At 10:42 PM 12/30/2012, Eric Walker wrote:
Le Dec 30, 2012 à 5:39 PM, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> a écrit :
> You, Mike McKubre and I are just about the
only three people in the world I know who have
read Hoffman, and you are the only one who does not consider him a dolt.
I'm reading Hoffman right now. He doesn't come
across as a dolt, yet, and he has some
interesting insights into possible sources of
experimental artifact (to one who has no experimental experience whatsoever).
Hoffman presents his information as a dialog
between the Old Metallurgist and a Young
Scientist. The OM is philosophical and explores
topics without attachment, he's cautious but
open-minded. YS is a pseudoskeptic, but obviously
respects the OM, and will concede points. He's
really just young and immature, and like many of
us, likes to believe that he understands things.
The OM takes pains to present skeptical theories.
That can look to a "believer" as if he's
pseuodskeptical. But generally, he ends up
skewering the theories. Perhaps he wants to make
sure that the objection is understood before
being dismissed. He presents the "heavy water
contamination theory" that got Jed so exercised,
but *he dismisses it.* Somehow I don't think I've
sufficiently inspired Jed to look again at that
section of the book. He thinks Hoffman insulted
Ontario Hydro. The point was missed. Hoffman was
covering a possible skeptical argument, giving it rein before dismissing it.
There was no accusation against Ontario Hydro.
There was also a tiff with SRI and McKubre,
basically over a misunderstanding. It was not
hostile, Hoffman pointed out his idea that SRI
results were not public, as I recall. It seems,
now, a mountain made out of a molehill.
Generally, Hoffman considers the problem of cold
fusion unresolved, as of about 1994. He stops
short of looking at Miles' work, which had been
pubished before his book came out, but it's
possible that the book could not be seriously
revised by that time. Miles was revolutionary,
and incorporating Miles would have been quite a
job, I suspect. He covers a lot on the Helium Problem up to that point.
At the time, most of the SRI work was with
careful calorimetry. Hoffman focuses on nuclear
evidence, and does *not* dismiss the calorimetry,
and he says it would be expected to be sound,
that the workers knew what they were doing.
Hoffman, as a reviewer of cold fusion, must be
seen as someone who did a lot of investigation on
the nuclear issue and came up with "maybe."
That is actually a pretty sound scientific
position, until you have truly solid evidence.
Remember the 2004 DoE review. Half the experts,
this time (9/18, a vast increase from 1989)
considered the evidence for excess heat to be
"conclusve." But only 1 out of 18 considered the
evidence for a nuclear origin for the heat to be
"convincing," with another 5 or so considering it "somewhat convincing."
Given that Hoffman set aside the calorimetric
evidence to simply focus on "nuclear," he must be
considered advanced for his time.
(The 2004 DoE review was badly flawed,
procedurally, and the review paper by Hagelstein,
as good as it is, was not polemic, when the
situation called for *effective polemic.* The
crucial heat/helium evidence was presented in a
way that was quite difficult to grasp, it took me
quite a while to figure out what the Appendix,
where it was placed, was saying. So, not
surprising, the reviewers misread it, badly. And
that's why so few were convinced. We need to take
responsibility for that, instead of continually blaming the skeptics.)
Enjoy the book!
