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

Quote from Louis Reed

Well, this is kind of peripheral to my claim, and doesn't contradict it either way, but I'd be interested in seeing a specific quotation from Fleischmann recorded at the time that supports this. So far, the only thing you've actually cited was an account given years later.

The account was given by Caldwell to Beaudette years later, but it was correct. Fleischmann told me that is what he said. Plus I have many letters and other comments from him that confirm he did not want to do the press conference. He wanted to keep the research secret. See his letters to Miles, for example:

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

These letters were not written for publication. He was not trying to fool you.

More to the point, the date at which the conversation with Caldwell was revealed is irrelevant. Unless you attended the press conference and physics conference, and unless you subscribed to a clipping service, all of the information that you have about cold fusion was also given years later. Most did not come out until Mallove published. You could not have read Fleischmann's letters until I uploaded them, a few weeks ago. Miles and I read them when they were written. Does that mean our knowledge is correct because we read them back then, but you are wrong because you are reading them now? How can the date you read something affect the veracity? Please explain!

Quote from JedRothwell

If the consideration you describe was mistaken, then of course this mistake affects the point!

Not if the point is that the world was initially enthusiastic about cold fusion and became negative as a result of the examination of the evidence. My purpose was not to resolve the issue, which has no value 30 years later. The point was to show there was no prevailing instinctive opposition to the idea.

Quote from JedRothwell

The account was given by Caldwell to Beaudette years later, but it was correct.

Well, it was an account given from memory, and Beaudette admits there were differing accounts. Moreover, it conflicts with the quotation that shows he expected a practical application to be easy.

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Plus I have many letters and other comments from him that confirm he did not want to do the press conference. He wanted to keep the research secret.

That's a different matter. He may have wanted to avoid competing development. If the reason he didn't want to go public was fear of dismissal, then as I said before, that represents a lack of confidence in the results. A practical application could not be dismissed.

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Unless you attended the press conference and physics conference, and unless you subscribed to a clipping service, all of the information that you have about cold fusion was also given years later.

What are you talking about? The press conference was recorded. I can watch it on youtube. There are records more credible than remembering a conversation, and there are also multiple independent accounts that coincide...

... "Note also that fission is what GEC are claiming."

Fission WITHOUT NCR licensing

[http://www.mvariety.com/cnmi/c…offers-nuclear-energy.php]

Quote from Louis Reed

Well, it was an account given from memory, and Beaudette admits there were differing accounts. Moreover, it conflicts with the quotation that shows he expected a practical application to be easy.

He most emphatically did not expect a practical application to be easy! He said "relatively easy" compared to Tokamak plasma fusion. One of the first things he told me when we met was that it would take billions of dollars to make a practical device.

Quote from Louis Reed

That's a different matter. He may have wanted to avoid competing development. If the reason he didn't want to go public was fear of dismissal, then as I said before, that represents a lack of confidence in the results.

As you see from his letters to Miles (and Szpak, and me), he was not worried about competition. He was worried about national security and he was worried that others would botch the research, which they did. He had full confidence in the results. Anyone would, given the signal to noise ratio of some of his results. Not to mention the melt down. You would be crazy not to have full confidence.

Quote from Louis Reed

What are you talking about? The press conference was recorded. I can watch it on youtube.

I meant you would have to be standing there next to Caldwell, hearing his comment. In any case, he made similar comments to many people, and in many letters, such as the ones I uploaded. So, you can see this for yourself. I give you original source documents -- you're welcome. Or you can continue inventing imaginary counterfactual history. Whatever floats your boat.

You are also free to invent imaginary methods of calorimetry where it is okay to measure the calibration constant after excess heat begins. However, as Fleischmann pointed out, this method was developed by J. P. Joule in the 1840s so it probably works. I doubt that Lewis has found a problem with it. I doubt that you have found a problem. If either of you have, you can win a Nobel by telling the world, so don't hide your light under a bushel.

Perhaps Lewis simply had a faulty TC that was drifting. The data does not look that way to me, and it would be a trivial matter to discover that by recalibrating. Instead of calling into question instruments and techniques that have been used for 150 years, he should have done some common-sense checking.

