When Gen. Grant took over the siege of Chattanooga, Rosecrans, the general he relieved, briefed him on the situation and gave him a list of actions that were needed. Grant wrote that these were good ideas and should be done. So he did them, promptly.
The point I am trying to make here is that Rosecrans saw the need for action, and after all he did act. He held on. He did not surrender. He was a competent soldier, and he had the right ideas. For that matter, Ken Olsen did act, eventually. I exaggerate when I say he rolled over and played dead.
This is only speculation, but perhaps the situation with Gates is analogous. He sees the need to act on cold fusion, but he does not see it clearly enough, or with enough self-confidence, to invest the kind of money the field really needs. Perhaps he suffers from the lack of self-confidence that held back Rosecrans. As I said, at various times in the history of Microsoft, the company retreated when it should have advanced, giving up new markets to rivals such as Apple and Google. (This is understandable. No company does everything right, and takes advantage of every opportunity. We all make mistakes.)
We have been waiting 6 months for Duncan to give us his verdict on LENR. If a yes, then I am sure more funding will follow.
I have no information, but it would not surprise me to learn that Duncan already gave his answer, and Gates has supplied more funding, and they are keeping it quiet for that very reason. I think that might be the case because I suppose that if the tests were negative and they could not replicate cold fusion, they might have closed down by now. They have not closed down.
No news may be good news.
Bill Gates is no doubt one of the worlds most recognized names. His thoughts and influence reach far and wide in terms of technology, science, economics, and humanitarian efforts. All or most of his public investments to date have backed ideas based on well known scientific principles and for the most part been uncontroversial.
LENR is neither of those in the main stream scientific circles and media. His coming out in support would be a huge reputational risk. If I were him I would not show support without certain proof that it is real, scaleable for mass energy production, and also safe.
His show of support would swing billions of dollars in energy investments overnight. It could literally upend global stock and energy markets. It would have vast geopolitical ramifications. And he knows this.
He has little to gain and much more to lose by publicly backing LENR at this moment.
If I were him I would not show support without certain proof that it is real, scaleable for mass energy production, and also safe.
I think that is going too far. He could show support without saying all of that. He might say: "The scientific claims have been widely replicated, and the research I funded once again confirmed the claims. We used the best instruments available, and the results are definitive. The effect appears to be scalable. However, this does not mean the effect can be used for mass energy production, and safety issue has not been explored."
(That is actually my summary of the facts. I don't know if Gates agrees, but if he does not, he's wrong.)
His show of support would swing billions of dollars in energy investments overnight. It could literally upend global stock and energy markets.
If his support included what you described, saying it is scalable for mass energy production and safe, then I think you are right. This would swing billions of investments overnight. The kind of endorsement I described would have a less dramatic effect, swinging tens of millions in six months.
Bill Gates on safe ground..
https://videos.files.wordpress.com/vueGF533/bill-gates_dvd.mp4
QuoteFor SOT the fight against LENR is No.1 priority
I don't "fight against LENR." I do fight against crooks and scams like Rossi. Actually, it would be much more interesting if robust, reproducible and useful LENR could be demonstrated than if the current experiments with purported good results were refuted.
QuoteLENR is neither of those in the main stream scientific circles and media. His coming out in support would be a huge reputational risk. If I were him I would not show support without certain proof that it is real, scaleable for mass energy production, and also safe.
Mostly nonsense. Yes, it's a "reputational risk" if he says LENR is real and it later turns out to be bunk. If LENR can be shown to be real, robust and able, at least in theory to provide useful power, scaleability and safety will probably turn out to be engineering problems. In any case, difficulties in those areas would be no reason to withdraw support and would not endanger anyone's reputation.
QuoteI know you did not mention them. I pointed to them to illustrate the fact that self-proclaimed experts with a great deal of scientific knowledge have made terrible mistakes analyzing Fleischmann and Pons. They thought they found errors, but their discoveries were nonsensical mistakes, confusing energy and power with arithmetic errors 10,000 times off.
Did either acknowledge the errors? You'd think they would if the errors are as you describe, "heeewyuudge."
Mostly nonsense. Yes, it's a "reputational risk" if he says LENR is real and it later turns out to be bunk.
That is incorrect. It is a reputation risk just to mention cold fusion, even for someone like Bill Gates. Three people with Nobel laureates in physics who mentioned it, or endorsed it, got in huge trouble. Granted, they are scientists and Gates is software mogul, so it was directly in their line of work. Still, he would come under attack by Nature, the Scientific American, the Washington Post, the DoE, the APS and many others if he were to say anything at all, even slightly positive. They would not look at his data. They would treat him as if he endorsed the Flat Earth society, or the anti-vaccination movement. They would say he is a lunatic and a fraud. Perhaps that would not bother him. I don't know the guy, and I cannot judge how thick his skin is, or how concerned he is about his reputation. But I am sure he would never again be quoted in the mass media, invited to the White House, or consulted on important issues. He would be a pariah unless and until the public realizes that cold fusion is real, and the DoE is wrong.
