Sent from my iPhone
On Mar 31, 2010, at 10:56 AM, Michel Jullian <michelj...@gmail.com>
wrote:
In fact, I was wondering, who cares about the heat, helium production
alone is an indisputable proof of LENRs, isn't it?
A familiarity with the history of the dispute, and even of very recent
comments here about this, would reveal how incorrect this is.
Huizenga laid out the challenge in 1993. Nuclear products commensurate
with excess heat. He recognized the devastating significance of the
work of Miles et al, and only managed to dismiss it as unconfirmed.
Which was, even then, misleading.
Helium is difficult to measure. It will diffuse through glass. The
levels are very low and in most results, are below ambient. It is very
easy to remain skeptical on helium measurements alone. But when the
helium findings correlate with excess heat, it all changes. The
results confirm each other. Huizenga seems to have realized that from
his response to the reports.
That heat/helium work continued, and was confirmed, and it is
conclusive evidence for nuclear reactions, and the values found are
little short of strong evidence for some kind of deuterium fusion,
mechanism and pathways unknown or certainly not proven.
Krivit is showing that, in spite of his experience, he doesn't
understand the science, he doesn't understand the researchers, and he
has lost his journalistic objectivity and integrity. I've been begging
for months for someone with Krivit's ear to help their friend, whom I
see as trashing his own career. Look at Marwan's response to Krivit in
the press conference, and realize that Marwan and Krivit were co-
editors of the ACS Sourcebook. Last year at the , Krivit was sitting
up there with the others. This year, he's an obvious crank in the
audience.
It's not about challenging orthodoxy. It's about a personal agenda, a
vision of himself as a muckraker, courageous investigative journalist
not afraid to confront dogma. Problem is, he doesn't understand what
he's challenging, he's making blatant errors right and left, and seems
completely unable to recognize it.
He is irrelevant to the science, but he is damaging the return to
general respectability of the LENR field, that's clear from media
response to his "confession." He can't stop the progress, but he can
slow it down. How much, I don't know. Maybe a year, depends. It seems
he did damage, this year, but he won't stop existing journals, already
opened to papers in the field, from continuing, and he's not going to
cause backtracking of the experts who are increasingly open. It's just
with the spread of that openness.
The helium results should be vigorously criticised, but by the
knowledgeable and competent. I'll do what I can, but my knowledge is
limited, plus I have no academic credentials. Krivit is,
unfortunately, criticizing details of interpretation that are almost
completely irrelevant.
And, distracted by that, he's not investigating and reporting the real
stuff, even with respect to his obsession, Widom-Larsen theory. What
exactly is the theory, how does it explain the experimental results
without creating new, more difficult questions, what does it predict
and how could it be tested, and how is this theory being received by
experts? In all this, the bulk of his journalism should be reporting
on the experience and opinions of experts, and other witnesses. His
own original analysis, he should report with caution, and never as
conclusive, more as an aside, that's acceptable in informal style.
What Krivit is doing is making his own opinions the center of
attention, the story.
Krivit frequently reports his own defective analysis as it it were
fact, we saw an example of this yesterday, where he claimed that where
one source did not confirm the report of another source, the first
source was "contradicting" the second. Basic logical error, the
excluded middle. There existed obvious possible underlying facts that
would harmonize the two reports or claims. Krivit does not understand
what's in front of him, and appears to be impervious to correction, no
matter how clear. This did not just begin, I've found. Gradually,
Krivit has alienated most of those working in the field, and without
good reason.
And if his errors are confronted as he so freely confonts what he
imagines as the errors of others, he rejects the communication, he
doesn't have time for this nonsense. That's fine, except, that goose
sauce is gander sauce. He generally treats the silence that ultimately
results from experts in the field, after attempts to answer Krivit's
often hostile questions, as proof of stonewalling and the expert
having something to hide. See how he treated the ENEA researchers over
his own silly error in not realizing that 10 x 10^n is equal to 1 x 10
(n + 1).
This could all stop in a flash. What it would take is "Oops! I lost it
there!" He'd have to start listening to *somebody*, I don't care if
it's me, I tried privately long ago without success.
I'm trying to reduce damage to the field and to the researchers, who
need our support -- which includes collegial criticism -- and not
charges of data falsification and biased interpretation over every
discovered error or change.
