Can we talk about Holmlid?

Quote from eros

Do you have point any paper about radiation generated mental sympthoms?

http://www.cs.amedd.army.mil/b…1b-4af9-91c5-098947cb57f2 does have information on this, and, yes, radiation exposure can cause mental dysfunction and euphoria.

There are other conditions that can cause a sense of "certainty." It is very seductive, and the presence of it can create a kind of certainty in those contacted by it. LeClair was playing with what, if it worked, could create hot fusion, not cold. So maybe he was, in fact, exposed to massive radiation; the experiments seem to have been phenomenally naive as reported.

His work would have massive military implications, and one of the signs that something was quite off about his reports is that the military had not shut him down (i.e., made his work secret, which would generally involve paying him, if I'm correct.) He seems to have disappeared, but was quite open for a long time, so a military clamping-down seems unlikely. His goal was not science, as such, but Fabulous Personal Profits. Another clue.

Connecting this back to Holmlid, Holmlid is not showing serious derangement like LeClair, but there is an obvious social dysfunction; he found ways to continue to be published in spite of this. I would encourage his friends to encourage him to connect with the community, it may be important for his long-term health.

Quote from JedRothwell

Alan Smith wrote:
If nobody objects I will delete all the food related posts from this thread in a few hours time.

I object. I put some effort into those messages. More to the point, Taubes and his lack of credibility are important issues for cold fusion.

I also object, though I would say "the credibility of Taubes," not his "lack of credibility." Taubes is highly controversial -- like cold fusion. How Taubes is responding to this is instructive. And this is related to Holmlid, who is suffering disconnection with the mainstream.

I have always encountered some segment of fora readership who do not know how issues are connected and see some material as off-topic. I have seen moderators act unilaterally to delete what they did not understand. I have seen it kill a previously-active forum.

If there is going to be a policy on relevance, it should include how to deal with "off-topic" posts. Until and unless there are techniques for moving posts to another thread -- which should be accompanied by links in both directions -- they are far better left in place. If people don't like what they see, they can downvote it (and downvotes should create a tighter display, more like blocks, and both downvote collapse and block collapse should be one-click readable by choice).

This site is presently, for the most part, community-driven. Moderators, though, if not restrained, always tend toward moderator domination. For the good of the forum, of course, and moderators may not recognize their own bias. This is not personal, it is part of the Iron Law of Oligarchy, which should be understood.

Quote from axil

and more posts along that line. If he did not get what he wanted, Axil threatened to disrupt conversations with irrelevances (since he believes -- or claims to believe -- that others are paid to do that). This is a form of trolling and adds to the weight of Axil's own long-term dysfunction in LENR discussions. Hence I am blocking. I will still see quotations of his posts and may respond. We need more flexible software, but we cannot demand it.

Quote from eros

Most paywalled, .mil link dosn't open here.

I uploaded the file to the main filespace on newvortex. If you are a subscriber to newvortex, and are logged in to your yahoo account, you can get this file immediately. Otherwise obtaining a yahoo account and subscribing are quick. (You can subscribe with "special notices only," and we have never sent a special notice. New subscribers are on moderation until they post a relevant mail, so we have zero spam. But you might get mails with Abd opinions ... and others, I am not the only moderator or writer.

https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/newvortex/files/Nuke Warfare-ch07.pdf

I've asked the Nanospire people many times for any evidence they have that they were exposed to radiation as a result of their experiments. They should have hospital records, reports to radiation monitoring agencies, and so forth. The US takes radiation exposure seriously as do most civilized countries. They have no such evidence and they reply with defensive gobbledygook nonsense answers. They are simply flakes. There is no evidence that they have anything of value, ever did, or were ever exposed to excessive radiation from their experiments. It's all baseless claims a la Rossifiction.

Quote from JedRothwell

Taubes makes specific assertions about the effects of eating refined white rice.

Tabues asserts hypotheses and does not "believe" that they are true. He asserts facts, from research studies. If you actually read what I pointed to, you would see that the basic suggestion is that fructose is the major problem, and that high-fructose diets then create insulin phenomena that cause some carbohydrates to become fattening that may not have always been so.

Cold fusion researchers also make unsupported and sometimes unsupportable statements. What conclusions can we draw from that? Our topic -- at least what I brought up here, is not Taubes' theory, in spite of efforts to make it that. It is about how it has been received by a 'scientific establishment," the information cascade phenomenon (where "everyone knows" is how it shows up) -- and how he has responded to that.

If anyone wants to continue discussion this dietary issue, as a dietary issue, I do recommend starting a new topic. Because I have researched this intensively, for a decade -- and have bet my life on the information I found -- I would probably participate.

Quote from JedRothwell

Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
I also object, though I would say "the credibility of Taubes," not his "lack of credibility." Taubes is highly controversial . . .

I think you have over-analyzed the discussion and lost sight of the point.

Odd. I introduced Taubes here and the point was not Taube's theory, as such, but the process of science and information cascades and what we can learn from Taubes. I don't see any sign that you get "the point," but you have your own point, which seems to be a common one for you: is it that Taubes is an idiot?

The arguments you have presented are a dime a dozen on the blogs and fora about Taubes. It is, again, similar to cold fusion pseudoskepticism, in that the actual claims are not understood and details are attacked, often with severe misinformation. I'm not going to try to establish Taubes theory' here in this thread. The relevance ihere s social in nature, how information cascades work. How you describe Taubes' work shows clearly that you have not understood it, but think you have.