You may think I am exaggerating, but I have spoken with every major cold fusion researcher, and I know a lot more about what happened to them than you do. It was even worse than I have described. Gates' reputation and his money would protect him from the worst abuse. It would be similar to the way Bezos was able to strike back at Pecker in the recent extortion scandal. As Bezos put it, "If in my position I can’t stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can?" Gates might deflect some of the attacks by saying something along the same lines: "In my position, I was able to pay the world's best experts in calorimetry and electrochemistry, to produce the best science available. You have no business denouncing me as a fraud." Some people might respect that, but it would carry no weight with Nature or the DoE. I know those people well. They are political animals and they do not give a damn about facts, or science, or anything other than their own power. As long as they think they can get away with it, they will shred anyone's reputation with accusations of fraud, and they will denounce any research, no matter how good it is.
Did either acknowledge the errors? You'd think they would if the errors are as you describe, "heeewyuudge."
Good question. I don't think Shanahan has admitted anything, but you can ask him. Morrison did make some changes. He did not acknowledge technical errors as far as I know. However, he did make some adjustments to his paper before it was published regarding matters of fact. You can see that in the two different versions of his manuscript that I uploaded here:
https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanreplytothe.pdf
See my note on p. 19.
Looking at the final published version in Physcics Letters A . . . The major mistakes are still there:
Non-linear regression. As Fleischmann pointed out, "we manifestly have not used this technique in this paper."
Cigarette lighter effect confusing power and energy, still there.
Rate of recombination error (5 mW, not 145 W), still there.
Confusing 4.5 s with 600 s, still there. Error by a factor of 1,700 still there. (The same mistake Mary Yugo repeatedly made. Morrison made larger errors elsewhere, as I recall. He seemed to be innumerate.)
It is pretty much the same as the final draft. I have not gone over it word by word, but the major errors are intact. I am sure he was given Fleischmann's critique before publication. Perhaps he did not read it, or perhaps he ignored it. Either that, or he deliberately published misinformation to deceive the readers. That's my guess, but I can't read minds. He was pretty stupid. It is hard to see how he could deceive professional scientists by mixing up power and energy, so I guess it could be an honest mistake. On the other hand, many professional scientists act as if they want to be deceived when it comes to cold fusion. They will grasp at any argument, no matter absurd, if it confirms their belief that cold fusion is wrong. (Rather similar to the way Rossi believers will believe any claim, no matter how absurd, in support of their hero.) That is why Taubes got glowing blurbs for his book from Nobel laureates and others. I suppose they could not have read the book. It was filled with dozens of idiotic mistakes. The descriptions of experiments were grotesquely mistaken.
. . . I guess Morrison had to publish with the mistakes intact. If he had made the corrections indicated by Fleischmann, there would have been nothing left of his paper. You can see that from the above document.
I gave this talk on matters related to the reputation trap and the opposition to LENR at Cambridge University ln 2017. Much of it still applies.
Cigarette lighter effect confusing power and energy, still there.
I explained this in more detail on page 6 - 9 here:
https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanlettersfroa.pdf
It is remarkable that Kreysa and Morrison were never able to grasp the difference between power and energy. You'd think any scientist would understand that. It was pointed out to Morrison many times, but he never stopped mixing them up.
People in the mass media often confuse them, but they are not scientists or engineers.
I gave this talk on matters related to the reputation trap and the opposition to LENR at Cambridge University ln 2017. Much of it still applies.
Well written and interesting. But what happened with the chimpanzee? Was that your account, or were you quoting someone?
Surely it is not so unbelievable that a chimpanzee escaped captivity and was wandering around the English countryside. The poor thing would catch a cold and soon die of pneumonia, I think, but it should last for a while. We have many living in Georgia, at the Yerkes Center. I think they go indoors on cold days. I saw a video of one preparing potatoes in the kitchen, and another one lighting a fire outdoors. They are more capable than you might think.
Now if you claimed you saw a Tyrannosaurus rex, that would be unbelievable.
But what happened with the chimpanzee?
What happened to the albatross?
In Russia it became a health tonic..
but Russia has a few problems today
I do fight against crooks and scams like Rossi.
If only SOT/MY would confine itself to the Rossi trough instead
of taking lame potshots at Godes, Mizuno Miles.. to name a few
... They thought they found errors, but their discoveries were nonsensical mistakes, confusing energy and power with arithmetic errors 10,000 times off. The "errors" that you think you have found are similar to this.
