In his 1974 commencement speech at the California Institute of Technology, Nobel laureate physicist Richard P. Feynman articulated the foundation of scientific integrity: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.... After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.”
Unfortunately, says Feynman’s Caltech colleague David Goodstein in his new book On Fact and Fraud: Cautionary Tales from the Front Lines of Science (Princeton University Press, 2010), some scientists do try to fool their colleagues, and believing that everyone is conventionally honest may make a person more likely to be duped by deliberate fraud. Nature may be subtle, but she does not intentionally lie. People do. Why some scientists lie is what Goodstein wants to understand. He begins by debunking myths about science such as: “A scientist should never be motivated to do science for personal gain, advancement or other rewards.” “Scientists should always be objective and impartial when gathering data.” “Scientists must never believe dogmatically in an idea or use rhetorical exaggeration in promoting it.” “Scientists should never permit their judgments to be affected by authority.” These and many other maxims just do not reflect how science works in practice.
Knowing that scientists are highly motivated by status and rewards, that they are no more objective than professionals in other fields, that they can dogmatically defend an idea no less vehemently than ideologues and that they can fall sway to the pull of authority allows us to understand that, in Goodstein’s assessment, “injecting falsehoods into the body of science is rarely, if ever, the purpose of those who perpetrate fraud. They almost always believe that they are injecting a truth into the scientific record.” Goodstein should know because his job as the vice provost of Caltech was to investigate allegations of scientific misconduct. From his investigations Goodstein found three risk factors present in nearly all cases of scientific fraud. The perpetrators, he writes, “1. Were under career pressure; 2. Knew, or thought they knew, what the answer to the problem they were considering would turn out to be if they went to all the trouble of doing the work properly; and 3. Were working in a field where individual experiments are not expected to be precisely reproducible.”
To detect fraud, we must first define it, and Goodstein does: “Research misconduct is defined as fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting research results.” Next there must “be significant departure from accepted practices of the scientific community.” Then, the misconduct must be “committed intentionally, or knowingly, or in reckless disregard of accepted practices,” and finally, as in any court of law, the fraud charge must be proved by a preponderance of evidence.
Clear-cut cases of fraud include the twin studies of British psychologist Cyril L. Burt (who faked so many twins that he had to fabricate additional twin researchers), the Sloan-Kettering Institute cancer researcher William Summerlin’s experiments on inducing healthy black skin grafts on white mice (which he was caught enhancing with a black felt-tipped pen), physicist Victor Ninov’s alleged discovery of element 118 (predicted by others so he faked data for its existence), and of course the famous Piltdown Man hoax (which turned out to be the jaw of an orangutan dyed to look old). Other cases are not so clear. Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons’s “discovery” of cold fusion, Goodstein concludes, was most likely a case of scientists who “convince themselves that they are in the possession of knowledge that does not in fact exist.” This self-deception is distinctly different from deliberate deception.
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Add CommentShermer says that Goodstein concluded that cold fusion was most likely a case of scientists who "convince themselves that they are in the possession of knowledge that does not in fact exist."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCold fusion has been replicated in over 180 major laboratories, by roughly 1,500 professional scientists. These replications have been published in roughly 800 papers in mainstream, peer reviewed journals such as J. Electroanal. Chem. and Japanese J. of Applied Physcis. J. He of the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences estimates that the effect has been observed in roughly 14,000 experimental runs (Front. Phys. China (2007) 1: 96 102).
Many of the results were at low signal to noise ratio, but others were high, such as heat from 10 to 100 W, and tritium at 50 times background (Los Alamos, Texas A&M) up to several million times (BARC).
Most of the researchers who have reported positive results are senior, distinguished experts, such as the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, government of India, and the experts at Los Alamos in charge of the Tritium Systems Test Assembly and the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor at Princton. Only senior researchers can get funding because of academic politics.
When a result has been widely replicated at high signal to noise ratios and reported in the literature, that result is real, by definition. There is no other standard of reality in science. If it were possible for hundreds of scientists in hundreds of laboratories to be wrong, the experimental method would not work, and no result would be meaningful, and science itself would not work. If Shermer and Goodstein would substitute some other standard of truth, and ignore replication and peer-review, they are engaged in some form of faith-based religion or a popularity contest, not science.
Here are some references to support my previous message.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisU.S. Defense Intelligence Agency report on cold fusion: "Technology Forecast: Worldwide Research on Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions Increasing and Gaining Acceptance" DIA-08-0911-003, 13 November 2009:
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BarnhartBtechnology.pdf
This was written by a group of 90 scientists in the DoD, NASA and other government agencies.
The American Chemical Society (ACS) Spring 2010 National Meeting & Exposition March 21 - 25, 2010. Forty six papers on cold fusion were presented in four sessions over two days, sessions: ENVR014, ENVR049, ENVR050 and ENVR051.
The PowerPoint slides and upcoming proceedings from 15th International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science, Rome, Italy, October 5 - 9, 2009. The conference was sponsored by the ENEA (the Italian National Agency for New Technologies Energy and the Environment), the Italian Physical Society, the Italian Chemical Society, The National Research Council (CNR), and Energetics Technologies.
Results published by Los Alamos and the experts at Tritium Systems Test Assembly are in the Proceedings of the NSF/EPRI Workshop on Anomalous Effects in Deuterated Metals. 1989. Washington, D.C.: Electric Power Research Institute.
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/EPRInsfepriwor.pdf
I have a collection of 1,200 peer-reviewed papers on cold fusion copied from the library at Los Alamos, and 2,500 other papers from proceedings, national laboratories, the NRL, BARC India and elsewhere. Some of the claims in this literature may be mistaken, but it is inconceivable that every single measurement in every single experiment since 1989 has been a mistake or fraud. Shermer considers himself a skeptic. If he believes that hundreds of professional scientists could make thousand of mistakes over 21 years, and yet the peer-review system and internal peer review at places Los Alamos, SRI, BARC and the China Lake has never caught these mistakes, then he the opposite of a skeptic: he is extremely gullible and he is living in a fantasy world. The scientific method does work. Replication, peer review and the conventions of science do work. Shermer denies this and ignores this evidence, but anyone who goes to a university or national laboratory library will find hundreds of papers that prove cold fusion is real.
Rothwell is highly knowledgeable about cold fusion. Someone who is not might miss a crucial point, which the SciAm reviewer may also have missed. Goodstein is a real skeptic, that is, he's aware of the problems here on both sides. He is aware that the case of scientists who “convince themselves that they are in the possession of knowledge that does not in fact exist"does not just apply to Pons and Fleischmann, indeed, it may hardly apply to them at all. They quickly backed off from claims of fusion, for all they knew was that that they were finding unexpected heat. The rejection of cold fusion was based on an application of theory to a situation where the mechanism was not known. You cannot do calculations from theory for an unknown reaction. The obvious hypothesis of brute-force deuterium fusion was easily rejected on fairly solid grounds, though even there, possible unknown effects could damage the application of theory. Today, hardly anyone in the field considers d-d fusion reasonable now, and more sophisticated analysis by physicists has predicted 100% fusion under unexpected and very rare, but possible physical conditions (Takahashi Tetrahedral Symmetric Condensate theory), and there are other theories, none of them widely accepted, and all of them difficult to test. Fleischmann was not looking for cheap energy, he was attempting to explore the accuracy of the 2-body approximations of quantum mechanics, and expected to find nothing. He was wrong, he found something. Which was then rejected as impossible based on the very approximations he was testing. Bad Science. But that was twenty years ago, and the field has moved on. Publication in this field has exploded since 2004.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMr. Shermer might have included and categorized more recent examples such as the leaked e-mails on global warming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRothwell writes:
"Cold fusion has been replicated in over 180 major laboratories, by roughly 1,500 professional scientists. These replications have been published in roughly 800 papers in mainstream, peer reviewed journals such as J. Electroanal. Chem. and Japanese J. of Applied Physcis."