Taubes is not God. However, he began a long-overdue conversation, and has taken many steps to resolve it, not just argue back and forth.

Quote from JedRothwell

Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
He asserts facts, from research studies . . .

Oh, I am sure he does. Like he did in his book. "Facts" such as the notion that factories are closed on weekends so there is more electricity winging around, which causes excess heat artifacts. You can open that book to just about any page and find an outrageous error or deliberate character assassination. "Facts" like in Japan in the 1960s most people ate brown rice. I can just imagine the "research study" that came from! Something written by a high school kid whose knowledge of Japan begins and ends with Pokemon and manga -- which is probably more than Taubes knows.

Yeah, with facts like that, who needs ignorance?

As I said, that kind of nonsense will invade your brain. Stay away from people who publish books with garbage like that. A stopped clock may be right twice a day but most of the time it will mislead you. When someone demonstrates a reckless disregard for facts, and when he tells researchers such as Ed Storms that he would gladly destroy their careers if he could make a buck doing it, that person is a psychopath, and you should not believe anything he says. Ever. In any context.

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The entire CMNS field was heavily afflicted with reactivity to the rejection cascade, and Taubes mostly documented the history of the very early days, and did not cover later developments that turned the balance of evidence.

It would be useful if Jed would recognize how much his arguments resemble those of pseudoskeptics. When we hate people based on some characteristic we see, we often become a mirror of it. It's quite normal. And quite disempowering.

Above, Jed makes factual claims about Taubes, with no specific citations. If we are going to talk about Taubes, it should really be a separate topic. I searched for citations from Taubes on the matter of electricity on weekends and got one hit. It was to a Discus blog post from some years ago, apparently a comment. There were the better part of a thousand comments, and I never found it, because most of the comment section was hidden under the "More comments" button. Reading over that discussion, it's amazing how much of it is pure noise, garbage, essentially. On all sides. A few exceptions stand out. Alainco was there, always thoughtful. I suspect it was a post from Jed. I have seen or heard the "weekend electricity" idea before. Probably from him.

Googlebooks allows a search for "weekend" in Bad Science, but it turns up many hits and only two are displayed. I have the physical book, not a file.

This making of accusatory claims without citations is a common trait of pseudoskeptics. Or there are citations of sources that cannot readily be checked for the specific claim. An entire book on nutrition is cited as proof. Proof of what? Not referenced, no page numbers, etc. I'm not saying that Jed is lying, and, in fact, I have never seen Jed lie. But he makes unwarranted claims, based on past interpretations.

So he said something to Storms. How does Jed know this? Well, Jed knows Storms well. Consider, Jed, is Ed reliable as to his assessments of the significance of conversations? He is reliable as a scientist, I stand with that, particularly as an experimental scientist and, as an expert, his knowledge of chemistry and the publications in the CMNS field.

So Ed told Jed his impressions of what Taubes said to him. And then Jed remembers and reports his own impressions of that, heavily influenced by his existent impressions of Taubes. This is all what I would call "normal dysfunction." Again, I cannot claim that it is wrong, but the unreliablity of such memories is well-known and is why hearsay evidence is not admissible in court, generally.

There are ways around that, but ... my guess is that they have not been explored. Most people will not go to that trouble.

So is there a reference supporting the "weekend electricity" claim? Page number in Bad Science?

Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

The old idea of blaming lack of progress on the skeptics is useless

True. Also, science has never been suppressed through endless drivel, threats, or even murder

For example, we can see here below Jed Rothwell eating besides Eugene Mallove, who died because of a bad diet, so it's really important to talk about white rice and food. That's why Jed is so passionate about it. He really wants Cold Fusion to succeed, and he wants to pay tribute to his old friend.

I'm sure Mallove would be thrilled to know his old acquaintance is fighting the good fight by debating the food merits or issues on a LENR-related board, in a Holmlid thread.

After all, bad food killed him. But hey, maybe bad science entails bad diet?

Sorry for interrupting your scummy and despicable filibustering relevant discussion of good science related facts, please continue!

And by the way, I consider Bad Science must reading if anyone cares to understand the rejection cascade, together with Cold fusion: scientific fiasco of the century, by Huizenga.

For neutral skepticism, I recommend A Dialogue on Chemically Induced Nuclear Effects, by Nate Hoffman. This book does not cover the discovery of the heat/helium correlation by Miles, but only earlier helium work, so one must recognize it as "pre-proof." Hoffman is quite aware of the possibility of the reality of the FP Heat Effect, and skewers some of the major pseudoskeptical arguments.

There are other books, to be sure. Park should be read and understood. What caused Park to essentially explode over Pons and Fleischmann? What the hell happened with Morrey et al? On the "positive" side, Excess Heat by Beaudette is excellent. And, by the way, his subtitle is remarkable, "Why Cold Fusion Research Prevailed."

I'm trained in transformative technology, and that is a declaration, not a "fact." With that declaration, we have created a possibility (i.e., a possible interpretation, this doesn't change extant "fact.") And then we can set up structures to express the possibility, to bring it fully into reality. In theory, for research to prevail, the truth becomes evident through it. In scientific research, "prevail" does not mean "free energy forever!!!!" It means that we know more. It's actually neutral as to "commercial possibilities."

Everyone made mistakes. "Scientific fiasco of the century," is possibly a fair description, once the depth of what happened is understood.