ARPA-E looking for "Teaming Partners" UPDATE

Quote from teppo

LENR Program Kickoff

https://arpa-e.energy.gov/site…23-09/01_Ledoux_Staff.pdf

As Ed Storms pointed out elsewhere, slide #8, Some “Rules of Thumb” on Nuclear Fusion Rates shows that these people know nothing about cold fusion. They think it is plasma fusion.

My guess is that these people have read nothing and know nothing about cold fusion. I have often encountered such people. When I tell them: "cold fusion does not produce neutrons in the same ratio to the heat as plasma fusion," they seem surprised.

Also, their "LENR Alumni" have contributed nothing to the field as far as I know, and I would probably know. So, you can write off this program. It will probably be $10 million wasted, and another black eye for cold fusion.

Ed suspects they are trying to sabotage cold fusion. He thinks this project is a scam. My response:

I doubt they are smart enough to conduct a scam. It seems like an inept scam. Anyone who has read the literature will see they are wrong.

Hanlan's principle: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Of course these people are very smart about their own areas of expertise. But they resemble Douglas Morrison or Robert Park in that they lack judgement and common sense. It probably never occurred to them to read papers on cold fusion. They may not even know that such papers exist. I am not joking.

Such people have no reason to lie to me. If they act ignorant and surprised it is most likely because they are ignorant and surprised. As Groucho Marx said: "Gentlemen, Chicolini here may talk like an idiot, and look like an idiot, but don't let that fool you: he really is an idiot." (Duck Soup) When people act in an outlandish manner or say stupid things, we assume they have some ulterior motive. We think they must be smarter than they seem. They must be putting us on. As history shows, they are often actually stupid.

Maybe I am right and these people are inept fools. Maybe Ed is right they are nefarious plotters engaged in a scam. The outcome will be the same either way. As I said, it will be $10 million wasted and another blow against cold fusion. As Margaret Atwood said, "Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results."

Succeed or fail, it seriously strains credulity to suggest that ARPA-E are not operating in good faith.

I think I agree with Jed on this, failing to even talk to people who know about cold fusion and who have worked in the field for decades is pretty stupid. They are doing the scientific equivalent of searching for asteroids without talking to astronomers.

Quote from orsova

Succeed or fail, it seriously strains credulity to suggest that ARPA-E are not operating in good faith.

I agree. I think they are sincere, but stupid. Ed thinks they are plotting to make cold fusion look bad. He could be right. As I said though, this would be an inept way to make cold fusion look bad. Anyone who has read the literature will see that the ARPA-E people are wrong.

I don't know what to make of it. I am not saying I know for sure these people are stupid. I cannot read minds. You can't read minds either. People often say, "our rivals are plotting to do this or that" or "our rivals think thus and such" but it turns out the rivals were not plotting or thinking anything like that. Because you, the readers here, know about cold fusion, you might think: "Those DARPA-E people can't be serious when they talk about neutrons. Surely they know a little about cold fusion. They must have read something. They are scientists, after all!" Maybe they did read something and they are putting us on. Or maybe they did not read anything. Very often I have seen assertions by distinguished experts about various subjects, such as cold fusion, wind turbines, computers, AI, or what have you. Assertions that were totally wrong. Regarding cold fusion, skeptics often have no idea what instruments are used, what results are obtained, or how these results are interpreted. Their version of cold fusion is imaginary. Perhaps they get it from an internet rumor mill?

I find it odd that someone would make bold assertions about a subject he knows nothing about. I guess that is human nature.

Quote from JedRothwell

I don't know what to make of it. I am not saying I know for sure these people are stupid.

You have a very good instinct. All institutions (EU,US) are headed and staffed by "iditots" with no knowing of new physics. So these idiots will go on to feed the same old thinking people again & again.

From my point of view all old CF researchers should go off field, because after > 30 years of total failure and no usable knowledge, besides some experimental techniques, acquired they are fully disqualified.

There are some good fellows in Japan or Holmlid, Brillouin, Celani that have some success. The rest looks to me like greedy money suckers, that invent fake and scams to get US/EU money.

The quality of fakes did very much increase in the last year due to GPT like tools. Here an example for a fake tool::

(Dont buy!!)

Radiation Detector and Spectrometer - Radiacode 102

Radiacode is a portable radiation detector, dosimeter and spectrometer that uses a highly sensitive scintillation detector for analyzing environmental…

www.radiacode.com

Quote from Alan Smith

failing to even talk to people who know about cold fusion and who have worked in the field for decades is pretty stupid.

