Fusion Responses

Fusion Responses -- April 2004

Dr Carl Berke wrote:

You have stepped out far past where angels fear to tread. I am somewhat of a "buff" on "pathological science", a term coined by Nobelist Irving Langmuir. That's probably because I lived through the "polywater" affair in the 1970s, which you might not remember, but I was training to be a chemist then. The out-of-favor Russians had discovered a new physical state of water right under our noses. The defense department was worried we were going to lose that battle of the cold war. A good example before that was Percival Lowell's canals on Mars. He was an eminent astronomer who published a book with maps and all kinds of pseudoscientific evidence. It's absolutely fascinating to watch this latest chapter of voodoo unfold. Remember Uri Geller and his bending spoons? He demonstrated before the entire Stanford physics department and none of them could explain it but it doesn't make it true.

You say "their results are reproducible". I say, "What results by whom

with what rigor?" You should check out the source of your lead quote,

"Infinite Energy" magazine. It's more a comic book than a journal and the

back pages are full of ads for cold fusion kits that you can build at home.

Who wouldn't want this to be true? Perpetual motion - the solution to world energy limits. Of course it challenges orthodoxy, but that is how reputations are made not destroyed.

Extraordinary claims call for extraordinary proofs. You quote Robert

Langer in your piece; did you ask him about cold fusion?

And my response:

I don't pretend expertise in these fields, although like everyone outside of the field, I am attracted to the romanticism of the concept.

The update wasn't advocating cold fusion per se, but rather pointing out two things --

that there are respected scientists who have put together results on cold fusion that have convinced the DOE to take another look (and the ability of the DOE to take another look is a good thing);
That Kuhn's landmark "paradigmatic" view of science remains fresh and relevant 40 years after he published it. In fact, in an ironic twist, the "revolutionary" view has now become the accepted paradigm for how new breakthroughs happen, rather than the "positivist" view which Kuhn blasted years ago.

Ed Kahn of EKMS wrote:

Eric M. says: "If cold fusion is successful, Kuhn would predict that its pioneers will come from areas outside of the fields most challenged by it."

For some reason, Ed K. intuited that folks from way out of their box would have insights into those alien boxes...thus the EKMS DDE (doctor of dangerous ecclectism) approach...

Eric, I found your Kuhn-Cold Fusion piece comforting....

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