This certainly sounds impressive until you discover that (in the words of Schwarzenegger (in True Lies)), they are all bad:
So bad that none of the CF claims survive peer review in main-stream *nuclear* physics journals -- the most relevant field. (If a single result had any credibility, you couldn't keep it out of Phys Rev or PRL or Science or Nature.)
So bad that even a strong CF advocate (Nagel) complains about low quality in his report on ICCF2009, and takes to lecturing the incompetent researchers on the basics they should have learned as undergraduates.
So bad that an expert panel hired by the DOE in 2004 concluded (for a second time) that CF is a bust, after reviewing the best of the results.
So bad that instead of the publication rate growing exponentially as it does with real discoveries, the rate has decreased to a mere trickle of a few (bad) papers a year. And instead of reporting ever more progress, the size of the effect (which bears no systematic relation to the amount of the "fuel") becomes ever smaller. Two analyses of the publication pattern have pointed to the similarities between the CF pattern and other pathological sciences.
So bad that of the 2 selected journals, the J. of Electroanal. Chem. has not published a positive result since 2000, and nothing at all related to CF since 2005.
In short, it is reasonable to conclude that cold fusion researchers are, to a man (or woman), delusional.
And 180 laboratories? Really? That works out to an average of 800/180 = 4.4 papers per lab, over 20 years. Now since the vast majority of those papers were published within a few years of the 1989 press conference, one should assume that most of the major labs have been in it for 20 years or so, or they have gotten out. If they've been in it for 20 years, and have published 4 papers on the subject, they don't really qualify to be called major. If they got out of a research area that they expect will change the world, that doesn't say much for their confidence in that expectation.
Rothwell writes:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"J. He of the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences estimates that the effect has been observed in roughly 14,000 experimental runs (Front. Phys. China (2007) 1: 96 102)."
This need to obsessively count "replications" is an indicator of poor quality. Does anyone count the number of observations of high temperature superconductivity to prove it's real? There are hundreds of thousands of claims of UFO sightings in the last 50 years, but it's unlikely that even one is an alien. You're claiming something as simple as *heat* from water on a table top. If it's real, one good demonstration is all that it would take. The world waits.
Rothwell writes:
"Only senior researchers can get funding because of academic politics."
What political sentiment is opposed to energy independence? To cheap, abundant, and clean energy? To stopping off-shore drilling, and the accompanying spills? To replacing the finite fossil resources? To reducing the threat of global warming? And why don't they work against hot fusion, fission, solar, or wind?
If a credible demonstration of CF existed, you'd have to beat the young (and old) researchers off with a stick. We know this because when the world thought (briefly) that a credible demonstration of CF existed in 1989, there were D/Pd electrolysis experiments in physics and chemistry labs around the world, and at the following ACS meeting, the delegates were hanging from the rafters at the CF sessions. Then, reality hit...
Rothwell writes:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"When a result has been widely replicated at high signal to noise ratios and reported in the literature, that result is real, by definition. There is no other standard of reality in science."
Where is that definition of reality spelled out? I'm not sure "reality" is a scientific concept. It's more of a philosophical or religious concept, which is consistent with a CF advocate rambling about it.
Science is more about observations, phenomena, hypotheses, and theories. And at least one description of a scientific theory is that it must be falsifiable, and if something is real by definition, then it is clearly not falsifiable.
But any attempt to codify science is just that: an attempt to codify what scientists do. "Science" is what scientists do (a lovely definition once used in a legal argument against creation science). Scientists judge the credibility of experimental results based on experience and apprenticeship. And at present, it is the virtually unanimous judgment of scientists that cold fusion is not credible. That includes the judgment of 17 of 18 experts hired specifically by the DOE to examine the best of the evidence, and to interview the most prominent advocates.
In any case, the result that has been widely replicated is, for the most part, anomalously high temperature readings in D/Pd electrolysis. Most scientists probably believe that those readings were made (are real), but for many, that's where credibility ends. The connection between temperature and excess heat requires assumptions about calibrations and chemistry that are not so simple. Calorimetry is notorious for artifacts.
But the next step from excess heat to fusion, or anything nuclear, is nothing more than a leap of faith. It is made by the process of elimination, as if nature is a multiple choice test. There's a reason examiners often put "none of the above" as a safety out on multiple-choice exams. Proof by elimination gave the Greeks a sun god, and even now gives us the god of all creation. (continued...)
Rothwell writes:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"When a result has been widely replicated at high signal to noise ratios and reported in the literature, that result is real, by definition. There is no other standard of reality in science."
The replicated results are higher than expected temperature readings, so maybe they're real. But CF is a theory to explain the results. When the theory can explain or predict the temperature readings with any consistency, then people might begin to think the theory has some merit.
CF advocates (chemists, many of them) can't conceive of chemical explanations for their temperature readings, or experimental artifacts that could explain them, and therefore conclude it must be nuclear. But skeptics (physicists, many of them) can't conceive of nuclear explanations, and therefore conclude it must be chemical or experimental artifacts.
The fact is, there is no consistent explanation, chemical or nuclear, and so the best we can do is assign probability. The claimed limits of experimental error are too small by an order of magnitude or two; the claimed heat exceeds known chemical explanations by two or three or maybe four orders of magnitude; and the claimed heat exceeds known nuclear explanations by some 30 orders of magnitude. So it is reasonable to rank the likelihood of explanation as error > chemistry > nuclear, or to admit that maybe it's something nobody has thought of yet.
The reality is that none of the results to date are compelling enough to attract much interest. Before heat will be accepted as evidence of a nuclear reaction, it will have to be unmistakable and sustained without input energy. That means CF will have to at least power itself. That hasn't happened yet.
Rothwell writes:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"If it were possible for hundreds of scientists in hundreds of laboratories to be wrong, the experimental method would not work, and no result would be meaningful, and science itself would not work."
Wait. You're arguing that thousands of scientists in thousands of laboratories are wrong about the spectacularly successful theories of quantum mechanics and nuclear physics that have yet to be contradicted by experiment (including condensed matter nuclear reactions like fission), but that a ragtag band of washed up, senile, incompetent, and/or deceptive losers *can't* be wrong?!
And isn't the idea the scientists can be wrong central to the entire argument for contrary ideas like cold fusion? Don't the proponents usually dredge up a list of spectacular examples demonstrating science's fallibility? It seems the shoe is on the other foot.
One example that has some similarities to CF is the existence of the ether. For the entire 19th century luminaries like Faraday and Maxwell were absolutely convinced of its existence. The evidence for it was as plain as the nose on your face. Here's Lord Kelvin in 1891: "The luminiferous ether, that is the only substance we are confident of in dynamics… One thing we are sure of, and that is the reality and substantiality of the luminiferous ether." But the current dogma has dispensed with it, and the 19th century scientists are now regarded to have been wrong about ether; every single one of them.
