<blush> Oh, er, yeah, that kind of blind testing... yes, that makes
quite a bit of sense, after all, doesn't it.
On 11-12-21 04:49 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Stephen A. Lawrence <sa...@pobox.com <mailto:sa...@pobox.com>> wrote:
Blind testing is done in the social sciences and in medicine but
not in physics. It's nutty to even suggest it.
Actually, <ahem> Miles, Boss, Mizuno and some others did do blind
testing. Single blind. That is to say, they knew the history of the
sample, but the labs they sent samples to for evaluation did not.
Miles sent flasks collected from cells to be tested for helium to
three different labs. In some cases he sent dummy samples, such as
room air. In all cases he did not tell the people conducting the tests
whether the cells produced excess heat or not. This eliminates the
possibility that wishful thinking biased the measurements.
In one case, my guess is that the person he sent the samples to dearly
wanted cold fusion not be real, so the wishful thinking might have
worked in the other direction.
- Jed
