(Deleted comment.)
Cambridge University Professor Huw Price on the ‘Reputation Trap’ of Cold Fusion (Update: Response in Popular Mechanics)
-
-
Frank,
I am going to make another guess - your background is in the "social sciences"
Best regards,
Dog
-
It has amazed me for years that Thomas, MY, Popeye (elsewhere) and others spend a mind boggling amount of time on sites like this in endless and very repetitive debates on the merits of LENR. The tale of the true believer is much easier to grasp. But you perma-skeps are clearly intelligent, educated and skilled debaters. What keeps you coming back? Chances are your response to this will be rather feeble, and I will not bother to criticise or debate it. This post is much more for the rational skeptic who reads these blogs from time to time. If I had the time I would do a count of posts and a word count. The results might be quite shocking. They are either obsessional or professional in my opinion. Just saying.
-
Huw Price asks two questions:
1. Is cold fusion truly impossible, or
2. Is it just that no respectable scientist can risk their reputation working on it?”Regarding 1, the answer is 'we don't know'
Regarding 2, the answer is 'no', respectable scientists are working on it but some do fear the subject.In order to arrive at definitive answers to both of these questions sensitive, inclusive and considered enquiry is necessary without prejudice, not guesswork and particularly not intellectual bullying.
-
I agree with you. Some types of tabletop, if not necessarily classical LENR cold fusion, are clearly possible -- the Farnsworth Fusor and Muon catalyzed fusion. The question maybe should have been, can one extract useful power from tabletop fusion devices? And clearly, a few reputable scientists are working on it. The problem is that incompetents, crooks, cranks, con-men and idiots have muddied the waters and are continuing to do so. And the so-called LENR community seems to embrace way too many of these instead of repudiating them.
-
Mary
An unusually polite and considered response, I'm impressed with the absence of 'finger pointing' with the exception of having a go at the whole LENR community to which you belong. So I have read your post again; particularly the last two sentences and I can understand why you haven't particularly excluded yourself, although some of it seems a bit harsh and self critical, as Thomas would say "ad homs like this do your case no good".
Best regards
Frank -
TheGomp,
Another possibility is that those named and unnamed folks might just look at all of this as an interesting hobby. They're not trying to "save the world". Perhaps, like me, they might be looking at the entire subject area as "an interesting mental exercise".
:nuke: Dog,
-
Dog
If that's the case then perhaps we should not judge them to harshly, any visitor to my home gets the best seat, I listen to them and engage without making them feel uneasy, I make them feel welcome as Alain and Co do on this site, is Price asking too much for polite inclusive and non hostile exchange in the LENR community?
Regards
Frank -
MY, if you want to keep the L in LENR you cannot count muon catalyzed fusion to the LENR family, classical or not. The reason for this is that muons require high energy particle smashers to materialize, so they are born by HENR, not LENR.
A similar argument applies to fusors that require 15 kV to operate. This may not sound very much but it still corresponds to a temperature of over 170 MK, and we are already well into the realm of hot fusion.
To the best of my knowledge both of those concepts have been ruled out for production of affordable energy.
There are also commercially available neutron generators and of course you could initiate exothermic nuclear reactions with these neutrons, e. g. with uranium (obviously). But the value of the energy produced would be much less than the cost to make the neutrons. And like for the fusor, the neutron generators also require acceleration of particles to high energies. As a matter of fact, the neutron generators are fusors.
To generate energy this way is just as far fetched as the suggestion by Ugo Abundo (in another thread here) to use americium alphas to radiate beryllium to produce neutrons to produce energy. See http://www.hydrobetatron.org/019-ultimo-report.html if you are interested. At least the Beryl Heliodor looks nice and the music is pretty. You can try to make a small donation. Maybe they can play another tune if you do, which would be good because it gets boring after a while.
-
Ahhh - but who gets to determine who is polite and sensitive and unassuming - ah now there is the "rub"...
I would not be at all surprised to learn that you believe that you or Price are highly qualified to pass that kind of judgment.
best regards,
:nuke: Dog,
-
Dog
Well lets hope that what you learn is not determined by any undue influence and you have available to you all the facts without spin or bias and you don't make any more unproductive guesses!
My take on this is that 'you' get to determine this, along with every other member and guest here, we bring to it and take away what we will, but we all take with us and perhaps leave an impression.
Price's impression was that clearly some are attempting to use what might be considered psychological warfare in order to influence the course of discovery, Mary might agree that is a correct statement with regard to Rossi and Axil may feel that it is a correct statement with regard to Mary; you will have to make your own mind up!
Then if you want me to agree with you, you must put your case in a polite, inclusive and non aggressive manor, otherwise I will not listen, regardless of how good your case is, as Thomas says; ad homs does your case no good.
Regards
Frank -
Frank,
Thank you for teh compliment - I think! It is actually an emotional thing. once a certain line is crossed and the arguers become primarily defensive, regardless of how polite they are, there is no use in continuing the [lexicon]conversation[/lexicon]. In recognising this I am perhaps slightly more enlightened than Popeye - but the fact is that I can easily stay in perseverent "win the argument" mode beyond when the [lexicon]conversation[/lexicon] sheds any new illumination, so I'm in no position to criticise Popeye for this.
QuoteI respect your commentary, and I think you do yourself a huge disservice by conflating yourself with that cartoon character.
Well I don't conflate myself with anyone - recognising certain common traits in this case is just having a small degree of self-knowledge!
Now however I will take you to task. Popeye is not a cartoon character. He argues rationally and with details. I know that his arguments are 100% opposite to those of most here. However, when I've (for example) read through that long "state of LENR" interchange between him and Jed I have to say that Popeye had facts to back his generalisations, Jed did not. So the way I judge these things Popeye's arguments were more compelling than Jed's.
