At 11:25 AM 12/31/2012, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Look, he said right here, in this forum, that he wants to see a
"testable theory."
Jed, I must have missed that. Where did he say that?
Sat, Dec 29, 2012 at 11:58 AM, Mark Gibbs
<<mailto:mgi...@gibbs.com>mgi...@gibbs.com> wrote:
> Sure, there's lots of interesting experiments but is there a testable
> theory?
You are not seeing the forest for the trees, Jed. had made a
statement about the general way that cold fusion was viewed. This
quoted his original comment:
What did Peter originally ask? "when will enter LENR such lists as
[Greatest Inventions: 2012 and 1913 Editions]?" My answer was "When
there is a testable theory or a demonstrably practical device." I
wasn't asserting that LENR doesn't exist, I was answering Peter's question.
Gibbs was *incorrect*. Testable theory will not lead to LENR entering
such lists, not directly. What would do it is a "demonstrably
practical device"?
You went off on him like he was the Devil of Pseudoskepticism
Incarnate. Gibbs doesn't know -- or didn't know -- that there already
testable theories, and, more than that, theories that have been
tested, but this, for him, was really beside the point. The real
point, for him, would be a practical device, and theory is merely an
idea that he has might lead to that.
Yes, he's not thought this all the way through. He will. Why not?
I'l tell you why he might not. If he finds that people who are
knowledgeable in the field treat him as the enemy.
Read *all* of what he writes, Jed, not just the parts that push your buttons.
Gibbs has written:
In the case of cold fusion, phenomena have been observed that are
believed to be the result of a novel physical process. No one has
been able to explain what causes the phenomena and no one has been
able to produce a device that is useful that uses whatever the phenomena is.
Almost true. We know what causes the heat. Deuterium is being
converted to helium, and that's confirmed by the ratio found. It is
*highly* unlikely that this ratio could be coming from anything else
that that conversion, which is called "fusion." What is *not* known
is the mechanis, the specific conditions that cause it and the
specific pathway followed. There are theories attempting to explain
the mechanism, but none are as yet adequate. That's all.
But you have consistently argued that cold fusion *will* have a
world-changing payoff ... you're not in it just for the science,
you're in it for the payoff.
You could agree with this or not. Gibbs is interested in the payoff.
I'm into this for the science. They are not unrelated! It is possible
that the payoff could arrive before the science, but not necessarily
probable. Jed, you have an optimism that technology can solve any
problem. Maybe. Maybe not. Science is not about making that
assumption, it's about testing theories, and Engineering is the about
taking what is known -- as to theory or measured results -- and
applying this to make devices practical.
I think you may be right, Jed, but you must recognize that it's an
optimistic view. It is not impossible that the nature of the
mechanism is such that it's *inherently* unstable and unreliable. Bad
luck, that would be, but not impossible.
Do you propose to ignore the effect and reject the claims
Nope. And I haven't ignored the phenomena. Indeed, I admit that
there appears to be evidence of something remarkable. I just want to
find out what's real and what's fake.
Jed, do you want to be part of the solution or part of the problem?
Gibbs is asking for help. How about helping him? He wants to find out
what is real and what is fake.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. But we could start with what
is real. Finding out what is fake can be much more difficult.
What's real is cold fusion itself, and most clearly the LENR effect
that is the most solidly established is anomalous heat from palladium
deuteride, accompanied with correlated helium production. It is
preposterously unlikely that further research will reveal this as artifact.
Mark wants to know about practical devices. Nothing on the palladium
deuteride front is yet truly a practical device, though some devices
might be scalable. Until they are stable, scaling up would be
*hazardous.* Mark might want to look at the Nanor, Mitchell Swartz's
device. Not Ready For Home Depot, and not any time soon. Practical
devices are being claimed with nickel-hydrogen. None of this has yet
been confirmed in any reliable way.
But if anything is going to happen quickly, that might be where it
will happen. It's worth watching, but there are obvious reasons to be
*quite* skeptical.
That's where it stands. There are promising research lines being
pursued. There are signs that the ice floes blocking funding are
breaking up. If cold fusion had been funded as recommended in the
first DoE review, we could be twenty years ahead of where we are.
Science by Politics is a Bad Idea.
Maybe. The DoE may easily be in bed with the hot fusion projects, it
was in 1989. So? Huizenga's book is *still* embarrassing, and is
more and more visible that way.
In recent years, Chu and many others have cited Huizenga and his
book as proof that cold fusion does not exist. Most mainstream
physicists agree with Huizenga completely, that cold fusion violates
theory and it cannot possibly exist, and that all reported results
are mistakes or fraud. I have heard that from HUNDREDS of leading
scientists such as Chu. I am certain that is what they believe. I am
also certain they have not read any papers on this subject. That is
what they tell me.
You may think the book is embarrassing. I think it is a hatchet job.
However, Chu and others think it is the truth.
Have you talked with them? (Is that what you implied?)
Can you point to citations where they quoted Huizenga's book?
But he was an old man, and, unfortunately, probably losing it.
He wrote most of the book while conducting the ERAB panel
investigation. It was published soon after ERAB was published. He
was still at the peak of his intellectual power, and political
power. He repeated the statements in the book many times, in person,
and in letter to me and to others.
He did a second edition in 1993, in which he made that remarkable
statement about Miles' work. Jed, you are preaching to the choir, but
you seem, by the above comment, to have missed something.
What you saw with the Amoco situation would be how he responded when
he couldn't understand what was happening. He'd flee.
He understood perfectly what was happening. I am sure he did not
think the results were real. I am pretty sure he thought: "Another
damn fake result! More nonsense to contend with!" He did not say
that. He refused to talk to the authors. But that is what other
leading skeptics said, and I am sure he agreed.
Of course that's what he thought. His thinking had become ossified.
He'd really lost it as a scientist, he'd only have a lot of memories
of being a scientist!
As for his statements about Miles in his book, he was posturing to
make himself seem open minded. He never took those results
seriously, or any of the similar helium results from Italy. He knew
about those results, because he attended ICCF conferences. I think
that was before the second edition of the book. He might have
written about them or spoken about them any time. For that matter,
he might have described the tritium from Bockris or Storms, or the
excess heat results from McKubre. But he never said ONE WORD ABOUT
ANY OF THAT. Not in his book, not in public, not in his letters.
Never. He said only "it is all bunk" (to me). He did not talk about
these results not because he wanted to hide the truth, or he was
afraid he was wrong. Only because he was sure it was bunk, and he
thought that even mentioning these results would confuse the issue
and make some people imagine there might be something to cold fusion after all.
You are aware that you are confirming what I've said, right?
He knew he was right. He was supremely confident of that. He saw it
as his job to present the facts which proved he was right, and not
to present any of the lies and nonsense published by McKubre and the
others. That was his point of view, and he made it 100% clear to me
and to many others. Steven Chu and many others have said the same
thing, almost word for word. These people do not hide their opinions
on this matter.
Was this only verbal, or has Chu said this in writing? If Chu does
not hide his opinions, where has he expressed them?
Jed, if there is any meat here, we will sic the dogs on it. To repeat
Gibb's comment, "where's the beef"?
I'm still a learner in this field. That could mean that I'm naive.
But it also could mean that I'm not stuck by the past. They told me I
was naive on Wikipedia, but I simply went ahead, stated the obvious,
and accomplished far more than was considered possible by the
"knowledgeable." Who had given up.
What I've seen here is that you are going after Gibbs as if he was
Huizenga, or Chu. And what if you are doing the same thing with Chu himself?
Your story about Chu leads to what inspiring possibility?