The errors that I have pointed out and described in the closed thread are different from those you mentioned.
QuoteThey are nonsense. I and others have pointed out many reasons why they are nonsense. But you do not listen, you are blind to the facts, and you remain certain that you are right.
You have not contested my remarks in the merit. You just built up some straw man arguments, as you are doing right now with Morrison and Shanahan, and then you attacked these same arguments. You are very skilled and long trained in the art of rhetoric, but it is not enough to be right.
As already said, the only LENR supporter who tried to rebut my remarks was oystla, but he failed and eventually admitted that the F&P boil-off results were not correct.
QuoteYour behavior is typical of person with an unwarranted high opinion of his own expertise.
I affirm what I consider correct on the basis of the information I can gather from the web. I'm aware that this information is partial, so it may lead to incorrect conclusions, which is why I usually propose my findings in a hypothetical form. From the content and tone of the replies to my criticisms, I can gain more or less confidence in the correctness of my initial guess. In the case of the F&P errors, the thread closure gave me the best possible confidence that I was right.
QuoteYou imagine you understand calorimetry better than Fleischmann, Miles or McKubre. You imagine you have easily found problems that they overlooked for 30 years.
I'm not questioning about who better understand what. I'm just affirming that the F&P boil-off results were wrong, as shown in the closed thread and confirmed by its sudden closure.
As for the overlooking of the evidence, very strange things happened in the CF field. For instance, the steam probe used in the Ecat demo held on January 14, 2011 was very different from the DeltaOhm model declared in the calorimetric report signed by Levi. It was evident and very easy to detect just by comparing the many photos of the event with the images of the probe reported in the DeltaOhm websites. After a few weeks, I did this comparison and immediately reported this strangeness in the Italian site EnergeticAmbiente (1). Well, this blatant and crucial flaw was overlooked (or ignored or just not mentioned) by all UniBo professors and the other LENR experts who proclaimed the production of kWs of excess heat on the basis of steam dryness, a condition that simply couldn't have been verified by a missing probe. So, overlooking the most evident errors and discrepancies seems to be a feature of the CF field.
QuoteYou are wrong, but your ego prevents you from seeing that you are wrong.
You have been for many years the main supporter on the web of the reality of the Ecat, the validity of the demo held in January 2011 and of the reliability of the professors involved in the Ecat tests (2). It's quite funny that you say that who's wrong is me.
(1) http://www.energeticambiente.i…ala-11.html#post119167978
(2) https://www.lenr-forum.com/for…D/?postID=29406#post29406
You have not contested my remarks in the merit.
Yes, I did. I pointed out several mistakes, such as the fact that calibrations did not show spurious excess heat, and metal which is hot enough to melt plastic a 200 deg C cannot have liquid foam on it. Other people also gave you reasons. You ignored them. This is not a scientific debate. This is you, fantasizing that you know more than Fleischmann.
Well written and interesting. But what happened with the chimpanzee? Was that your account, or were you quoting someone?
Yes- I really saw it cross the road in front of me - I had to stop to avoid running it down, and it lived through a hard winter in thick woodland in fox-hunting country (Belvoir, Lincs) for at least 5 months before being recaptured after breaking into a house.
Yes- I really saw it cross the road in front of me
So did you ever find out why the chimpanzee crossed the road?
He was just coming out of the pub car park and probably thought he had priority.
I gave this talk on matters related to the reputation trap and the opposition to LENR at Cambridge University ln 2017. Much of it still applies.
Dear Alan Smith in OPPOSE COLD FUSION A SMITH.pdf you write:
1910 -1926 Irving Langmuir. The recombination energy of atomic hydrogen is higher than expected. The claim was withdrawn after a dialogue with Niels Bohr.
Do you have documents or copies confirming this dialogue with Niels Bohr?
As far as I know there is a correspondence between Irving Langmuir, and Niels Bohr.
If so, could you send me these documents?
There is a very comprehensive archive holding Bohr's letters in Denmark - the link below takes you to the brief descriptions of letters between Bohr and Langmuir. The full text is available on application - I don't have copies I'm afraid.
http://archon.nbi.dk/index.php…otcontentid=40460#id40460
This is one of the key papers on hydrogen dissociation by Langmuir.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/ja02168a002 (paywalled!)
This link takes you to an article on the Chava Science website (not my favourite source normally) that says something about the disagreement between Langmuir and bohr.
https://chavascience.com/en/hy…cess-energy-from-hydrogen
Sadly much of the core information is difficult to find, however it should be said the Langmuir re-ran his experiments using a different method and did reach closer agreement with Bohr's theoretical value. But in fairness, this argument has not been entirely settled, an many other experiments have shown what was considered to be a settled value (bohr's) is not correct. You must remeber all this work was done long ago, and things have moved on a little since then.
