Gerhard Adam wrote:

"My point remains .... without a theory, then you cannot know what the phenonemon is . . ."

That is completely incorrect. Before 1939 it was obvious that the Sun was undergoing a nuclear fusion reaction, because the Sun is composed almost entirely of hydrogen. However, the precise nature of that reaction was unknown. Along the same lines, we can be certain that cold fusion is fusion because it consumes no chemical fuel, and it produces thousands of times more heat than any chemical reaction with the same mass of reactants could produce. The key point is that it produces helium in the same ratio to that heat as plasma fusion does. Therefore it is fusion.

(We cannot measure the decrease in deuterium in the cell because there is too much deuterium overall. We can only measure the increase in helium.)

"Experimental results are simply that .... experimental. You cannot develop a technology merely on the existence of a difficult to reproduce lab event."

Every modern technology from 1800 to the present began as a small scale lab event. The effect is not that difficult to reproduce. It is far easier to reproduce than transistors were in 1955, when they were already commercialized. Unfortunately, heat on a small scale is of no use whereas a low-power transistor from a 10% yield production batch was useful in 1955. It was far more expensive than a vacuum tube, but still useful.

"Everyone knows that lightning produces immense amounts of power, but it is pointless to consider it for exploitation if it can't be harnessed. That's what I mean by the hype."

That is not hype at all. As soon as Franklin demonstrated that lightning is electricity, that proved large-scale electricity is possible and pointed the way to future applications. Franklin went on to produce large amounts of electricity from capacitors: enough to electrocute a turkey, and nearly electrocute himself.

"You've also indicated several times of experimental runs with zero(0) power input producing output power. This is a 'something for nothing' phenomenon which suggests that the power output is simply spontaneous requiring no input or trigger."

Not at all. The input power in cold fusion was electrolysis is only used to form highly loaded palladium deuteride. Other methods of forming the same material also produce the same effect. These other methods such as gas loading and ion beam loading do not require any input electricity. There is a small amount of energy in gas loading (to pressure the gas), and a tiny flow of electricity with proton conductors as well, but as Mizuno showed the input is thousands of times smaller than the output.

With electrolysis, output has sometimes exceeded input by a factor of ~50. The electrolysis can be turned off and the output continues by itself, sometimes for hours or days in what is called heat after death. There is no direct connection or correlation between input and output. Input energy is used only to form the material. You might compare it to the energy needed to manufacture the material.

"Something must be given up to produce output, so this statement is incorrect or misleading."

Deuterium fuses to produce the heat output, and helium, and some tritium. The input electrolysis energy does not convert or transducer into output heat in any sense.

"In short, in the absence of a theory, that means there is no explanation for what is happening."

Yes there is: you need only measure the products of fusion. You do not need to know the mechanism by which it occurs.

"However, the problem runs deeper than that.

'Pamela Mosier-Boss, a researcher at the US Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Centre in San Diego, said her group had detected telltale signs that nuclear fusion reactions normally found in the centre of the sun were afoot in a simple bench-top device.'"

You are confused. This has nothing to do with excess heat experiments. Mosier-Boss et al. have measured heat successfully in many experiments, but they make no effort to do so in their CR-30 neutron detection experiments. It would be difficult to perform calorimetry with this device. (Impossible, I should think.)

There is no doubt that the same code deposited material does produce heat because it has been measured with calorimetry and an IR camera. In fact it produces heat in nearly 100% of the tests.

"This is a FAR cry from producing hundreds of times the input energy. From this comment, it would appear that, at best, there may be some evidence that it is possible (note her statement that this is the FIRST scientific report .... )"

You are talking about completely different experiments in which output energy was not measured, as I said.

"While I am sure that there is plenty of politics, and shenanigans involving funding, it is equally true that simply having an unexplained phenomenon isn't any criteria to award funding either."

I have read the letters by DOE managers that turned down funding, and uploaded them to LENR-CANR.org. I have read letters from Journal editors rejecting papers in cold fusion summarily without peer review. I have read hundreds of attacks by scientists in journals and magazines such as the Scientific American. The people who oppose cold fusion are not shy or reticent about expressing their views. Their motivations are transparent. They state their reasons for opposing the research very clearly, and they have done so hundreds of times in the mass media. For example, F. Slakey, the Science Policy Administrator of the American Physical Society, wrote in the New Scientist that cold fusion scientists are "a cult of fervent half-wits" "While every result and conclusion they publish meets with overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, they resolutely pursue their illusion of fusing hydrogen in a mason jar. . . . And a few scientists, captivated by [Fleischmann and Pons'] fantasy . . . pursue cold fusion with Branch Davidian intensity."

In 1990 an editor in Nature wrote: "Would a measure of unrestrained mockery, even a little unqualified vituperation have speeded cold fusion's demise?"

In the mid-1990s Robert Park, Zimmerman and others vowed that they would “root out and fire” and federal researcher who expressed support for cold fusion, attended the conference on the subject, or attempted to publish a paper, because, all cold fusion researchers are "lunatics and criminals.” Park made similar remarks last week

I have probably read every major attack published against cold fusion in the mass media and in Scientific Magazines. I have never seen one that made reference to experimental evidence, or that described the experiments. They are all ad hominem attacks except for one in the Scientific American which attempted to describe the experiment but which was entirely incorrect in every detail. See:

http://lenr-canr.org/News.htm#SciAmSlam

"While it may not be nice to hear it, the simple reality is that after the disappointment of the 1989 announcement, cold fusion has to come up with a theory or impressive reason to be given another chance at government funding."

There was no disappointment in 1989. The 1989 results were replicated by ~98 labs by 1990. The excess heat results were replicated and reported in the 153 papers in major peer-reviewed papers by 1992. Tritium and other nuclear effects were reported in ~100 other papers. I have copies of those papers from the library at Los Alamos. No other experimental claim in history that has been replicated more than five or 10 times has been considered doubtful. There is no rational basis for the attacks and refusal to fund this research. It is entirely political. The people who oppose the research are well known to me. I have met with and spoken with them on many occasions. Their reasons for opposing this research have everything to do with money -- with their own livelihoods -- and with academic politics, and nothing remotely to do with science. One of them, a scientifically illiterate reporter named Taubes, wrote a book attacking cold fusion. He told a cold fusion researcher: “I do not give a shit whether your results are real or not. I am writing this book to make money.”

This is not a conspiracy by the way. I know Taubes, Park, Zimmerman and the others quite well, as I said, and I assure you, they are not smart enough to conspire their way out of a paper bag.

"One thing I do know .... whoever comes up with a device to produce free energy would become richer than god."

This is a naïve view of history. I suggest you read about what happened to other people in the past came up with important breakthroughs. In any case, I know several hundred people who have come up devices that produce energy from fusion at room temperature without significant radiation. They have not been rewarded. On the contrary, in many cases their reputations, lives, careers and marriages have been derailed or ruined. Distinguished professors and Institute Fellows have demoted to menial stock room jobs, forced into early retirement, or fired. Their experiments have been sabotaged, their children attacked in schools. For 20 years they have been savagely attacked and ridiculed in the mass media. Members of Congress goaded by their academic rivals call them to Washington, accuse them of fraud, and demand to see their personal letters and tax returns going back many years. What has happened to these people would have been unthinkable in academic science in the 18th or 19th centuries, but today the only things that count in science are money, politics and influence.

This blog is devoted to "depravity." The abuses and depravity of modern day research funding, micro-management and the abuses of the peer-review system dwarf all previous scientific scandals. Unless you have encountered the abuses first hand you cannot imagine how corrupt it has become!