Joshua Cude <joshua.c...@gmail.com> wrote: or rather, why do nearly all intelligent people reject it. >
I know a lot about this, because I have access to the traffic data at LENR-CANR.org. The answer is: 1. Most intelligent people do not reject cold fusion, or accept it. Most people have no knowledge of it. They have no idea whether it exists or not, and no basis to judge. They sometimes repeat what they read in the mass media or Wikipedia, but that does not count. In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, many people repeated the assertion that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. These people had no knowledge of the situation, no experience in military intelligence, and -- in short -- no idea what they were talking about. 2. Taking the group of people who have read papers and who know enough about science to understand them, a large majority believe that cold fusion is real. I can tell this from the comments and requests for information that come to me as librarian. 3. Among people how done a formal review of cold fusion and written a paper, most believe it is real. They include people such as Gerischer and Duncan. The only exceptions I know of are Dieter Britz and some of the 2004 DoE review panel members. I consider that review a farce. The negative comments violate the scientific method in many ways, showing that these scientists do not know how to do their own jobs. (In every line of work you will find incompetent professionals, even at the highest levels. The creme de la creme of Wall Street tycoons and bankers triggered the 2008 crash. Gen. Colin Powell believed the Iraqi WMD intelligence.) 4. There are small number of hard-core opponents such as Robert Park, Huizenga, Close, Morrison and the editors of the Scientific American. These people jumped to the conclusion that cold fusion is wrong. They wrote highly unscientific papers and books to back this up, which shows that they do not understand the scientific method. Their arguments are easily refuted by grade-school level science textbooks. For example, textbooks say theory cannot overrule widely replicated, high-sigma data. Unfortunately, some of these people have a great deal of influence at places such as the Washington Post and the APS. There is tremendous opposition to cold fusion by the plasma fusion researchers and the DoE, because they fear losing their funding. Huizenga acted as their attack dog, a job he loved, which he described with glee, in his book and in discussions with me and others. These people have staked their reputations on cold fusion being wrong. They are emotionally blind to the facts. Huizenga and Morrison looked at the data, but -- as I said -- they made elementary mistakes. Others such as Park and the Sci. Am. editors say they have never read a paper, and it is clear from their statements they know nothing about this subject, so I assume they are telling the truth. Obviously, this means they have no right to any opinion, positive or negative. I summarized some of the extreme skeptics views here: http://pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/cf/293wikipedia.html You can see what they say in their own words. - Jed
