How do you convince a skeptic?

Why the ongoing discussion belongs in a Rossi-Blog Comment thread I can’t imagine. In any event, the bone of contention appears to be whether LENR has been adequately demonstrated to exist with some suitably defined set of parameters. THH and SOT are unconvinced. So let’s say you all manage to convince them. Suppose they capitulate and acknowledge that high-power, long-duration, high-“COP” LENR has been demonstrated and replicated by appropriate entities. Then what? Surely defeating some internet skeptics is not an important goal. What is it that is supposed to happen next? Who is supposed to do what?

Quote from THHuxleynew

Sigh (again).

I define high power as say 500W+ something that might be useful industrially without further dev.

Oh, okay. This is the Mary Yugo technique. Whatever power level has been achieved is too low by definition. If they reported 500 W, you would demand 1000 W.

Your definition makes no scientific sense. Laboratory calorimetry works best between 1 and 20 W. 500 W is actually more difficult to measure, and the results are less accurate. You would reduce the signal to noise ratio. The first scientist to measure ~1 W was Lavoisier, in 1780 when he measured guinea pig metabolism and showed that the ratio of body heat to carbon dioxide is the same as it is with fire. Any scientist in the last 240 years could have measured such power levels with absolute confidence. But you say we cannot trust measurements made by many of the world's top experts in calorimetry.

More to the point, neither you nor anyone else has ever published a reason to doubt any of the major studies. So your "reasons" for doubting these results are invisible and cannot be debated or falsified. In fact, you have no reasons. You just don't believe it. That's emotion, not science.

Quote from Alan Smith

What you are saying is you don't believe any of it. Fair enough, you made your point.

Exactly. And as I said, it is not a point that anyone else can debate or falsify.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

100 Watts or greater, output/input power > 5, duration of test for a desktop (weight < 100kg) device: 4 weeks. <-- typical confidence inspiring numbers.

Indeed. And these numbers were achieved by Fleischmann and Pons, as I showed in my video.

What is your point?

Other, lower power levels could have been measured by any scientist in the last 240 years. But you don't believe them. That is your problem, not theirs, and not mine. For you to argue that such numbers are somehow questionable is a lot like people arguing that vaccinations do not work.

Quote from [email protected]

The contrast parallel is HTSC. There were some surprising developments which was invigorated right around the same time as LENR, but there were no entrenched opponents to HTSC whose funding would be threatened if the research were allowed to continue.

The human factors were that there was a bunch of hot fusion physicists who fed at the public trough and their funds were directly threatened.

I believe that is correct. When there is an existing technology, the people selling it oppose progress. There was no entrenched low temperature superconducting industry, but if there had been, they would have opposed HTSC. To take an actual example, there was tremendous opposition to the development of the MRI machine. I do not know the details, but I believe most of it came from the people who make x-ray equipment. They saw the MRI as a competing technology. They trashed the inventor for many years.

There is no doubt the locus of opposition to cold fusion was and continues to be the hot fusion researchers. Ask them if you have any doubt. They don't hide their enmity. Physicists also oppose it because it calls into question their theories.

Quote from Alan Smith

In the absence of any serious opposition from science in general they pass the time (mostly) by stabbing each other in the back.

This is typical of academic science. As Woodrow Wilson put it, academic politics are vicious because the stakes are so low. (Wilson was the president of Princeton U. before he was elected president of the U.S.)

Quote from JedRothwell

I believe that is correct. When there is an existing technology, the people selling it oppose progress. There was no entrenched low temperature superconducting industry, but if there had been, they would have opposed HTSC. To take an actual example, there was tremendous opposition to the development of the MRI machine. I do not know the details, but I believe most of it came from the people who make x-ray equipment. They saw the MRI as a competing technology. They trashed the inventor for many years.

Actually, there was an entrenched low-temperature superconductivity industry, ironically mostly involved in building superconducting magnets for MRI machines (as well as a much smaller market for particle accelerators and other scientific applications.) With the discovery of HTS, virtually every company and laboratory involved with LTS immediately started research programs in HTS including industrial, academic, and government labs.