The example is not intended to show that a consensus is always wrong. In fact, I think that expert consensus is the most likely approximation to the truth. But the example shows that absolute statements like yours, that hundreds of scientists can't be wrong, are always dangerous.
In any case, it seems a little odd that someone without training or experience in science is telling scientists what they should and should not believe; how science works and how it can't work. What's next? Will you advise Tiger Woods on his golf swing? Will you tell Fosbury that he is not using the proper high-jumping method?
Rothwell writes:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"If Shermer and Goodstein would substitute some other standard of truth, and ignore replication and peer-review, they are engaged in some form of faith-based religion or a popularity contest, not science."
No one is ignoring replication and peer-review. The replication in CF is simply not regarded as credible, like the many replications of the sightings of the Loch Ness Monster, or those of perpetual motion machines. And it is the absence of peer-review in the journals that specialize in the field CF would revolutionize, if valid, that sustains skepticism of nearly all experts in the field.
Kemo sabe wrote:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"So bad that an expert panel hired by the DOE in 2004 concluded (for a second time) that CF is a bust, after reviewing the best of the results."
The 2004 DoE panel recommended that the research be funded: "The nearly unanimous opinion of the reviewers was that funding agencies should entertain individual, well-designed proposals for experiments that address specific scientific issues relevant to the question of whether or not there is anomalous energy production in Pd/D systems, or whether or not D-D fusion reactions occur at energies on the order of a few eV."
Of the 18 reviewers, 10 said that cold fusion does not exist, 6 said it does exist, and 2 were undecided. I would call that a split decision, not a bust.
"So bad that of the 2 selected journals, the J. of Electroanal. Chem. has not published a positive result since 2000, and nothing at all related to CF since 2005."
Papers have been published in many other journals including J. Fusion Energy and other nuclear journals. There have been many previous scientific disputes in which journals such Phys Rev and Nature were on the wrong side.
"In short, it is reasonable to conclude that cold fusion researchers are, to a man (or woman), delusional."
This is impossible. It cannot be that thousands of professional scientists are all delusional. Some may be, but if that many experts in calorimetry, mass spectrometry, nuclear physics and other fields were delusional or wrong, science would never work in the first place. They include, for example, the worlds leading experts in measuring tritium at Los Alamos, the reactor safety staff at BARC and the PPPL. These groups have been measuring tritium for decades. In some cold fusion experiments, they measure it at rates far above background. The group leader at BARC remarked that "if we could not measure tritium at these levels, we would be dead." It is inconceivable that every single one of these people has forgotten how to measure tritium, or that every single one of them has gone crazy or is lying.
Writers not familiar with the literature often make assumptions about it and confidently assert them. I was a skeptic about CF a year ago, but was led, as an editor, to read the literature. Robert Duncan was a skeptic, but, as a reputable and knowledgeable physicist, was paid to investigate. People who know the literature and the research, skeptical or not, don't make the statements that are common here. I will only correct two out of many.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. Positive publication has exploded since 2004, and it is not confined to CF journals. Naturwissenshaften, a top multidisciplinary journal, they published Einstein,has been publishing in the field since about 2005, including some stunning reports, such as conclusive evidence of very low level neutron emissions from certain CF cells, like being a little pregnant. There should be none over background, but a thousand times background? Accumulated over weeks with an SSNTD. Not present in controls.
2. In 1993, early results from Miles had were available, finding He-4 "nearly commensurate with excess heat," as mentioned by Huizenga, leader of the skeptical charge in 1989, writing then in his 2nd edition of Cold Fusion:Scientific Fiasco of the Century. He added that, if confirmed, "one of the great puzzles of cold fusion would be solved! however, as is the case with so many cold fusion claims, this one is unsubstantiated."
So, was it substantiated? Eager to know the answer?
Every review I've seen on this says that it was not only substantiated, the energy/He-4 ratio can be estimated now at 25 +/- 5 MeV, compared to 23.8 for d-d -> He-4, based on many studies from many groups, not just one. There is controversy over precision, but not over the interpretation given by Huizenga in 1993. The "ash" from the reaction is primarily helium, and from other evidence, the main fuel is deuterium.
This doesn't prove "d-d fusion," which is unlikely. The reaction in these cells is like a black box, deuterium in and helium out. What's going on in the box? If you only look at "d-d fusion," you will think, "but that's impossible!" But that is far from the only possibility! What happens, though, must involve some kind of nuclear reaction.
This is no longer controversial among those who know the literature, which includes many who used to be skeptical.
There is now work predicting fusion from quantum field theory, applied to physical configurations that weren't anticipated. CF is not contrary to known theory, that was an error, based on making assumptions and approximations.
Rothwell writes:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The 2004 DoE panel recommended that the research be funded: "The nearly unanimous opinion of the reviewers was that funding agencies should entertain individual, well-designed proposals for experiments that address specific scientific issues relevant to the question of whether or not there is anomalous energy production in Pd/D systems, or whether or not D-D fusion reactions occur at energies on the order of a few eV." "
That is a statement of motherhood. It is the mandate of funding agencies to entertain well-designed proposals that address scientific issues.
Of the 18 reviewers, 10 said that cold fusion does not exist, 6 said it does exist, and 2 were undecided. I would call that a split decision, not a bust.
If they said those things, they didn't say them in the final report.
What I read in the report is:
" Two-thirds of the reviewers [...] did not feel the evidence was conclusive for low energy nuclear reactions, one found the evidence convincing, and the remainder indicated they were somewhat convinced.
and,
"The preponderance of the reviewers’ evaluations indicated that [...] the occurrence of low energy nuclear reactions, is not conclusively demonstrated by the evidence presented. One reviewer believed that the occurrence was demonstrated, and several reviewers did not address the question.
and,
"While significant progress has been made in the sophistication of calorimeters since the review of this subject in 1989, the conclusions reached by the reviewers today are similar to those found in the 1989 review."
To me that sounds like a bust as far as the existence of CF goes, but if you interpret somewhat convinced to mean convinced, or abstinence to imply agreement, or no progress since 1989 to mean progress, then I can see how you can make the leap from excess heat to fusion.
Rothwell writes:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Papers have been published in many other journals including J. Fusion Energy and other nuclear journals. "
There were a lot in J Fusion Energy in 1990 and 1991, but essentially no experimental results since. It has an impact factor of 0.296. What other nuclear journals?
Rothwell writes:
"There have been many previous scientific disputes in which journals such Phys Rev and Nature were on the wrong side."
Maybe, but examples would make your case stronger. But it's not just Phys Rev and Nature, it's all the APS journals, and nearly all mainstream nuclear physics journals. If you know of a subject that has been excluded to this extent for 20 years, and later turned out to be not just valid, but monumentally important, don't hold back.
Rothwell writes:
Sabe writes:
>> In short, it is reasonable to conclude that cold fusion researchers are, to a man (or woman), delusional.
> This is impossible.
That's what they said about heavier than air flight. Turns out, it is possible.
> "It cannot be that thousands of professional scientists are all delusional. "
Why not? There are probably 10s of millions of scientists on the planet. One in 10,000 is not so many. And delusional scientists are attracted to CF like moths to a flame.
> "Some may be, but if that many experts in calorimetry, mass spectrometry, nuclear physics and other fields were delusional or wrong, science would never work in the first place. "
Sure it would. There are still plenty of non-delusional scientists left to work on other subjects.