But no doubt your view of Popeye is not so positive. Nevertheless calling him a "cartoon character" is surely the worst type of emotive language. If his arguments are weak that can be established on the details, as it should be. Dismissing him as ridiculous is hurtful and untrue. In fact I suspect the strength of that epithet comes exactly because you don't find his arguments ridiculous, but don't like them...
-
Quote
MY, if you want to keep the L in LENR you cannot count muon catalyzed fusion to the LENR family, classical or not. The reason for this is that muons require high energy particle smashers to materialize, so they are born by HENR, not LENR. A similar argument applies to fusors that require 15 kV to operate. This may not sound very much but it still corresponds to a temperature of over 170 MK, and we are already well into the realm of hot fusion.To the best of my knowledge both of those concepts have been ruled out for production of affordable energy.
Absolutely. If somone could generate muons cheaply it would be a big deal and we would have cheap fusion. But people have been trying for a long time...
There are a collection of relatively low power ideas - FRCs, Magnetic Target Fustion, etc which in some combination might just pan out. There is a very large design space and it is not well understood, so you can't dismiss these ideas. But none of them look very promising, there is such an engineering challenge just to get significantly more energy out than in, let alone containment and lifetime issues, and achieving X6 or so total energy gain from which you could possibly make money.
-
But no doubt your view of Popeye is not so positive.....
Popeye is a cartoon character! It was just a play on words... You should have heard what I going to write. It was hilarious, but possibly a bit too offensive.When it comes to his arguments, they are just that. He (as you hint at) absolutely must get the last word, essentially arguing by attrition, and maybe he's even right sometimes - it's just that when I've read his arguements about the limited subjects that I do know about, I can see that he's clearly EDIT: just arguing, as he doesn't have a good understanding of the topic. Because of that, and his style, which is IMHO sophistic, I think that maybe the rest of what he says is EDIT: possibly dubious too.
-
I suggest, Colwyn, that you look more at content and less at style.
-
Why? I can understand and make deductions from both.
May I suggest that you devote a bit of time to scrutinising any posts that you instinctively agree with... You may be suprised...
-
Mary
I suggest, Colwyn, that you look more at content and less at style.
Why then do you devote so much of your discourse to style and then complain ? May I suggest you decamp from the dark side, as you have rightly recognised, it is a diversion.
Price's impression was that clearly some are attempting to use what might be considered psychological warfare in order to influence the course of discovery,
-
An idea came, because I love symetry and Aikido spirit.
Abd Ul rahman Lomax recognize Popeye, aka Josuah Cudes is very competent, and only competent people like Abd can simply point the errors in his claims. This is a problem.
Let us assume that Josuah Cude is right and all LENR papers are flawed.
He can make a peer reviewed paper ?
If as he says there is no "blocus" against cold fusion papers, he will be published in recognized journal.
If as we say there is a stigma he can publish it in Open Journal, on arxiv, and wait for an answer by McKubre, Abd ul Rahman Lomax, who know calorimetry enough to point errors in a way that people can understand.
:cookie:
I don't talk of Rossi, but of McKubre/SRI M4 experiments, Miles, Storms, Bockris F&P, Longchampt, DeNinno, BARC/Srinivasan, Oriani, then Iwamura/takahashi. (Tritium, helium, heat)
No excuse on the "it is not peer reviewed" will be accepted, as this will be a peer review.
Anyway this already have been done. And there is no serious paper that challenges the reference experience of the domaine, taken as a whole.
Charles Beaudette in Excess Heat reports well the way the 4 critics of F&P were debunked (by skeptics too, like Wilson).It is easy to spread FUD on Wiki or here, to flood beginners in calorimetry with unproven claims of artifacts, by "there is background", not accounting for blank tests or calibration done, selecting the worst experiments ignoring the best, but once you write done your "conspiracy of artifact and fraud", it can be debunked safely.
Never forget that there is hundreds of peer reviewed papers that describe Excess heat, and thus that only written, structured and reviewed critics can revert the burden of evidence.
Never forget that even if there was room for errors, there would be anyway a huge requirement to pursue experiments. Current situation is clearly a denial of possibility, not prudent skepticism.
-
Quote
Let us assume that Josuah Cude is right and all LENR papers are flawed.
I don't think you get it, Alain.
There are NO LENR papers that prove LENR. How could they when it does not exist as a hypothesis.
LENR papers, at most, can highlight an apparently anomalous experimental result.
That is all well and good. They are flawed if the apparent anomaly is obviously the result of bad methodology, or just bad interpretation - for example miscalculation of the real error bounds. But they don't have to be flawed to be null evidence for LENR.
If not flawed how strongly they indicate something worth further investigation depends on the strength of their evidence. In fact, we do not see these "strong" papers. Guys here have tried to post them and they just don't seem to exist. But, if they did exist...
...if we did they would not prove LENR. They would make further investigation of that specific anomaly in exactly that experiment worthwhile - and if it remained, with no explanation, and more comprehensive controls and instrumentation, we have real evidence of something extraordinary. I note that this further investigation is sometimes done by LENR people, and leads to the original "anomaly" vanishing. They then describe other weaker "anomalies". this scattergun approach is exactly what you expect if there is no underlying extraordinary effect.
Your cognitive problem here is that you just don't understand the level of evidence required to make an extraordinary hypothesis plausible.
-
Quote
Never forget that even if there was room for errors
Intellectually, I like theory, especially maths where given a sound proof there is indeed no room for errors. But in experimental work? In experimental work there is always room for errors, and positing this even hypothetically shows a lack of caution unwise in an experimenter.
