ERAB panel & evidence denial

Quote from JedRothwell

That is hilarious! The reviewer has never heard of a forest fire?! Or firewood? This is like our friends here who insist it is impossible to tell when half the water in a test tube boils away. (Okay, it might be 45% or 55% instead of half, but that would make no difference to the conclusion.)

I just assumed this particular reviewer was not familiar with biological processes at all. Albeit specialization is generally necessary, it can create a lot of blind spots, and this may be one example. I have usually been part of interdisciplinary research teams so you get a much more comprehensive understanding this way.

Quote from Curbina

I just assumed this particular reviewer was not familiar with biological processes at all. Albeit specialization is generally necessary, it can create a lot of blind spots, and this may be one example.

Such things happen due to the cellar effect. If to many bottles (=dumb heads as we say in German..) make it to prof.. it ends up in a wine cellar. Today peer review means promote your phd's and your (fake-) fame.

FWIW, although I am no scientist, I will chime in on this. I believe in the high integrity of the majority of people in science. Although I've lost respect in most people, I continue to hold scientists in general in high regard. Therefore, I do not give much credence to people who insist that malice is involved in LENR's difficulties. I am also not inclined to believe in conspiracies in general.

I agree that the problem is psychological. When I think about scientific work, I imagine people who are mentally interacting with conceptual structures that are not directly observable. When science is taught, these conceptual structures are taken for granted. We are taught about the atom and the DNA double helix, and these are conceptual structures which have been elaborated to extraordinary extents. If an experimental result is a brick, then the DNA double helix is a large building. The number of bricks which are fit into this building constitutes its hold on our opinions.

Is it possible that the bricks can be rearranged to fit an entirely different building, to accommodate some bricks that had previously not fit? Sure, but that's a scientific revolution. It's the bricks which don't fit that provide the motivation for studying rearrangement. But when you've spent decades working with a particular framework, a particular building, there is little reason to think that the few bricks which don't fit cannot be incorporated, eventually, into the existing framework. And that's why scientific revolutions might rely on new people, who still see the building as mentally constructed from bricks, while many of the older people no longer pay much attention to the bricks, seeing the building instead.

Epicycles made perfect sense; there was a building, and there were a few bricks that were needed to make it more perfect. So you add epicycles, unless you're disrespectful of authority and also a genius.

Quote from mjtrac

Therefore, I do not give much credence to people who insist that malice is involved in LENR's difficulties.

This is OK as all of them so far failed to deliver new physics...

But CF was such a big gold nugget on the tablet of a few people that cheating started some weeks after the P&F presentation. You have to know some people to get the real insight.

I personally think that today most folks involved in LENR/CF are greedy and don't want to share even their mistakes...

My approach was to publish as many facts I could find to stop anybody to make blocking patents. In face of a dying planet there are no words to explain how stupid most people are.

Quote from Rob

The primary thing I'm interested in is the sociological / psychological explanation for the actions of the ERAB panel members. Sure, there's many things that came before F&P, and evidence in many places if we go looking for it, but what I care about is why such very smart people – the ERAB members – could have seen such clear and irrefutable evidence, and basically rejected it.

Quote

The level of the need for cognitive closure is a fairly stable individual characteristic. It can affect what information individuals seek out and how they process it. This need can be affected by situational factors. For example, in the presence of circumstances that increase the need for closure, individuals are more likely to use simple cognitive structures to process information.^[6]

According to Kruglanski et al., need for closure exerts its effects via two general tendencies: the urgency tendency (the inclination to attain closure as quickly as possible) and the permanence tendency (the tendency to maintain it for as long as possible). Together, these tendencies may produce the inclinations to seize and then freeze on early judgmental cues, reducing the extent of information processing and hypothesis generation and introducing biases in thinking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closure_(psychology)

Quote from Rob

I have trouble buying into the notion that hot fusion proponents had something to lose by cold fusion succeeding. I see no reason that the hot fusion crowd could not have simply switched gears and begun applying their skills to develop LENR-based systems.

Proponents of hot fusion in plasma see only chaos, so they firmly believe in the Lawson criterion. It is difficult for them to understand that plasma, under certain conditions, can be a living organism (that is, it can form a highly organized flow), to which the Lawson criterion is no longer applicable.

Quote from Rob

Thoughts?

Not only could they, they had to pay attention to CF, but for this it is necessary to change the equipment in order to experiment with cold plasma.

Quote from Rob

I think this lends some support to the idea that HF proponents could have chosen to get into CF. Thoughts?

BARC has always been a predominantly fission-based organisation. The country has suitable mineral resources, and so the funding has been aimed at various types of fission-based power (with a bomb spin-off, of course).

They have never really had the budget for carrying out practical hot fusion work - so have had to resort to theoretical studies only. CF was seen as a good low-budget topic, where their lack of funds would not be so much of a handicap. So no, there was no real "switch" as such, IMO.

As an aside, I've had numerous dealings with the Indian defence industry, over the years - and am aware of some major differences between research there, compared to that in Western countries. IMO, technological progress in the country is hampered, to a large extent, by its huge social inequality and class-based social structure (which is much worse than that in the UK - but might not be for much longer). (My apologies to the forum moderators, if this sounds too political.) However, as Srinivasan says in his interview, this meant that the senior researchers there have had a lot of freedom to study whatever interested them, without fear of being sacked.

Quote from Rob

JedRothwell, Frogfall, I came across something new (new to me, old historically). Srinivasan was in hot fusion research at the time of the CF announcement.

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

Certainly there are some differences between the BARC facility and US labs, which Srinivasan explains in this interview, but still, I think this lends some support to the idea that HF proponents could have chosen to get into CF. Thoughts?

I think BARC is precisely one of the few nuclear energy research entities that took CF seriously from the get go, and kept it ongoing a certain level, which allowed Dr. Srinivasan to keep into this field until the end of his life.

You can also count ENEA in Italy which allowed Dr. Vittorio Violante to keep a level of CF research (now that I think about it, we haven’t heard much of him since about 4 years ago, have we?)

Quote from Curbina

I think BARC is precisely one of the few nuclear energy research entities that took CF seriously from the get go, and kept it ongoing a certain level, which allowed Dr. Srinivasan to keep into this field until the end of his life.

Srinivasan got no support from BARC after Iyengar retired from being the director of the Atomic Energy Commission. I do not think Srinivasan did any experiments. If he did, he paid for them himself. I heard that the director who replaced Iyengar was strongly opposed to cold fusion.

Quote from JedRothwell

Srinivasan got no support from BARC after Iyengar retired from being the director of the Atomic Energy Commission. I do not think Srinivasan did any experiments. If he did, he paid for them himself. I heard that the director who replaced Iyengar was strongly opposed to cold fusion.

Thanks for That clarification, he indeed did not make experiments but kept related personally with the field.

Quote from Curbina

That's not fair, now that you picked our curiosity you have to tell us the story!!!

As the great Nikola often said, “the world is not ready”.

Rob - sorry, that was for a private meeting, no video AFAIK.