I took dark amusement in Mitt Romney's recent brush with science regarding the University of Utah's sponsorship of research into Cold Fusion in the late Eighties:
I'm also astonished how, towards the end of this audio interview, he decries the idea of an entity using government guarantees for profit-making in the mortgage market, when he demands precisely the same thing early in the audio interview for research into nuclear power.
The flip-floppery makes one's head spin!
But I really wanted to talk about Cold Fusion.
I arrived at the University of Utah in July, 1989, about five months after the whole Cold Fusion balloon blew up in their face. I even met some of the University people involved in the mess: in particular, James Brophy, vice-president of research. I was struck at the rather odd attitude people in Utah had towards scientific research, in general. It amounted to a kind of faith in the industriousness of the Mormon people.
The Mormons ultimately derive from northern New York state and are direct heirs to the tradition of Yankee ingenuity. Compared to my hometown of Albuquerque, Salt Lake City is full of well-organized, small-scale industrial enterprises. It's a wonder to behold, actually!
But 20th-Century science was characterized by heavy involvement by two entities: 1.) government, and 2.) large-scale industry. Both are anathema to the Yankee tradition, which is shop-oriented. People in Utah found the idea of a cheap, small-scale, state-supported enterprise beating the Big Boys at their own game to be completely irresistible. So much so, that it made them open to swindlers like Pons and Fleischmann.
So, even at this late date, in the rarefied Mormon political realm that Mitt Romney inhabits, three layers removed from the actual scientists, the appeal of Cold Fusion still hasn't perished. Much like how, three layers removed from the actual soldiers, the idea of the Soviet Union and the Cold War hasn't died yet either.
The ox is a potent symbol in Mormon culture, and it lives on and on too, even though there are very few oxen in Utah today.
A Romney Administration will be to politics like the Lawrence Welk Show was to music: an animatronic simulcrum of real life.
Cold fusion has been replicated thousands of times in hundreds of major laboratories. I have a collection of 1,200 peer-reviewed journal papers on cold fusion copied from the library at Los Alamos. I suggest you review this literature before commenting on this research. See:
ReplyDeletehttp://lenr-canr.org/
I took a brief look at the Web Site. As I recall, the reputations of Pons & Fleischmann & the University of Utah were destroyed as much by the manner of exposition (science by press release, rather than peer review) as by anything they presented. Ever-lasting hostility is one of the sad remnants of what look like interesting (but poorly-understood) experiments. The uncontrollable heat output is a bad sign, and suggests something chemical is happening.
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