NASA partners with Global Energy Corporation to develop 10kW Hybrid Reactor Generator

Quote from JedRothwell

I don't have any published threats, but Pons, Bockris and others told me this. Take it or leave it.

They told you they were threatened with jail the day after the press conference??

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There were countless accusations of fraud, such as the one you cite below.

Right. The one I cited was published 5 weeks later, not the day after.

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so the accusation itself implies that is what the opponents were demanding.

If that's the case, why did you have to say explicitly they were threatened with jail? And on the day after?

When what happened was they were accused of fraud *after* they published, weeks later.

So, you have not contradicted my point that cold fusion was initially welcomed with enthusiasm, in spite of making things up.

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There were many other similar accusations, not just about the neutron peak. For example, Park accused them of fraud in the Washington Post.

But not before they published, and definitely not the day after the press conference.

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Chapter 11, quoting Fleischmann:

After the press conference, Dr. Caldwell came up to us and said, “Well, when my grandfather proposed electrolytic disassociation, he was dismissed from the University. At least that won’t happen to you.” I said to her, “But you are entirely mistaken. We shall be dismissed as well.”

This is what Fleischmann said *after* the fact. It could be simple rationalization. I was asking for a record of him making the prediction before it happened. If Caldwell had documented the conversation...

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He was definitely not beaming at the press conference.

I've seen it. He looks beaming to me.

Quote from Louis Reed

Anyway, the only political interest in suppressing cold fusion would be the loss of funding for hot fusion scientists.

You do not know much about the history of science. Most major discoveries have faced political opposition. This seems to be human nature. See:

http://amasci.com/weird/vindac.html#j38

http://amasci.com/weird/skepquot.html

Here is one of my favorite examples. Charles Townes said that many people tried to stop him from doing the research that led to the laser. Opponents included Niels Bohr, John von Neumann, Isidor Rabi, Polykarp Kusch, and Llewellyn H. Thomas. He wrote:

"One day after we had been at it for about two years, Rabi and Kusch, the former and current chairmen of the department—both of them Nobel laureates for work with atomic and molecular beams, and both with a lot of weight behind their opinions—came into my office and sat down. They were worried. Their research depended on support from the same source as did mine. "Look," they said, "you should stop the work you are doing. It isn't going to work. You know it's not going to work. We know it's not going to work. You're wasting money. Just stop!"

The problem was that I was still an outsider to the field of molecular beams, as they saw it. . . . I simply told them that I thought it had a reasonable chance and that I would continue. I was then indeed thankful that I had come to Columbia with tenure."

- How the Laser Happened (p. 65)

This goes on for several pages, with other examples.

The laser was not a particularly controversial discovery. It did not gore anyone else's ox. There was tremendous opposition to the MRI. That is understandable; it competed with x-rays and cat scans. There was big money involved. But the opposition to the laser was only because of theory.

Quote from Louis Reed

I've seen it. He looks beaming to me.

I have talked to him, and to Stan Pons, and I read the book by the president of the university. See:

http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/PetersonCtheguardia.pdf

Whatever your impression may be, I assure you, they were not happy. Who would be? They knew damn well what would happen. Unlike you, they knew the history of science.

Let me reiterate that your "impression" and gut feelings do not overrule original source documents, letters, and my personal knowledge gained by talking to the people involved. You are making this stuff up. I just published 300 pages of letter from Fleischmann, and I have lots more like it. I spent a day in the archives at U. Utah where there are thousands more documents. Who should we believe here? Your version of history based on what you suppose might be true, by guess and by golly? Or the documents, news clippings, letters and transcripts from the time.

You mention the excitement and the people wanting to study the effect. Here is an interesting aspect of that. Some of the most important mainstream scientists who were savagely attacking cold fusion in the press in 1989 were also applying to EPRI for research funding to study the effect. Tom Passel, the project manager at EPRI told me that. You should not think that is odd, or unusual. It is typical of academic science. Academic scientists often stab their rivals in the back, have their funding gutted, steal their ideas, and then claim that they made the discovery. Hagelstein and many other academic scientists have told me that sort of thing happens all the time. Academic science is riddle with politics, corruption, plagiarism and fraud. It was not surprising that opponents accused F&P of fraud, because fraud is common. The MIT results were fraudulent in my opinion, for the reasons I showed on p. 23 here:

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

The authors claimed this was a software glitch. I have lots of experience with computers and I do not think software would have generated those graphs with skewed data points. I think this was done by a person, deliberately.

Quote from Louis Reed

This is what Fleischmann said *after* the fact.

Five minutes after the fact. He said it immediately after the press conference ended. Like it says: "After the press conference, Dr. Caldwell came up to us . . ." Are you seriously calling that "after the fact"? Do you understand that term means?

That's a weird assertion.

@ Louis Reed,

Quote from Louis Reed

... but then you [JR] had no doubt about Rossi either.

