From: jac@ds8.scri.fsu.edu (Jim Carr)
Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Subject: Re: Cold Fusion Confusion
Date: 18 Nov 92 15:19:14 GMT
Reply-To: jac@ds8.scri.fsu.edu (Jim Carr)
Organization: SCRI, Florida State University

In article <1992Nov17.151633.11143@Arco.COM> dprjdg@inetg1.ARCO.COM (John Grasham) writes:
>I am a regular reader of this group and not a CF researcher.  I have
>a (somewhat) informed layman's knowledge of physics.
>
>I do not understand why STILL no one can tell whether or not CF exists.

I am tempted to say "Because it does not", but that would be a bit 
premature.  Proving a zero is one of the hardest jobs in physics, 
right up there with measuring a very small, yet non-zero, quantity.  
Both are dominated by systematic errors rather than statistical errors, 
so that more data does not always improve the situation.  Only more 
careful experiments will clarify what is going on. 

The real reason is that the purported positive experiments are not 
reproducible.  The negative ones are, but they can always be dismissed 
on the basis that some (unspecified, because it is unknown) condition 
was not met.  The biggest symptom of this problem is that the very 
*definition* of the phenomena being sought is still changing.  It is 
hard to do a test when one person says light water gives nothing and 
someone else says light water is the way to go.  

We do not yet have a recipe, where you can be told "do this and you 
get heat, change this one variable and it will go away" and then 
proceed to monitor other things like nuclear products.  The contrast 
with high-Tc superconductors, where everyone was making them within 
a week of word getting out, should enlighten you. 

>I have read everything I could get on the subject both in the press and
>here on the net, and am amazed at the level of diatribes, accusations
>of outright fraud/intentional lying, etc.

I note with interest that you do not include scientific journals in 
your list of things you have read.  The information there is quite 
thin, and then only if your library happens to get the rather obscure 
journal where most of it appears.  

>Is the level of emotion shown here evidence of what is at stake?
>
>Is science-in-the-making such a messy process (a la law-making and
>sausage-making) that this is a normal part of the discussion?

Yes.  More so in some fields (particle theory was famous for this) 
than others, but it is not uncommon to see rather emotional responses 
to a challenge to accepted ways.  Not-invented-here.  Turf battles. 
I once had my head almost bitten off when I (a theorist!) suggested that 
the reason certain data seemed unusual was that they had most likely 
made an error in background subtraction (they had followed a procedure 
quite different from that used by others).  Yo Mama!  Its our background 
and we can subtract it any way we like, and besides, it has already been 
published in a respected journal so it must be right!  

I love meetings. 

--
J. A. Carr                                    |  "The New Frontier of which I  
jac@gw.scri.fsu.edu                           |  speak is not a set of promises
Florida State University  B-186               |  -- it is a set of challenges."
Supercomputer Computations Research Institute |   John F. Kennedy (15 July 60)