How do you convince a skeptic?

  • but only to people so delusional they imagine that a bucket of water will evaporate overnight.


    This is a strawman argument, which, in case you didn't know, means it is a false construct. Please state evidence for any such claims that you may have. Be specific. No more strawmen or ambiguosity.

  • MP surely had the capability so I asked the Report but you have not.

    What exactly is your point? MP may have had the capability. I wouldn't know about that. I do not know of any replication there, or any attempt to replicate there. If they did one, they did not publish it. But what does that mean? Are you suggesting that because they did not replicate, that means the replications at Los Alamos and BARC don't count? They are invalid because a lab that you named did not do the experiment? Hundreds of labs were capable of replicating cold fusion eventually, given a few years. We know that because they did replicate. In 1989 it was more difficult and there were fewer labs ready to go, with the equipment and materials in hand.


    There were ~50 labs that tried to replicate and failed in 1989 and 1990. The reasons they failed were not clear at the time, but are now understood. See:


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

  • Quote

    There has never been anything surreptitious about the opposition to cold fusion, or who leads it, or why they are doing it. On the contrary, it couldn't be more wide open. Opponents have billions of dollars in funding, and they darn well intend to keep it. Having all that money means they have influence and power, in Congress and in the mass media. From day one they trashed the research and the reputations of the researchers the Washington Post, the New York Times and Scientific American. They know the editors will not allow the cold fusion researchers to respond. Because money talks. Science is funded mainly by Uncle Sam, in Washington DC, where politics and money rule, and no one gives a fart about science.


    Or perhaps main line scientists have concluded the evidence for cold fusion is not convincing. If they thought otherwise, nothing would stop them from asking for millions in funding for that, I doubt that the current LENR investigators would have much of a head start in getting large amounts of money. They haven't had much luck convincing money people either but I am sure you have an excuse for that.

  • Quote

    If you can't accept that data nothing will persuade you short of commercial sales of reactors.


    There's that stupid old canard again (the statement, not the author). All manner of things would persuade skeptics. Things like "indipendent" testing by main line testing agencies which many of us have listed at length before. Of course, no such testing exists except the little bit that was done for Rossi's stuff and all of that turned out negative.

  • This is a strawman argument, which, in case you didn't know, means it is a false construct

    No, it is a lunatic assertion that you have made repeatedly, and that you will make again, as soon as you feel like trolling the audience here again. I will not bother to look through your messages to find it. You will again deny you said it even if I do. Here is one example; there are countless more:



    "What I did was to assume a large hot object was dropped in a bucket of water on a low humidity day in a well-ventilated abandoned laboratory, possibly overrun with vermin, and attempt to compute what might have happened, and then compare that to what was claimed to have happened. In my analysis of the situation, I found that the missing information on air flow and humidity was crucial to judging the what caused the reported amounts of evaporation."


    Mizuno's bucket of water



    You also repeatedly said the cell was hot because they heated it, and when I and other pointed out that was three days earlier, you ignored that and said again "because they heated it" and again, and again, and again. No doubt you will deny this too.


    I cannot tell whether you actually believe these lunatic assertions or whether you are trolling and trying to subvert a serious discussion with nonsense and chaos.

  • Quote

    Mizuno's bucket of water


    All this arguing will resolve nothing. Reproducing Mizuno's best results in "plain sight" and by a credible test lab would. But of course, Jed has excuses for why that can't be done either.

  • Or perhaps main line scientists have concluded the evidence for cold fusion is not convincing.

    You can determine that easily enough. Read what they say. Compare it to the actual published claims. You will see that they do not know shit from shinola about cold fusion, and they have no basis whatever to conclude it is convincing or not convincing.


    In 1941, before the attack on Pearl Harbor, many U.S. experts in aviation declared that Japanese military aircraft were inferior to U.S. ones, and their pilots were nearsighted, half-trained, and incompetent. These people really were experts in aviation, but they knew nothing about Japan, its aircraft, or its military training. It turned out the Japanese Zero fighters were better than any allied aircraft in the Pacific, and their pilots were superbly trained veterans of the war in China. In the early phase of the war, they shot Americans and British out of the sky with hardly any losses. The point is, even if you are a genuine expert, when you have no specific information about a situation, you cannot judge it or pontificate about it. Being an aviation expert does not give you ESP knowledge of Japan. Being a scientist does not give you an ability to judge the evidence for cold fusion when you have never seen that evidence and you have no idea what it is.

