On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 1:41 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <a...@lomaxdesign.com>wrote:
> At 12:47 PM 2/21/2011, Joshua Cude wrote: > > > On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 9:52 AM, Jed Rothwell <<mailto: >> jedrothw...@gmail.com>jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> Cude has added that he is not "convinced that nuclear reactions in cold >> fusion experiments have produced measurable heat." From my point of view >> that puts him in the category of creationists who are not convinced of the >> evidence that the world is more than 6,000 years old, or that people did not >> ride on dinosaurs. >> >> >> Points of view clearly differ. From my point of view, being convinced by >> flaky evidence like Rossi's puts you in the category of creationists, who >> believe in a young earth because of scripture. And I think the similarity >> favors my point of view. >> > > > Joshua, don't be distracted. You are now entering "You" territory, the > exchange of accusations. You don't understand Jed's position on Rossi, he's > not "convinced." He's aware of the problems and has documented them. He's > examined some of them and has rejected some alternative explanations. > > From what I've seen, there are only two likely explanations of the Rossi > demo: he's got a genuine nuclear reaction going, or he's got a sophisticated > fraud going. And, frankly, I can't tell the difference. Can you? How? > > > In both cold fusion and creationism, you have a small group of fringe >> "scientists" who adopt an idea in which they have important self-interest, >> and try desperately to prove its reality. >> > > That's a political description, polemic. Every researcher has > "self-interest" in their field of research. "Desperately" doesn't describe > the mental state of cold fusion researchers today. They aren't trying to > prove that it's real. That happened years ago. You may not agree, but I'm > telling you how they think. Do you know how they think? How? Have you talked > with them? > I've seen what they write. Practically every review is preoccupied with defending the reality of the field. I know you've read Storms' abstract to his latest review, because you are acknowledged in the paper. It's 2010, and most of it reiterates the reality of the evidence for the effect. That's desperately trying to prove it's real. Try to find another 22-year old field that adopts that sort of defensive tone in the abstract. > > You've missed something huge. Cold fusion is now routinely accepted as a > reality by the peer reviewers at mainstream publications, and it is the > purely skeptical view that is being rejected. On which planet? Cold fusion papers appear in a tiny subset of the peer-reviewed literature, mostly second-rate, non-physics journals. They do not appear in APS journals, and certainly not in the prestigious journals like Phys Rev, PRL, Science or Nature, where discoveries of this magnitude would automatically appear if they were "accepted as a reality" We could toss in the 18 experts of the 2004 U.S. DoE panel, though that was > a review far shallower than the normal peer-review process at a mainstream > publication. You have no idea what you're talking about. 18 reviewers met for a day; CF advocates gave live presentations, 9 reviewers had the literature for a month; Each of them wrote reviews longer than most reviews of published papers. It was a review, by any measure, at least 10 times deeper than the normal peer-review process at a mainstream publication. Those experts *unanimously* favored further research and publication, which > is entirely contradictory to your confident assertion that it is only > "fringe 'scientists'" who are "desperately tryingto prove it's real." > No, they did not. They rejected, unanimously, special funding for the program. That would be ridiculous if any of them held out hope for a real effect. The statement you refer to: "The nearly unanimous opinion of the reviewers was that funding agencies should entertain individual, well-designed proposals for experiments that address specific scientific issues relevant to the question of whether or not there is anomalous energy production in Pd/D systems, or whether or not D-D fusion reactions occur at energies on the order of a few eV." appears first to be a sop to the presenters egos, after the devastatingly critical review, but also a simple restatement of the mandate of funding agencies. They are not recommending more research, only that well-designed proposals deserve to be considered.
