Warmed over bullshit or fertilizer?

How about both?

The 2016 NRL briefing on LENR, written per Congressional request. There are some interesting possibilities here, if we proceed carefully and effectively.

I sent these first reactions to the private CMNS list:

First finding. This was an FOIA request, and this was not the only document disclosed. I looked at the directory on the Vault site.
http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/dod/

There are three documents with the date 2017-07-06

http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/dod/16-F-1333_%20DOC_02_LENR_Briefing.pdf is the briefing we have seen.

http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/dod/17F0621_Final_Response.pdf is the FOIA approval (of little interest, other than a note that someone else obtained the same information)

http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/dod/16-F-1333_%20DOC_01_LENR_Emails.pdf , however, is a collection of emails about the report. Some gleanings from it:

The persons responsible for the Report were:
Robin Staffin, SES OSD OUSD ATL (US)
Thomas A Mehlhorn, SES USN NAVAL RESEARCH LAB (US).

The requested funding for this work was $50,000 to NRL.

Staffin:

Tom. Attached are some documents that I promised. The MS Word file contains the House language for the briefing. The ERAB pdf refers to the DOE Energy Research Advisory Board study oompleted in 1989. The SC2004 is the Office of Science sponsored update to the ERAB report completed in 2004, and the CF physics extract is the physics analysis taken from a JASON study, I would probably like to talk with you and your folks, if nothing but for the pleasure of having and enjoyable physics discussion.  Note the Popular Mechanics article (“The House is Suddenly…”). I think it is likely that our report will he noticed. But if we wanted applause, we would have joined the circus.

Huizenga called Cold Fusion the “Scientific Fiasco of the Century.” It was, and many otherwise smart people made fools of themselves, on all sides, as seen in the light of history. Staffin and Mehlhorn joined the circus! They were paid to generate a report for those who need to know, and what they did for the money was largely a cut-and-paste job, no depth, done by two people obviously ignorant on the topic, with a few unattributed snarky comments tossed in.

Congress would need a report showing the state of the science. It is a very difficult field, that’s obvious. They point out some legitimate problems, problems well-known, but only provide the shallowest take on them, as if “problems” means “nothing worth looking at here, move along.”

However, that is my own shallow and fast take. Now comes the work, which I am beginning today. I will create study documents on this report, and will collect and cite their sources, such as can be known.

The NRL report does not generally cite sources. If a high school student created such a report, they could be dinged for plagiarism. It gives summary opinion without attributing it to the opinionator.

Initial study document: http://coldfusioncommunity.net/briefing-on-low-energy-nuclear-reactions-research/

(presently this is a draft)

This will be greatly expanded to study each aspect of the Report.

Blog post on this, http://coldfusioncommunity.net/briefing-on-low-energy-nuclear-reactions-research/ (this post)

(CFC blog posts are often highly opinionated — and sometimes polemic. Increasingly, CFC pages are used for more neutral presentations or the development of consensus.)

Ultimately, however, we will facilitate the creation of a Briefing that would be what would properly have been provided by NRL to Congress, and our political wing will communicate that to Congress. It is essential that we begin to approach LENR activism professionally, as if it is important.

Is it important? Who is on board this possibility?
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And now a word from our sponsor: Infusion Institute has some limited funding from a private donor. As well, there is a GoFundMe page: https://www.gofundme.com/cold-fusion-journalism

As a result of community generosity, my trip to Florida to cover the Rossi v. Darden trial, and then to Washington, D.C., was fully covered. It helped that I kept costs down by taking the bus, and by staying in an AirBnB room, and my hosts in D.C. were generous, but long term, it takes money to pay expenses. More than the money, every time I get a message that someone donated to the GoFundMe campaign, it encourages me to keep working at this. Even if it’s just $5. It makes a difference.

The blog also will be limited if it is just me, compared to what it can be as a full-on community project. Gradually, there is more participation.

Infusion Institute is my vehicle; at this point it is how this work is supported. I could not afford it on my social security income. I expect Infusion Institute to support others who do similar work, to improve communication in the field. We are working with LENRIA and Cold Fusion Now and Infinite Energy (projects will become visible soon). Diversity creates power.

 

Author: Abd ulRahman Lomax

See http://coldfusioncommunity.net/biography-abd-ul-rahman-lomax/

2 thoughts on “Warmed over bullshit or fertilizer?”

  1. Abd – the format of the study document falls apart after the heading “Spin-Boson Oscillator Theory” about 2/3 the way down. Lots of unreadable stuff. Your comments are however cogent, and there’s probably not much I can add to the discussion.

    Maybe the attitude of the reviewers was that, since this is Bad Science, they complied with the letter of the commission and produced a report, but didn’t bother going deeply. This is a fairly common reaction to needing to write a report about ideas that are thought to be rubbish. I even do the same when I’m asked to comment on some Perpetual Motion idea involving connecting a motor and generator in a loop.

    The main thing that I think the mainstream theorists are missing is that, whereas normally nuclear reactions are single-body or dual-body (in a plasma), LENR seems to be a multi-body reaction and so the rules will be different since the conditions are massively different. Periodicity in a lattice, both of mass and energy-levels, will produce different effects than single energy-wells or masses. There will be different resonance effects.

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