> "It is inconceivable that every single one of these people has forgotten how to measure tritium, or that every single one of them has gone crazy or is lying."
Well the results vary by many orders of magnitude, and no one has come within a factor of 100 of the first tritium measurements by BARC in 1989. That doesn't sound like replication to me. And even if the more recently measured results are valid they are still much too low to account for the observed heat.
abdlomax writes:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this>"Robert Duncan was a skeptic, but, as a reputable and knowledgeable physicist, was paid to investigate."
He's not a nuclear physicist, and has been out of research and mired in administration long enough to lose touch, and he was paid by people obviously looking for someone that would be converted.
abdlomax writes:
>"People who know the literature and the research, skeptical or not, don't make the statements that are common here."
The experts on the DOE panel were familiar with the literature, and essentially poo-pooed CF, as politely as possible, to be sure.
abdlomax writes:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this>1. Positive publication has exploded since 2004,
From Britz's CF bibliography, there have been maybe 20 - 25 peer-reviewed papers reasonably closely related to the subject since 2004 (excluding reviews, comments, and papers on hydrinos). Of those, 5 can be considered negative, and maybe 9 are theory papers. I identified 9 experimental claims of positive results in 6 years, or less than 2 per year. Hardly explosive. And of those, 5 are from the Mosier-Boss group on dubious claim of tracks in CR-39, and two or three are on sub-watt level gas-loading.
>and it is not confined to CF journals. Naturwissenshaften, a top multidisciplinary journal, they published Einstein,
Naturwissenschaften had its glory days the better part of a century ago, when it still published in German, when Einstein, Planck, Heisenberg, and Schrodinger published there. But nowadays its impact factor is 2.3, and of all the notable physicists from the last 40 years I checked (Gell-Mann, Weinberg, Glashow, Feynman, Hawking, von Klitzing, et al.) none have published in it. The subjects listed on the search page are: Biomedical and Life Sciences, Chemistry and Materials Science, Earth and Environmental Science, Life Sciences, and Environment.
>[Naturwissenschaften] has been publishing in the field since about 2005,
By "publishing in the field", I presume you mean they have published 3 papers from the same group on the same experiment.
>including some stunning reports, such as conclusive evidence of very low level neutron emissions from certain CF cells,
I haven't seen any replications of these results reported by other groups in peer-reviewed literature. And doubts about the CR-39 results have been raised in the literature by Kowalski, and by the pretentiously named Galileo project, in which several groups tried similar experiments. Krivit desperately tries to salvage something positive in his final report of the project. It turns out that interpretation of the results is not so unambiguous, that the brand of material affects results, that chemical attacks on the material produce artifacts. Some of the participants concluded evidence for nuclear reactions was absent, and Krivit was left with the following pathetic consolation:
"Everyone who has reported results has found something anomalous, something that they have had difficulty explaining by conventional science, and all of their experiments are giving results, however mystifying they may be."
In the best tradition of pathological science, definitive results are just out of reach.
abdlomax writes:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this> So, was it [He4 commensurate with heat] substantiated?
>Every review I've seen on this says that it was not only substantiated, the energy/He-4 ratio can be estimated now at 25 +/- 5 MeV,
Reviews tend to be written by advocates, and often include non-refereed results. Rothwell has emphasized the importance of peer-review. I'd be interested in original peer-reviewed papers that substantiate the claim. I didn't see any in the explosive period since 2004. (Arata's 2 papers claim He, but I don't think a correlation is identified. (One is in Japanese.))
I agree that good evidence for an energy-He4 correlation would make a compelling case for CF. But I see many problems with the He results:
1. The measurements are difficult, and the reported levels are erratic, and rather close to background. And background is likely to depend on outgassing and permeation, both dependent on temperature.
2. Of all the possible products of nuclear reactions that have been claimed in CF (tritium, neutrons, transmutations, alpha, X-rays), the only one that is at a level in the same ballpark as the claimed heat (He4), is the only one that happens to exist in the background at about the same level. That seems too coincidental.
3. Krivit has examined the He results in detail and concluded that the 25 MeV per He is not in evidence. He's not the most credible source, to be sure, but his evisceration of the reported experiments at least shows that the situation is far from clear-cut.
4. In Storms' 2007 book (Science of LENR), in the section on He-4, he refers to Miles' work from the mid-90s, which is sufficiently inconclusive to have given rise to published challenges by Jones. Then Storms refers to Gozzi's experiments from the mid-to-late 90s, and shows a figure from a '93 conf proceeding. But in Gozzi's 1998 refereed paper, he admits the low levels of helium are not definitive. Oops. Gozzi appears to have gotten out of the field after that paper. The other two experiments Storms refers to (McKubre & Hagelstein) are both published in conf proceedings.
5. All of the results in Storms book were available to the DOE panel, and they did not agree that the He4-heat correlation has been substantiated.
6. Given that everyone agrees that He4-heat represents the most discriminating experiment in CF, it is hard to believe advocates aren't busily working on it. So why the dearth of literature on the subject in the last decade? It suggests that not much success, beyond that which failed to convince the DOE panel, has been achieved.
abdlomax writes:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this>This is no longer controversial among those who know the literature,
To some extent, that's a tautology. The only ones who know the literature in detail, are those who are already convinced, or predisposed to being convinced. Skeptics look at the claims, and conclude that if they had validity, unmistakable proof-of-principle would be easy to demonstrate.
But skeptics that are retained to learn the literature, like the DOE panel, put the lie to your claim.
>which includes many who used to be skeptical.
Besides yourself and Duncan, do you have other examples?
>There is now work predicting fusion from quantum field theory, applied to physical configurations that weren't anticipated. CF is not contrary to known theory, that was an error, based on making assumptions and approximations.
The theories range from highly speculative to completely wacky, and none of the them have had much success. If conventional theory predicted CF, you'd have 1989 all over again. Scientists like fame and fortune as much as the next guy, and if CF is possible, there is plenty of fame and fortune in that field to go around. But mainstream science does not share your view that CF is consistent with known theory, and -- no offence -- I'm betting on the mainstream on this one.
kemo sabe wrote:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"That is a statement of motherhood. It is the mandate of funding agencies to entertain well-designed proposals that address scientific issues."
If the NIH were to convene a panel to study creationism, do you think they unanimously recommend further research? Do you suppose 6 out of 18 would say the creationism is real and 2 remain undecided? If, as you claim, anyone who believes the experimental results is deluded, yet deluded scientists are rate, how did the DoE manage to find 6 deluded people out of 18 distinguished experts?
If you sincerely believe that thousands of professors who had important and productive careers until 1989 are all, to a man, deluded, then you are extremely gullible, and the very opposite of a skeptic. There is no evidence for your claim, to say the least.
"'Of the 18 reviewers, 10 said that cold fusion does not exist, 6 said it does exist, and 2 were undecided. I would call that a split decision, not a bust.'
If they said those things, they didn't say them in the final report."
Yes, they did. See:
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/DOEusdepartme.pdf
"[Duncan] is not a nuclear physicist, and has been out of research and mired in administration long enough to lose touch, and he was paid by people obviously looking for someone that would be converted."
1. He was asked to review calorimetry, not nuclear physics. He is a leading expert in calorimetry, and a Fellow of the APS for his contributions to that subject.
