Rep. Rohrabacher on Cold Fusion

Once a turkey, always a turkey. Rep. Rohrabacher reaches far back into history to cite the public and “official” reactions to research, theories, and inventions, mostly occurring prior to the establishment of what is known as the “scientific method.” This notion, evolved from the late 1600s to the present, is that an experimental researcher presents the work in a clear fashion, indicating the details of the equipment, the measuring devices, the environmental conditions, the step-by-step method used, and the results. The glaring problem with the Pons-Fleischmann announcement of the achievement of cold fusion is that they didn’t bother to carefully document their methods and measurements for others to review and replicate.

I was a high school student when the first laser was devised. Within the year, virtually every high school regional science fair had a least one entrant who had replicated the device. In college, every physics major could follow the recipe set out by Einstein to demonstrate the photoelectric effect of light, an experiment that challenged the previously accepted notion that light was fully defined as a wave phenomena.

Rep. Rohrabacher states that the would-be discoverers of cold fusion “have done nothing wrong.” But of course they have done something wrong. They haven’t documented their years of research in a clear manner so others in their field can replicate the results, if there are any. That’s what science is all about. They aren’t being vilified because others are afraid or jealous. They’re derided because they’ve been sloppy, certainly in the documentation, and maybe in the execution of the experiment.

JULIE WHITE

Hawthorne