Posted on 12/12/2012 4:54:03 PM PST by TXnMA
Frankly, having access to such resources is one of the reasons I chose to do my research in an industrial environment, rather than as an independent. The downside is that all my patents are owned by big corporations... :-(
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Again -- like it or not -- "shoestring" lab setups tend to be cobbled together with whatever is at hand, and, frankly, look "sloppy". In fact, I just saw a video of one italian LENR lab setup with cheap, hand-held (battery powered) meters precariously resting on the platen of a drill press that had been dragged over to do duty as a lab bench.
Not only do such "lashups" hinder viewer confidence because they "look unprofessional", they do tend to produce unreliable results because things are not fixed in place to minimize deviations and instruments usually are not displaying the labels of recent calibrations. Worse, such "jury-rigs" frequently display little attention to safety, as well.
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Bottom line: shoddy-looking experiments performed by non-credentialed researchers are expected to produce less credible results. And when you add in one or two hucksters of the Rossi type, (who explain little, communicate poorly -- and [repeatedly] promise [but don't produce] miracles) it is only human to discredit the whole endeavour...
Then, when you add in vocal (but not necessarily erudite) non-professional "champions of the underdog", who belittle critics -- credibility of the subject takes off in a handbasket.
Sorry -- "Dat just de way t'ings is..."
Look at the video of Iwamura’s paper presentation. (Link is in my comment #1.) He presents atomic weight data.
I just got soured over Rossi's grandiose promises, that lead to nothing at all. Where is Rossi? What is the status of his megawatt cold-fusion system? Has he finally gotten an independent tester to validate his machine in an outside lab? I've just gotten so damn tired of him and his crap.
Large outfits, with reputations to preserve, tend to at least try to deliver on what they say.
Whatever is going on, if it does not involve fission of heavy elements, then they've got something new there.
Ah yes, back in the day... When there were only 4 elements!
Oh .. oh ... I know that one ...
Bacon
Potatoes
Salt
And chocolate ...
Ah, no, those are the four basic food groups ...
Uh ...
Air
Phlegm
Dirt
And water?
Hops, Malt, Barley, and some mysterious carbonation stuff.
In my experience doing and managing research inside large companies, corporate researchers report considerably less than they have already delivered to their product development colleagues. And they delay their reports to the public significantly -- until their own people have a good head start on commercializing their discoveries.
It's called "competitive advantage" -- and it is the primary raison d'etre for large firms' funding of research in the first place.
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A second strategy is the withholding of research results as "internal trade secrets" -- usually without even divulging the technology via patent disclosures! A significant number of my best discoveries are still being "held as trade secrets" by my former employers.
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And really savvy companies employ a third research strategy: patenting and licensing of "intellectual property". This is especially true for discoveries "outside the core mission" which provide no direct competitive advantage, but for which others are wiling to pay big bucks. For instance, check out the annual report of, say, Texas Instruments: an amazingly large fraction of their revenue is from "royalties". Savvy corporate managers are fond of saying,
"There's nothing quite as nice as 'IP' (intellectual property) revenue: discover something you don't need, license it -- and sit back and enjoy the checks rolling in every month..."
Curiously, there are / were even some (former) Fortune 500 companies who never grasped that third concept / opportunity...
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Independent paranoids like Rossi fear their ideas will be "stolen", and unless they are spectacularly successful early on, neither advance the (published) state of the art nor reap any benefits (except for scammed investments) from their efforts...
Note: You can't patent what you do not understand well enough to explain it in a patent application. (Fundamental research on principles and mechanisms is key to defending application patents...)
Any credentialed scientist who thinks like that should be drummed out of the profession. And that is most certainly NOT what I am talking about. The vast majority of the work on LENR has been done by well-qualified researchers at mainstream organizations or who have emerged FROM mainstream organizations.
That the work has been forced to operate on a shoestring is due to political manipulation of the science review process both in government and academia to shut down any and all funding and research. Said manipulators have even interfered in industry funding.
"Then, when you add in vocal (but not necessarily erudite) non-professional "champions of the underdog", who belittle critics -- credibility of the subject takes off in a handbasket."
The pathological skeptics have been criticized by fully qualified professionals in addition to "non-professional "champions of the underdog"".
I suggest again that you read Beaudette's book. He is certainly a "well-qualified professional". So was Eugene Mallove. So was Julian Schwinger. So is Brian Josephson.
However, I note that the index to Beaudette's book does not even have an entry for the eminent LENR 'researcher', "Rossi"...
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As you probably know, even we "heavy hitters" mostly did our earliest research in makeshift fashion. However, those of us who went on to become "credentialed professionals" soon learned that sloppy setups are detrimental to both accuracy and repeatability (not to mention safety).
Even the simple and inexpensive expedient of fastening all components down to a common plywood substrate and immobilizing and minimizing wiring and tubing connections considerably improves reliability of results (and experimenter safety).
Researchers who habitually ignore such simple discipline merely display disregard for quality results and self-label themselves as unprofessional "hacks"... The rest of us learned better lab practice.
Note that I said, "SELF-label"...
Sorry — “Dat just de way t’ings is...”
***Yes, for engineering, but not for science. The science results have been solid for years. The engineering is just beginning to scale up. Almost all the criticism of the engineering results has crossed over to anti-science due to ignorance of the subject matter.
Who cares where Rossi is? He’s engaging in engineering, not science. Would you expect TxNMA’s employer to reveal all of his research prior to obtaining a patent? Then why do you require it of Rossi?
However, I note that the index to Beaudette’s book does not even have an entry for the eminent LENR ‘researcher’, “Rossi”...
***First of all, the book was written before Rossi ever came onto the scene. Secondly, Rossi is not primarily a researcher. He’s a business man looking to generate money from his engineering effort. He does not have the resources you so eloquently advocate. Why do you criticize his research when even your own experience suggests that he’s following your posted business strategies?
For instance, check out the annual report of, say, Texas Instruments: an amazingly large fraction of their revenue is from “royalties”. Savvy corporate managers are fond of saying, “There’s nothing quite as nice as ‘IP’ (intellectual property) revenue: discover something you don’t need, license it — and sit back and enjoy the checks rolling in every month...”
***A few years ago I worked for a $multibillion company that was recently acquired by TI. Their approach to IP was amazingly short sighted, focusing only on things that would become products. It wasn’t until a meeting between the field engineers and the legal department that the approach changed, because I pointed out to them that I had approached Legal on several patents that were outside of our own product scope. At the time, they were not interested. But during the meeting they claimed they WERE interested, that their focus all along was on generating patents. So I talked about several of my projects that were turned down. Their policy changed on that day. They had missed out on hundreds of patents from field engineers & others that could have generated revenue.
Actually, your question is sorta like asking the guy who discovered that petroleum will burn if you can have a Maserati...
***At least one mod viewed it in the same perspective
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/backroom/2917406/posts?page=3976#3976
I’m very curious to hear his reaction to this discovery.
***This is not a discovery. It is a replication of earlier discovery which goes back years. Nuclear Transmutations have been part of some LENR results for a long time. There are over 350 papers that discuss it on the LENR-CANR website
http://lenr-canr.org/
Here’s one of the recommended books on the subject.
Mizuno, T., “Nuclear Transmutation: The Reality of Cold Fusion” describes the experimental work of Prof. Mizuno.
http://www.amazon.com/s/189-0162132-4114471?ie=UTF8&index=books&keywords=Nuclear%20Transmutation%20Cold%20Fusion&link_code=qs&tag=thedesmoinescity
oops, make that 120 papers, I used the wrong search function
http://lenr-canr.org/index/Summary/Summary.php
search for ‘transmutation’
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