Shane wrote:
Quote[the stigma cold fusion acquired] is justified to protect the public's image of science. Ends justifies the means.
Cold fusion was judged to be bad science, and just like any other field judged to be bad science, it acquired a stigma. It is perfectly reasonable to advocate and support good science in preference to bad science. It's not more complicated than that.
QuoteBut the public must be getting a bit confused as to what, exactly, you are protecting them from, as there are these institutions popping up around the world to study LENR. Governments starting to offer some funding. What to think for John Q public?...On one hand you have Josh and friends telling you there is nothing, CF died a long time ago -we know because we killed it , and on the other hand the pace of research, and preparations for commercialization, move forward anyways.
It's funny. Here you're arguing that the current level of activity legitimizes the field, and shows that it is alive and well, and on the verge of breakthrough. And yet, in the early 90s, the level of activity was at least 10 times higher, and the publication rate 100 times higher, and yet you just finished arguing that it was dead back then, having just been killed. You just don't make any sense.
Of course, it is the nature of true believers to delude themselves into thinking interest is growing and about to burst forth, even while the field slides slowly, asymptotically, inexorably toward oblivion.
Cold fusion has nowhere near the level of interest it had at almost any time during the 90s, when even toward the end, close to 50 papers were published per year. Or in 2004, when the interest was high enough to convince the DOE to convene another panel to examine the evidence. Or in 2009, when 60 minutes did a piece on cold fusion, and when both the APS and ACS were running LENR symposia at their annual meetings, and SPAWAR had an active LENR program, and activity at NASA seemed to be on the increase.
Just since Rossi, in 2011, Ruby Carat wrote a column titled "Mass Use of Cold Fusion in One Year or Less" on coldfusionnow.com. On Jan 4, 2012, the web site ecatreport.com (now defunct) wrote a column titled "2012 The Year of Andrea Rossi" and gave a list of 10 reasons for ecat momentum. Most of the things on the list are as defunct as the web site.
But since 2009, nothing comparable has appeared in the mainstream media, SPAWAR shut down the LENR research, NASA has gone quiet, and both APS and ACS stopped their LENR sessions, and both rejected publication of the final volume of papers representing one such session.
For the last decade, the publication rate for new experimental results has been maybe 1 per year, and of those maybe two (in the decade) are excess heat claims. And except for a special LENR issue in a 3rd rate journal, containing (by design) mainly retrospectives and reviews, the total publication rate is only about 5 per year, excluding peripheral papers (helium in volcanoes) and negative papers.
One could also look at the diminishing quality of the people involved. In the beginning there was Fleischmann, Pons, Bockris, Schwinger, Yeager, and some interest from Rubbia, Gerischer, Pauling and Teller. Of this list, those still living (Pons, Rubbia) have abandoned the field (although they haven't denounced it), and some others (Yeager, Teller) abandoned it before they died. Other reasonably careful investigators like Will and Gozzi have also abandoned the field. None of the new recruits have anything like the chops of these people. Apart from Duncan, none are distinguished in any way, and many (like the MFMP crew) are not even PhDs or physicists, and have little or no experience in research.
There may be some sort of surge in lay-interest, expressed in on-line forums, and in interest from companies trying to attract funding, but I don't see it from credentialed academics, nor do I see any scientific progress.
QuoteAdmit it Josh, you guys are sweating this one.
If I thought there was a reasonable chance cold fusion were real, I'd be making every effort to get involved and looking forward to a clean and abundant source of energy.
But no, as time passes with no improvement in the evidence for the phenomenon, certainty that it is bogus only increases to the extent that's possible. I'm not swayed by meta-data in the way you and other true believers clearly are.