  • Quote

    In 1989 it was more difficult and there were fewer labs ready to go, with the equipment and materials in hand.


    29 years are elapsed from 1989 and you still stay here talking of your library and so on, speaking of old or new "replication" with success but the GAS still nowaday deny the CF and not believe to none of you claims so, if you are able, REPEAT YOU (or a fusionist group at your choice) by yourself, showing a clear experiment with a device able to demonstrate the CF in front of the WW scientific community, starting from MP.

    Do it and everyone will see which are the scientific facts or wich are just illusion. No excuses or still words or procrastination otherwise it means that also you are not so sure of what you believe.

    If the phenoma really would be so clear as you stated many times it should be no problem to do the above.

    My strong suspect is that cold fusionists are just taking time with the hope of discovering something that they have not at present time.

  • I cannot tell whether you actually believe


    That's because you refuse to understand the situation and what I write about it. That's your fault, not mine.


    The quotation you supplied does NOT support your strawman argument.


    And to be clear, I realized what I should have wrote was more like:


    "This appears to be a strawman argument, which, in case you didn't know, means it would be false construct. Please state evidence for any such claims that you may have. Be specific. No more strawmen or ambiguousness."


    since it is always possible an apparent strawman really isn't false. That's what the evidence would prove, if you could find it. Instead what you will find, if you look, which you have already said you won't do, is that you can NOT support your contention with relation to me. I don't recall anyone else you might be attempting to assassinate, but I may have missed someone.

  • All this arguing will resolve nothing. Reproducing Mizuno's best results in "plain sight" and by a credible test lab would.

    That was done hundreds of times, by Fleischmann and later by others. You can see a video of that which -- if you have the eyes to see, and you understand high-school level physics -- will prove to you that the heat is anomalous. However, I do not think you will look, and even if you did, I doubt you would understand. That video was broadcast in Canada and Japan, which I suppose constitutes "plain sight."

  • That's because you refuse to understand the situation and what I write about it. That's your fault, not mine.


    The quotation you supplied does NOT support your strawman argument.

    I understand perfectly well. The quotation means you think a bucket of water might evaporate overnight in room temperature conditions. You have said that dozens of times in many different ways. You cling to that belief because if that is not the case, obviously Mizuno's cell produced far more energy than any chemical reaction could. That is the only thing you can come up with to deny the obvious.


    That fact that you cannot or will not face reality is your fault, not mine.

  • The quotation means you think a bucket of water might evaporate overnight in room temperature conditions. You have said that dozens of times in many different ways.


    What the quotation means to those who are scientifically inclined is that there are unreported variables of significance to the problem, whose absence makes it impossible to draw a certain conclusion. (Especially since the whole issue rests on 1 anecdotal experiment.)


    You on the other hand, use your ESP to delve into those missing variables and conclude it had to be LENR, and then expect all of us to agree. When we don't, you go ballistic and start making stuff up to bolster your character assassination attempts.


    To summarize, you still haven't proved your strawman true.

  • if you are able, REPEAT YOU (or a fusionist group at your choice) by yourself, showing a clear experiment that demonstrates the CF in front of the WW scientific community.

    I am not an electrochemist, and I do not have a lab, so obviously I am not capable of doing this. However, many scientists who had labs did this. Unfortunately, they are nearly all retired or dead. Dead people cannot do experiments, so what you are demanding is impossible. I suppose that is why you are demanding it.


    Demonstrations were done in the past at SRI, ENEA and elsewhere, but you demand that they be done now, by dead people, which moves the goalposts to a place that can never be reached. Suppose we manage to bring people back from the dead and do these demonstrations. I am sure you will move the goalposts again. Let me guess that you would then say we must make a fully functional cold fusion powered automobile before you will believe it.


    There are some other problems with your demand, such as the fact that there is no money for such a demonstration, and practically no labs that would allow it.


    Having said that . . . There are some experiments underway in the U.S. and elsewhere. I am pretty sure I could go visit them, because I have visited them in the past; I am on good terms with the researchers; and the researchers know that I would understand what I see, and I would not waste their time, or make up fatuous nonsense about the projects. I don't think they would be so happy to have you visit, but you could ask. I strongly recommend you first learn something about the research, and you stop making up nonsense about it.

  • What the quotation means to those who are scientifically inclined is that there are unreported variables of significance to the problem, whose absence makes it impossible to draw a certain conclusion.

