Posts by interested observer

Jed, you must have been a broken record in a previous life. You have one speech for each person you disagree with and you repeat it ad nauseum. And it is as off-track the 27th time as it was the first.

I do not need to find a problem with McKubre’s calorimetry or dispute Miles’ helium detection because I am not claiming that there is something wrong with their work. I have no opinion of their work. I can tell you that 100 times and you are incapable of understanding it. Clearly, you have some sort of disorder.

I am not disputing the so-called reputations you harp on (I say so-called because you refuse to define the term in any meaningful way). Furthermore, I am also not disputing the critiques of cold fusion. I don’t have a opinion of them either.

What do I have? What most of us have for technical and other academic subjects that we have not studied in detail: opinions formed by exposure to whatever sources we have encountered. Nobody studies the literature of every topic that they form some opinion of.

LENR is a topic I have repeatedly encountered by virtue of its apparent connection to the antics of a very entertaining con artist. This led me to read a few things here and there, but has not enticed me to really study the technical literature. Why not? Guilt by association. The LENR community (meaning the folks who inhabit LENR websites as distinct from practioners in the field to whom I have virtually no exposure) seems to be heavily populated by the same sort of people who are into bigfoot, UFOs, and other nonsense. Does that mean that LENR belongs in that category? Not necessarily, but like I said, guilt by association.

I have a great deal of experience discussing a wide range of technical topics with active practitioners, business people, and ordinary folks. There is a certain comminality that transcends the specific topic. When it comes to LENR, It is more like talking to Scientologists or members of other fringe groups. It is all club secrets and special rules for learning anything as well as personal attacks on heretics.

The technical material I have looked at related to LENR is intriguing. I would not be surprised if there is some meaningful science going on. But given the weird culture surrounding the subject, I choose to remain neutral until more convincing information filters its way into the real world. You insist that I am anti-LeNR and believe it doesn’t exist. That is your problem and your error. But really, I don’t care what you think because you don’t base your opinions about people on fact.

Pathological skepticism is a real thing and is properly applied to things like Holocaust denial,moon landing denial, and flat earthism. However, the way the term is tossed around here is thoroughly bogus. Jed may try to argue that cold fusion is as firmly established as the spherical earth, but that is utter nonsense. The fact that the phenomenon is still quite controversial is not exclusively a result of bias and various conspiracies. The fact that mainstream science has not accepted the phenomenon is not something to just be ignored because Jed says so. People with considerable expertise have doubts, including some on this site. They are not crackpots just because Jed says so. Mostly, pathological skepticism is used here as a way of dismissing people and making the spurious claim that if you don’t accept the gospel according to Jed, your skepticism must be pathological. Sorry, but skepticism doesn’t work that way and science doesn’t work that way either.

Basically, calling everyone who is skeptical about LENR pathological is just another form of the absurd viewpoint espoused by Adrian et al that unless something is proven false, it should be considered to be true. Not only does science not work like that, nothing works like that.

Quote from Adrian Ashfield

Sure it is, The SK only produces two magnitudes more power and is being manufactured.

How do you know that? Oh right, your infallible genius hero said it in his onanistic blog.

AlainCo: good job. Much more nuance than the previous formulations. I think your category 4 comes in several forms. If one is not inclined to comprehensively study the literature (a cardinal sin according to some), then one can come to this very undecided viewpoint as a result of possibly extraneous factors. The nonsense generated by Rossi and other scam artists (e,g, Defkalion) muddies the water. The fact that “serial believers” (i.e. those who accept every pseudoscience claim as legitimate) are loudly on the LENR bandwagon doesn’t help either. Given this noise background, it is difficult to read enough into the signals. Couple that with the parochial and belligerent attitude of the pro-LENR crowd, it isn’t surprising that someone would have the attitude that there is not much reason to delve to deeply into this topic. That’s the scientific side of it. From the human interest side, on the other side, it is compellingly fascinating. If I may make a brief political aside, my exposure to the Rossi affair for the past seven years has given me real insights into the morass of American politics over the past couple of years.

bang99 is far closer to reality than Shane. Certainly none of Shane’s 3 category describes my own position and anybody who says otherwise is just making up shit to suit their biases. Of course, Jed insists that it is impossible to be agnostic about LENR. That is because he thinks he is in charge of what other people can think.

