Over the last few weeks I’ve written a couple of times (here and here) about the inventor Andrea Rossi and his Cold Fusion system … er, Low Energy Nuclear Reaction system, the E-Cat (see my posting “Believing is Cold Fusion and the E-Cat” for an explanation of the distinction, or lack thereof, between CF and LENR).
I’m sorry to report that there still appears to be no news one way or the other as to the reality of Rossi’s claims.
Since Rossi’s annoyingly three ring circus of a “ test” in Bologna, Italy, on October 28th, there’s been a cyclone of comment, support, criticism, defense, attack, disparagement, and rumor. In all of this whirl, Rossi has added nothing new.
Much to the disappointment of many of the “believers”, mainstream press coverage of Rossi’s system has remained at roughly at the level it had been at prior to the 28th, which is to say, more or less non-existent. Coincidentally, that’s the same level of attention that the mainstream science world has also paid to the topic over the last couple of decades.
As an aside, it is amusing that one of the few mainstream press articles was published by the UK Wired Magazine after Rossi’s last demo and used the incredibly misleading headline “Success for Andrea Rossi’s E-Cat cold fusion system, but mysteries remain“. Despite that apparently positive headline the article goes on to comment
Skeptics have plenty of grounds to doubt whether the new test really takes us any further forwards.
Really? That counts as success? I’d suggest that Wired’s editors need to be a little more critical.
Anyway, I’ve had conversations with a variety of people who contend that the underlying reasons for this poor coverage are conspiracies.
Some believe there’s a conspiracy which has its roots in Big Business; that the companies involved in energy production and distribution have intentionally created a media environment where anything to do with cold fusion and or LENR are dismissed as quack science. Others theorize that the silence and downright dismissal of CF in the scientific community is due to people not wanting to deal with anything that threatens established doctrine.
I find the Big Business conspiracy theory to be unconvincing. No one can show any evidence as to which organizations might be involved and it’s hard to believe that, for example, the oil companies or the power utilities would have that much fear of something that has never been proven to actually work on a commercial scale (some would go further and argue that cold fusion never been proven to even work at all).
As for the idea that Big Science is protecting the status quo, well, sure, of course there will be push back when something comes along that defies all known principles. But if someone was to produce a demonstration that could be reliably replicated by others or, at the very least, could be evaluated by independent observers to perform as claimed, then there would be something the scientific community couldn’t ignore. Such demonstrations have yet to appear.
One of the most persistent claims by CF believers is that cold fusion has, in fact, been duplicated thousands of times and that the perceived problems with reliably reproducing the results is due to subtle and poorly understood aspects of the materials used. These people could well be right but what they refuse to recognize is that the scientific method matters.
The scientific method demands verifiable results so if you haven’t got any then all you do have is, at best, a theory and the problem with a theory is that if you want people to believe it, it has to extend observable facts into the realm you’re trying to explain.
When there’s a discontinuity between known science and all theories about how, in this case, cold fusion might operate then, of course, the scientific community will be dismissive: You haven’t got anything that anyone can be objective about! What you’ve got is, in effect, unfounded belief and that isn’t science.Over the last few weeks I’ve written a couple of times (here and here) about the inventor Andrea Rossi and his Cold Fusion system … er, Low Energy Nuclear Reaction system, the E-Cat (see my posting “Believing is Cold Fusion and the E-Cat” for an explanation of the distinction, or lack thereof, between CF and LENR).
I’m sorry to report that there still appears to be no news one way or the other as to the reality of Rossi’s claims.
Since Rossi’s annoyingly three ring circus of a “ test” in Bologna, Italy, on October 28th, there’s been a cyclone of comment, support, criticism, defense, attack, disparagement, and rumor. In all of this whirl, Rossi has added nothing new.
Much to the disappointment of many of the “believers”, mainstream press coverage of Rossi’s system has remained at roughly at the level it had been at prior to the 28th, which is to say, more or less non-existent. Coincidentally, that’s the same level of attention that the mainstream science world has also paid to the topic over the last couple of decades.
As an aside, it is amusing that one of the few mainstream press articles was published by the UK Wired Magazine after Rossi’s last demo and used the incredibly misleading headline “Success for Andrea Rossi’s E-Cat cold fusion system, but mysteries remain“. Despite that apparently positive headline the article goes on to comment
Skeptics have plenty of grounds to doubt whether the new test really takes us any further forwards.
Really? That counts as success? I’d suggest that Wired’s editors need to be a little more critical.
Anyway, I’ve had conversations with a variety of people who contend that the underlying reasons for this poor coverage are conspiracies.
Some believe there’s a conspiracy which has its roots in Big Business; that the companies involved in energy production and distribution have intentionally created a media environment where anything to do with cold fusion and or LENR are dismissed as quack science. Others theorize that the silence and downright dismissal of CF in the scientific community is due to people not wanting to deal with anything that threatens established doctrine.
I find the Big Business conspiracy theory to be unconvincing. No one can show any evidence as to which organizations might be involved and it’s hard to believe that, for example, the oil companies or the power utilities would have that much fear of something that has never been proven to actually work on a commercial scale (some would go further and argue that cold fusion never been proven to even work at all).
As for the idea that Big Science is protecting the status quo, well, sure, of course there will be push back when something comes along that defies all known principles. But if someone was to produce a demonstration that could be reliably replicated by others or, at the very least, could be evaluated by independent observers to perform as claimed, then there would be something the scientific community couldn’t ignore. Such demonstrations have yet to appear.
One of the most persistent claims by CF believers is that cold fusion has, in fact, been duplicated thousands of times and that the perceived problems with reliably reproducing the results is due to subtle and poorly understood aspects of the materials used. These people could well be right but what they refuse to recognize is that the scientific method matters.
The scientific method demands verifiable results so if you haven’t got any then all you do have is, at best, a theory and the problem with a theory is that if you want people to believe it, it has to extend observable facts into the realm you’re trying to explain.
When there’s a discontinuity between known science and all theories about how, in this case, cold fusion might operate then, of course, the scientific community will be dismissive: You haven’t got anything that anyone can be objective about! What you’ve got is, in effect, unfounded belief and that isn’t science.