Oh, they did a lot more than just lobby. Gene Mallove discovered that the MIT cold fusion experiments (which were used to deny that cold fusion existed),had, in actual fact, FOUND THE SAME ANOMALOUS HEAT that Pons and Fleischmann had. "Someone" ALTERED THE DATA in the report from what had actually been found in the experiment.
So, the only DOCUMENTED case of fraud known in the whole field of cold fusion was committed NOT by the folks who were "touting" cold fusion, but by those who were "denying" it.
My question is why? If you were the researcher who corroborated P&F's work, would you bow down to the University or would you publish that you had indeed replicated their results? Now, if someone altered the data, why didn't the person whose data was altered step forth?
If what is said about what MIT did is true, that is unconscionable behavior and someone should have said something; the researcher who corroborated the data should have stepped forth. What was the person who replicated the tests job? Was he a student, teacher, tenured teacher, who? Did they know the trail the data took so they could point to the person doing the data manipulation?
If I just replicated a test that will affect all mankind, I'm not going to be worried about getting canned over coming forward and stating that the results were replicated AND that someone had altered the data.
I don't know how they do it now, whether they use computers or not, but when I went to school, any class where you had to keep a lab book, you had to number the pages on day one. Now, it's possible to set up two sets of books but that doesn't matter as the person who corroborated the results would use his normal book which should have reflected all the work he or she had done since the book was started.
This makes no sense. It's like the conspiracy theorists that think there is a magical cure for cancer but it's being withheld due to the money brought in by normal procedures. The only problem, Doctors get cancer too and no matter how committed they were to their job, It's one thing to take one for the team, it's another thing to die knowing there is a cure.
I'd like to know all about MIT's role in this. They are a preeminent school, in the top five and they're going to risk their considerable reputation over this?
How much funding if any do they receive for hot fusion?
I hope the whole sordid truth comes out.