Oh, no! I wonder why everyone here considers the Ecat story as the initiative a single man. There were many people involved in it, and each played his specific role. JR did express a lot of doubts on Rossi, but he promoted the absolute reliability of the Ecat performances on the base of the calorimetric results proclaimed by the UniBo professors:

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From http://www.mail-archive.com/vo…0eskimo.com/msg41324.html (January 15, 2011)

This tells us that various professors at the university have been involved

for some time, and they designed and implemented the calorimetry. I do not

think there is any way Rossi could "fool" these people. I think that would

be physically impossible. Rossi may be a crook but he could not persuade

Levi to destroy his career.

The fact that Levi and other established professors took part in the

experiment is about 4 orders of magnitude more significant than what Rossi

may have done, or the unexplained fires, or his criminal record (if he has

one).

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... and also on the basis of other results of previous independent tests carried out in the United States with the participation of various experts:

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From https://www.mail-archive.com/v…@eskimo.com/msg59315.html (December 18, 2011)

These were independent tests done by Ampenergo before they made an

agreement with Rossi. Various experts participated, including someone

McKubre knows well. He trusts his expert. I know some of those people too,

and I trust them. That is not to suggest that I can judge calorimetry as

well as McKubre can! Far from it. But it isn't hard to judge these

results. These tests were similar to the public tests conducted by Rossi,

only they were independent, with someone else's instruments. Somewhat

better instruments, proper computers and so on, but basically the same sort

of HVAC test procedures.

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Yes, thanks Ascoli. And from the next line in the original message:

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Krivit should have said that. I dislike the way he focuses on

personalities and allegations, and ignores the technical content of the

demonstration.

Oh yeah. Krivit was so wrong about Rossi and Rothwell was so right. Oh, wait.

@ seven_of_twenty,

Quote from seven_of_twenty

Oh yeah. Krivit was so wrong about Rossi and Rothwell was so right. Oh, wait.

Sure. Krivit has proven to have been right for almost every aspect of the history of Ecat. One of the most significant interpretations of the story is summarized in the cover that he put at the beginning of his report n. 3, published in July 2011: http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2011/37/NET370.shtml

The cast is not complete at all, but still gives the idea of what collective effort was the Ecat initiative: the 10 years long final chapter (in a world farce lasted 30 years) in which Rossi has only interpreted the role of front man.

Quote from Eric Walker

The Gamow theory of alpha decay can be used to estimate the spontaneous fission cross section, as the process is very similar to alpha decay. The Gamow theory of alpha decay has as one of its variables the Coulomb barrier width. The Coulomb barrier width is a function of electron screening from the bound electrons. The shape of the electron cloud surrounding an atom and nucleus depends in part upon the external electric field, so your conclusion does not (necessarily) follow.

I was thinking of responding to H-G's comment about the miniscule field across a nucleus .... but you [ and others] beat me to the changes of the electron orbitals.

A coupla/few years back (maybe in response to Widom-Larsen), I looked into close approaches by electrons in non-spherical (lobed) orbits .. eg figure-8's -- where electrons nominally pass through the nucleus, at relativistic speeds.

There's also a possibility that strong electric fields restrict the permissible orbits. So an electron which would like to be in a spherical/elliptical shell might have to accept a lobed-shell ... with VERY different results.

All of this being WAY beyond my competence, of course.

The discussions in the blog make an interesting study, at least for those who are woking in this domain. Surprisingly in the attached Agreement, there is no mention of "Cold Fusion/ LENR".

Is it purposefully dropped or is it an oversight?

Quote from JedRothwell

That is incorrect. I expressed many doubts about Rossi.

In 2011, you wrote:

"Rossi has given out *far* more proof than any previous cold fusion researcher."

If the previous evidence left no doubt, then better evidence also leaves no doubt. That's simple logic.

Around the same time, you said "There are videos and data from the Oct. 6 test. That test is irrefutable by first principles."

Something that is irrefutable leaves no doubt. It's what the words mean.

You may have expressed doubts about Rossi the person, but these quotations show that when you made them, you had no doubt the ecat worked. And so your proclamation that there is no doubt cold fusion is real carries no weight.

Interestingly, while you say that by late 1989 there was no doubt whatever about the reality of cold fusion, in 2001, you wrote

"Why haven’t researchers learned to make the results stand out? After twelve years of painstaking replication attempts, most experiments produce a fraction of a watt of heat, when they work at all. Such low heat is difficult to measure. It leaves room for honest skeptical doubt that the effect is real."

Hmmm. So is there room for honest doubt or no doubt whatsoever?

Quote from JedRothwell

The two tables in his first book list 180 institutions.

So I assume you now withdraw the claim you made here recently that "Over 180 highly reputable universities and government labs replicated, as shown in Storms Table 2."

There are less than half that many in table 2, and many are not university or government labs.

And table 2 lists the excess heat claims, which are the only things one could call replications of P&F. Claims of tritium or transmutations orders of magnitude below levels commensurate with the claimed heat are *not* replications.

Indeed, your own tally of replications in 2009 listed only 51 affiliations. How did you miss 130 of them.

And even if you use all four tables, counting transmutation, tritium, radiation (all at non-commensurate levels) and heat, the number of unique first or second authors still falls well short of 180.

