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Cold Fusion and the Reputation Trap (aeon.co)
An anonymous reader writes: Huw Price, the Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge, has written an article about how the scientific community regards research into cold fusion, and those who undertake it. His argument is not that current cold fusion research is necessarily correct, but rather that actual scientific progress is inhibited by what he calls a "reputation trap." "People outside the trap won't go near it, for fear of falling in. ... People inside the trap are already regarded as disreputable, an attitude that trumps any efforts that they might make to argue their way out, by reason and evidence." Central to his case is Andrea Rossi's work, which is not taken seriously throughout the scientific community, and yet he's still doing business.
Price's point is this: "Cold fusion is dismissed as pseudoscience, the kind of thing that respectable scientists and science journalists simply don't talk about (unless to remind us of its disgrace). ...the standard line is that the rejection of cold fusion in 1989 turned on the failure to replicate the claims of Fleischmann and Pons. Yet if that were the real reason, then the rejection would have to be provisional. Failure to replicate couldn't possibly be more than provisional – empirical science is a fallible business, as any good scientist would acknowledge. In that case, well-performed experiments claiming to overturn the failure to replicate would certainly be of great interest."
Price's point is this: "Cold fusion is dismissed as pseudoscience, the kind of thing that respectable scientists and science journalists simply don't talk about (unless to remind us of its disgrace). ...the standard line is that the rejection of cold fusion in 1989 turned on the failure to replicate the claims of Fleischmann and Pons. Yet if that were the real reason, then the rejection would have to be provisional. Failure to replicate couldn't possibly be more than provisional – empirical science is a fallible business, as any good scientist would acknowledge. In that case, well-performed experiments claiming to overturn the failure to replicate would certainly be of great interest."
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mass-extinctions-tied-to-past-climate-changes/
You're a moron.
Well said, however, I disagree regarding cold fusion in particular. It should be shunned because it flies in the face of physical laws. Creating sustained energy from room temperature fusion is as laughable as someone levitating with the power of their mind.
Simply put, fusion requires nucleons to:
1) physically strike the nucleus of another atom (protons have to overcome the electrical field of electrons surrounding the atom unless it's a plasma where the electrons have been stripped away; neutrons can penetrate, but must come from another nuclear source as neutrons decay into protons very quickly) There's an awful lot of space inside an atom, and it's hard to target the nucleus. That's why you need density -- if you fire at one and miss, you might hit the one next to it or behind it... or the one behind that, maybe.
2) fuse with the nucleus rather than ricochet or split the nucleus
The only known way to do that is with intense heat (heat is just movement -- so fast moving particles) and pressure (pressure is just density of the fast-moving particles). So, when you have a lot of hydrogen in a compact space moving around fast, you get collisions that occasionally fuse. Even with stars the size of our Sun, it takes quantum mechanics to create sustained fusion -- as even with the heat and pressure of our star, the fusion rate would be low save for the protons being close enough to quantum tunnel to fuse.
If you want cold fusion, yes, you can set up a neutron beam from a nuclear source and it'll bombard atoms with neutrons which will fuse with the nuclei, then decay into protons causing the atoms to transmute due the fusion... but, it's not a sustained reaction and gives off little energy. It'll stop when you turn the beam off.
If you want real sustainable H2 to He fusion reactions, you have to have the hydrogen as a dense plasma. That's never going to happen at room temperature or pressure. Sure, some stray cosmic rays will cause fusion in the upper atmosphere and occasionally random radioactive atoms emit particles that fuse with surrounding atoms... but, it's not going to power a nuclear plant. May as well claim you can run a car on tap water instead of gasoline.