Friday science roundup, January 28, 2011

Just one story on the FSR this week, because this one’s a lulu.

Now here is two words I bet you never thought you would here together again, ever : cold fusion.

Yes, amazingly, it’s back in the news. Those of us who were around back when those two words first came together in the public imagination will likely remember those heady few days between the first news story concerning this amazing scientific breakthrough which was going to change the world and finally solve all our energy problems forever, and the inevitable realization that it was all a bunch of crap and the whole thing was a big sad cruel joke created by overenthusiastic scientists and an ever more overenthusiastic media.

Well, hang on to your hats, because apparently it’s 1988 against and we’re getting on this ride just one more time for old times’ sake.

This time, it’s a pair of Italian scientists named Rossi and Focardi who are claiming to have invented a phenomenal new process that will yield tons of free energy via a room-temperature reaction that produces neither carbon emissions nor radioactive waste, and produces eight times the energy you put into it or possibly a lot more.

Now, as an open minded rugged skeptic who prides himself on being both open to anything and fooled by nothing, the first challenge this sort of story presents is as simple as it is profound : not immediately dismissing the whole thing with a derisive, mocking laugh out of leftover bitterness from the first time around.

It’s very tempting, and would be both easy and very satisfying. It would be the simplest thing in the world to just say “Hah! We’re not falling for that again, you sad, sad losers! Find a new scam!”

It felt good just typing it. But as easy and fun as that would be, it’s not logical or right. Just because in one rather famous case, the effect turned out to be bogus and the media looked foolish for getting us all excited over what turned out to be nothing does not mean the cold fusion is impossible and that anything bearing that label must, perforce, be a completely and total fraud. These guys could truly be onto something, and it would be a global shame if we dismissed a revolutionary technology that could lead to many wonderful things simply because the field it’s in is somewhat disreputable because of something that happened 23 years ago.

That said, Rossi and Focardi are making a lot of very bold claims, and not providing a lot of the crucial details needed to let other scientists judge said claims for themselves, and so the possibility that they, too, are entirely wrong, or worse, frauds, still remains.

Interestingly, they claim they do not understand how their reaction works. That is, in and of itself, quite damning in many people’s eyes. It is always tempting to jump to the conclusion that if you can’t explain how something works, it doesn’t work. But that’s letting intellectual hubris get in the way of real science. Science does not require an explanation of how something works, it merely requires a demonstration that it works. The explanations can come later.

After all, humanity used fire for thousands of years without having the slightest idea of why it did what it did. They knew that it worked, and how it worked, and what you could do with it. Theories about combustion, oxidation, and chemical energy didn’t come along till quite recently, and it didn’t get in the way of us using fire to found civilization at all.

So have they demonstrated that their process works? Sadly, that’s where things get muddy. They certainly seem to think they have, and they definitely demonstrated something at a big press conference last week. Some other scientists were there and claimed that they verified that it was not a chemical reaction, but the real meat of the thing, the explanation of how it all works and, most tellingly, the means to independantly verify their results via repeating their experiments, remain undisclosed.

This quote from the letter telling them that their patent had been rejected sums it up nicely :

As the invention seems, at least at first, to offend against the generally accepted laws of physics and established theories, the disclosure should be detailed enough to prove to a skilled person conversant with mainstream science and technology that the invention is indeed feasible. … In the present case, the invention does not provide experimental evidence (nor any firm theoretical basis) which would enable the skilled person to assess the viability of the invention. The description is essentially based on general statement and speculations which are not apt to provide a clear and exhaustive technical teaching

In other words, if you are going to make this kind of claim, which would seem to deny the laws of physics, you had better be able to offer more than vague statements and extraordinary boasts.

Their defenders might well claim that Rossi and Focardi are just doing what they have to do to keep others from stealing their brilliant idea and claiming it for their own. But that might be how business works, but it’s certainly not how science works. In science, you do not claim what you cannot prove, and more importantly, what you cannot allow other scientists to prove.

So is their claim real? Are they truly the revolutionary, world-changing scientists they claim to be, or just some of the boldest fraudsters the world has ever known?

I don’t claim to know. I am not qualified to understand their theoretical arguments, and if the world’s top scientists can’t figure out if they are lying, neither can I. It all sounds very fishy, but there is no “fishy soundingness principle” in science. There is just proof or disproof, and if their claims are legit, Rossi and Focardi are doing themselves no favours by playing this so close to the vest.

But who knows? Maybe we’ll all be using one of their reactors in our homes come 2020.

6 thoughts on “Friday science roundup, January 28, 2011

  1. I’ll react to it the same way I react to claims of the paranormal. As long as they don’t want my money, I won’t pass judgment. I also won’t get excited until I see evidence that it will make a positive difference in my life.

  2. They can’t have it both ways… patent protection and keeping the necessary details secret. Their reactor boils down to pulsing hydrogen gas through compressed nickel powder, heated to 150 – 500 C with an electric heating coil until it gets going. It just looks like an elaborate tea kettle to me. Their patent application was amateurish, vague, and sloppy. No wonder it was rejected.

    • I was hoping you’d chime in, dear, seeing as you are far more qualified to judge the technical details than I am!

      I keep picturing someone ripping open their mysterious blue box and revealing rows of large batteries inside. Oh, so THAT is how you get 400W in to turn into 12400W out… you don’t count the batteries! 😛

  3. People are understandably sceptical about this. I would be myself, had I not had the chance to meet some of the people involved. They are elderly, modest, have being steadily improving their Ni-H energy generators since 1994, and they are not asking anybody for their money. They invited their boss to the demonstration. If this turns out be a fraud, they will loose their jobs.
    Of course there is no generally accepted theory – the physics establishment has placed a complete veto against anything on cold fusion since 1991. Very few young scientists want to risk their careers by being associated with “voodoo science”.

    Who cares. It works, and these machines will sell because they are economicallv viable.

    • If it works, why won’t they be more open about the process? Why was their patent rejected? Why can’t they open up their process to scientific scrutiny?

      I am sure they are lovely gentlemen. And I am not saying I know for a fact that the process is not real. But if it is a legitimate discovery, they are doing themselves and the world a grave disservice by behaving in such a suspicious and secretive fashion.

      And to be blunt, inviting your boss to the demonstration proves nothing, if the boss is not a scientist and/or is not allowed to inspect the process thoroughly. Having fooled one person enough to get funding is hardly proof of anything, is it?

      Also, it is entirely possible to be sincerely convinced you have something and simply be wrong. It’s happened before.

      I want their find to be legitimate. It would mean a great deal for the whole world and all of humanity. But we do the world and our humanitarian goals no favours by accepting something simply because we wish it to be true.

      They should publish detailed plans for how their reactor works, detailed enough so that others can build their own and verify that it does, indeed, work. That would be all that would be needed to silence the critics forever, clear their names of suspicion, and clearly and completely establish them amongst the greatest of all inventors for creating the machine that will solve humanity’s energy problems forever. Their legacy would be massive and there would be no doubt as to who invented it. They would quite likely also become quite rich from personal appearance fees, scientific prizes, and book sales alone.

      So why be so secretive if they have nothing to hide?

      • It’s pretty clear to me why they are being secretive. They are going after the money, and don’t want to get scooped. Cashing in on science can be tricky. They are applying a business model to a scientific endeavour, which have opposing views for the need for transparency of the development process.

        As for the merits of the process itself, there isn’t enough information yet to decide whether it is a major breakthrough, or a scam. Time will tell.

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