2. He was asked to determine whether the calorimetry was correct in an experiment with a fraction of 1 W input and 20 W output, lasting for days. This is very easy to determine; it does not actually call for an expert. There is no chance it is mistaken, and the net output energy exceeds the limits of chemistry thousands of times over.
3. He was not paid.
Excuse me, I meant to write "yet deluded scientists are rare" not rate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo take some other examples:
A Japanese technical magazine conducted a poll of professional scientist and engineers in 1993, by mail. Most responded, and just over half of respondents thought that cold fusion is real, and most supported continued research. Are you suggesting that half of Japanese scientists and engineers are delusional?
Readers have visited LENR-CANR 2 million times, and downloaded 1.6 million papers. Hundreds of them have contacted me, mainly to ask for more information. They include people from most major U.S. universities and dozens of leading corporations, national laboratories in many different countries and so on. Only one of these people said he thinks cold fusion does not exist; the others all made positive comments. No doubt some readers think cold fusion does not exist, but out of those who contacted me that number is less than 1%. Most of the papers are technical and most readers are professional researchers. Do you think they have taken the time to read that many papers if they believe the subject is bogus, or do you think I have found 2 million deluded people?
Do you also think that the directors of the Italian Physical Society, the Italian Chemical Society, the ENEA (their DoE) and the National Research Council are deluded? They sponsored the last conference and showed up to make encouraging speeches. Do you think they would do that for creationism?
The skeptical assertion that "most" scientists think cold fusion is not real is based entirely on opinion, without a shred of supporting evidence. All methods of measuring the opinions of scientists, such as convening a DoE panel or conducting a poll, show that opinion is divided roughly 50 - 50% on this subject. If you limit respondents to people who read more than 5 papers and who have some relevant professional qualifications to evaluate the results, based on the response of readers at LENR-CANR.org I expect you would find that over 90% believe cold fusion is real.
While it has been entertaining to read the preceeding debate, the essential question remains: If cold fusion is here, why are we still burning coal?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistefen wrote:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"While it has been entertaining to read the preceeding debate, the essential question remains: If cold fusion is here, why are we still burning coal?"
Read the experimental literature and you will see. To summarize, a great deal of progress has been made. The success rate is much higher today than it was 10 or 20 years ago. But the reaction still cannot be fully controlled, so it cannot be scaled up.
Many other fundamental discoveries took a long time to develop into practical devices. Semiconductor research began in the 1920s but did not pan out until 1952. The first electric motors were made in the early 1800s but the first commercial ones were not made until the 1870s. The development of cold fusion has been held back even more than these other discoveries because there is great deal of opposition to it, caused by academic politics and ignorance. Cold fusion seems to attract opponents with anger issues and unscientific attitudes. For example, the previous editor of the Scientific American told me that he and the others at Sci. Am. have never a single paper on cold fusion, because "reading papers is not our job," yet they are certain it is not real. He published a column about with technical assertions about cold fusion which were totally at odds with facts. So I am sure he was telling the truth when he said he has read nothing. See:
http://lenr-canr.org/News.htm#SciAmSlam
Robert Park of the APS also brags to people that he has not read a single paper but he is sure the claims are wrong. In the Washington Post he says all researchers are frauds, lunatics and criminals. You will appreciate that is very difficult to get research funding when major mass media accuse you of being a criminal.
"While it has been entertaining to read the preceeding debate, the essential question remains: If cold fusion is here, why are we still burning coal?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis one is really easy. Because the reality of cold fusion does not necessarily translate to practical application, and, in fact, "cold fusion" is already known and accepted in the case of muon-catalyzed fusion. As with muon-catalyzed fusion, reality does not automatically translate to practical application. It seems that our present topic, "cold fusion," which is possibly "electron-catalyzed," in one theory through the formation of a two-molecule Bose-Einstein condensate, *might* be practical some day, but reliability is a huge issue, and experiments that are both large and reliable are not known. There are small effects that are statistically reliable. There are large effects reported occasionally, by enough people, who were exercising sufficient care, that we know they can occur, but nobody has figured out how to repeat them reliably. There are unknown factors, obviously, and it could take decades before they are clearly identified.
As to the obtuse skeptical comments being posted here by one person, I have begin a seminar at en.Wikiversity,org as a subpage of the Cold fusion resource there, on Skeptical Arguments, so that the arguments presented here, some of which are quite familiar, can be examined in detail and neutrally, which may assist others in becoming familiar with the field. Anyone is welcome to participate there, subject to normal Wikiversity policy.
Many of the comments here are at direct variance with the sources, such as the U.S. DoE reviews, and the claim is being made that anyone familiar with the sources must, therefore, be a "believer," and to be disregarded, which, again, directly contradicts any reliance on reviews by the DoE (did they read the sources?), or the peer reviewers at mainstream publications that are now approving contributions in the field, such as Naturwissenschaften. Evidence can be cherry-picked to appear to support any conclusion one wants, but to find the truth -- or the best available knowledge, we need to look at much more than bits and pieces in isolation.
Kemo sabe is anonymous. I and Jed Rothwell are very known, real people, whose reputations are at stake if we put up deceptive material. If I've ever done that, please let me know! You can find me through Wikiversity, user Abd.
Excuse me again. I meant to say that the Sci. Am. editor said he has never READ a single paper.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this(I have a very mild disability that causes difficulty with computer input. It causes words to drop out when I am not careful with voice input.)
Robert Park has never TOUCHED a single paper, never mind reading one. When I offered him copies of papers he refused to touch them, and let them fall to the floor. Leading cold fusion researchers have met with him from time to time, as recently as a few months ago. He refuses to accept information from them, either papers or a briefing. He wrote a lot about cold fusion in the WaPost and in a book, but his assertions about it are wildly wrong. Perhaps he makes stuff up. Maybe dredges it out of the Internet rumor mill. It is clear that he is telling the truth when he brags that he has read nothing. A normal scientist would ashamed to admit such willful ignorance, but Park brags about it.
The author of this article, Shermer, is apparently unaware of the fact that thousands of scientists claim they replicated cold fusion. I doubt he reads these messages, or that he has any knowledge that LENR-CANR, the Defense Intelligence Agency report, or the stuff from BARC or Los Alamos. I cannot accuse him of willful ignorance. But it is sloppy for him to publish columns without fact-checking the peer-reviewed literature to see whether his assertions are supported.
This article made me laugh ..Feinman actually did what he says a scientist may not do; He is lying or lying or is mad
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOld Greek scientists knew light cannot be corpuscular because we see the stars.By actual science light is an E.M.wave.By corpuscular theory we could not see colors or the stars.Not a single optical phenomenon can be explained by photons. If photons were real their existence could be proved by manuy experiments..The only "proof" that is actually given is the photo-electric effect. But Nobel Laureate Richardson proved the photo-electric effect did not exist. And if this effect had existed really how could it prove the existence of photons?.Did the Caltech pofessor ignore all this ?
Scsnece proves scientists are lyers
Rothwell writes:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this>If the NIH were to convene a panel to study creationism, do you think they unanimously recommend further research?
No. I'll grant you that creationists are more deluded than CF advocates. But if a creationist put together a focused proposal on dating the shroud of turin, or a possible piece of the ark, and the research promised to elucidate some scientific question, I suspect they might entertain it.
