FUSION REPORT: Summary
"Cold Fusion: An Outcast of Science," 21st Cent. Sci. & Technol., Vol. 10, No. 4, Winter 1997-98, pp 19-26.
By Edmund Storms,
FUSION REPORT: Summary
Edmund Storms, "Cold Fusion: An Outcast of Science," 21st Cent. Sci. & Technol., vol 10, no 4, Winter 1997-98, pp 19-26.
Science, the search for truth, has become polluted with controversy and emotion over the concept of "cold" nuclear reactions. Influential scientists have actively tried to degrade and even stop the work of others in their field, just for continuing research on anomalous phenomena found in low energy nuclear reactions. Why? Storms says "The answer involves three factors: the unconventional nature of the scientific claims, the manner in which the original claims were made public, and the tendency of the media to distort a situation to their own benefit."
Dr. Edmund Storms, retired Los Alamos scientist, elaborates. Although more than 50 examples of excess heat production and nuclear reactions can be cited, with more than ample peer-reviewed experimental verification, still the skeptics remain rabid in their rejection. Tritium production, Helium-4 and transmutation effects are all repeatable although usually difficult, in various different experimental protocols. "Although [some] of this work is still unpublished, the claims are being supported with increased sophistication and consistency." Even biologically induced nuclear reactions have been researched and shown to create lacking elements necessary to survival of yeasts and bacteria, in experiments in Russia and Japan.
"Of course, many readers [and scientists] may successfully avoid this belief." Critical variables have been poorly understood in many failed experiments. Random errors can also be cited for some positive experiments, too. A major toehold for skeptics is the fact that no one hypothesis has been reached that proves and/or demonstrates all the results. But Storms proposes that, because of the variety of effects observed in various types of "cold fusion" experiments, a qualitative relationship between theory and observation is not yet possible, even though many attempts have been made. He reviews several of these theoretical models.
Media distortion ranges from poor reporting and information gathering, to deliberately paying authors to write anti-fusion books. They are taking their cue from establishment scientists, such as those on the ERAB report team, who support highly biased "facts" as truth. "And what can be said of the health of science, when major scientists and scientific societies reject a phenomenon without an honest examination of the evidence?.... there are no end of examples where new and correct ideas are rejected by conventional science,"..... From Galileo to vonBraun, they were all told they were dead wrong.
The cliche that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof may better be said as: extraordinary claims require extraordinary effort by many researchers to get to the real truth.
www.padrak.com/ine/NEN_5_10_4.html
Feb. 23, 1998.