292) Are we fighting an uphill battle ?


Ludwik Kowalski; 4/12/2006
Department of Mathematical Sciences
Montclair State University, Upper Montclair, NJ, 07043

The messages below were posted recently on the restricted Internet list for the CMNS researchers. They show what these people think and feel about being discriminated by the establishment of mainstream science.

Message 1;
Jean Paul Biberian, a French electrochemist from Marseilles, wrote:

When I perform an experiment, I have three goals in mind:

1- Most important: convince myself, that the measurements are valid, and make sure that there is no artifact. People who have done calorimetry can tell how easy it is to make mistakes, I have done many myself. Calorimetry needs a lot of practice, and there is nothing more difficult than a simple experiment.

2- Then and only then I can think of a demonstration to convince others, i.e. colleagues of mine interested enough to have a look at the experiment.

3- Try to publish the results. Here things become very difficult, because production of heat alone is not sufficient. The referees will want to have an explanation of where the heat comes from. Even though the total amount of heat might be beyond any chemically possible reaction, doubts may persist. Think of the heat pump which produces several times more heat than the electrical power input. You can never prove that somewhere somehow there is not a hidden energy source. It becomes necessary to come up with an explanation, i.e. for instance the production of energetic particles or helium, tritium, transmutation.... The point is that no referee will want to spend the time to come to the lab and stay a few days with me to check everything in details. Even if he happens to do it, the editor or another referee will kill the OK of the first referee, because the credibility of the journal is at stakes.

Why are we in such a situation? :
We want to sell Cold Fusion as a scientific reality, and get acceptance from mainstream science. After 17 years, twelve international conferences, thousands of papers and experiments, we are not yet accepted. Why? I think because nobody wants Cold Fusion :

1- Scientists don't like paradigm changes, most are very conservative and do not like to have to change their habits. Lot has already been said about that, no need to develop here.

2- Energy suppliers: oil-gas-coal-nuclear don't need a new competitor, like with the mafia each one has a part of the territory, and they will join to expel a newcomer, even though they fight all the time between themselves. A new energy source will endanger all of them.

3- Environmentalists do not want Cold Fusion, for them this is the worst thing that could happen, if Cold Fusion becomes a major source of unlimited energy, then mankind will destroy the planet.

4- The military don't want us to look at that. There might be military applications, and this might give everyone access to powerful weapons. Nobody understand some of the explosions that occurred during electrolysis.

We are fighting an uphill battle, we are in a situation where everybody and everything is against us. What is our best hope:

1- An experiment that produces lot of heat, with a large COP, for a long period of time. The calorimetry must be very simple, with no calibration. My opinion is that mass flow calorimetry is the best. Input power should be simple, i.e. DC current so that no correction is needed, The output power is easy to calculate if you can measure the input and output temperatures with a mercury thermometer, and the water flow with a stopwatch.

2- An experiment that produces anomalous isotopes, the Iwamura work is in that direction, but there is not enough material produced to convince skeptics.

3- The best experiment: a stand alone system,with no electric wire attached producing heat or electricity. However, if anyone can do that he doesn't care about publishing, he can probably sell the device!

Conclusion:
I do not have a solution yet, but I think that a convincing Mizuno type experiment should be done with mass flow calorimetry, I am thinking about doing one in Marseilles. Duplicating what has been done several times before will not help.

Massage #2
Ludwik Kowalski
I do not think that an explanation is essential at the very early stage. An experimental claim like "we demonstrated an excess energy that can not be due to a mistake or to an artifact" should be publishable. Pierre Curie had no theory explaining why his radium source was generating heat. That was in 1903. Good luck with Marseilles experiments.

Message 3
Jean Paul Biberian
Pierre Curie, he had found anomalies in the uranium salts, but nobody wanted to believe him. When he and his wife managed to isolate radium, and that at this point it was obvious to everyone that something unusual was happening then and only then radioactivity was accepted. A little bit like having a stand alone system producing heat without any external source...