It seems they did not even read review papers by Hagelstein, Storms, McKubre and others.

I have expressed concerns of the same tone before. The way I see it at this moment is that, no matter how this all became to be set up as it is now, we still have a chance to reach to the teams engaged in these projects and try to get them to see how they might be off the mark, and help them see how they can improve their chances of success.

Quote from Curbina

The way I see it at this moment is that, no matter how this all became to be set up as it is now, we still have a chance to reach to the teams engaged in these projects

If you know of any way to reach out to these people, please do that. They never contacted Storms, Miles or the other researchers I know. It seems they never read any review papers. So they do not seem open to suggestions . . . to say the least.

Quote from Alan Smith

I think I agree with Jed on this, failing to even talk to people who know about cold fusion and who have worked in the field for decades is pretty stupid. They are doing the scientific equivalent of searching for asteroids without talking to astronomers.

That’s a fair opinion. I was only meaning to comment on the somewhat caustic suggestion that they were running a ‘scam’, or trying to sink the field. Both claims that I would submit are, on their face, absurd, and do nobody any good.

I must confess, I’m not sure I understand the criticism that they didn’t talk to the community when they conducted what appear to be some pretty thorough workshops before announcing their chosen projects.

I also don’t really understand the argument that they’re doomed to failure because they’re outsiders who don’t listen, given that the project is funding people who have genuine interest in and track records within the field.

Quote from orsova

I must confess, I’m not sure I understand the criticism that they didn’t talk to the community when they conducted what appear to be some pretty thorough workshops before announcing their chosen projects.

But who was invited? They asked for 'teaming partners' - but AFAIK none were invited to the workshops.

Sorry to put one more coin in the machine but some relevant persons here ( even in the staff) believe that Rossi world wasn't a full joke.

In this way, a link between him/Focardi an DOE DOD have to be more highly considered.

As i said often USA isn't a "one voice" entity, many "organizations" working independently from the others.

Regarding the climate change problems, some organizations push forward to try all the way available, explaining this smoke screen ARPA E "program" even if the official Lenr understanding could be more deep.

Strange that the Google relevant team found nothing special at the end..

Again the NASA pseudo Lenr way, is staying between classic Lenr and classic fission. We could find this way confortable for them because as more complex than classic Lenr it could not be spread easily everywhere to keep the control.

Quote from Cydonia

Strange that the Google relevant team found nothing special at the end..

What should an elephant find in an opera house?

The problem is that most people with money in reality are brainless and instinct driven exactly, what you need in basic research.

Quote from orsova

I must confess, I’m not sure I understand the criticism that they didn’t talk to the community when they conducted what appear to be some pretty thorough workshops before announcing their chosen projects.

I do not know what they covered in these workshops, but they did not learn anything about cold fusion. Just having experts assemble and "look" at cold fusion does not ensure they will see anything. They sometimes make drastic mistakes. In 2004, 18 experts looked at cold fusion. They were given a large pile of papers, shown here:

2004 DoE Review

6 of the reviewers concluded that cold fusion is real; 2 were undecided; and 10 said it was not real. Those 10 knew nothing about it. If they read the papers, they learned nothing. Their critiques were so unscientific, they violated high school level science textbooks. See:

https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJresponsest.pdf

Quote from orsova

I also don’t really understand the argument that they’re doomed to failure because they’re outsiders who don’t listen, given that the project is funding people who have genuine interest in and track records within the field.

They might have genuine interest. I cannot read minds so I do not know what their attitude is. However, I can see that they know nothing about cold fusion, and I know for a fact they did not listen to most people in the field. I don't see how they could have read the literature. Even with the best will in the world, and the utmost sincerity, if you do not do your homework, you will fail. No one can understand a technical subject by ESP, or based on previous knowledge. I have seen many smart scientists, programmers, and others make drastic mistakes. When I was 23, I was working at a large computer company. I read internal company reports, and a report they commissioned at a famous technical consulting firm, for a large sum of money. I discovered to my surprise that I knew more about computers and programming than some of the top managers at the company, and far more than the consulting company report authors. For example, those authors thought that applications software is distributed on ROM chips.

Arthur Clarke described a similar situation. I cannot find the original text, but anyway, in 1945 V2 rockets began falling on England. Some people doubted they could be rockets. One supposed expert said there is no way you can guide rockets accurately over such distances. Someone said, "suppose the Germans use gyroscopes." The expert said: "Gyroscopes? I never thought of gyroscopes." Sperry autopilots had used gyroscopes since the mid-1930s, so this person clearly had no idea what he was talking about.

