Forbes: Is Cold Fusion Feasible or a Fraud? (Ethan Siegel)

Thanks to georgehants for posting a link to a new article on the Forbes website by Ethan Siegel titled: “Is Cold Fusion Feasible, Or is it a Fraud?” Link his here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2016/09/23/is-cold-fusion-feasible-or-is-it-a-fraud/#4979732f1903

This is another article from an established media entity on the subject of cold fusion lately, so for some reason there’s more attention being paid in the editorial rooms. Siegel focuses on the work of Andrea Rossi and the E-Cat and testing results that have been published. He uses the example of the Mechanical Turk to show that some things that seem real actually turn out to be frauds and fakes, and suggests cold fusion could be something similar. He suggests a creative use of power meters in tests could be used to give false readings.

His conclusion:

This doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re lying, that LENR is impossible or that there’s fraud going on. But it isn’t the job of science to prove that someone is fooling us; it’s the job of a good scientist to prove to the world that we aren’t fooling ourselves when we make an extraordinary claim. As soon as that bar is cleared — and that starts with the people working on this making an extraordinary effort to demonstrate that bar is cleared — we can promote LENR or cold fusion to the realm of real, robust and incredible science. But until that day, we should all remain skeptical. In the words of Richard Feynman:

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself. And you are the easiest person to fool.