I have often heard Fleischmann refer to cold fusion as something like
an "old bicycle," meaning that after you become used to its quirks it
does not seem so odd. I am cleaning up the 1989 Congressional
testimony, and there he said it again:
Mr. ROHRABACHER. But contrary to public opinion or perception, isn't
it true that most new, major scientific breakthroughs have not been.I
shouldn't say most, but many major scientific breakthroughs in human
history have not been greeted by the professionals of the day with
open arms and.
Dr. FLEISCHMANN. How can you expect it? I think that a strange piece
of research will strike people as being strange. You have to get used
to it. You have to live with it. It's like an old bicycle. You have
to grow old with it.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. And perhaps the fact that so many people in the
scientific community are now dependent on Government grants, that
perhaps are heading in totally the opposite direction to achieve the
same results, might actually make this problem even worse.
Dr. FLEISCHMANN. I hope not. I think that in the end all the people
working in this area will come to see this as just another arm of the
research, one they will wish to be involved in, rather than one they
wish to stand aside from. I think if we are correct, if
we are opening up this gray area between physics and chemistry, where
there is this strong overlap, then the people who have got the big
experience in the high energy physics end will have an absolutely
vital contribution to make. I think they will come to see that very shortly.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. I hope you're right. I would like to note that Jonas
Salk in my own time was not greeted with open arms, and was vilified
for a certain period of time in his life, and there was a lot of
confusion about that. I think he probably saved a lot of young people's lives.
One last question. We've heard some qualifiers from you today, and
they're justifiable. But are you still absolutely confident that you
have discovered a new fusion process?
Dr. PONS. Well, for five-and-a-half years I think we were our most
severe critics, and we are still as sure as sure can be. We produce
our data and we believe what we are seeing. So I'm sure.
Dr. FLEISCHMANN. I do not know how to interpret our results in any
other way than that we have observed a fusion phenomenon. So I'm
still totally convinced about our own work. But naturally, we shall
have to look at everybody else's work as well, including all the
unsuccessful experiments, and only time will show whether we
are correct or not.
. . .
Rep. Rohrabacher is no fool.
That is the unedited OCR output, by the way. Pretty good.
I will upload a clean version of this soon:
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/CSSThearingbef.pdf
- Jed
