I was wondering if the Reifenschweiler effect was ever replicated ? Was an attempt ever made ? If not, why not ?
My understanding is that Reifenschweiler discovered the effect in the Philips lab (NatLab) in Eindhoven, Netherlands around 1960/62. He discussed it with Hendrik Casimir who was head of research there. The investigations at NatLab were not continued to further understand the effect further and "forgotten". When Fleischmann & Pons announced their anomalous heat effect in 1989 Casimir urged Reifenschweiler to publish the (old) results, because he thought it might be related. I read the discussion here with Mark Gibbs about "falsifiable theory". It appears that this experiment should be easily repeatable. I have never heard of any lab actually trying a replication. That's strange. Science method "dictates" that an theoretical understanding is only valid until experiment evidence shows a different behaviour. Yet no research lab wants to (re)produce this evidence. To me that stinks, science is not performing research to falsify their own theory. Any lab could take the Reifenschweiler effect and replicate it. If successful the notion (axiom?) that the radioactive decay rate is constant would be void. And the notion (axiom?) that chemical environment cannot influence nuclear reactions would also be void. What excuses does "science" have for not performing the research that would disprove the accepted axioms ? My assumption is that the funding agencies only promote the deepening of the current understanding out of convenience: "Anomalies are too plentiful to investigate all" and it would likely "endanger" the validity of running programs. I haven't seen any science journalist write a story about this topic, asking these questions, let alone answering them. And therefore we trot on, boldy going where no man was ever supposed to go.
