From: ames!FNALD.FNAL.GOV!DROEGE
Subject: Academic or Commercial?
Reply-To: ames!FNALD.FNAL.GOV!DROEGE
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 07:22:46 GMT

Jim Carr has put up a nice discussion of the messy world of controversial 
science.  The assumption is that P&F are scientists and that we are operating 
under the rules of controversial science.  But what if P&F turned commercial 
the day they thought that they had "fusion in a jar"?  Then word leaked out.  
How would they react?

In commerce, it is perfectly proper to mislead a competitor.  It is more like 
the Manhattan project, where all sorts of fakery was performed to dupe any 
outside government agents into thinking we were doing something other than 
what we were doing.  Note that while Fleischmann is a career academic, Pons 
has had commercial training in a family business along with his academic 
career.  

It is quite possible that the day that they thought that they had something 
that they started covering their tracks.  What an easy thing!  Publish a 
rigged radiation curve that could be easily detected.  Claim that they see 
neutrons.  Any student of science could predict the result.  The academic 
community writes them off as fools.  While the Jackals howl over the fake 
corpses, they can continue work without competition.  Meanwhile, they disclose 
enough information to sponsors who are used to working in secrecy (the 
Japanese) to get all the money they need to continue their work.  

I find the recent P&F publications much more consistent with trickery than 
with honest publication.  Why spend so much journal space with justification 
of their obscure calorimetry instead of telling us what they do to produce 
"boiling cells"?  I assume they are commercial and that they are trying to 
mislead us while publicly showing just enough to reassure their backers.  

While the thought of publishing fake data horrifies any academic, when there 
are billions to be gained, some may change their principals.  The AIDS test 
comes to mind.  

In general, I do not believe that conspiracy is possible.  But this is a 
special case.  Possibly only two know the secret.  My brother has a theory 
gleaned from many years in the early semiconductor work that if three or more 
people know a secret process, that the group will split and form separate 
businesses.  But here only two may know, and one at least is old enough to 
likely not have commercial ambition.  

But it is a dangerous game.  They risk losing all if the secret gets out.  My 
understanding of the patent process is that you must "teach" (very special 
patent meaning) and claim to get a patent.  So far I have not found much 
"teaching" in the P&F patent applications.  It is my understanding that if 
someone else files a patent with the correct "teaching" first, that they will 
get the patent even if P&F know the secret.  Withholding "teaching" that you 
know from a patent application, I believe, precludes you claiming that you 
knew it earlier.  But this is likely something that patent attorneys could 
argue over for years.  

So the most likely thing is that P&F don't know a secret.  Else it would be in 
their patent application.  But it is remotely possible that they think that 
the secret is so obscure that it is unlikely that others will find it.  So 
they withhold it to gain time to tie up the field.  

Tom Droege

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