscription process has changed. To change your subscription status please visit this link: http://listserv.umd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=bobparks-whatsnew&A=1
