Public funding of investigations into LENR?

Quote from gio06

Sergio Orlandi (ITER project leader) opinions on "cold fusion", gse Magazine "Elementi" N. 37:

E: Qual è la sua opinione sulla contestata fusione fredda?

SO: Un approccio ridicolizzato fin dai tempi di Fleischmann

e Pons. Il brevetto dell’E-Cat di Andrea Rossi, sta però

modificando le cose. Personalmente tendo a dare fiducia a chi

lavora e produce ricerca. A patto che si sia sempre trasparenti,

nei risultati e nelle sperimentazioni. Forse in tale ambito,

queste, non sono sempre state cristalline. Ma è una strada da

tenere in grande considerazione.

E: What is your opinion on controversial "cold fusion" ?

SO: A ridiculized approach since the time of Fleischmann and Pons.

However, Andrea Rossi's E-Cat patent is changing things.

Personally I tend to trust who works and produces research.

Provided that you are always transparent, in results and experiments.

Perhaps in this context, these have not always been crystal clear.

But it's an approach to keep in high regard.

Elementi_37FF.pdf

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This is funny. Quite a few "high ranking" or "esteemed" individuals have come out of the woodwork lately to say they might believe in the Ecat or LENR. I say put your money where your mouth is. Talk your government into investing $5-10 million in LENR in a pass/fail, up/down experiment with a set goal of say a COP of 1.5 in terms of electricity to heat energy. This test would have full public disclosure. There would not be any NDA's to hide the failure. Nor would they be allowed to go silent to cover up the loss of tax dollars. In order to ensure maximum success and cut off any possible excuses, the inventors would be required to make the device run in overunity mode with their own equipment. Then, the testing agency would connect their tools in parallel to make the same measurements.

This would be a "no excuses" test. If the claimants fail to make the device run at the established COP per their measurements or the test agency fails to measure the agreed upon COP or any COP>1, the test will be deemed a complete failure with no caveats and reported as such.

The above scenario is very unlikely to happen, of course. If a gov't today publicly invested millions in LENR and the effort failed it would be a disaster. Newenergytimes and every other skeptics blog would raise such a fuss and complain so much that I wouldn't be surprised if a gov't banned all work on LENR. Look at how gov't funded ITER responded to the criticism from Newenergytimes. Investors can throw away millions on LENR whenever they want. If a gov't wastes money to that extent on an unproven science without a theory, it can cause quite a stir.

Quote from lenrisnotreal

a set goal of say a COP of 1.5

I suggest the criterion should be somewhat higher than 1.5. That is so low that a heat pump out performs it (up to 3.4, if I recall correctly). Further 1.5 is about the variation seen in historical heats of enthalpy for many reactions. COP of 4 or 5 gets us beyond a reasonable doubt.

Quote from Alan Smith

Many notable scientists have tried to get serious government funding for LENR projects. What on earth makes you think they have not? However, government science advisors in their infinite wisdom (some even have a relevant degree or two, but not all) have never been persuaded to fund anything that doesn't cost at least $10Bn since small projects don't provide sufficient rake-off opportunities for their political allies and donors.

This is circular reasoning to an extent. NASA was probably willing to invest a significant sum in the ECAT if it passed a simple up/down test performed by NASA experts using NASA measuring equipment. The test never happened.

What I'm proposing is to skip the pass/fail test any gov't employee who wants to keep their job will require to be performed before investing a large sum in LENR. Have the pass/fail test after investing a significant sum of tax dollars into a claimed working LENR device. This way, when the failure is revealed due to full public disclosure, there will be such an uproar over wasted tax dollars that perhaps a law will be passed to restrict or ban research into LENR.

Quote from lenrisnotreal

The above scenario [a "no excuses" up/down test] is very unlikely to happen, of course. If a gov't today publicly invested millions in LENR and the effort failed it would be a disaster.

Methinks:

1. You would love to see the book closed on LENR once and for all.
2. You have unrealistic expectations for what is needed to get a solid, reliable LENR experiment sorted out.
3. You have unrealistic expectations for what would close the book on LENR once and for all.

Experience teaches that a credible effort looking into LENR would require sustained if modest funding. The funding would be speculative, to be sure. And it would surely meet resistance from people such as yourself and Ethan Siegel. But it would have a considerable basis of prior experiment to draw upon for justification and would fit within the rounding error of the NIF or ITER budgets. Unfortunately, this, also, is unlikely to come about anytime soon. But we can at least make an attempt at accurately describing what is needed.

(Just to clarify, none of the above pertains to the E-Cat, which I assume is nothing more than a joule heater.)

ETA: I'll probably move this subthread into its own dedicated thread.

This thread captures a subthread that started in a thread on fusion reactors.

If one reads the comments from LENR supporters across various threads, it becomes pretty difficult to understand what the status of the field is. Depending on what point people are trying to make, either it is a well-established phenomenon for which there is unassailable evidence, or it is in the wilderness crying out for some real research that hasn’t been done and can’t be done because of suppression, superannuation of researchers, or lack of funding, Without wading into that quagmire, what do people anticipate happening in the world of LENR, say, over the next year? Are things likely to be any different from the way they are today? Are they any different today than they were a year ago? 3 years ago? Ten years ago?

My guess is that, absent a report from someone like Robert Duncan or a publication in a reputable journal outside of the LENR field, the situation will be similar at the end of this coming year to what it was last year, however one reads the current situation. There is always scope for surprises, and plenty of scope for certain entrepreneurs (cough ...) further tarnishing the field.

Eric, LENR afficionados always proclaim themselves to be the last bastion of open-mindedness. It seems to me that you are the only one who actually fits that description.

Quote from Alan Smith

This post is incredibly dumb. In fact it is the dumbest thing I have read since the last dumb thing you wrote. You accuse me of circular reasoning while indulging in it yourself. And as you have already decided that the end result will be failure I am tempted to ask what would be the point of the exercise in the first place? However it is very creditable of you to want the taxpayers to provide lavish funding in order to save (presumably) money they are not spending anyway.

As for the ECat, NASA aren't interested, perhaps because they have a LENR system of their own under development....oh noes! Taxpayer dollars are being wasted again.

My reasoning is completely logical. NASA was interested in the Ecat enough to develop a test plan for it. They also sent people to test it. Show me where NASA has invested a significant amount of money in LENR. I mean more than just to pay someone to write a study on it. As a gov't agency, their threshold for investing in science is higher than that for investors.

I understand LENR proponents might be frustrated over the lack of progress in their field for 29 years. But, refrain from calling me names. Once LENR has been independently verified by credible researchers with access to the very latest equipment and an expensive, clean laboratory, I will admit I was wrong. I highly doubt that will happen, though.