Jed, once again you are flinging straw man arguments at me. I asked you for examples of the various things you accuse me of saying and you ignore me and accuse me of even more of them. You seem to think that you can conjure up a stereotype skeptic profile and apply it to anyone you feel like criticizing. For a guy who complains that people don’t read things, you don’t pay attention to anything people say except for the tiny nuggests that suit your agenda.

I really don’t have anything to say about cold fusion either positive or negative. Your delusion that I am busy criticizing researchers, papers, results, and so on is exactly that: a delusion. What I do have to say is that many of its foremost proponents are irrational and dishonest in what they say to people who don’t suit their fancy.

It is interesting how many people are ascribing various judgements to me with respect to various aspects of LENR. Robert Horst mentioned the crux of the problem I was talking about. Which problem is that? Apparently, even by asking people what progress has been made over the years with respect to understanding, reproducibility, control, scaling, etc., that somehow implies that I have conclusions about those things. I really haven’t but the extreme reticence on the part of all of you to address any of these issues is puzzling. If I want information on these topics, I need to plow through the literature with zero guidance apart from the legendary 10-year-old McKubre paper. People actually sharing knowledge is verboten because that is “spoon feeding”. Jeez!

And Shane, of course there should be continued LENR research. Jed’s massive heap of publications can’t all be meaningless. Science is all about finding out the truth. Go for it!

Quote from RobertBryant

which research fields have you encountered in your life?

I’ve personally worked on thin-film materials, photovoltaics, superconductivity, power electronics, cryoelectonics, cryocoolers, quasi-one-dimensional solids, rf filter technology, magnetometry, and a few others. I have been involved with in terms of policy and public education but not personally working on battery technology, fuel cells, demand management, various aspects of ecology, endangered species, climate change, and several other issues. And I have managed to gain a reasonable understanding of these things without having to join any exclusive clubs. But, like I said, I guess LENR plays by a different rule book.

“IF you are really interested in the progress of a field, then you have to start to work in the field or if this is to much, get acquainted with some knowledgeable researchers.”

That is a false statement for pretty much any field I have encountered in my life. But perhaps it is the case for LENR for reasons that escape me.

Quote from JedRothwell

You don't know enough?? You mean, you don't know anything, so you make up bullshit about reproducibility and you pretend there are professors who published critiques pointing out errors. You make up one thing after another, without a shred of evidence, and then when I point that out, you say, "but I don't know enough."

You could not care less what people think when they read the lies, bullshit and nonsense you yourself write.

Please provide some quotes from me that make up bullshit about reproducibility and say things about professors who published critiques point out errors. Go ahead and try. Show me some examples where I make up one thing after another, without a shred of evidence.

The real bullshit around here is all the lies you spread about what other people supposedly said. If you ever were forced to argue with anybody from fact rather than personal attack and obsession with some random remark people might have made at some point, you would become silent.

I’ll make you a deal. I’ll stop putting words in your mouth when you stop making false accusations at me. I do not attack LENR. Despite your forbidding me to be so, I am agnostic about it. I only ask the same questions over and over again when they are ignored and twisted around by you. And I swear on a stack of LENR-CANR papers that I could not care less what other people think about cold fusion and have no interest whatsoever in persuading them about anything to do with it. Like you say, I don’t know enough about it. I can’t, however, help pointing out the self-evident fact that some of its most vocal proponents behave like irrational zealots, but that doesn’t prove anything about the science one way ot another. You are correct about one thing: I am not fooling anyone with the things I say, but that is because I am not trying to. But you are entitled to whatever delusions you care to harbor if that gives you comfort.

Sense of humor - n. Ability to type “LOL”

Like I said, Jed. Stop being defensive and stop blithering about anti-cold fusion propaganda. I wish the field great success and hope something comes of it. But that is not enough for you. You need me to say that LENR is proven science, making strides all the time, and is poised to take over the world. You don't even believe all of that. Depending on who you are yakking at, you either say there is great and continued progress or there is little because everybody is dead. So which is it? And I am not trying to make a point with anyone. Yes, I realize lots of people are working on it. Good for them. I hope they succeed. But that is not good enough for you. You demand that I say that they HAVE succeeded. But if I ask in what way they have succeeded, you blow a gasket.

