Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
> So ... I don't expect it, but suppose I figure out how to get serious > excess heat, my cat pees in the tube and, damn, it works, and I can > reproduce it with some uric acid or whatever, sheer luck. I shouldn't > publish? But, sure, publication of sloppy work that makes big claims, that's > lousy. That is unlikely. I have seen photos of cathodes with cat hairs galvanized onto them, but they did not work. Historical note: coal saturated in cat piss was used in the mid 17th century to demonstrate the first non-polluting furnaces with afterburners, a clever and reliable technique. The cats probably did not like being shut in the coal locker . . . > On the other hand, what that makes me think of is the amateurs at Caltech > and MIT in 1989, eh? What made them think they could do accurate calorimetry > and get this miserable solid palladium electrolytic mess to work? These two were completely different. At MIT they were somewhat amateur. They said later the experiment was very difficult and the results meaningless. Many people agree. They should have retracted on that basis alone, never mind the fact that they diddled with the data. Lewis, at Caltech, is an accomplished electrochemist. As you see in the NSF proceedings, he knew a great deal about the subject. He was quite capable. He did the experiment correctly and confirmed Fleischmann and Pons. His only problem was that he misinterpreted the results. He used the wrong equations. I find this inexplicable. Even if he honestly believed the calibration constant was inconstant, that can only mean the instruments malfunctioned and the experiment should have been done over again. I doubt he thinks that all calorimeters of this design are inherently unreliable. (Or maybe he does -- who knows?!?) Anyway, there is tons of data going back to the mid-19th century showing that this type of calorimeter is reliable. - Jed
