Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Diogenesis
"By the Second International Conference on Cold Fusion, held at Villa Olmo, Como, Italy, in June/July 1991, the altitude toward Cold Fusion was beginning to take on a more scientific basis.

Was that altitude measured above sea level or ground level?....sarcastic inquiring minds need to know..../sarcasm off.

Too bad the forward isn't as simply directed and focused in its measurable metrics as the above quote.

I've found the topic of 'Cold Fusion' to offer good opportunity in the identification problem, history of science, and philosophy of science. Many of the topics implied by the study require an intuition of the founding arguments used in science for basic terminology. The actual meanings, scope, and limitations of terms between different branches of science as well as identifying the mathematical methods used to describe phenomena from different scientific points of view.

Simple terms such as each term in Maxwell's Eqns (quantum, QED), terms from electrochemistry, terms from solid-state physics, derived terms and terms used as identifiable measurables all have some basic implied meanings constraining their range and domains of valid use.

The Cold Fusion problem exemplifies a problem where the quantification of some of these measurables might exceed the functional domains of other functions. Using a handful of measurables might lead to actual circular reasoning and measurements which imply false meanings without indications of the problem to junior postdoctorate level researchers.

I found study of the topic to mandate a review of the researcher's academic background to more fully appreciate their point of view and implied understandings of basic scientific terms. My viewpoint is more from rigorous Material Science ( Mechanical, Electronic, and Chemical), applied mathematics, and common engineering. Too many researchers in this field are either PhDs in Physics, with less than a 3rd year college experience in scientific study of Chemistry, or Physical Chemists, with less than 5 yrs of collegiant study in applied mathematics, or engineers / applied mathematicians with only one or two years of study in chemistry and physics.

I've found that a good 3 yrs of study of both Chemistry and Physics at the undergraduate level is required to even identify the semantical and meaningful conflicts between the sciences. Another 2-3 years of study in each discipline is then required, devoted to simply studying the etymology of the eqns and basic scientific terms. Essentially, this further study amounts to forming a history of science intuition. Then for a particular problem, such as 'Cold Fusion' a quick study and reformulation of scientific reports in an applied mathematics format allows the problem to take shape meaningfully.

Until this is done, too many sparsely described phenomenon are discussed using less than 5 variables when perhaps 10 are involved amongst peers who are only intuitive with discussing 1-3 variable problems.

53 posted on 04/14/2002 1:30:10 AM PDT by Cvengr
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]


To: Cvengr
You use a lot of scientific words in pseudoscientific fashion.
Perhaps if you did several years of graduate study in engineering, physics, etc.
you would be better able to adequately criticize
the paper(s) to which you simply toss word-bricks.

These scientists published serious data, and analysis.
In constrast, your comments are not serious, but typical of the pathologic skeptic.

54 posted on 04/14/2002 2:04:56 AM PDT by Diogenesis
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 53 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson