[extropy-chat] Elvis Sightings

[Ben Goertzel]

Eugen,

The story that the researchers tell is as follows:

1) The experiments are simple but hard to get right, because when you  
run the cell for weeks on end, gunk tends to build up inside them so  
a lot of care needs to be taken

2) In most variants of the experiment, the phenomenon only occurs a  
certain % of the time.  Arata's set-up seems to be an exception, but  
his set-up is not so easy to run in your garage.  The variation  
appears to be related to the batch of palladium used, which suggests  
it has to do with impurities in the palladium.

So, you have a phenomenon that requires extremely careful set-up,  
takes a long time to run, and succeeds only a certain percentage of  
the time.

And then, once you've done it and gotten positive results, everyone  
laughs at you and calls you a MEGA-BULLSHITter anyway...

Let's say that you, Eugen Leitl, took the time to replicate the  
results yourself.  Let's say you put in a year of part-time effort on  
this project, learning the boring little ways of getting the  
deuterium to load really densely into the palladium, keeping your  
cell running cleanly and so forth.  Then, at the end of the year,  
what would your result be?  Well, it would be just another paper to  
add to the existing list of replications.  How would one more  
replication, by you, change the situation any?

The re-counting of McKubre's experiments in Beaudette's book are  
instructive, for example.

-- Ben

On Feb 3, 2007, at 5:48 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 02, 2007 at 05:54:57PM -0600, Damien Broderick wrote:
>
>> Have you looked at papers by Peter Hagelstein yet?
>
> Yes, but my beef is with the experiments. I'm not sure there's
> an anomaly to explain. What's needed is experimental proof
> of excess heat.
>
> http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Hagelsteinsummaryofi.pdf
> contains plenty of claims which are trivial to reproduce.
> Each one of these claims would be enough for a Nobel prize.
> This is pretty old stuff, why did they stop? You don't
> need a large budget, and you could do it in your cellar.
>
> So why did they stop?
>
> -- 
> Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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