Last year, Iwamura's prospects improved tremendously, when two leading institutions (Tokyo U. and the Spring8 facility) agreed to cooperate with him, and help confirm his results. He is very confident and he has guts, so he insists everything will work out fine in the end, and the tide is turning, but I fear those two labs may botch the experiment.
I should add that Iwamura has good reason to feel confident. He is no fool, and he must understand Japanese politics well or he would not have survived so long. Tokyo University has as much prestige as MIT and Harvard rolled together, and Iwamura himself as a graduate of Tokyo University. Like they say, you can always tell a Harvard man but you cannot tell him much. If Tokyo University does report positive results it will have a profound impact on the Japanese scientific establishment, and on public opinion. I am also sure that hostile opponents in Japan are doing their best to prevent that outcome, or at least to prevent publication of a positive results. They are only a little less powerful than their U.S. analogs such as Robert Park or Zimmerman. (I expect Park and Z. are in cahoots with them, and Park must know what is happening at Tokyo University, and what it will mean to his reputation if the experiment works and squeaks past peer-review.)
Incidentally, based on my experiences dealing with people who oppose cold fusion, I do not think any of them -- Park, the Japanese, or the Sci. Am. editors -- has the slightest inkling he might be wrong. They sincerely believe that cold fusion is 100% unadulterated fraud and garbage. The Sci. Am. Editors sincerely believe those four statements they made in the sidebar in the March 2005 issue. It never occurred to them to check the literature, and if someone were to suggest that to them directly, they would respond: "this so-called 'literature' is nothing but blather from a seance of true believers. Claims made by these unknown 'researchers' McKubre or Iwamura -- people no one outside cold fusion has ever heard of -- mean nothing and prove nothing. Even if Iwamura's papers did pass peer-review, that only proves that the peer review process is not perfect and it does not always exclude nonsense." (At least, that's what they tell me.) They are as convinced of this as, for example, I am convinced that HIV causes AIDS, or that creationism is not science because it cannot be falsified or tested. They have no secret doubts. They are not being hypocritical or craven. I wish they were, because a person suffering from a guilty conscience might, someday, admit that he is wrong and make amends, but there is no cure for stupidity.
- Jed
