Mark Gibbs <mgi...@gibbs.com> wrote:
> Cude has waved his hands and said there might be a method of deception >> that he has not thought of yet. As I have often pointed out, such >> assertions cannot be tested or falsified. There might be an error in Ohm's >> law we have not yet discovered, but until you specify what that error >> actually is, you have no basis for arguing that law may be wrong. > > > Ah, so it's OK to argue that Cude is, in effect, hand-waving away Ohm's > law and that's indefensible because that law is accepted but it's not OK to > argue that Carat's dismissal of conventional physics as being wrong about > LENR is also hand waving? > Yes, this is okay. We are talking about two fundamentally different things: actions taken by engineers and laws of nature. Let's go over this carefully, because this is an important distinction, and Cude has often repeated this mistake. First of all, Carat is not "dismissing laws of nature." She is only saying that cold fusion cannot be explained by theory, but a theory is not required to explain an anomaly before you accept that it is true. Cude claims there may be a method by which an engineer can cause a reactor to consume 900 W yet the instruments only show 300 W. However, he says he cannot specify what that method is. Therefore, his assertion cannot be tested or falsified, so it is not scientific. Anything that an engineer can do is known to science, by definition. It is in the textbooks. It can be simulated with an electronic SPICE program (an electronic textbook). Now let us compare that to a claim made by McKubre that he observes excess heat for reasons he does not fully understand. He understand the control parameters, he sees that it correlates with helium at the same ratio as plasma fusion does, but he has no theory. He knows it cannot be chemical, because there are no chemical changes and it exceeds the limits of chemistry by a factor of 10,000, but he cannot prove it is nuclear. This claim is based entirely on calorimetry, which is based on 18th and 19th century instruments and physics. These instruments and physics are fully described in the textbooks, and therefore we can be certain that McKubre's claim is correct. The cause of this heat -- the nuclear theory -- is a mystery. McKubre does not have to supply a theory before his claim is fully accepted. If he did, the scientific method would not work because it is *always impossible* to explain an anomaly when you first detect it, by definition. It would not be an anomaly if you could explain it. If science rejects anomalies, progress will cease. It may remain impossible to explain the anomaly for decades, as it has with high temperature superconductivity. It may take hundreds of years as it did with the heat and light from the sun. However long it takes, science is never allowed to dismiss the anomaly. The only theory McKubre needs to reference are the laws of thermodynamics. As long as we remain certain these laws are right, we must accept that his results are correct, and the anomaly is real. Conversely, the only way to prove that McKubre, Fleischmann and the others are wrong would be to show an error in the laws of thermodynamics. As long as the instruments and techniques used in an experiment are known to be correct, and listed in the textbooks as part of generally accepted scientific technique, the results must be accepted as valid. To summarize it is ALWAYS okay to say: The experiments prove that nature is doing something we do not understand with present-day theory (an anomaly). We can look at the experiments and confirm this is a real anomaly. Or we can find a prosaic explanation, and dismiss it. Science begins with an anomaly. It is NEVER okay to say: An engineer (Rossi) is doing something to make a fake test I do not understand and cannot describe, but I am sure he is doing it. This is empty speculation. It cannot be tested or falsified so it is not scientific. Any act that a person can do to make a fake test must be described by the textbooks and by SPICE. If it is not in the textbooks, that makes it a genuine anomaly. In other words, if Rossi has discovered a way to make a power meter report 900 W as 300 W, but SPICE cannot simulate that method, that makes it an important new discovery that the instrument makers and EEs must investigate. - Jed
