Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
I'll bet if you contacted those people today (the ones still
alive), you would find they have not learned a thing about cold
fusion and they would not change a word of their endorsements.
Unless you could approach them in a way likely to generate rapport,
and discuss the issues in detail, perhaps following the approach of
someone you love to hate, Hoffmann. It's not impossible, but, yes,
it can be very difficult.
Difficult or easy, why would I bother? I don't care what these
nudniks think. They sure don't care what I think!
As Mike McKubre says, "I wouldn't cross the street to hear a lecture
by Frank Close."
I have nothing in common with the extreme skeptics and the Avowed
Enemies of Cold Fusion. No meeting of the minds is possible between
us. I never communicate with them unless there is an audience and I
wish to score points. Discussing the issues with them is a futile
waste of time.
Needless to say, they think the same thing about me, as they have
often said. Here is one that said that about me yesterday:
http://evildrpain.blogspot.com/2009/09/freedom.html
Here is the "heated discussion" linked to in the blog:
http://missatomicbomb.blogspot.com/2008/06/gullible-part-2.html
This person thinks that he won the debate, and that:
"This debate, of course, turned out to be an utterly pointless
exercise, as the advocate descended predictably into nonsensical
argument, and what amounted to name calling, in order to defend his position."
From my point of view, I made mincemeat out of him, and I never
engaged in any name calling. I believe this is cognitive dissonance
on his part. Mainly it was a discussion of matters of fact, not even
technical matters. For example, he claimed that no nuclear scientists
have worked on cold fusion, so I gave him a long list of
distinguished nuclear scientists who have. He claimed that no
replications have been done, so I gave him a list of replications. And so on.
By the way, I would never claim that I won the debate by virtue of
superior intellect or legerdemain. Any fool who bothers to read the
literature can easily win this sort of debate.
I am in the same position as someone in 1906 debating whether
airplanes could exist. All you have to do is point out that those
Wright brothers have done public demonstrations, flying for up to 40
minutes, as attested in affidavits by leading citizens of Dayton, OH.
And they have a patent, and they have published scientific papers in
leading journals of engineering, and there are photos, etc., etc. The
skeptic may make an absurd technical objection: "Even if someone did
fly, they could never land, because they would be moving so rapidly
through the air." (A famous scientist in 1903 actually said this.)
Anyone with rudimentary knowledge of flight would respond: "Birds
solve this problem by stalling at the last moment, and falling on
their feet. A human pilot can do the same thing, to fall on landing
gear." Which is exactly the case, and which the Wrights and others
knew perfectly well, and had been doing for many years. This is
analogous to me saying to the cold fusion skeptic: "Many different
calorimeter types have been used, so this cannot be a systematic
error caused by one calorimeter type." It is one of the first things
you lean when you study the subject, and it is easy to understand.
(Many things about cold fusion -- and aviation for that matter -- are
difficult to understand, but the skeptics of 1906 and 2009 fail to
grasp even the ABCs.)
- Jed
