Re: taboo science and politics

[William Beaty <billb@eskimo.com>]

On Mon, 5 May 1997, Stanley J. McCaslin wrote:

> At 11:17 AM 5/5/97 CST, you wrote:
> > > Date: Fri, 2 May 1997 07:30:05 -0700 (PDT)
> > > From: William Beaty <billb@eskimo.com>
> > >
> > > Be aware that [cold fusion] is "taboo science".
> One good guideline for evaluating any out-of-the-mainstream
> claims is "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".

The "pro-CF" people target this phrase as evidence of shady dealing in
science research.  It pushes a double standard.  Why is *extraordinary*
evidence needed, why not just solid, replicable evidence?  If we require
different standards of evidence for reports which go against current
thought, it is all too easy to start imposing arbitrarily high standards
in order to silence research which we don't like.  It is also easy to let
our observations become biased, and we then run the chance of ignoring
evidence which is not in line with theoretical predictions. 

> The fact that Fleishman and Pons went to the Utah legislature
> and the popular press, rather than going through normal peer
> review, and that their work could not be replicated by other labs,
> properly consigned it to the fringe.

Yep, they screwed up badly.  They thought they had the Nobel in their
pockets.  They thought that (Jones?) was going to spill the beans early
and beat them to the punch.  All politics and ego.  But what does this
have to do with whether or not their discovery was real?  They also kept
some secrets.  This may have let them keep control of the discovery, but
lack of replication turned everyone against them.

> I am certain that any solid,
> reproducible, experimental evidence for cold fusion would bring it
> back into the mainstream.

> From watching the ongoing CF controversy, I'm certain that solid
experiments will be ignored because we've all made up our minds, and any
evidence that our decision was misguided will be very hard to accept. 
Positive "CF" results can always be dismissed as evidence of research
incompetence rather than as evidence of anomalous events.  However, it's
been years since 1989, and headway is FINALLY being made. 

For example, there were numerous papers presented at the ICCF-6 in
Japan last year, and at the ILENR2 conference (the one which suddenly lost
permission to be held on campus, Texas A&M).  The American Nuclear Society
meeting is supposed to be holding a panel on 'LENR' at their next meeting.
(LENR, for Low Energy Nuclear Reactions, is a politically correct
euphimism for "cold fusion.")

Here's an online paper from LANL showing that palladium wires become
filled with tritium after plasma bombardment. 

    http://wwwnde.esa.lanl.gov/cf/tritweb.htm

For those who are interested in the controversy, see the following books. 
The first is "con," the second neutral, the last "pro."  Make your own
decisions. 

  Close F,   "Too Hot to Handle. The Race for Cold Fusion"
  2nd Edition, Penguin paperback 1992, ISBN 0-14-015926-6.

  Hoffman N, "A Dialogue on Chemically Induced Nuclear Effects. A Guide
  for the Perplexed about Cold Fusion."  American Nuclear Society, 
  La Grange Park, Ill, USA 1995. ISBN 0-89448-558-X.

  Mallove E;  "Fire from Ice: searching for the truth behind the cold  
  fusion furor";  John Wiley 1991. ISBN 0-471-53139-1.



ICCF-6 = Sixth International Conference on Cold Fusion
ILENR2 = Second International Conference on Low Energy Nuclear Reactions

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