From: Frank Close <FEC%VAX2.RUTHERFORD.AC.UK@ib.rl.ac.uk>
Subject:  Questions to Frank Close: Some answers
Reply-To: Frank Close <FEC%VAX2.RUTHERFORD.AC.UK@ib.rl.ac.uk>
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 17:44:21 GMT

Tom Droege thought I was feeling that ``Tom is not being scientific".
On the contrary Tom. Your reports on your heat measurements show the extreme
care that you are taking and, I repeat what I said some months ago, if you
eventually decide that you have observed a positive phenomenon then it will have
to be taken seriously. In the absence of a positive heat result, any tests
for nuclear ``ash" have limited bearing on the central question of whether
a nuclear process generates measurable heat in the Pd/d system. However, they
may teach much about natural backgrounds and how to recognise them - an
essential stage in a project. As you and I well know from experience in
particle physics, experimentalists ``learn" about their detectors by recording
cosmic rays, test beams etc in advance of the ``real" experiments.
I interpret the nuclear measurements associated with your expt to be
in an analogous ``learning" stage; the ``real" experiment in your
case will follow if positive heat has been demonstrated.

Jed Rothwell claims that ``Jones, Huizenga, Morrison, Close - - - believe
theory overrules facts". I know that experimentalists often hold
theorists in awe but I dont recall Drs J,H or M having put us on such a
pedestal! I certainly have not - show me where I have. While you are looking,
you should read what I wrote on this in Too Hot To Handle (in the prologue on
page 3 I think), namely that it is EXPERIMENT not theory that decides
and that that was a reason why we had to check the CF claims.

Jon Webb has it right: it is a question of which ``facts" one accepts.

Chuck; glad you liked the Canadian radio piece on quarks which is the area
of physics that I have put most of my effort into. You ask if I have said
anything about ``CF". Well, I wrote 300 pages about it in Too Hot To Handle
(if you're in Canada you can get it in paperback for less than the price of
a flask of heavy water and find the answers to many questions that keep
coming up on the net). It exposes some of FP's actual data as distinct from
the invention that they published (FP's attorney C Gary Triggs wrote
to me in November - Douglas Morrison has posted something about this on
the net. Several net readers have contacted me about this; suffice to say
that I have told him that I have no doubt about the quality of my sources,
nor about the evidence in my possession and the consequent claims in THTH.
For the record, I stand by everything that I have written about that episode).
As concerns the science, I concluded that there is no evidence that watts
of power are produced by a nuclear process at room temperature in the Pd/d
system  but I left open the question of whether there is an atomic
(chemical not nuclear) energy storage mechanism responsible for transient
heat bursts. Jed Rothwell would say (has said) that the amounts of heat
are too much to be chemical, but that seems to me to be theory
prejudice :-)

(An additional comment: I would like to see better evidence that
*systematic* errors have been carefully incorporated in the claims of
watts/cc. In particle physics nowadays results are quoted with TWO separate
errors; one statistical, one systematic.  The latter you are stuck with
unless your understanding of the apparatus or other details improves. The
former gets better as the number of events increases e.g. to quote a case
from the primitive CF literature,if the measured number of events in a bin
increases from 2000 to 20,000, the error bars cannot remain unaltered.)


Steve Jones posts on fusion in the Earth and asks me to take note of a point
he makes. Steve, it will be several days before I have time to digest your
comments which I have so far only read here at my terminal (my NY resolution
is to do CN-F only at weekends - and I am already violating it) but can
you clarify which point? Is it in connection with the appendix in THTH
``Fusion does not give the Earth's Heat" or is this some new information
 about gas emissions that you are emphasising?



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