SCIENTISM-1, GLUCK-0; the first half.

Motto:

If you can't be a good example, you'll have to be a terrible warning. (Catherine Aird)

My gratitude goes to the readers who have answered to my questionnaire re SCIENTISM and LENR or have tried to help me in other ways. This gratitude includes NOT citing them in connection with some quite dangerous heretical ideas for which I take alone the full responsibility.

Actually, this paper just tries to call your active attention to the survival problem of LENR, it is an expression of deep discontent with the situation in the field and is a new assertion of the idea that only a mixed approach (scientific and technological) can assure a future for LENR. Homo sapiens and Homo faber have to work together for pleasing Homo discontentus. The generally accepted idea is different- first Homo sapiens has to decipher all the puzzles of LENR and then he can tell Homo faber what to do.

Scientism as a general concept is an unrealistic belief in the omnipotence of OUR science (Science hic et nunc). However it is in any case much better than the contrary opinion and, in practice is sooner or later corrected by reality. Perhaps the correct, direct question could have been:

“Is LENR a special victim of scientism?” A very inopportune question because it is common sense that Cold Fusion has problems of development due to oppression by closed minded and ill-willed skeptics and only lack of funding and support has stopped LENR to become the most important, clean, green energy source on Terra. However, till the reproducibility problem will not be solved= it will be something very rotten in LENR-land.

I have to confess: only a good dose of plum brandy has saved me from depression when during my study of the papers to be presented at the coming ICCF-18 in a keynote paper (Kidwell) I have read: “Unfortunately, the poor reproducibility (<6%) prevented discovery of the trigger for this excess heat.” This is a kind of reality I am unable to accept. My ideas are probably solitary and non-scientific and deeply mistaken; I wrote an Open Letter to the previous ICCF-17 and I have told straightly what I think-http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2012/08/open-letter-to-iccf-17.html and this was ended with:

“We have to acknowledge that LENR is like a caterpillar that has to be metamorphosed in LENR+- a butterfly able to fly (i.e. to generate useful energy).. Instead of conclusions…
I think the best option is for radical changes, first of all in the mode(s) of thinking in/re LENR.”

That my success/impact/influence was zero or even negative is demonstrated inter alia by the very slogan of the coming ICCF:

“Applying the Scientific Method to Understanding Anomalous Heat Effects: Opportunities and Challenges.”

Is this realistic, stimulating, inspiring?

Can the scientific method applied well when the process is not under control? Are Mother Nature’s answers useful when She whispers and stutters?

Is understanding the ultimate aim when we have to solve the problem of energy? (here I suddenly remembered quinine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinine that is used against malaria with some success, but its mechanism of action is still not fully understood. And LENR seems to be seriously ill; an analogy with malaria is even not so idiotic, high fever episodes are not predictable.

And nothing is more counter-productive and self-destructive than calling anomalous (even temporary) a phenomenon aiming to furnish energy for billions of people.

Otherwise, as Cuvier would say the crab is indeed a little red fish that moves backward. And LENR is purely scientific, completely knowable now, and is indeed weird.

One reader has interpreted my essay as a wake up call for conventional science; actually I am focusing on the LENR community that was not conventional but has recently embraced the idea of science as first priority, kind of Science uber alles. The crisis of global science- physics first-is a too complex subject for this blog, here and now.

Very interesting for me is the idea taken from the genius de jour, Nicholas Nassim Taleb of ‘via negativa’ in usual language it is more urgent and important to get first rid of the evil harmful things and only later add or build the positive things. Your humble friend has arrived to the same conclusion years ago see please my 20 Problem Solving Rules or this essay-puzzle

http://egooutpeters.blogspot.ro/2011/02/can-you-guess-word.html whose unique solution is the boldest word: NO!

In the case of LENR the “negative way” is to solve, to get rid of the life-or-death problem of reproducibility that also includes low intensity and duration of excess heat. I know well many of my friends will say that is stupid exaggeration coming from somebody unable to comprehend  the subtleties of the scientific method and will give examples  of sporadic or unpredictable  or uncontrollable processes that are doing quite well, scientifically i.e are studied with care by many researchers. The killer difference is that cold fusion had ab ovo great technological ambitions. Now it has great but undefined scientific ambitions.

An other wise reader has patiently explained me that what happened, rejection reaction to CF and the reactions of those rejected by the scientific community are both conditioned culturally and by the standard modes of thinking. We do not have to assume any conspiracy. The inability to cope with the frightening complexity of the reality, manifested as extreme wickedness of the research problems. The symbolic boat of LENR was caught and became a long-time prisoner between the Scylla of skepticism (outer) and the Charybdis of scientism (inner). This situation has to be seen as a special, extreme case of the crisis in science-physics-thinking- that claims a revolution. It seems also that the unique salvation of the crew from the fatal attraction of the rocks and deadly currents of Scylla and Chrybdis is to change the boat from LENR to LENR+ much more advanced technically.  

