My ESP failed me. Randi did respond. See attached. - JR
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From: "James Randi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject:
Jed, the JREF has the American Physical Society
founded in 1899, and now at 43,000 members
worldwide who would supervise any test of cold
fusion. Is that authority not enough for you
?
We at the JREF never assumed any expertise in
this matter; as always, we refer to authoritative
experts. Dont put false claims in our mouth, please.
James Randi.
James Randi Educational Foundation
201 S.E. 12th Street
Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA 33316-1815
phone: 954-467-1112
fax phone: 954-467-1660
web page: www.randi.org
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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You wrote:
Jed, the JREF has the American Physical Society
founded in 1899, and now at 43,000 members
worldwide who would supervise any test of
cold fusion. Is that authority not enough for you
?
How about the Physical Society of Japan? It was
founded in 1877, and it publishes the Japanese
Journal of Applied Physics (JJAP) -- their
flagship journal. JJAP, as I mentioned, published
the Iwamura paper and many others about cold
fusion, including a special issue devoted to the subject.
Is that not authority enough for you? If not, why
not? Have you or your experts read and critiqued
the JJAP papers? Did they find any technical errors?
There are roughly 1,000 other peer-reviewed cold
fusion papers in other leading journals, such as
J. Electroanal. Chem. and Naturwiss. How many of
them have your experts reviewed, and how of these
reviews were published in the peer-reviewed
literature? If you know of any members of the APS
who have written critiques of cold fusion, please
point them out to me. I have read hundreds of
papers and books, including probably every
skeptical paper. I do not know of any from the
APS. In fact, I know of only three that passed
peer-review. I do not think these papers have any
merit, but I can give you a list and you can judge for yourself.
A critique of a peer-reviewed paper must be held
to the same standard of rigor as the paper.
Disbelief does not get a free pass. Many skeptics
have said that the burden of proof is on cold
fusion researchers to prove their point. As the
editor of the Scientific American put it: "But it
is not up to mainstream physicists to disprove
LENR-CANR [cold fusion]; it is up to LENR-CANR's
physicists to come up with convincing proofs. The
burden of evidence is on those who wish to establish a new proposition."
Cold fusion researchers feel they have met this
burden. Cold fusion experiments are based upon
traditional instruments and techniques, such as
calorimeters (most of them developed between the
1780 and 1840), autoradiographs (circa 1890), and
conventional tritium detection and mass
spectroscopy. Calorimetry is based upon the laws
of thermodynamics. Since most skeptics agree that
autoradiographs, the laws of thermodynamics and
so on are valid, cold fusion researchers argue
that the skeptics should agree that cold fusion
experiments are valid, and that the burden of
proof is on those who say these techniques and laws are inoperative.
- Jed
