On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 10:25 AM, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Broadly speaking, I think three explanation have been offered for the > astounding mass spec results: > > 1. Tentative acceptance, or at least acceptance for the sake of argument. > That, it seems to me, is McKubre's position. As McKubre says, this result > is so different from previous ones it should be considered one-off, and not > yet replicated. > > 2. Mistake. This seems unlikely given the magnitude of the effect. On the > other hand mass spectroscopy is a difficult art. The people at Mitsubishi > and the National Synchrotron lab both saw pronounced isotopic shifts in > Iwamura's samples. The people at the NRL looked at those samples and saw > nothing. I believe they were the very same samples in some cases. > > 3. Fraud. Surely you jest. This has been proposed by skeptics thousands of > times to dismiss cold fusion results. It is an intellectual dead end. It > can seldom be tested. > > I cannot judge the likelihood of 1 or 2. #3 seems unlikely because, as I > said, there is no motive. Rossi already has what he wants from IH. I doubt > IH has any investment (fiscal or psychological) in Rossi's Ni theories. No > industrialist cares about theory, except insofar as they want a theory to > speed up development. > > - Jed > > Robert Ellefson makes a good case why the ash is not fake without reference to motive or magic tricks: https://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l%40eskimo.com/msg98444.html "I do not believe that the discovery of highly-enriched isotopes is the result of fraud. I think that the variable fractions of isotopes between the surface and the bulk of the ash indicates that isotopic enrichment was occurring in-situ. The apparent fact (if true) that the bulk of the nickel is 99.3% Ni-62, while it is 98.7% Ni-62 on the surface, along with an even larger lithium isotope gradient from surface-to-bulk, demonstrates that we are looking at the ash of a nuclear reaction, and not a faked result. I have no idea how Rossi could achieve such gradients in with a laboratory-supply feedstock of enriched nickel achieving both the surface morphology that the ash grain displayed and the isotope fractionation gradient that it displayed. I highly doubt this would be possible to fake even with tremendous effort. So, rather than providing evidence of fraud, I very much believe that this isotope fractionation gradient clearly indicates that some kind of nuclear reaction is taking place in during this experiment. " Harry