Opposition? Well, nobody argued that HTS wasn’t real. Pretty much anybody with modest laboratory skills could demonstrate it. Skeptics - and there were plenty - argued that it would never really be all that useful for a variety of technical reasons. To a fair extent, so far the skeptics have been right. There have only been very modest and not very successful forays into commercialization despite substantial investments of both public and private money and decades of effort. For remaining diehards in the field, though, as the old saying goes, the opera ain’t over until the fat lady sings.

The amazing Doral mezzanine heat exchanger?

Photos or it never happened.

Quote from interested observer

Actually, there was an entrenched low-temperature superconductivity industry, ironically mostly involved in building superconducting magnets for MRI machines . . . With the discovery of HTS, virtually every company and laboratory involved with LTS immediately started research programs in HTS including industrial, academic, and government labs.

Yes, I know. I was going to mention that, but it confuses the issue. They did not oppose HTSC because they were going to get paid either way. Uncle Sam is their only customer, and they don't care what he orders as long as he (over) pays for it. Their situation was similar to Boeing's when jet aircraft were introduced. Industries do not oppose new technology when it is no threat to their business. On the contrary, they often invent it, the way IBM invented a lot of semiconductor technology.

If HTSC had been a radically different technology they could not make, or if it had been far cheaper, they would have opposed it. The plasma fusion scientists have no relevant skills in electrochemistry or other cold fusion related research. If cold fusion succeeds their budget will be cut to zero. So they oppose it.

Quote from interested observer

Opposition? Well, nobody argued that HTS wasn’t real. Pretty much anybody with modest laboratory skills could demonstrate it. Skeptics - and there were plenty - argued that it would never really be all that useful for a variety of technical reasons.

Yes, it is a shame that cold fusion is relatively difficult to demonstrate. It is also a shame that when opponents of cold fusion at MIT and elsewhere accidentally demonstrated cold fusion, they lied about their results. And it is a shame that in many other labs, people who replicated were threatened, their reputations were attacked in the mass media, their experiments were trashed, and they were never able to publish.

If HTSC had been attacked the way cold fusion was, I doubt many people today would believe it exists.

Perhaps you are forgetting that the fact that cold fusion is difficult to replicate has no scientific significance. It is not relevant to whether the effect is real or not. There is no rule that something difficult to replicate might not be real. Many other experiments are much harder to replicate, with lower s/n ratios, but everyone believes them. The top quark is an example. If scientists would evaluate cold fusion strictly on the merits of the experiments -- s/n ratios, replications and so on -- while ignoring irrelevant issues such as the fact that it is difficult to replicate, they would all believe it is real.

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I believe that is correct. When there is an existing technology, the people selling it oppose progress.

So what? These days, people who "oppose progress" will only stop some of the available sources of funding. There is crowd funding and there are open minded foundations. And like I've said many times, some venture capitalist investors don't care much about opposition providing there is good evidence that they will get a return on their investment. Problem with LENR is that the evidence is judged by those responsible for investing, to be insufficient and way too risky. I don't know if crowd funding has been tried but if not, it should be. Nothing can stand in the way of believers sending money, can it?

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In my view, Swartz hooking up a simple Stirling cycle engine to his FUSOR/NANOR met this criterion. And sure enough, the criticism against him was that he must be faking the demo/data, that he is a fraud

I've never heard anyone claim Swartz is a fraud -- only that he doesn't measure correctly and is missing some source of error.

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If HTSC had been attacked the way cold fusion was, I doubt many people today would believe it exists.

Doubtful. It is too straightforward to demonstrate and replicate. Commercial applications are a different story apparently (I don't know much about that).

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Do any skeptics, or even non-believers, feel there is enough evidence to continue on with LENR research

Sure, why not? I disagree with spending large amounts of government money on it but private research? It would be nice to answer the issue better than it is answered now, if only to stop or slow scammers and liars like Rossi.

JedRothwell Where's that video again pls? I lost the link.