Clearance Items

@Thetruemonty: Nah, no bravery. Hanging out in a place where you don't share the opinions of most other people means you are branded a crackpot, an ignoramus, or the shill of Big Something-or-other. Hardly painful or frightening. Mostly just silly.

@Alan: Having never been savaged by a sheep in any stage of life, I can't really speculate.

Boy, you all get so touchy when somebody notes that skeptics are not beloved here. It's ok. Really!

Eric: you are probably right about that. Back in the day, Rossi supporters and LENR advocates were pretty much the same group. Not so much any more. For the remaining Rossi supporters, even long-term LENR supporters who have written off Rossi are now branded "skeptopaths". Tribalism knows no bounds.

Quote from Thetruemonty

What about you open your own ECN-like forum? So all can be like it once was...

That does sound like a good idea though I wonder if the regulars would turn up.

Quote from interested observer

I am not sure ECN warrants wistful nostalgia. It, of course, began as a Rossi fan site and skeptical opinions were regularly banned by the proprietor. Eventually, he lost the faith and became completely hands-off. It became the only completely unmoderated site on the topic and, unsuprisingly, was pretty chaotic and often degenerated into lengthy abuse sessions. As Roger observed, if nothing else it certainly was entertaining at times. Over time, the population skewed heavily towards skeptics and the remaining believers were primarily the angriest hardcore Rossiphiles who apparently enjoyed the give-and-take and the experience of spending time in the lions' den. I suppose for them it was pretty much the equivalent experience to being a skeptic here.

A lions den you say? Nah, it was nothing like that. It was a joyous place which I enjoyed so! I wasn't a regular contributor, more an observer. Perhaps I was an interested observer? Hmm, makes me wonder. Any ways ECN was a place for much mutual doling of praise. If Popeye posted something you would then have NTAK jump in and give him a face-full of praise. That would be followed by JKW, Mary Yugo, Pweet etc. Much doling of praise. Each got his or her turn. They enjoyed that very much.

Quote from Eric Walker

I feel like we're the only LENR site on the Internet where both skeptics and the hard core Rossi followers feel the same way about this.

Yes, as a skeptic I do find it hard difficult to express my thoughts here.

Self-styled experts are for the most part the only kind who frequent internet discussions.

Quote from Eric Walker

You are not finding it difficult to express skepticism here. You are finding it difficult to troll here.

My questions about calorimetry, in particular placement and insertion of probes, is totally valid. I cannot see how this is construed as trolling behavior.

No, I did not know that. I asked questions about calorimetry and the likes and you guys got upset. It's all good though. You've accepted you have no issues with my line of questioning so I will continue.

Quote from Eric Walker

I feel like we're the only LENR site on the Internet where both skeptics and the hard core Rossi followers feel the same way about this.

Seems you're mixing up people and their approach of LENR: "hard core" (?) Rossi followers are actually skeptical that "cold fusion" is the hoax that we've been told is a hoax for nearly 30 years now, doubting that this inventor is a criminal hyperpsychic mastermind who's been able to hypnotise for 10 years the scientists who evaluated his work IRL, and teach fellow hypnotists his craft so they get hired by universities.

What you call "skeptics" are actually a mix of social engineers spending their time trying to slow down LENR by occupying verbal space in the biggest LENR forum around, and some hardcore (this time for real) pseudo-skeptics who need to hold onto their beliefs.

Quote from Roger

What you call "skeptics" are actually a mix of social engineers spending their time trying to slow down LENR by occupying verbal space in the biggest LENR forum around, and some hardcore (this time for real) pseudo-skeptics who need to hold onto their beliefs.

I am a skeptic.

I do not spend my time social engineering or trying to slow down LENR. I want LENR to be real and available ASAP.

As a matter of fact I have money invested in Woodford and put more in with all the hype and hope around Rossi. I turned out to be wrong about that.

At least I can admit when I am wrong.

"Criminal hyperpsychic mastermind hypnotising scientists for 10 years." What a baloney straw man argument.

You are just trying to make the side you disagree with, "the skeptics", look ridiculous but are merely making yourself look ridiculous.

Talking of ridiculous; a Rossi supporter on ECat World actually suggested that the enemies of Rossi had failed to stop him so Satan had now sent Irma to target Rossi so we should pray for him. Presumably Satan also hates the oil companies based in Houston.

I guess each of us have a greater or lesser grip on what is real and what we make up in our heads.

Still we can all be wrong and we can all be fooled, either by others, or by ourselves.

Quote from Eric Walker

The conspiracy theories you allude to are obviously just that, and are readily identified as such by all but a few. People who see things in terms of battles of good and evil, and of big interests attempting to kill LENR, have in my view a skewed and inaccurate diagnosis of the real challenges facing the scientific investigation of LENR at this time.

I agree. That is largely true. However, back in the 1990s there were some people who went after cold fusion because of academic politics, and some, such as the plasma fusion scientists, who went after it because it threatened their funding. There was never a "conspiracy" by the dictionary definition: "a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful" or "an organized group." It was never secret, and not a bit organized. On the other hand, people such as Robert Park openly and repeatedly bragged that he and his friends in the government would "root out and fire" anyone who applied for cold fusion funding or tried to organize a conference. He said that to a large crowd of people at the APS and got a standing ovation. So there was a lot of animosity toward the research. There still is. Plus, as I have pointed out, thanks to Park and others, many researchers were fired, threatened with deportation, or had their experiment trashed.

Park wasn't the only one. You can read quotes from important people railing against cold fusion here:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MalloveEclassicnas.pdf

Such attacks have a large impact. Words have consequences. When the Washington Post claims that a small, powerless group of scientists are liars, frauds and lunatics (as Park puts it), those scientists get into huge trouble. Their careers are derailed, or ended.

There are very few attacks today because the anti-cold fusion crowd won. Funding quickly ended, even though projects such as the National Cold Fusion Institute soon proved beyond any doubt that cold fusion is a real nuclear effect. In a rational world where people do science instead of politics, those results alone would have convinced every scientist on earth. What happened instead is that cold fusion researchers were thrown out, or they retired, or died. No young research could study this effect. He or she would be thrown out in a week, and would never again find a job in academia.