The conference has started! Bill Collis spoke first, but I missed it - jammed up at the front desk, people still coming in. I met Alla Kornilova at breakfast!!!!!! What a thrill! I will try to interview with the camera this week.
Mike McKubre is up now speaking about how the CF community should do better communicating what we know. He is addressing the negative google article. He says that they did not "not listen". He says that they listened, and we didn't effectively communicate. The failure is on the cmns community, McKubre says.
"This field lacks a clearly and fully specified written protocol to reproduce even semi-reliably any aspect of our claims for cold fusion or condensed matter nuclear effects of any sort."
We need "to see oursels as ithers see us!" Google did good things with their 4-year program:
1. Vision and action. - $10 million and four years so far, and they are CONTINUING.
2. Publication - an achievement to publish, despite the negative result.
3. Confirmation -
4. Youth involvement - google put together a young team that is INTERESTED in this field, and McKubre believes this participation with young people in this program may have actually saved the field, which is getting way too old.
"Without active youth participation we will fail to complete Martin Fleischmann's dream and vision."
Stan and Martin discovered not just cold fusion, but "nuclear effects".
He believes that he could not do what he did at SRI, because he doesn't have the TEAM of talent, which is critical. SRI was "lucky" with the materials early on, and then their palladium ran out, and then it was tough to get the effect.
We "don't know how it works, but we know it can be done, and it has already given indication that it may be useful", says McKubre.
What's next? Mike Melich's loss was huge, because he thought "strategically", and Matt Trevithik is a strategic thinker too.
Afterwards, I asked, "How do I respond when people say google didn't get any result, and the Nature articles are clear that this is not real"? He said that those people are thinking "like it was in 1989", and they aren't going to change, so essentially, it's not worth trying.