James Bowery <jabow...@gmail.com> wrote:
> It was not a Gregg Easterbrook-like character, but Stanley Pons and his > financial independence (along with Fleischmann's retirement independence) > that allowed for an escape route for cold fusion. Yet, we see 2 decades > later, the monster spawned of Manhattan, is still fighting for the > destruction of the world. > On the other hand . . . Fleischmann worked in government-funded institutions all of his life, as did not most other cold fusion researchers. U. Utah is funded by the state. Nearly every dollar that has been spent on cold fusion since 1989 came from government agencies. In the U.S., on Darpa contributes. Industry, venture capital and other independent sources have contributed nothing. In other countries such as Italy, Japan and China as well, nearly all funding is from the governments. Granted, Toyota and some others contributed a little, but only in tandem with governments. So, it is thanks to governments that cold fusion still survives at all. If cold fusion does succeed, it will be mainly thanks to governments. A few independent yeomen such as Rossi have made important contributions with the their own money. Fleischmann, Pons and later Mizuno contributed their own money. But it was nowhere near enough. The research is mainly thanks to government, and no thanks at all to industry, banks, venture capitalists, or any capitalist institutions. Government is the worst source of scientific progress except for all the others. As I have often pointed out, since 1800 continuing through the present, the U.S. and British governments have either paid for directly invented just about every major technological innovation, from steam ships to transistors to the Internet. Sometimes others such as Bell Labs make a discovery such as the transistor, but for the next 10 or 20 years it is the government that puts in most of the R&D money. Most of this research does not resemble the Manhattan project. The laser, for example, was invented by a professor and a grad student at Columbia U., with NRL money. - Jed
