From: Jed Rothwell <72240.1256@compuserve.com>
Subject: 1992 Acronym Award
Reply-To: Jed Rothwell <72240.1256@compuserve.com>
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 23:57:20 GMT

To: >INTERNET:fusion@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG

I nominate Terry Bollinger for most inspired Acronym Award, for:

"HICCUP Fusion: Hot-In-Cold Cavitation Ultra Pressure Fusion"

Truly Great! Plus - seriously now - I think the sonoluminescence and the
Portland cement experiments of Jones et al are fun and wonderful.


Tom Droege, with whom I usually agree, says:

"I am not surprised that Jed Rothwell does no recognize Dieter Britz's (and
also in this field Douglas Morrison) valuable contribution. Some in science
choose to do experimentation.  Some choose to do theory. So Jed, Dieter is
doing a very valuable job... It is wrong, I think, to criticize him."

If he was doing theory, or looking at the literature objectively, then I would
agree. But I don't see it that way. I know only a little bit about certain
specific areas of CF. The discussions of neutrons and theory are completely
over my head, so I never make any comments about them, and as far as I know,
DB and DM are doing a great job there. I cannot judge. However, I *can* judge
his comments about the Ni experiments, protocols, ultracleanliness, and
calorimetry, because I know a lot about these subjects. Plus, I can judge the
soundness of his accusations in 1991 against Dr. Farrell, and in 1992 against
Dr. Notoya and me. Here is my evaluation:

     Regarding unltracleanliness and calorimetry, he puts words in my mouth,
     he makes things up, and he evades the key, central issue, which is the
     sigma level of experiments like McKubre's, Notoya's and Srinivasan's. He
     will not tell us whether he believes thermocouples measure temperatures
     or not. He weasels, he bluffs, he avoids the main issue, he refuses to
     confront the evidence. This is even more true of DM, who says McKubre's
     work is "excellent." Well, if he really thinks so, then he must believe
     McKubre's 90 sigma results show CF is real. What else can 90 sigma
     possibly mean? If CF is real -- that is, beyond chemistry -- then all
     skeptical arguments against it collapse, and DM is catastrophically
     wrong. There is a wrenching, irreconcilable contradiction here. DM says,
     in effect, "the work is impeccable, the confidence level is
     astronomically high, the evidence of heat is inescapable... so I think it
     must be impossible, nonsensical and wrong."

     DB's evaluation of Farrell, Notoya and me showed signs of paranoid
     hostility. People who make baseless, slanderous accusations for no
     earthly reason destroy their own credibility; I will never again take his
     word for *anything*. I do not like to play psychiatrist, but I have been
     around long enough to know stuff like that when I see it. He apologized,
     and I am sure he won't do it again, so I would not think of suing or
     anything like that. On the other hand, he has no credibility and I will
     warn people never to trust him. If a customer rips you off and then pays
     up later on, you forgive him, naturally, but you don't ever ship him any
     more product!

     Regarding his evaluation of the literature, he is just kidding,
     nitpicking and kibitzing.

Morrison, by the way, is not like DB at all: he is a gentleman and a scholar.
As far as I know, he has never accused me or anyone else of fraud. I watched
Morrison under the most trying circumstances imaginable, and he never said an
impolite word; he kept his cool like a samurai, while I was shouting at that
Italian loudmouth to shut up!

Alas, however, I think that DM does not understand the fundamentals of
science: he does not understand the difference between theory and evidence, or
the role of theory. He does not understand elementary thermodynamics and the
conservation of energy; he does not even know how thermometers and
calorimeters work. His evaluation of the field is about as useful as a
creationist's essay on biology. His was the most bizarre and outlandish
lecture that I have ever heard in my life, outside of the Philosophy
Department of Cornell University; it stood the fundamentals and traditions of
science upside down and backwards. But, by golly, he is smart, he knows how to
act, and I like him! I admire his guts. He reminds me of The Bishop "Soapy Sam"
Wilberforce, who was also a heck of a lot smarter than he appeared.
Wilberforce went down in history as a fool who destroyed his own reputation in
the famous 1860 debate with Huxley.

Let us award Morrison the Right Honorable Bishop Wilberforce Memorial Award
for 1992. Morrison should note that at the time of the famous debate, most
commentators and eyewitnesses thought that Wilberforce had won, because he
spoke so well. Huxley was young, he mumbled, and made a poor impression; he
was not the hero he himself described in his memoirs. Years later it dawned
upon people that Wilberforce had made a fool of himself. He made a mockery of
his great learning, he perverted the traditions of science, muddied the
issues, and he did not reveal a single "new fact or new argument," but
merely rehashed the old, irrelevant ones.


Let me address this other juicy comment: "Some in science choose to do
experimentation. Some choose to do theory."

That's true. I myself mostly type, translate and look at data, rather than
getting my hands dirty in the ultraclean lab.

