The complete absence of progress in cold fusion is once again emphasized by the citations of arguments in defense of P&F's early work. If the field (and the arguments) had any merit, those arguments would *not* represent the last word in the literature; advocates would be citing recent *results* that put an unequivocal end to the dispute. Unfortunately, there aren't any.
If this sort of thing helps you guys sleep at night, then more power to you. But I fail to see how you think it's going to be persuasive to skeptics who can *see* that nothing has come of it.
I suspect that 30 years from now, when the world still thinks cold fusion is bogus, there will be a counter-part to alainco (maybe his descendant) rehashing the minutiae of the (then) 60 year old experiments and insisting their defenders got the last word, and citing Beaudette's book that they think proves cold fusion is real, even though the field does not represent a single meaningful or reproducible scientific or practical advance. By then, even graphic artists might have given up, so the task of finally, once and for all, proving cold fusion to the world might fall to junior high students, who might form the Stanley Pons Memorial Project.
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I mentioned the events of 1989 to show that the overwhelming inclination of mainstream science was to accept the phenomenon of cold fusion, and to show that suggestions about an intrinsic bias against it are nonsense. The account in Storms book of 2007 leaves no doubt that scientists around the world were enthusiastic and excited to get involved in the new field. And the gushing first reaction from Douglas Morrison shows that even eventual and adamant skeptics were at first excited to accept the claims.
oystla cited the applause Koonin got when he finished his talk accusing P&F of incompetence. But talks always get applause, and in comparison to the 7000 scientists that gave Pons a standing ovation a few weeks earlier, this was pretty tame, and represented appreciation for a detailed and logical examination of a revolutionary claim.
And I brought up the criticisms of P&F to explain why the sentiment changed in a matter of weeks. It doesn't matter if a few advocates think that the criticisms were all suitably answered, and that P&F held sway. What matters is that in the judgement of most scientists who paid attention, P&F were exposed as incompetent and probably delusional.
The initial enthusiastic response from the world in 1989 was obviously contingent upon the reliability of the two scientists making the claims, which was thought to be high. Certainly, no one thought scientists of that calibre could get claims of nuclear fusion or measurements of heat wrong, especially when such an important revolutionary claim depended on them.
But then, when it was discovered that the work was without question sloppy, and the report was rushed, and some public claims had been clearly exaggerated, confidence in P&F evaporated, and the sentiment changed. Any 8 page paper that requires two pages of errata is sloppy, particularly when a critical spectrum is completely revised. And then the interpretation of the spectrum was found to be wrong, their rationalization for the work was determined to be completely invalid (the proximity of deuterium nuclei to one another in fully loaded Pd is *less* than in a deuterium molecule), and the best that can be said of the calorimetry is that it was not compelling, and did not support the public claims made in the press conference.
Again, you can argue that the criticisms were answered and that on your score-card, P&F won the debate, or got the last word, but the reality is that the evidence was *not* compelling, and the judgement reached about P&F's incompetence has been vindicated over the years.
Their results did not convince the reviewers for Science or Nature, which had been holding a place for their paper, but rejected it because it did not meet ordinary standards of scientific rigor.
The results did not convince the ERAB panel that studied the field for 6 months, and which represented interests that could only benefit from cold fusion in many ways.
The results did not convince the patent office, which eventually (1998) rejected the application submitted in 1990.
The results did not even convince the organization that gave them a posh lab in France and generous support for their research. In 1998, Toyota shut them down without them having produced any tangible results.
It's even questionable that P&F could convince each other as time went on, given that they stopped speaking to each other some time during the 90s, and then Pons abandoned the field.
Then in 2004, the DOE enlisted another panel to examine the best evidence up to then, and reached the same conclusion the first one had reached in 1989. And since then, reports of new experiments claiming excess heat (particularly from electrolysis with Pd-D) in the refereed literature have all but vanished.
Finally, it seems even cold fusion advocates agree that the results have not been good enough to convince the world, which is the reason the MFMP has formed, in order to generate the evidence they agree P&F did not.
Next to all that, a book rehashing old arguments, published by an electrical engineer with a bachelor's degree, the title of which reveals him as a member of the believer cult, is pretty irrelevant. Whether or not one is a believer, to suggest that cold fusion prevailed, when the publication rate marches inexorably toward oblivion, is clearly delusional.