>Do you suppose 6 out of 18 would say the creationism is real and 2 remain undecided?
No. But creationists are more deluded that CFists, and that didn't happen with the DOE panel either. Only one said evidence for LENR was conclusive (i.e. CF is real). (More below.)
> If, as you claim, anyone who believes the experimental results is deluded,
Nope. Didn't claim that. I said it is reasonable to conclude that the researchers are all deluded.
>yet deluded scientists are rate, how did the DoE manage to find 6 deluded people out of 18 distinguished experts?
They didn't. It's not surprising that 1 in 18 would be uncritical, and taken in by the data, but to wear the "deluded" moniker, requires putting his time where his mouth is. If any of the panel members have started doing CF research, I'd say they were deluded. Otherwise, none of the 18 is necessarily deluded.
>>>"'10 said that cold fusion does not exist, 6 said it does exist, and 2 were undecided. '
>>If they said those things, they didn't say them in the final report."
>Yes, they did. See: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/DOEusdepartme.pdf
I've seen that. As summarized in the final report, and contrary to your count, only one of the reviewers found the evidence for LENR conclusive. One found the evidence very compelling, but stopped short of saying it was conclusive, emphasized by a conditional in his summary (if correct). Five others found the evidence somewhere between suggestive and compelling, but were rather explicit that it was not conclusive. Eleven were clearly negative. If 6 were positive of CF, as you claim, surely, given its importance, they would recommend in favor of a focused funding program, but none did. One hinted at it, two were non-specific about funding, and the others were all against a special CF program (even the one convinced of CF).
That you regard 6 of the reviewers as convinced of CF, contrary to the final report, indicates that you too are, wait for it, deluded.
The DOE report is one of the pillars in my argument that CF researchers are deluded. So you should not be surprised that I consider it consistent with my conclusions.
Rothwell:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this>To summarize, a great deal of progress has been made. The success rate is much higher today than it was 10 or 20 years ago. But the reaction still cannot be fully controlled, so it cannot be scaled up.
I don't buy this excuse. The wind and sun are also not fully controlled, but they have been exploited well enough to keep them in the game, although perhaps not at the cheapest rates. Heat is especially is easy to store, as it is at more than 95% efficiency in concentrated solar power facilities.
The problem is that it can't be scaled up, but it is most likely because experimental artifacts don't scale predictably. That's why, in recent experiments, they tend to use smaller and smaller amounts of Pd, so that when the artifact doesn't scale down, they can claim a bigger relative effect.
> Many other fundamental discoveries took a long time to develop into practical devices. Semiconductor research began in the 1920s but did not pan out until 1952.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPresumably you're referring to transistors, because diodes were patented in 1909, and already had applications in radar receivers by then.
If so, then the equivalent to the 1989 event in CF would be the first claimed observation of transistor action (amplification) by Shockley's group in 1947, just after the war. From then, it was just a few years, and only a few researchers, to practical applications, and less than a decade to the Nobel prize.
If you take the starting point for the transistor in the 20s, when the first patents were written, but indications of experimental activity are scarce or absent, then the equivalent starting point for CF would also be in the 20s (and early 30s), when the first claims were made of conversion of hydrogen and deuterium into helium in Pd electrolysis, and the first patent was written, although declined. That would mean CF and transistors started about the same time, but one of them has a slight lead over the other, considering most of us carry more transistors in our pockets than there are CF cells on the planet. This comparison does not do CF any favors.
>The first electric motors were made in the early 1800s but the first commercial ones were not made until the 1870s.
Faraday first demonstrated the principle of converting electricity to mechanical motion in 1821, and in 1828, Jedlik demonstrated a working motor, and in the same year he built a vehicle propelled by one. That's 7 years, and a less than 10 people to an unmistakable proof-of-principle. In CF, after 20 years (or 80, depending where you start counting), and thousands of people, the world is still waiting for proof-of-principle.
As for commercialization, the electric motor had to wait for the development of economically competitive sources of electricity. CF allegedly produces heat, just like the sun, or burning fossil fuels, so it awaits no parallel technological development. And if the claims are to be believed, it can produce this heat cleanly, and at essentially no cost. No other energy source could compete with that.
So, indeed, if CF is real, why are we still burning coal?
Rothwell:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this>The development of cold fusion has been held back even more than these other discoveries because there is great deal of opposition to it, caused by academic politics and ignorance. [...] he and the others at Sci. Am. have never a single paper on cold fusion, because "reading papers is not our job," yet they are certain it is not real. ...
> Robert Park of the APS also brags to people that he has not read a single paper but he is sure the claims are wrong. In the Washington Post he says all researchers are frauds, lunatics and criminals. You will appreciate that is very difficult to get research funding when major mass media accuse you of being a criminal.
Ah, the conspiracy theories. The claim that academic politics can suppress a revolutionary energy source that would provide unprecedented benefit to the US and its government, not to mention the planet, is less plausible than CF itself.
SciAm is a relevant magazine, but its clout in the world of research is minor. Pobert Park is respected, but if CF had a convincing demonstration, he could call the researchers baby rapists, and it wouldn't slow the progress down at all.
> This one is really easy. Because the reality of cold fusion does not necessarily translate to practical application, and, in fact, "cold fusion" is already known and accepted in the case of muon-catalyzed fusion. As with muon-catalyzed fusion, reality does not automatically translate to practical application.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease. It's not the existence of fusion in deuterated Pd (which certainly happens at a low rate) that promises clean energy. It is the claimed measurement of *energy* attributed to fusion in deuterated Pd that suggests it as a potential source of *energy*. If you observe the thing you want to produce, then the only problem is scaling. And regardless of whether it's understood or controllable, if it's the D/Pd producing energy, then more D/Pd ought to produce more energy.
Muon-catalyzed fusion is observed by the accompanying radiation, and of course understood in great theoretical detail, but it requires muons. So far, no one has figured out how to get more energy from the fusions a muon can catalyze than it takes to make the muon. That's a problem CF advocates claim they do not have.
> As to the obtuse skeptical comments being posted here by one person, I have begin a seminar at en.Wikiversity,org as a subpage of the Cold fusion resource there, on Skeptical Arguments, so that the arguments presented here, some of which are quite familiar, can be examined in detail and neutrally, which may assist others in becoming familiar with the field.
What CF needs is not better argument, but better experiment.
> or the peer reviewers at mainstream publications that are now approving contributions in the field, such as Naturwissenschaften.
As previously argued, the appearance of 3 CF papers in the now mostly biological journal Naturwissenschaften is not a positive indicator for the field. It likely means the authors could not get the paper into more relevant physics journals.
Rothwell:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this>A Japanese technical magazine conducted a poll of professional scientist and engineers in 1993, by mail. Most responded, and just over half of respondents thought that cold fusion is real,
1993? Anything more recent?
>Readers have visited LENR-CANR 2 million times,...
Considering the spin you put on the publicly available DOE report, I can't put much stock in the spin you might put on your own anecdotal data.
> Do you also think that the directors of the Italian Physical Society, the Italian Chemical Society, the ENEA (their DoE) and the National Research Council are deluded?
No. The APS is not deluded either, and they held a CF session as well. The researchers? Probably.
>The skeptical assertion that "most" scientists think cold fusion is not real is based entirely on opinion, without a shred of supporting evidence.
