Jeff Berkowitz <pdx...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I suppose that if this work all holds up, the mainstream scientific > community may get what it deserves for shunning the discipline: all the key > results may be locked up behind an impenetrable veil of trade secrecy. > That subject came up in the panel discussion; the panel of which I was a member. An audience member expressed concerns that if cold fusion transmogrifies into something like the semiconductor industry, how will scientific information spread from what Berkowitz calls "an impenetrable veil of trade secrecy." I address this question. I don't recall exactly what I said, but the gist of it is that trade secrecy is not impenetrable. It is a sieve. In industry, proprietary information floods out by well known means such as reverse engineering of machine and poaching top employees who have technical knowledge. (I believe the whole thing is on video, so you might find I blurted out something quite different, but that is what I mean to say.) There is nothing more ephemeral that a vitally important trade secret. Trade secrets about unimportant technology sometimes last for decades. - Jed
