Replies

Wow! So much hostility toward someone who has always been fascinated by alternative energy sources. But at least I learned a new word, "skeptopathism" which although it apparently is just one more term that you have made up... is very entertaining. And I am sorry that #22 was taken down by the moderators... most would probably have found it eye opening. I am not the one who flagged it.

And despite the "150 peer-reviewed replications" that you claim verified the work Stanley Pons and Dr. Martin Fleischmann there is still nothing that shows that this is a viable energy source. This is after over 30+ years passing, massive amounts of interest and massive amounts of money being spent.

Then you follow up with numerous foul mouthed rants and claims of conspiracies and the conduct of others, etc... Boy you really know how to make a technical argument! There are probably 100s of times as many peer reviewed papers that supposedly verify that man caused global warming is causing irreparable damage to the planet. Yet they too are mostly based on false premises that lead to incorrect conclusions.

If you really do have something of interest to share... in the future you might consider telling us in your own words why you believe what you are sharing is an important development. I have appreciated many of the threads that you have shared in the past. The way you started this thread and the "points" that you just made in post I am currently responding to, demonstrate only that you desire to make proclamations and want only positive affirmations to follow. The scientific method not only invites skepticism it relies on it. You have what appears to be a belief system that borders on religious beliefs. This results in only confirmation bias inducing faulty conclusions. I once believed that you had more mature and grounded reasoning.

I would suggest that you follow the following link:

https://undsci.berkeley.edu/lessons/pdfs/cold_fusion.pdf

It seems very even handed in explaining what went wrong.

Here is an excerpt from the end of the piece:

"An error like this would normally be detected before it caused an uproar in the scientific and broader communities. However, in the case of cold fusion, the checks inherent in the process of science were weakened when Pons, Fleischmann, and others caught up in the excitement broke with norms for good scientific conduct (Fig. 27). While the process of science is resilient to a single, or even a few divergences from best practices, the convergence of multiple infractions can hinder the process. The journal editor who allowed the original article to be published with minimal peer review did not adhere to the standards science had set for such publications. Pons and Fleischmann withheld experimental details from the community and tried to shield their ideas from testing. They and the other scientists who “reproduced” cold fusion, only to later retract their results, failed to perform adequate tests to evaluate their ideas. And, of course, Pons’ behavior during the helium experiment, as well as the broken publication agreement with Jones, smacked of dishonesty (Fig. 27). It’s important to note that even with such unscientific behavior, the process of science still worked. "

" Within a year, the scientific community had investigated Pons and Fleischmann’s claims and come to the consensus that what had been observed wasn’t really cold fusion. However, there was still a price to pay for this misconduct: time, energy, and upwards of 100 million tax dollars were squandered on cold fusion."

" Pons and Fleischmann also did damage that is harder to quantify. Perhaps most worrying is the effect that this debacle had on the public’s perception of science. Pons and Fleischmann’s unclear statements at the press conference, which emphasized only the future benefits of cold fusion and not the early stage of the investigation, contributed to the media hype and raised society’s expectations without warrant. These unmet expectations coupled with accusations of fraud and dishonesty damaged the public’s trust in science. Because science is so deeply intertwined with the broader community, scientific misbehavior has implications far beyond the group of physicists and chemists who study cold fusion. Despite all this, somescientists continueto investigatethe possibility of cold fusion. Science doesn’t give up on ideas that have merit, even if they experience setbacks. All scientific knowledge is, after all, tentative. So though there is every reason to think that what Pons and Fleischmann observed was not cold fusion, some scientists (though a small minority of the physics community) continue to investigate whether or not cold fusion is possible. But to convince the rest of the physics community, they’ll need to find many lines of solid evidence to support their views."