How about the complete absence of CF articles in APS journals, or in most mainstream nuclear physics journals? How about the almost complete exclusion of CF from funding by peer-reviewed funding agencies? How about the DOE reports of 1989 and 2004? None of these things would happen unless most scientists are skeptical of CF. (Note that in 1993, Japanese journals published CF, and Japanese funding agencies funded CF.)
>All methods of measuring the opinions of scientists, such as convening a DoE panel or conducting a poll, show that opinion is divided roughly 50 - 50% on this subject.
The summary of the DOE panel said one reviewer was convinced by the evidence. 1:18 != 50:50
Do you have some other polls? Some in this decade? Some from the US?
>If you limit respondents to people who read more than 5 papers and who have some relevant professional qualifications to evaluate the results, based on the response of readers at LENR-CANR.org I expect you would find that over 90% believe cold fusion is real.
Now you're losing it. The DOE panel fits those criteria, and even your delusional reading of their report doesn't claim 90% support.
Science self-correcting. What about the "Theory of Nothing" of Nobel laureate and Caltech professor Feinman?He denies logics but tries to justify this theory logically..He did not invent this theory but extends it;The spectrum of hydrogen is explained logically by a lot of illogic assumptions .Why an explanation for the spectrum of hydrogen and all other spectra are supposed to be natural properties of the chemical elements. Animals have a minimum of logic, so are humans. A minimum of logic would be to imagine explanations for the other chemical elements or to drop the explanation of hydrogen spectrum ,with quanta and the theories of Feinman .first solution is the easiest but it will not come from Caltech or Harvard but from Athens or Saloniki.All spectra can be explained by Greek logic not by dogmata By considering atoms as small planetary systems and abandoning Feinman's dogmata it is easy to find the relation between the constitution and the spectrum of any atom.If science will correct itself it must start by rejecting the Feinman nonsense
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRothwell:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this> Robert Park has never TOUCHED a single paper, never mind reading one. [...] A normal scientist would ashamed to admit such willful ignorance, but Park brags about it.
Presumably he thinks of CF the way most scientists think of perpetual motion; most would be proud not to have wasted their time reading about it, while still quite confident in their skepticism.
>The author of this article, Shermer, is apparently unaware of the fact that thousands of scientists claim they replicated cold fusion. [...] But it is sloppy for him to publish columns without fact-checking the peer-reviewed literature to see whether his assertions are supported.
The DOE review supports his assertions; he doesn't need more than that.
There is so much competition and money involved in this that scientist are more concerned about who is right and gets credit for it than what is right, even if it might save the world.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey shot us this game for years about how concerned they are about the world and us. Communicating this so well in popularizations of science that some of us became interested, understood it studying on our own, and wanted to contribute also.
But if you present something that they dont agree with, or something that they do agree with, but did not discover first, their response does not fit the expectations.
They reminds me of children who get mad if they do not win the game, as if it is a game, instead of a life and death situation, for the whole planet, as some of us think it is.
I hope that I am wrong.
I do not mean to pick on, Silvester Gates , but I wrote him a E-mail concerning a discovery that I made as an independent scientist, and this is what he said. Here is the Email
Re: New interpretation of E=mc^2
Monday, December 11, 2006 1:55 PM
From:
"Sylvester James Gates Jr." <gatess@wam.umd.edu>
Add sender to Contacts
To:
"Conrad Countess" <cjcountess@yahoo.com>
Dear Conrad,
> Dear Sylester James Gates Jr., Ph.D.
Please call me `Jim' as I don't stand on formalities.
> My name is Conrad J. Countess and I am an independent
> amateur scientist or at least I like to think so.
It is nice to meet you here in cyberspace.
> I saw the Nova program, ``Einstein's Big Idea'' and
> found it very interesting.
I am very happy to hear this as I know from working with
the producer, Gary Johnstone, quite an effort went to
create an accessible and entertaining video presentation.
> I even tried to get on line the next day to chat with
> you but could not get through.
I am sorry to hear that. The entire transcript of the
chatroom is available if you wish to see it. Unfortu-
nately, it is filled with my spelling and grammatical
errors which occur whenever I type fast in the attempt
to answer the most inquiries I could.
> I've written one book in which relativity plays a big
> part and which also mentions Einstein and a lecture
> that I attended at your place of work, University of
> Maryland, years ago as I was living in Baltimore at
> the time but now reside in Columbia just down the road.
> Go to www.cjc123.net and hit browse book if you like
> to see it.
Congratulations.
> But let me get to the point at hand now. I think that
> I have enough evidence to confirm that c^2 in the
> equations E=mc^2, M=E/c^2 and m=Ec^2 is not just a
> mathematical conversion factor of energy to matter but
> is an actual frequency at the high end of the electro-
> magnetic spectrum where energy turns to matter and has
> a geometrical circular or spherical structure such as
> a standing spherical wave.
When my scientific career began about thirty years
ago, I could not imagine it would place me in a role
of directly informing the public about developments
in mathematical and theoretical physics that have been
my chosen fields of effort.
Most recently, I have completed my first solo effort in
the realm of presenting frontier science to the public.
It is described at
http://www.teach12.com/teach12.asp?ai=16281
you can see there an annoucement for a collection
entitled, `Superstring Theory: The DNA of Real-
ity.' This was released by The Teaching Company
(TTC) in October and has been their `fastest sell-
ing offering' with `extraordinary sales' ac-
cording to what I have been told.
One person who reviewed it said,
``At times, you will feel like a tourist in a
dark magnificent cavern, whose guide shines
a light at one spectacular sight and then
another before you can catch your breath
again,''
and they are talking about the MATHEMATICS which
anchors the presentation but in a way I have never
seen done before.
One lesson I have learned from all of this is that a
tremendous number of people are interested but have not
understood how theoretical physics is done. I spoke a
bit about this in the chatroom.
One would literally have to be smarter than Einstein to
be successful at what you purport...without formal train-
ing to present advances in physics. Even he first got
a Ph.D. in physics before he was able to present his
amazing discoveries. No one without the mathematical
training similar to what he undertook has ever made any
substantial contribution to theoretical physics.
> The simplest explanation is that the angular momentum
> of the frequency equals and balances the speed and mo-
> mentum of light along the linier path for a balance of
> centrifugal and centripetal forces resulting in a clos-
> ed loop of rotating energy. A more detailed explana-
> tion is available at
>
> www.cjc123.net/review
>
> I've tried to take this idea to its logical end and
> so a lot of what it contains may be speculative or
> inaccurate, but the main idea I just mentioned I am
> sure of and I have logical, mathematical and geome-
> trical evidence to back it. Due to the efficiency of
> the Internet and search engines the evidence is pil-
> ing up and I do think there is no way around it.
>
> There is plenty of collaborating evidence. It would
> be a great honor for me if you would review this paper
> and evidence, especially the idea just mentioned.
> Imagine a new breakthrough on this subject after 100
> years. It is bound to generate much excitement and get
> more people interest in the sciences. E=mc^2 tells
> us that a lot of energy is trapped inside of matter
> and that they are one related by that formula. But up
> tell now I have not heard anyone explain how. This ex-
> plains it so simply that even a child can understand it.
> The implications are far reaching. Among other things
> it will show a more direct relationship between
> relative and rest mass, waves and particles, energy
> and matter, relativity and quantum mechanics.
> SEE FOR YOURSELF - IT WOULD BE A GREAT HONOR FOR ME.
