Jed, I think you are both right and wrong! Depends on who's watching.
Owner perspective!
I don't see any rational reason from an owner's perspective to convince humanity that LENR works, if they have the funding they need, it's absolutely right to develop this under the radar.
My personal perspective
If I look from a more personal perspective and what is best for the planet Earth, I would like to see a total breakthrough, it can shift the focus so that major investment decisions become sustainable over time. A breakthrough will be redbull and cocaine for our stock market in the coming millennium. )
When LENR is totally accepted, the capital will flow, growing fast is not always easy, culture is complicated in a company that grows quickly.
My belief is that they only make convincing demos to selected investors.
Display MoreI disagree. I wish they would focus on demonstrating the effect to scientists and engineers, to persuade a large number of people that the effect is real. That would be much far cheaper and faster than commercialization. To take my favorite example, the Wright brothers tried to commercialize from 1905 to mid-1908. They got nowhere. Their rivals began to gain in them. Their problem was that very few people believed they could actually fly. On August 8, 1908, Wilbur flew in front of a crowd of experts and reporters in France. He only flew for a few minutes, but those people understood what they saw. They instantly understood that the Wrights had completely solved the problem of flight, that they "mastered the air" as one of the French observers put it. The experts told the reporters what was what, and within days Wilbur was the most famous person in Europe. Hundreds of thousands of people came to see flights. They has no difficulty commercializing after that. See:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com…lane-went-public-8791602/
Here's the thing that a modern person may not realize. In 1908, it was not easy to tell that an airplane was working. You had to be an expert. In 1908, dirigibles had flown long distances. Many people did not understand the difference between lighter-than-air aircraft and airplanes. When they heard that Wilbur flew for a few minutes they said, "So what? The Count Zeppelin has flown for hours." Furthermore, by 1908, some French pilots had flow for hundreds of meters. But their aircraft were barely controlled. Essentially uncontrolled. It was not really flying. More like an uncontrolled hop, like putting a propeller on a washing machine and going some distance through the air. The French did not understand 3-axis control, because they had not read the Wright's 1906 patent. Their engines were far more powerful than the Wright's, but they did not develop enough thrust, because only the Wrights understood the physics of propeller blades.
Along the same lines -- the very same lines! -- it might be difficult for a person in 2022 to tell whether a cold fusion demonstration is doing anything interesting. Whether it is actually producing anomalous energy. This is partly because people do not know much about energy. Even scientists such as Morrison did not understand the difference between power and energy, so he had no idea what F&P were saying. (See https://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanreplytothe.pdf) Even when people know know the difference, a badly designed demonstration will fail to convince them. If I were to set up such an demonstration, it would be convincing. I know how to do that, because I have written product manuals and taught people how to use machines in tech support. Not because I have some special genius for explaining things.
Unfortunately, the video of a test published by Brillouin is not convincing. It does not show what is needed. It is not accompanied by instruments, or explained correctly. There is no quantitative analysis. It will not convince engineers or scientists, and it will certainly not convince educated observers or ordinary people.