Quote from Alan Fletcher

A coupla/few years back (maybe in response to Widom-Larsen), I looked into close approaches by electrons in non-spherical (lobed) orbits .. eg figure-8's -- where electrons nominally pass through the nucleus, at relativistic speeds.

Did this paper also explain why an electron on a non circular orbit never radiates????

Or is this simply one more bull-shit theory people go on to believe...?

PS: With a toroidal nucleus this early works...

Quote from JedRothwell

I realize that demanding specifics and supporting evidence takes all the fun out of the discussion. The thing is, this is history. It really happened. You can't just make stuff up, [...] You need to go through this literature and show us where, how and why your version of history happened.

I did not make anything up. I cited the account of a cold fusion expert, and some other quotations which support my simple assertion that the initial reaction to cold fusion was widespread enthusiasm and optimism. I submit Storms is as familiar with the history as you, and he called it a "huge bubble of enthusiasm". Nothing you have quoted or cited has disputed that simple assertion. Most of your citations post-date the period I'm talking about, and all of your thread-bare arguments about the validity of the claims are not relevant to the validity of the assertion.

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I am right that there was extreme political opposition, and you are right that there was also positive excitement in 1989.

There was extreme opposition, but I don't agree it was political. But before that the prevailing sentiment was positive excitement.

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But you are completely wrong when you ascribe "plausible" causes that do not exist to explain events that did not happen! No scientist ever changed his mind after finding errors in the papers because no such error has been found or published.

To repeat, the sentiment was positive before the evidence was examined, and negative afterward. The self-interest, greed, corruption, and politics did not change in the interim. What changed is that the world got a look at the evidence. Therefore greed and politics are not a plausible explanation, but a negative judgement of the evidence is. This is made all the more plausible when you consider that careful consideration of expert panels also led to a negative judgement of the evidence.

Quote from Louis Reed

Indeed, your own tally of replications in 2009 listed only 51 affiliations. How did you miss 130 of them.

This is old mens graveyard talk! About childhood (miss-) achievements...

We have the Lipinski experiment and sono-fusion (Stringham). All well measured and way above a COP of 2. Mills replication of Pons already 1989 had a COP of 2.

It would be nice to stop this distracting talks and may be to re-focus on real - present - work.

Quote from JedRothwell

Perhaps you should add that by October 1989, three groups at LANL replicated, including one with Jalbert, who was arguably the world's top expert in tritium. So, the excitement was justified. See the NSF meeting transcript. This is the actual history of cold fusion, not your invented version.

This in no way contradicts my version of history, which is the version described by Storms, so I'm not sure what your point is except to distract from your inability to refute the idea that possibility of cold fusion was initially welcomed with enthusiasm.

As for LANL's tritium results, they were all over the map, and in the last report I've seen from them they admit the signal was still subtle and weak. I'm not aware that LANL published anything on tritium in a prominent refereed journal, and the last time I checked, I found no reference to LENR or cold fusion on their web site.

Quote from JedRothwell

Okay, if that is a plausible explanation, then what are the technical reasons for this doubt?

>Okay, if that is a plausible explanation, then what are the technical reasons for this doubt?

Let's see if an analogy can help you understand my argument here: Someone hears rave reviews about a new restaurant run by a gay couple, and so he expresses great excitement about going to the restaurant because it is apparently very inexpensive, and convenient for him. But then, after he goes, he denounces it as the worst restaurant he's ever been to. The most plausible explanation is that he changed his judgement or enthusiasm based on his own examination of the place. I don't need to know what he ate, or if the service was bad, to conclude that his change of view resulted from his visit. Others might claim he is prejudiced against gay couples, but then that would have to be new information for him. He was clearly open-minded about the possibility that the restaurant could be good.

Likewise, the change in the sentiment about cold fusion that coincided with the examination of the evidence is most plausibly attributed to the examination of the evidence. You say vaguely that the rejection of cold fusion was because of academic politics, but academic politics existed in the same way before and after the examination of the evidence. A change in the sentiment can't be plausibly explained by something that was the same before and after the change.

PERMALINK.LAN.GOV

tr

Quote from JedRothwell

Which scientists changed their minds, and where did they publish their opinions and reasons for changing their minds? You wave your hands and say this is the "only plausible explanation," but you present no evidence for it.

I can say this is the only plausible explanation that I can imagine because no other plausible explanation has been suggested. Academic politics or corrupt self-interest are just not plausible because they would have been present to the same extent during the honeymoon period, when cold fusion was welcomed.

And it doesn't matter which scientists changed their mind. What matters is the sentiment was very clearly positive and optimistic in the first weeks after the press conference, and we agree that it was very clearly negative and pessimistic about 5 weeks later. So, the sentiment changed, which means many individuals' opinions of the merits of the claims had to have changed.

But there is one scientist for whom we can trace the change. Douglas Morrison started a kind of newsletter very early on (the early parts are here allegedly.petebevin.com/coldfusi.html), and you can watch his sentiment change gradually from effusively positive to scathingly skeptical as the evidence is revealed and tested.

Quote from Ahlfors

PERMALINK.LAN.GOV

tr

Thanks. Is that linked from their web site?