>
> CJCountess
> e-mail-cjcountess@yahoo.com
I must decline.
Due to some previous experiences and on advice
of counsel, I now operate under policies that
require contractual arrangements before I dis-
cuss scientific issues with someone who does
not hold a recognized scientific affiliation.
The rate for the consultation is $500/hr. or any
fraction thereof. There are also forms requiring
waiver of rights, copyright agreements, a state-
ment of indemnification, an agreement regarding
billable hours, etc. and a security deposit of a
minimum of $1,500.00 non-refundable made prior to
any such consultation to be paid via a secured fi-
nancial instrument. If you wish for my attorney
to send you a complete detailed set of such docu-
ments, please indicate to what address a C.O.D.
package may be sent.
I do wish you are able to find what it is that you
are seeking.
Sincerely,
Jim
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
S.J.Gates, Jr. John S. Toll Professor of Physics and
Center for String and Particle Theory Director
University of Maryland Tel: 301-405-6025
Physics Department Fax: 301-314-9525
Rm. 4125 E-mail: gatess@wam.umd.edu
College Park, MD 20742-4111
http://www.physics.umd.edu/ep/gates/gates.html
http://nsbp.org/cgi-bin/nsbp.cgi?page=jgates +-+
Re: New interpretation of E=mc^2
Tuesday, December 12, 2006 1:55 PM
From:
"Sylvester James Gates Jr." <gatess@wam.umd.edu>
Add sender to Contacts
To:
"Conrad Countess" <cjcountess@yahoo.com>
Dear Conrad,
> Thank you for your quick response. Thought you would
> be to busy to respond this quick or at all.
It is a matter of simple respect for another human be-
ing that I respond to all who write to me...unless I
can perceive in their communications something to indi-
cate otherwise.
> I do have the transcript to the chat- spelling errors
> and all. And believe me you are not the only one whose
> thoughts out run your ability to write them down quick
> and accurate. Happens to me all the time. But than we
> are not discussing spelling and grammar so why get dis-
> tracted by that when the subject of physics is to im-
> portant.
Thank you for the generosity of your assessment of my
failings as a chat-room host.
From the remainder of your message, it is clear to me
that you know precisely what you are doing. Under these
circumstances, I have a simple request. Please do not
send me further communications on this topic is they will,
indeed, elicit no response.
I can only wish you the best in whatever are your goals
in pursuing this.
SJG
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
S.J.Gates, Jr. John S. Toll Professor of Physics and
Center for String and Particle Theory Director
University of Maryland Tel: 301-405-6025
Physics Department Fax: 301-314-9525
Rm. 4125 E-mail: gatess@wam.umd.edu
College Park, MD 20742-4111
http://www.physics.umd.edu/ep/gates/gates.html
http://nsbp.org/cgi-bin/nsbp.cgi?page=jgates +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
If anyone out there is more interested in what is right than who is right and gets credit for it you can view this paper
http://wbabin.net/science/countess.pdf
And the evidence just keeps growing, the internet is amazing.
The one main question that I have is will anyone in the established scientific community have the guts to interview or debate me on this and would the audience like to see this?
If you would let them know
The website for the book mentioned in the Email has changed to http://cjc123.com. You should also find this interesting.
Conrad J Countess
P.S.
James Gates must have forgoten that Micheal Farraday, who did not have formal education at the time, as was pointed out in the very show that Gates participated in, made a major discovery, and even "Einstein", is said to have done likewise, by many, if not "Gates", himself. I once read an article by "Einstein", on General Relativity, that stated that "Einstein" stated that, "it mused me to wonder if Farraday would have discovered the laws of electromagnetic induction, he did if he had been encombered by triditional education".
This is not to say that triditional education is not valid, we know that it is, and is probably another reason that academic institutions fight so hard to eliminate compitition from the natural talent, but natural out of the box thinking, sometimes is where the quantum leaps in knowledge come from, history has proven that also.
WE NEED BOTH!!
Conrad J Countess
The dream of abundant cheap energy is politicizing research in order to steamroll ahead with energy-hungry war efforts with proven technology. Possible methods remain in the hands of mathematicians. A woman devised Calculus decades before Newton. Peer review is a bombshell for making a case for publishing. Science must allow for an all-inclusive public interface so as to simplify leading edge research in understandable terms and finance clarity in the question itself. Spontaneous fusion may be as probable as uncertainty is in small scale experiments. Chalk up another one for the case of defining high and low density limits for either the detection or exclusion of the selective existence of n gravity vectors at all points in space and test environments. ;)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is Conrad J Countess
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with above statement. We must look seriously at outside of the box thinking, including layman thoughts in layman terms. It may very well be that the answer is found in the simplicity, not complexity. I can prove this.
Has Sci Am or Discover ever taken any of its readers or posters ideas seriously on these matters, or do they just pretend to be interested to keep the love affair going?
What if their public demanded that they did.
Come on Discover or Sci Am, which one of you really cares?
Conrad J Countess
conradjcountess - I agree with the above statement, or at least I empathize with it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've sometimes wondered if the term c^2 in E=mc^2 has anything to do velocity or if its simply an imprecisely large arbitrary number; whether E=m((c^2)-1) might just work as well, and if so at what scale does the equation break down? Perhaps someone knowledgeable would care to clarify.
conradjcountess - P.S., James Gates' point about the necessity for mathematical proficiency being required to be seriously considered has never been more appropriate than it is today, but it would be instructive, especially for the physics community, to consider the theoretical contributions of George Gamow throughout the previous century. As I understand, he probably could not have been successful without the assistance of his mathematician friends.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are two curious features of the energy budget model employed in cold fusion experiments that, to the best of my knowledge, have not been addressed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe first, which applies to the open, vented cells used by Pons and Fleischmann, is that the calorimetry model adopted by Miles and Fleischmann assumes that all the moisture that is vented from the cell is released in the form of water vapor, and none as mist entrained in the vapors.
If you observe the effervescence, as the bubbles of the evolving gases break the surface of the electrolyte, you can see that they spritz mist which can carry away water in the liquid phase rather than in the vapor phase. Ignoring the fraction of mist in the vapors introduces an error in the calorimetry that, as far as I know, has not been adequately addressed.
The second feature, which applies to both open and closed cells, is that the electric current that drives the cell is assumed to be an ideal constant current, with only a DC component, and no AC power arising from fluctuations in ohmic resistance as the electrolyte bubbles on the surface of the electrodes.
Omitting the AC power arising from fluctuations in the ohmic resistance systematically underestimates the input power by a factor that goes as the square of the fluctuations in the ohmic resistance of the cell. A 10% fluctuation in the resistance would inject an additional 1% of AC power, over and above the DC power. To the best of my knowledge, this issue has not been adequately addressed either.
Shermer is a climatist, so he won't go there.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.michaelshermer.com/2008/04/confessions-of-a-former-environmental-skeptic/
Shermer is a climatist, so he won't go there.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.michaelshermer.com/2008/04/confessions-of-a-former-environmental-skeptic/
<i>No one is ignoring replication and peer-review</i>
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet me add that you can't find any report on CF in the huge nuclear data banks, say National Nuclear Data Center of Brookhaven National Laboratory or Nuclear Data Section of IAEA. Among the 18712 researchers(IAEA datum)in the field of nuclear reactions, you can find not even one name of a coldfusionist.