Quote from Alan Smith

But who was invited? They asked for 'teaming partners' - but AFAIK none were invited to the workshops.

None were invited as far as I know. DARPA-E never even responded to most of them.

Ah. I found the quotes from Clarke. They are in his book "1984 Spring A Choice of Futures," p. 135 - 136. QUOTE:

To quote from [R. V.] Jones: "The naivete of our 'experts' was incredible. They were all eminent, some very eminent, in particular fields of science or technology, and yet they were completely out of their depth when dealing with the rocket. I can remember a Fellow of the Royal Society ... saying that he was amazed at the accuracy with which the Germans would have to set the rocket before launching it. ... What he had calculated, quite possibly correctly, was the trajectory of a rocket fired, as on 5th November, with a stick attached, and launched in the familiar way from a bottle ... we knew that the Germans were using gyroscopic control, with information ... transmitted to rudders in the main jet. ... As we explained the system, our scientist looked Heaven-wards and said, 'Ah, yes, gyroscopes! I hadn't thought of them!' And that was about the level of the better contributions from the experts."

It seems equally incredible that one of the reasons the "experts " -- led by Churchill's chief scientific advisor, Lord Cherwell (Professor Lindemann)--refused to believe in long range rockets was that they thought only in terms of such solid propellants as cordite. Yet liquid fuels had been known and tested for years, particularly by Robert Goddard in the United States, and almost all the literature of spaceflight was devoted to them. Despite this, it took months to convince the "experts " that liquid fuels might make long-range rockets possible. To quote Jones again: "I can remember at one meeting Sir Robert Robinson saying, 'Ah, yes, liquid fuel!' and several others taking up the chorus as though the realization that the fuel could be liquid instead of solid completely exonerated them from their previous failure." It was the gyroscope story again ....

But at least even these pathetic "experts" were not ignorant of one basic fact about rockets-that, unlike all other prime movers, they could operate in the airless vacuum of space. How many times, in the 1930s, we would-be astronauts heard the argument that "the rocket won't work in a vacuum, because there's nothing for the exhaust to push against."

Even in those days, it was hard to stomach the sheer Olympian conceit of the critics who brought forward this argument. Apparently they believed that they were the very first to wonder if a rocket could work in a vacuum -- even though scientists had been thinking about spaceflight for several generations. . . .

Quote from JedRothwell

If you know of any way to reach out to these people, please do that. They never contacted Storms, Miles or the other researchers I know. It seems they never read any review papers. So they do not seem open to suggestions . . . to say the least.

Well, I don’t know any more than contacting them through e-mail or similar online methods. I am sure among all of the forum members and staff we have also some friends that could possibly carry more weight or facilitate communication.

But just saying “these guys are wrong and this is a waste of money” is certainly not going to be well received as a message.

Quote from Curbina

But just saying “these guys are wrong and this is a waste of money” is certainly not going to be well received as a message.

It is a little hard to know what we might tell them, given the circumstances. I do not think they would be pleased to hear that cold fusion produces no neutrons, and that slide was nonsense. My guess is that these people resemble the 10 members of the 2004 DoE review panel who rejected cold fusion. Those people were hopelessly ignorant, stupid, and closed minded. There is nothing anyone could have said to change their minds. They knew less about the scientific method than I knew in third grade. I am not exaggerating. Look at the list of mistakes that Melich and I compiled. Nearly everything on that list I learned from Ms. Allen in third grade.

"Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain." - Friedrich Schiller

This goes back to Carlo M. Cipolla's Second Law of Stupidity:

The probability that a certain person will be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

". . . Whenever I analyzed the blue-collar workers I found that the fraction σ of them were stupid. As σ's value was higher than I expected (First Law), paying my tribute to fashion I thought at first that segregation, poverty, lack of education were to be blamed. But moving up the social ladder I found that the same ratio was prevalent among the white-collar employees and among the students. More impressive still were the results among the professors. Whether I considered a large university or a small college, a famous institution or an obscure one, I found that the same fraction σ of the professors are stupid. So bewildered was I by the results, that I made a special point to extend my research to a specially selected group, to a real elite, the Nobel laureates. The result confirmed Nature's supreme powers: σ fraction of the Nobel laureates are stupid."

The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

Here is another reason I do not think ARPA-E wants to destroy cold fusion. If that were their goal, they could simply ignore it. Do nothing. There is no need to spend $10 million or hold meetings to destroy a field that mainstream science despises and does all it can to suppress.