What you really want is for me never to post anything because I am not qualified to ask questions having not studied the LENR literature. I have seen what that gets. If someone actually reads a bunch of papers and doesn't accept what you claim for them, then they are a crackpot. I really wish there was someone knowledgable about this topic who wasn't a defensive zealot. It would be interesting to have an intelligent conversation rather than listening to rants about being "anti-LENR".

I am not trying giving readers any impression whatsoever other than exposing them to the fact that nobody wants to answer simple factual questions about LENR like "what progress has been made in the field?" Such questions are immediately treated as confrontational and part of some sinister agenda. Simple answers that actually address the question would be a preferred response.

If you were a reasonable person, you could write a response that is shorter than your rants at me with a few examples of how the field has progressed. But, no. You have to attack the bogeyman who dares to not just accept your assertions without any content. For a guy who lectures people endlessly on how science works, you seem to be completely disinterested in scientific inquiry. All you care about is measuring the thickness of your library. Ok. It is really thick.

I have read McKubre's 10-year-old paper and I am not demanding anything of anyone. I am simply asking what progress there has been. If nothing valuable has happened in the past 10 years, then there answer is not much progress in recent years. There is no reason to be defensive about it. You are all about the science, right? So I am simply asking what has gone on with the science more recently. Yes, if I wanted to spend my days reading the extensive LENR literature, I would acquire a comprehensive knowledge of the state of the art. But why should I do that? You seem to be implying that there is nothing of real import to learn from the past 10 years of activity. So why should I care? You keep accusing me of being "anti-LENR". I am not. That would be stupid and pointless. I am actually "meh-LENR" and whenever I seek reasons to be more interested, I am rebuffed by people like you who seem to think you own the topic and don't want any strangers butting in on your domain. Fair enough. I can remain contentedly ignorant and nothing you have said leads me to believe that I am missing out on anything interesting. There are plenty of scientific topics out there that capture my interest and I don't have to argue with zealots to find out about them. That being said, I am keen to keep watching the Rossi Chronicles because they are a hoot.

AlainCo, I am not debating whether LENR exists, I am asking what progress has been made in the field since its announced discovery 30 years ago. Apparently this is not appropriate to discuss with “the enemy”.

That’s it, huh? And you folks wonder why skeptics remain skeptical. Just keep telling yourselves that it is because we are biased. That way you don’t have to formulate any convincing arguments.

A list of people who replicated other people (particularly given the amorphous sense that “replicated” is used in these parts) and examples of who got money and who is working on it does not answer my question.

F&P did their thing 30 years ago. A number of people got similar results presumably under similar circumstances. So 30 years later, is the phenomenon better understood? More reproducible? More controlled? Scaled up? Your list is more hay in the haystack. Explain to me in what sense there has been progress. Saying that lots of people have seen similar results and are busy studying it does not equate to progress. I brashly said there has not been any. Refute that statement. Bill Gates spending his money is progress on the funding front but doesn’t equate to scientific progress.

Despite Jed’s accusations, I am not trying to spread anti-LENR propaganda. I am relating what I can glean from reading this site. Arguing over the validity of 30-year-old publications doesn’t make one think that 20-year-old papers, 10-year-old papers, or 2-year-old papers have advanced the state of the art. Saying there are 100 or 1000 or 10000 papers does not imply that the field is progressing. Obviously you are convinced that it is. So as a champion of LENR, take a shot at convincing me. I have the sense that I am more open-minded than most believers (sorry for using the term but I don’t know what else to call you.)

You can lead a horse to the haystack, but you won't find the needle for him. Ok Shane. How about if you explain what progress has been made in the LENR field over the years? In my experience, this is the only field of human endeavor where one cannot be told what progress has been made in some reasonably succinct way without having to study the entire literature. Sounds like a lame excuse to me.

So, sensei, why not correct my misapprehension instead of just giving me crap? Explain what progress the field has made over the years. I am happy to learn. Unfortunately you are determined not to teach.

Rossi's path to world domination may be hindered by the powerful force of Jed Rothwell, but fortunately he has the juggernaut of Adrian Ashfield to clear the way.