Alternate View column of John G. Cramer: Cold Fusion

His columns are pretty interesting to read. It so happens that he has one about the original cold fusion story of the eighties. This is a fairly critical column, one may feel after reading it that the cold fusion boys' proposition had been debunked.

Whenever something new comes along, it has a tough time because it has to go against the conventional wisdom. If there is anything that is left unexplained, this is seized upon as proof of error and the walls come crashing down on the discovery.  Such is the case here, but he does make some interesting points that should be addressed.

First of all, radiation levels were not detected, which is claimed as evidence of no fusion.  Note the following paragraph

In the P&F (Pons and Fleischmann) experiment, the energy released would require a speedup of the d + d fusion rate by a factor of about a trillion (the ratio of one dollar to the US National Debt). At the same time, their fusion process would have to make at least a billion times fewer neutrons and gamma rays than would be expected from a normal fusion reaction.

That would be true if the fusion was between deuterium atoms, but that is not necessarily the case.  This was fusion, as best as I can tell, between palladium and hydrogen.  A different matter entirely.

There is something about those palladium rods that may have made the difference, or an explanation that needs to be looked at

Pons revealed about a week ago that one must use palladium rods that are cast rather than extruded or forged, and that even among the cast rods tested, only a fraction show excess heat. 

There are some controversies about the P & F experiments, as follows:

1) the solution needs to be stirred, P&F did not
2) failure to use controls with H20 against D20, the P&F's control was with Palladium
3) the methodology of the measurements of voltages

What struck me was that some Palladium show a difference from other Palladium.  P&F was finding something, it would seem.  The use of deuterium is also puzzling.  So the check against hydrogen is a good point, in my opinion.

As with my earlier writing on Rossi Focardi , I guess that P&F found something that they could not explain, but the lack of adequate explanation is not evidence that they didn't find anything at all.  After reading Cramer's article the first time, I would believe that P&F had been debunked, but on further review, maybe not.

Update:
A list of his columns is now on the sidebar in the interesting reading section.