    You are saying that scientifically inclined people would take seriously the hypothesis that a bucket of water will evaporate overnight in room temperature conditions.


    No, they won't. That is a lunatic assertion. Also, anyone who takes it seriously for one moment will put a bucket of water into a room to see what happens, something that you will never do.

  • Ok Jed. As predicted, your response is that I am too stupid and ignorant to understand the facts pertaining to cold fusion. Boo hoo. You hurt my precious feelings, you big bully.


    For the sake of the smarter people here who might be capable of more advanced thought, how about answering my damned question?


    Again:


    What actually needs to be accomplished to move LENR from a internet cult topic to something of real impact?

  • in room temperature conditions.


    This demonstrates your lack of scientific understanding. After all the posts about the evaporation rate equation, you write "in room temperature conditions". What was the bucket temperature, as reported by Mizuno? What was the room air temperature, as reported by Mizuno? What was the room air humidity content, as reported by Mizuno? What was the ventillation rate, as reported by Mizuno (and '0' is not likely at all which is what you have asserted several times)? And finally and most importantly, how many times did Mizuno repeat his experiment? (That one we know. He didn't.)


    To summarize what I concluded and what you refuse to acknowledge, I said that a 'room temperature' bucket of water (i.e. 20-25C) or colder was unlikely to evaporate overnight unless a high airflow rate of dry air was passed over it. I said that Mizuno's report was an anomaly, (That means I don't have a specific explanation for it.) But I also said the most important thing about the whole drama was that it was a single event that was never reproduced. Science is NOT done with single events, replication is REQUIRED, and not the strangely defined thing you call replication. I'm talking about real replication.


    Your attempts to mangle what I say into some kind of 'proof' that I am a 'crackpot' just backfires on you.

  • Quote

    I am not an electrochemist, and I do not have a lab, so obviously I am not capable of doing this. However, many scientists who had labs did this. Unfortunately, they are nearly all retired or dead. Dead people cannot do experiments, so what you are demanding is impossible. I suppose that is why you are demanding it


    No problem, infact I wrote: "or a fusionist group at your choice"

    Are capable cold fusionists all died or retaired?


    Quote

    There are some other problems with your demand, such as the fact that there is no money for such a demonstration, and practically no labs that would allow it.


    No money... not exactly, for example when you want (I saw here by LF members) in few days thousands of US Dollars have been collected for repair the Mizuno's Lab.


    Quote

    I strongly recommend you first learn something about the research, and you stop making up nonsense about it.


    I strongly recommend you to change your behaviour, that one you adopted still after 29 years of discussion not produced results useful to convince (not me) but the WW scientific community.

  • Ok Jed. As predicted, your response is that I am too stupid and ignorant to understand the facts pertaining to cold fusion

    That's absurd. How can I know whether you can understand the papers or not?!? You have not addressed them. You have not made any technical assertions. I have no idea whether you understand or not. If you want to pass some sort of test, I suggest you read McKubre's paper and summarize it here. I'll let you know if you understand or not.


    Are you saying I have done nothing to help you understand? Uploading 4,000 plus papers doesn't help? Making an introductory video that people have watched 106,000 times does not help? What more can I do? I am open to any suggestion.


    What actually needs to be accomplished to move LENR from a internet cult topic to something of real impact?

    Well if it is a cult, it is mostly off-line, not on the internet. Call it a cult of the world's top electrochemists, mostly dead ones of the 20th century.


    What needs to be accomplished is a return to the scientific method, and the traditions of academic science --


    Scientists have to realize once again that science is based on experiments, and that when replicated experiments conflict with theory, the experiments always win; theory always loses. That is the bedrock basis of science. When you stop doing that, you are doing a perverse form of religion, not science. Experiments are the one and only way to discover the truth. Nothing else counts.


    People need to read the evidence and think about it carefully, rather than come up with imaginary reasons to reject experiments they know nothing about.


    People need to understand that science is based on instrument readings and facts, not opinions or bluster. As I said, McKubre's graph overrules every scientist on earth tied together. It make no difference what anyone says. The heat has been widely replicated. It is real, and the energy is thousands of times more than any chemical reaction can produce. The helium and tritium are real. No one can dispute that. As proof of that, no "skeptic" has even tried to dispute it, except Morrison and Shanahan. I invite you to judge Morrison for yourself. Always read original sources:


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

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