Considering the low probability (in the minds of honest skeptics) of cf, what will motivate scientists to even look (through the telescope)?
Nothing will motivate them and it is a waste of time trying to motivate them.
We have the data.
Now, how do we get their interest?
You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink. If the data itself does not excite interest in a scientist, nothing can be done. You should go look for another scientist. I hope there are enough open-minded scientists in the world to make a critical mass and get the field moving.
Perhaps when more papers get published, perhaps not.
Not. You could publish 6,000 or 10,000 more papers, but I do not think it would have an effect on the attitudes of those who express no interest in the field. Most of them figure it is simply not their business. No amount of proven no number of papers change the mind of a harsh skeptic. My impression is that most skeptics are extreme conformists. They will parrot whatever the "authoritative" sources such as Nature, the APS or Scientific American say. They will not change their minds until these mainstream organizations endorse CF. There is no point to trying to convince them. There is no point in discussing the matter with them or confronting them in any way. Prof. Steve Jones, for example, to this day will not admit that a *single experiment has ever produced convincing excess heat*. He dismisses all excess heat results, including McKubre, Storms, Miles, Mizuno and all of the others documented at LENR-CANR.org. He says -- and I am sure he sincerely believes -- that they are all experimental error or all so close to the margin they are useless. He and others are also pulling strings to prevent any further experiments involving calorimetry. That is why the DoE report came out so strongly against calorimetry. This is not because they feel unsure of their own beliefs or they secretly worry they might be proven wrong -- it is because they are absolutely, positively certain they are right, and they view any questioning or deviation from their beliefs to be an outrage and a disgrace to science. From their point of view, the search for excess heat from cold fusion is as absurd as a test to see whether a cow really can jump from the surface of the earth over the moon. It is manifestly impossible, and anyone who does not understand that is a crackpot, not a scientist.
It is fruitless waste of time talking to such people. It is like trying to convince a religious fanatic of the theory of evolution. You have to go after open-minded people and fence-sitters.
I believe there is some hope of success because people have downloaded more than 300,000 papers from LENR-CANR.org, and we get new visitors every day. There must be many people out there who are interested in the subject and will take a careful look at it. We must concentrate on those people and ignore the others.
Perhaps the interest will be driven by commerce and the science community will be very surprised one day.
Given the difficulties of replicating cold fusion, and the unpredictable power output from the reaction, I think it is very unlikely that corporations or venture capitalists will look at it. They have a very short horizon. Politicians are even worse. The other day I read that it is standard White House policy to deal with issues on a "90-day horizon" -- i.e., it is the policy of the administration to ignore any crisis, legislative initiativeor opportunity that will not reach fruition (I mean pan out) within 90 days. Many corporations are run on this basis nowadays as well, with an eye to the stock market.
Before corporations look at cold fusion, researchers must first learn to control the reaction. Our audience now is limited to researchers -- mainly academic researchers.
This may seem pessimistic, but it is not necessarily so because there may be enough academic researchers out there to rescue the field.
- Jed