Quote from Louis Reed

Not if the point is that the world was initially enthusiastic about cold fusion and became negative as a result of the examination of the evidence.

And my point is that if this examination is in error, then it makes no sense to say it resolved the issue or that the conclusion is valid. It is, in fact, lunacy to suggest this is how a scientific dispute should be settled.

In the 1930s, most scientists concluded that the genome was contained in cell protein. Would you say that issue was settled? In what sense? Would you have rejected the paper by Watson and Crick because it was "settled" or because most people said their claim was "negative"?

Quote from Louis Reed

My purpose was not to resolve the issue, which has no value 30 years later.

So, the truth has an expiration date. Facts don't matter 30 years later. A mistaken judgement based on a stupid mistake by Lewis should be accepted because time has passed. Is that what you mean?

Quote from Louis Reed

The point was to show there was no prevailing instinctive opposition to the idea.

Instinctive or political, there was tremendous opposition from the first day. Any cold fusion researcher can give you example after example of the opposition he or she met, right from the start. If you have not seen this, it is because you refuse to look. I have uploaded many examples. Why do you think Schwinger quit the APS and said this would be the death of science? Are you really willing to second guess him, or to tell us that he was delusional and no one was actually rejecting his manuscripts or attacking him?

... "heat source material" ...

Quote from JedRothwell

He most emphatically did not expect a practical application to be easy! He said "relatively easy" compared to Tokamak plasma fusion. One of the first things he told me when we met was that it would take billions of dollars to make a practical device.

I don't know when he met you, but the press release said relatively easy, and did not say compared to a tokamak. But even if it were easy compared to hot fusion, it would be difficult to dismiss. Anyway, in the Q and A he said:

"It does seem that there is here a possibility of realizing sustained fusion with a relatively inexpensive device, which could be brought to some sort of successful conclusion fairly early on."

It is difficult to see how something like that could be dismissed.

Then, when asked how he feels duplicating in a kitchen what physicists spend $.5B, he replies:

"...we financed it ourselves, and I think it would be fair to say that we burnt up about $100K in the process, so it's not that cheap, and this is a kitchen experiment, so if you scale it up, we could burn up a few million fairly quickly."

A few million is less than billions.

As for those letters, the earliest one is 1992, after cold fusion had already been dismissed.

Quote from JedRothwell

And my point is that if this examination is in error, then it makes no sense to say it resolved the issue or that the conclusion is valid. It is, in fact, lunacy to suggest this is how a scientific dispute should be settled.

No one has suggested that. I said there was no value to rehashing a 30 year-old paper, that has been hashed by people far more capable than I. The best way to prove Lewis was wrong is to design an experiment that proves unequivocally that cold fusion is right. That's MFMP's goal.

I was and am not trying to resolve the question of mistakes in Lewis's papers or in P&F's papers. I cited history to show that if there was bias regarding the cold fusion claims, it was in cold fusion's favor. I know that's hard for you to accept, because it pulls your only rationalization for the nearly complete rejection of the evidence out from under you, but that's what the events immediately after the press conference show.

Quote from JedRothwell

Louis Reed wrote: My purpose was not to resolve the issue, which has no value 30 years later.

So, the truth has an expiration date. Facts don't matter 30 years later. A mistaken judgement based on a stupid mistake by Lewis should be accepted because time has passed. Is that what you mean?

No. Pay attention. Resolving the issue of cold fusion has value. But after 30 years of arguing about the correctness of Lewis's 1989 papers or that of P&F's 1989 papers, more argument about those experiments will not advance the issue. That's what labs are for. When scientific questions are unresolved, in spite of much argument, the best route to resolution is more and improved experiments, more and improved evidence, not endless argument. Recall Francis Bacon and Horse's Teeth:

"In the year of our Lord 1432, there arose a grievous quarrel among the brethren over the number of teeth in the mouth of a horse. For thirteen days the disputation raged without ceasing. All the ancient books and chronicles were fetched out, and wonderful and ponderous erudition such as was never before heard of in this region was made manifest. At the beginning of the fourteenth day, a youthful friar of goodly bearing asked his learned superiors for permission to add a word, and straightway, to the wonderment of the disputants, whose deep wisdom he sore vexed, he beseeched them to unbend in a manner coarse and unheard-of and to look in the open mouth of a horse and find answer to their questionings. At this, their dignity being grievously hurt, they waxed exceeding wroth; and, joining in a mighty uproar, they flew upon him and smote him, hip and thigh, and cast him out forthwith. For, said they, surely Satan hath tempted this bold neophyte to declare unholy and unheard-of ways of finding truth, contrary to all the teachings of the fathers. After many days more of grievous strife, the dove of peace sat on the assembly, and they as one man declaring the problem to be an everlasting mystery because of a grievous dearth of historical and theological evidence thereof, so ordered the same writ down."

Quote from JedRothwell

Instinctive or political, there was tremendous opposition from the first day. Any cold fusion researcher can give you example after example of the opposition he or she met, right from the start. If you have not seen this, it is because you refuse to look. I have uploaded many examples.

You haven't cited any specific examples, let alone any evidence that such opposition went beyond isolated cases. You haven't cited an account of those weeks that suggest scientists interested in trying cold fusion in general faced opposition. The 7000 cheering scientists, the frantic and excited activity described by Storms and others indicates the opposite is the case.

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Why do you think Schwinger quit the APS and said this would be the death of science? Are you really willing to second guess him, or to tell us that he was delusional and no one was actually rejecting his manuscripts or attacking him?

Yes, I'm prepared to suggest he was delusional. It's certainly easier to believe that one bitter scientist is delusional, whose particular flavor of QM had been superseded by Feynman's, and who hadn't really made a significant contribution to science for some time, than to consider a much longer list of Nobel laureates including Gell-Mann, Glashow, Weinberg, Lederman, Seaborg, Mather, Riess, and Schmidt delusional, not to mention prominent scientists who studied it closely and wrote extensively about it like Close, Huizenga, Morrison and Park.

Lots of manuscripts get rejected. Rejection alone does not indicate unfair rejection. Anyway, I submit science did not die as a result of cold fusion's treatment.

Finally, Schwinger's first paper was submitted in August 1989, well after the honeymoon period I'm talking about.

Quote from Louis Reed

I don't know when he met you, but the press release said relatively easy, and did not say compared to a tokamak.

I met him many times, and worked with him for years. I have many letters from him, and I just uploaded 470 pages of them. So, what are you going to believe? A press release written by someone at the university who never heard of cold fusion until a few days earlier, or dozens of comments in writing by Fleischmann himself? Which do you consider a more reliable source of information?

Quote from Louis Reed

"It does seem that there is here a possibility of realizing sustained fusion with a relatively inexpensive device, which could be brought to some sort of successful conclusion fairly early on."

Definitely true. Especially compared to plasma fusion. They have been working on that for 60 years, and spending billions, without much progress. If cold fusion had gotten 1% that money, it might have succeeded by now.

Quote from Louis Reed

No one has suggested that. I said there was no value to rehashing a 30 year-old paper, that has been hashed by people far more capable than I. The best way to prove Lewis was wrong . . .

I showed you the best way to prove him wrong. Step by step, I showed you why it is a mistake to set the calibration constant after excess heat begins. Are you capable enough to understand that? If you are not, I suggest you should not hold any opinion in this discussion, because the point I made is elementary. Any junior high school student would understand it. It is appalling that Lewis and the editors at Nature failed to understand it.

Do you or do you not understand this error? If you think it is not an error, you should explain why. This is a technical forum. You should either answer a technical question with facts and physics, or admit you cannot answer it. Pointing to "public opinion" and invisible, unnamed physicists who supposedly "hashed out" an answer does not count. You have to tell us what answer they hashed out, and why it was right.

I gave you links to the answer that Lewis and the nitwits at Nature hashed out. You can see for yourself it is wrong:

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

Or if you cannot see that, you don't understand calorimetry.

Quote from Louis Reed

You haven't cited any specific examples

If you do not believe Schwinger and Fleischmann, I do not think you will believe any of the others. In any case, you can find them yourself easily enough. I do not need to spoon-feed you this information. You are rejecting it anyway, like a baby who does not want to be spoon-fed pureed peas. (I can't blame her!) So I suggest you do your own homework.