But, let us put this in perspective. There are different kinds of science; some
are cerebral, and some are more oriented to the laboratory. Biology, computer
sciences and CF are example of the latter. All biologists look at specimens,
or perform experiments, or go out in the field. There is no such thing as a
computer expert who does not design or build hardware, or program it, or at
least look at it frequently. CF was not discovered on the blackboard or in a
computer simulation. It was discovered, and it is now being explicated, in the
laboratory. At this stage in its development, it remains a purely laboratory
based science. DB is posing as an expert in the CF field. Would anyone here
believe a hot fusion expert who has never actually seen a Tokamak reactor --
at least a partial, nonfunctioning reactor, under construction, like most of
them forever are? Would you believe an astronomer who had never looked at
photo or a computer display from a telescope? Would you believe a software
expert who had never written a line of code?

Some sciences are more cerebral than CF. With some sciences, it is difficult
to do real, physical experiments. For example, cosmologists have trouble
recreating the universe from scratch, and people who design thermonuclear
weapons rarely get a chance to test them in basement experiments. However, CF
is not a bit difficult or inaccessible. People who are seriously interested in
it, and people like DB who comment on it, owe themselves and their readers a
little fieldwork. You don't have to run a successful experiment. You don't
have to actually do any experiment. But you need some real-time, visceral
exposure to the real thing. You have to see raw data, and you have to
experience, first-hand, what a credible, serious CF scientist does, or at
least you have to spend a few hours in meetings with CF scientists looking at
raw data. There is no substitute for seeing something like this up close, in
real life.

Of course, it is a free country, and if DB and other electrochemists want to
snipe and kibitz at CF instead of doing it, so what? It does no real harm. It
doesn't contribute anything, either, which is a shame. There he is, an
electrochemist, *right* *there* in a lab where he could do an Ni or Pd
experiment anytime he wants, with minimum effort and expense. Why doesn't he
do it? I think he owes it to himself to at least get his feet wet, and see
what it feels like. I am not saying he has to spend $3 million and perform 200
experiments. If he doesn't want to, okay -- fine. However, a guy sitting in an
electrochemistry lab who has never actually done any experiments does not
deserve to be taken seriously. CF is too easy for that.

That is not how real scientists, in real labs, behave. When people like
Farrell, Noninski, Srinivasan, or Notoya report a positive result, a real
scientist takes them seriously, and gives them the benefit of the doubt. A
real scientist assumes they are right, unless he spots an error and has some
reason to believe they are wrong. If he spots an error, he does the experiment
himself to prove his point. If DB thinks Srinivasan's data is "nonsense," as
he put it, let DB show us *his* data. Is this a showdown? Srinivasan's data
versus DB's opinion? Srinivasan wins by default. Data can be proven right, or
it can proven wrong, by replicating the experiment. But an opinion cannot be
proven either way, so mere opinion has no value and no standing in science.
You have to bring in the numbers from the laboratory to back up what you say.

My biggest objection to DB, and DM, and RB, and the others is philosophical:
CF is not based on theory. It is not cosmology. Theoretical objections and
critiques have no role whatsoever in proving or disproving laboratory data.
There are two sharply separate domains in science: theory and evidence. We are
dealing with evidence here: data. You can never counter or repudiate
laboratory data by pointing to a theory, you have to critique the physical
experiment. You have to show how the instruments or the layout was faulty. The
only way to disprove CF is to go into the lab (or look at a diagram), and show
exactly why the heat is not really there, with that particular setup. You have
to find a specific, systematic, mistake in *that* *experiment*. An appeal to
theory does not address the question.

Generalities about other experiments performed in other labs, back in 1989,
are also irrelevant. You have to show exactly why a particular experiment is
in error, and you have to disprove it utterly and completely. It is not enough
to say that a 6 deg C Delta T might actually have been 5.8 C, or even 4. You
have to prove, beyond any shadow of doubt, that the Delta T was so close to
zero that it was insignificant, because if there is any heat at all, and it
persists long enough, the reaction must be real. A little nitpicking here and
there will not do, you have to demolish the entire thing, all 6 degrees in one
experiment, all 30 degrees in another.

To disprove the existence of nickel CF, for example, you have to show
convincingly why every single one of Srinivasan's 29 published experiments are
wrong. Every single heat and every single tritium reading -- including the
ones at 1454 and 3390 bq/ml -- has to be completely wrong. You have to
demonstrate exactly how and why three independent teams of experts who have
been measuring tritium for 40 years, and who can easily measure amounts as
small as 4.0 bq/ml to the nearest 0.1, have catastrophically mismeasured
tritium time after time, for 9 months. If you cannot prove how such high sigma
results are wrong, then the results stand, by definition. How else does
science work? These are not marginal, arguable results, with weak signal to
noise ratios. When the evidence points very strongly and clearly in direction
A, and *you* say it is B instead, then *you* have to come up with amazing and
convincing reasons to justify your argument. Extraordinary claims require
extraordinary proof.

If you encounter even ONE experiment -- like McKubre's -- where you can find
no holes, and no possible objections, then the game is over, you lose, the
heat is real, and CF is real. That means that the other good experimenters,
like Kunimatsu, Mizuno, P&F, Takahashi, and the others are right too, although
they do not have such convincing data sets.


I nominate myself for the Verbosity Award of 1992. My only excuse is that I am
writing a book, and my saving grace is that you, Gentle Reader, are free to
press the Down Page button!

- Jed


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