Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
As Bob Dylan wrote, if you ain't got nothin, you got nothin to lose.
On the other hand, if the bucks start pouring in the door, hey, an
attorney should get some. How likely is that? I can see the headlines:
Cold Fusion Fad Hits High Schools, Physicists Hysterical
Sales of LDA Cold Fusion Kits Skyrockets after American Physical
Society Issues Press Release: It's Impossible!
That's funny, but this is no laughing matter. There has been and
continues to be serious, prolonged opposition to cold fusion. Many
powerful people such as Robert Park have gone to great lengths to
prevent research. They have done unethical things such as destroying
people's reputations in the mass media, and firing scientists who
published positive results or tried to organize or attend
conferences. They have destroyed people's lives, happiness and
marriages. I advise you not to play games with such people. Do
nothing that will give them the opportunity to get you in trouble.
They probably do not have much power to hurt a person who is outside
the academic establishment and not employed by a university or
corporation. But I expect they will try, and you may be more
vulnerable than you think to nuisance lawsuits, harassment, character
assassination, Internet rumors and so on. These people are creative
and they will stop at nothing. They sincerely believe that cold
fusion is "pathological science" worse than Creationism, and that it
is lunacy and criminal fraud, and that allowing any research will
"discredit" science.
I do not believe in conspiracy theories but I know for a fact that
harassment is widespread, because I know the victims from the 1990s.
More recently, people such as Robert Duncan told me making favorable
remarks in public about cold fusion is like poking a hornet's nest.
I myself have not been the target of any serious harassment. This is
because powerful people who have it in for the research, such as
Park, never bother me. They consider me an unimportant lunatic.
That's what they tell me. I am glad they feel that way! Some of their
small beer followers have bothered me, mainly in petty ways such as
banning me from Wikipedia. (Any self-respecting person qualified to
write about cold fusion will be banned from Wikipedia sooner or later.)
Actually, I have had just about as much trouble from cold fusion
researchers who oppose LENR-CANR.org as from opponents. Why they do
not simply ignore the site I do not know, but several have tried to
sabotage it. As I mentioned here, one even threatened lawsuits and it
turned out he meant it. Another included me as a co-defendant in a
lawsuit against Mallove, but the judge dismissed it. There sure are
many flaky people associated with this field! The skeptics are right
about that. You can see why people get a bad impression.
- Jed