As a honest writer I take the responsibility for this dubious metaphor, the reader has exposed these ideas with proper words- but this is what I was able to understand from the message.

An other nice reader calls our/your unkind attention to dogmatism, including its institutionalized form- a formidable force of inertia. Surprisingly stubborn anyway. I will cite this friend protected by anonymity:

“There are times when the physical reality intrudes so greatly upon our consciousnesses that the old systems and institutions fail, or are weakened enough that revolutionary progress occurs. as opposed to the evolutionary progress that is the institutional methods great strength.” 

In other words powerful shocks are  necessary to remove the old inner paradigm of LENR and then the unjust chronicized rigid impenetrable skepticism can /will gradually melt away.

The obstacle and the way out are defined: “the principle difficulty holding back the field is the lack of researchers that can be open minded enough to allow the new ideas in, and skeptical enough to block the old and bad ideas out. Instead, you have true believers for whom every experiment is a vindication and victory, and skeptics for whom everything is a fraud and a cheat.” 

The debates around LENR are fierce, and the methods used quite despicable. A geographically distant close-in-thinking friend raises the idea of right-brain vs. left-brain thinking in these debates; perhaps this deserves a special chapter in an old vs. new thinking editorial about LENR (and LENR vs. LENR+)

An other subject of paramount importance: when scientism will be removed and the problem of energy source will be solved in practice, the field will need a new theory, actually a creative association of diverse theories. A task for generations, but technological and commercial success does NOT depend on a perfect theory. Frere Axil contributes a lot to this Theory in statu nascendi

Frere Alain, on his turn correlates the present problem with Kuhn’s theory including paradigm change that will be fatal for scientism and all the other obstacles in the way of a new energy technology- or more. I am citing Alain because he is resistant to attacks- is an anti-fragile personality. (we have to explore Nicholas Nassim Taleb’s book to learn how LENR – now fragmented, broken can become an Anti-fragile construction indeed, as it has to be!

A discontented author of a new theory has reminded us: “The status quo has always powerful allies” True at the third power…

Two complete answers to my questionnaire

Special thanks and my comments in blue go to B.A. and E.P. who have answered directly to all my 5 questions re Scientism.\

The first

Q1: Is the problem of scientism an important one or is just an unjustified attack of reactionary people against Science?

A 1: I do not know the answer, but I suspect it is 'just the way things go'. That is, it is part of the human condition. 

C1: Yes, we err, and err and so on, but supposedly less, perhaps it is time to solve the problem and for this we will need a lot of realism and pragmatism, Active discontent is an even more human condition, see please this quote by Andre Malraux: “Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one's ideas, to take a calculated risk - and to act.” Boldness is the key for LENR

Q2 Had/has our field, LENR, a scientism problem and in what extent has this influenced its development?

A2: LENR had their problem defined for them and it made success nearly impossible, because fusion is not the root cause of the energy.

C2- This is a radical idea, attacking in a way an original certainty of the field, possibly its most sacred cow. However being given the powerful meme ‘nuclear is bad’ non-nuclear or differently nuclear is a good thing. Just wait

Q3. Do you accept that in present there are some inextricable complex and temporary unknowable things in LENR?

A3: No, the problem is finding the right metaphor.  For example; I once told a group of children that birds pull the grass up rather than growing. Later in life if they want a nice lawn they will buy birdseed rather than grass seed. LENR has bought into D-D fusion where it does not exist.

I have to agree with both the metaphor idea and with LENR community chasing sometimes inexistent beasts and chimaeras.

Q4-5. What is the main problem of the field now and what is the best approach to a solution?

A 4-5: See above

C 4-5: This seems to imply that the most scarce and  critical resource now for LENR is creative ideas not funding but I will let you to decide if you say this or not.

Q6. What will be the global situation of the field in 1, 3, 5 years from now?

A6: Rossi, Defkalion or others may break out soon, but their behavior is troubling.

C6: Actually these are solutions from outside of LENR community and we cannot expect from outsiders to respect our rules. The basic and primary nature of these LENR+ solution is not scientific but technology+engineering+ management-business. Why should these discoverer-developers strive desperately for peer reviewed all telling

papers in the best journals or open demos and detailed

reports helping existent and coming competition to reduce

the business intelligence-industrial espionage-reverse engineering expenses to a fraction of that “normal”?