Message 4:
From Jed Rothwell
Jean-Paul Biberian wrote: “Calorimetry needs a lot of practice, and there is nothing more difficult than a simple experiment. ” Exactly right. Try replicating J. P. Joule's experiments some time and you will see how true this is. [He also wrote] “Then and only then I can think of a demonstration to convince others, i.e. colleagues of mine interested enough to have a look at the experiment. ” Good start!. He also wrote] ”Try to publish the results. Here things become very difficult, because production of heat alone is not sufficient. The referees will want to have an explanation of where the heat comes from. . . .” When editors and referees say things like that, you are wasting your time. Forget about trying to convince such people.

We agree that the best way to begin to convince people is with colleagues who are interested in the experiment. After you shall the experiment to your colleagues, who is next? What group of people do you show it to after that? People who attend the ICCF conferences, naturally, but they only meet once a year. However, 5000 people per week gather at LENR-CANR.org and they download 4000 papers. These are mostly researchers and they appear to be serious, open-minded, and willing to read difficult papers. So obviously you should publish at LENR-CANR.org, and also at ISCMNS, and your own web page, and at as many other web pages as you can find. You write papers in order to inform other researchers of your work, and convince them that your results are important. You can accomplish those goals by publishing online.

[Jean Paul also wrote] “Even though the total amount of heat might be beyond any chemically possible reaction, doubts may persist. Think of the heat pump which produces several times more heat than the electrical power input. You can never prove that somewhere somehow there is not a hidden energy source.” That is incorrect. Only a few heat pump types exist and they are readily identifiable. Furthermore, if the excess power is greater than a few watts it is easy to identify where in the heat pump cycle it is coming from. Look for the component that is covered with condensation and cold to the touch. If the Mizuno cell is a heat pump, some part of it would be covered with ice. It would also be one of the most efficient refrigerators ever invented, and a world-class discovery. [He also wrote] “Energy suppliers: oil-gas-coal-nuclear don't need a new competitor . . . ” I doubt they are aware of the situation.

[He also wrote] “I do not have a solution yet, but I think that a convincing Mizuno type experiment should be done with mass flow calorimetry, I am thinking about doing one in Marseilles.” It will be much better to use Seebeck calorimetry.
[He also wrote] “Duplicating what has been done several times before will not help.” Exactly right. Ohmori and Mizuno would agree, I think.

Message 5:
Jed Rothwell wrote:
[X wrote, sarcastically] "Nature does not employ an editorial board of senior scientists, nor is it affiliated to a scientific society or institution, thus its decisions are independent, unbiased by scientific or national prejudices of particular individuals."

<http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/get_published/index.html> “]

That's pretty funny. It reminds me of Sci. Am. editor John Rennie's statements to me, "we aren't scientists, so don't blame us for our opinions. " Sort of the opposite tack after you get past the denial part, but equally loony. Quote:

"The second misconception concerns Scientific American's function. We're journalists here at the magazine, even those of us with scientific credentials. We don't claim to be authorities on physics or any other discipline (for all that there is quite a lot of real expertise built into our staff). For that reason, the scientific points of view we choose to publish are ones that have already been vetted in the technical, peer-reviewed literature and that generally seem to represent a consensus within the scientific community. To do otherwise would mean that we were pretending to be more expert than the actual scientific authorities. That is not what Scientific American's readers want or expect.

(As for whether we're entitled to mock cold fusion...well, sorry if you disagree, but that opinion reflects the consensus of most scientists, too.)

So it really doesn't make a difference to me if LENR-CANR advocates petition me for articles on the subject; I'll put them on the stack of similar requests from the scientific creationists, the global warming deniers the face-on-Mars people, the crypto-archaeologists, and all the others who want publicity and scientific respectability but can't make their case convincingly to the community of scientists. But I'll say this again, too: if LENR-CANR's physicists can convince the mainstream physics community that they've got a credible case and articles to that effect start appearing in major peer-reviewed journals, Scientific American would be glad to write about it." http://lenr-canr.org/AppealandSciAm.pdf

These are strange people. You wonder how they ended up in charge of major scientific journals. (The previous editor, Piel, inherited the job.) ... .