Quote from Louis Reed

Finally, Schwinger's first paper was submitted in August 1989, well after the honeymoon period I'm talking about.

Are you suggesting that Schwinger should have written a paper during this imaginary "Honeymoon" period? How long was this honeymoon? Three months? Six months? How could he possibly have learned enough and then done the work it takes to write a paper in a few months? Do you also think people should have done experiments and reported replications? Replications had barely begun in 6 months. It takes a year or two to do enough cold fusion experiments to reach a reasonable conclusion. Jumping to conclusions or reaching any kind of judgement in a few months is absurd. No experienced electrochemist did that. Hundreds of top electrochemists replicated this experiment, but none of them did it in a few months.

This imaginary honeymoon you have invented would be nothing more than absurd rush to judgement regarding experiments that had not begun when the honeymoon ended.

Quote from Louis Reed

than to consider a much longer list of Nobel laureates including Gell-Mann, Glashow, Weinberg, Lederman, Seaborg, Mather, Riess, and Schmidt delusional,

I talked to some of those people, and I read their comments and books. They do not know shit from Shinola about cold fusion. They had no idea what experiments were performed, what equipment was use, or what results were obtained. They never read any papers. They did not even know such papers were published! Their statements about the research were biased, ignorant, wrong, and useless. Having a Nobel does not give you magic ESP such that you can pontificate about an experiment you know nothing about and magically get the right answer. As for Huizenga, I suggest you read his book with a modicum of attention to what he actually said. You will see that it is garbage. If you are not capable of doing, here is the Executive Summary version:

http://pages.csam.montclair.ed…lski/cf/293wikipedia.html

Good old days style example A - cold fusion [contract number W-7405-ENG-48]

Shane D. wrote:

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Nonetheless, one of these days soon...er, or later -probably later, something is going to happen

"Something is going to happen or something is not going to happen. We'll see what happens. We'll have to see."

edited: ... link removed -- I deleted the link and I won't include one like that again. Sorry.

Good old days style example B - inertial fusion [contract number W-7405-ENG-48]

I read everything lol

Quote from Louis Reed

Actually, I think most advocates do not keep an open mind to the possibility that they may be wrong about cold fusion. Skeptics on the other hand, while nearly certain it is bogus, would change their mind in a heartbeat if the right evidence came along.

Funny that you say this because that is what happened to me.

Back in the 1990s, I was laughing at all these claims of cold fusion because as a physicist by training "I know this is impossible therefore they must be wrong". The issue is that most physicists, me first, didn't bother at that time to read the papers and forge a personal opinion. A priori conceptions are strong in science, especially in physics. I know that well because in the 1990s I published a few articles on another controversial subject (together with this year Nobel Prize by the way) and it took about a decade for our results, first to be accepted, then to represent the "norm".

More recently, around 2015, I was surprised to see that a good friend of mine was a "believer" in cold fusion. My first reaction was that he was another victim of "pathological science". Therefore I started to read a few books to understand how "apparently sane scientists" could succumb to such "pathological science". My interest was more in the psychological aspects of cold fusion than in the scientific ones. The fact is that all these historical books on the cold fusion saga contain many technical papers in reference. And as a "good" scientist I started to read one, then two, then many of those. With a drift from trying to understand the psychological aspects to trying to understand the physics behind, if any. After reading a few papers, then a dozen, then hundreds of them, I found that the evidence that cold fusion was junk science "not that strong". Cold fusion literature is full of crap articles but I was surprised to see that many of them had some merit. Each paper after each paper, my opinion progressively changed from a true skeptic to a believer in the fact that behind all these studies there is a physical phenomenon that involves the atomic nucleus other than traditional fusion.

I don't claim that my personal opinion is right nor want to convince anyone, but at least now I have a personal opinion! I made the effort to read the scientific literature and now I'm even participating to some experiments. Therefore your last sentence clearly applies to me because I changed my mind based on scientific evidence. Was a long route though.

Thank you for your replies and sorry for not taking the time to answer each of them, Jed is doing an excellent job and I admire his tenacity in that regard.