The second

Q1: Is the problem of scientism an important one or is just an unjustified attack of reactionary people against Science?

A1: Is scientism a major problem? No. Let's consider four groups the general public, politicians, scientists who are focused on money and position, scientists who are focused on understanding/finding new things. The first group believes science knows all and is certain. They are wrong, but it is not important they have little power or influence. The second group does not take unnecessary risks. They will not risk their success on uncertain science though some well understand science is uncertain. Scientists who, regardless of why they entered science, are now focused on their status will not take risks just like politicians. Some of them understand science is uncertain. Some of them entered science to avoid the anxiety caused by more fluid fields of human endeavor. They have made science rigid to meet their psychological needs. The last group is harmed by scientism in the other three groups, but there is little they can do about it.

C1 Perhaps scientism is good outside science and bad inside it.

Q2 Had/has our field, LENR, a scientism problem and in what extent has this influenced its development?

A2: No. LENR has political problems among career scientist and politicians. Seldom (only in LENR?) does science offer a big and immediate threat to a trillion dollar per year industry. When you threaten thousands of multimillionaires, and several multibillionaires expect violent and systemic push back. I think this is a special case for LENR.

C2- Usually (and psychologically) pride is considered the worst of the seven deadly sins. It is dangerous and counter-productive to think that science, pure science alone can solve all our problems and technology should come only later when

we are happy know-it-alls.

Q3. Do you accept that in present there are some inextricable complex and temporary unknowable things in LENR?

A3: Of course there are complex things going on that need detailed experimental data to understand.

C3-bad reproducibility unfortunately means that even the successful experiments give very different results and data. Too much chaos in the field.

Q4-5. What is the main problem of the field now and what is the best approach to a solution?

A 4-5: Lack of data is the main problem. The solution is more data. I do not expect money from the western/global-bank governments. I think parametrizing response to a few variable will be a big step forward and can be done by individuals.

C4-5: perhaps the problem is even more difficult. I am more and more convinced that even with a million researchers working with F&P Cells and an other million trying to get the best data and highest performances from the most pre-formed nano-structures- static NAE- a lot of data will be obtained but no real progress toward an energy source. The

Sine-qua-non condition for a technology is dynamic NAE.

Q6: What will be the global situation of the field in 1, 3, 5 years from now?

A6:  If someone or some group parameterizes the excess heat from nickel/copper in terms of temperature, hydrogen pressure, and lifetime as limited by nickel/copper, lifetime as limited by hydrogen, effect of various temperatures cycling then in five years there will be some government money for more data taking. With some luck the energy poor and non global-bank countries (the ones that are human capital rich) will be quietly developing LENR+ for themselves and their militaries. That is Japan, Italy, China, and India.

C6- I think we will know soon what is the real source of excess heat, we will be surprised but able to develop LENR+ faster and faster

The author who has inspired the essay, Dave Pollard nicely said he is respecting my opinion but is far from being a cold fusion or LENR believer. In any case he is convinced that the human society is “so” unsustainable that even an energy revolution cannot save us from the Collapse. On the contrary:

“I would hazard a guess that if some astonishing new energy technology were invented and rolled out with record speed it might make the ultimate collapse of our civilization even more catastrophic by enabling population and exhaustion of our planet to accelerate even more quickly over the cliff.”

On my turn, I respect Dave’s opinion.

As a kind of consolation- I am worried that my grandchildren will not be able to cope with that evil Collapse without my help- I got a nice message of a biologist, knower of many “isms” who gave me good ideas re LENR and the biosphere.

Eventually I think scientism needs a partner for constructive disputes.

I got the solution from Gary Wright who “created” a relevant accusation in his newest paper: “Hanno Essén Admits Recent Test of E-cat NOT Science” Subtle suggestion- if it is NOT science, the test is not valid, it is a blunder, a shame and so on, fiat justitia, pereat Rossi! For details please read Gary’s paper.

It was a black box experiment without theoretical foundation and it does not contribute to the advancement of human knowledge.

It has simply shown that the HotCat produces excess heat something very undesirable for Gary who has bet his virtual reputation on the repeated assertion that Rossi is a fraud.

“It is not Science!” but how will sound “It is not Technology?”

Something that resembles perhaps Science but cannot be converted in a technology. I am starting to write a list but now I have to finish this paper with the warning: “Scientism creates (new) problems or our field, does not solve them!”

Scientism in LENR is powerful; today I have no chances in confronting it. I am searching allies, humans because reality that is already on my part, has very limited convincing power compared to strong memes.

Peter