[Everhusk]

I dropped out of my masters because my prof basically laughed me out of the room for researching cold fusion/LENR, said it was a waste of time. Good to see unexplained anomalies in Science like this make their way back into the mainstream. We need this kind of science more than ever, no matter how 'crazy' it sounds. Crazy is whatever the hell we were doing the last few decades.

[glitchc]

I'm sorry to hear about your experience (rather insensitive prof.) but if you tackled cold fusion for Masters, it's unlikely that you would have finished your degree in 2, 5 or even 10 years. This topic is not suited for a Masters level thesis, where the primary goal is to build research skills while giving you the taste of tackling a real problem in a defined, manageable form.

[vlovich123]

Does cold fusion not have sub-problems that could be tackled at a master’s level? I don’t think OP was necessarily saying that they were proposing their master’s would be about solving cold fusion completely.

[glitchc]

It could be theoretical. The high baseline effort and cost to run even a simple experiment would probably preclude empirical work. The theoretical area is probably saturated by now, will be difficult to carve out a niche.

[vlovich123]

I feel like you could say that about any discipline that any Master's student would embark on just because the state of the art is extremely advanced, no? For example, if you're a chemical engineer focusing on batteries, you could say simple experiments are out of reach too because "simple" has advanced to a point that's extremely complex & expensive. I haven't done a Master's so I don't actually know.

[glitchc]

Oh, no I don't think so. High-energy physics has a high cost barrier to entry. Even a simple experiment requires a complex apparatus ex. an accelerator, or a very high pressure vacuum chamber, laser cooling, Bose-Einstein condensates, etc. It's much cheaper to run experiments in chemistry, batteries on the whole are not terribly complicated. We're talking about going from hundreds of thousands of dollars to merely thousands of dollars.

You could go a step further and talk about computer algorithms or mathematics in general. The only cost there is a pen and a piece of paper. The only cost there is your own time. Some experiments and analyses cost more than others, it's just the nature of things.

[vlovich123]

My point is that when you get sufficiently advanced, you some times require access to resources that aren't just a pen and paper. So sure, some fields of math may still be ok to do with a pen and pencil. It wouldn't surprise me if some require large super-computer style access. Or distributed algorithms that are written by master's & PhDs at massive cloud/internet providers that rely on those large networks to run an experiment. So even in the CS domain I expect there to be Master's thesis that isn't cheap to reproduce.

Similarly, if you're trying to get a novel battery chemistry to outperform a Tesla car battery or generate a completely novel solar cell, you're not going to be able to accomplish that as an IC researcher. As you point out, there could easily be interim projects along the way to identify various interesting properties that might be useful to your long term goal which aligns with my original statement. When that's out of scope you partner with institutions with access to those resources whether those are big corporations, research institutes, or particle accelerators.

[samatman]

Batteries are one I happen to know something about, a startup I worked for hosted $major-university's monthly battery lecture series, we were doing a SaaS business targeted at the vertical. I met a dozen or so grad students doing exactly this.

So, nope, bad example. Taking an existing process and giving it a few tweaks will push it around in parameter space, improving something we care about (number of cycles before 80%, let's say), often at the expense of something else, like you can't apply as many coulombs. Congratulations, you've got a thesis. And there are dozens of basic battery processes.

[Everhusk]

To clarify it wasn't for my thesis but for a nuclear engineering course where we could research whatever. I know not all profs are the same, but generally I do think there is a bit of a herd mentality in academia. My point is that there have been roadblocks for LENR researchers in academia for quite some time, and I hope we can finally remove those.

[glitchc]

Most definitely concur with the herd mentality. It comes from the funding model, which is admittedly rather broken. Unique or off-the-wall ideas often don't receive funding, and once you've been funded for a mainstream idea, it's hard to advocate much for the unique idea without somehow discrediting your proposal or the time you've put in to date. It's a vicious Catch-22. Most researchers start out with unique ideas, then it gets drummed out of them. My area is computer vision, and I see machine learning eating everything, so I can empathize. There seems to be no effort any more in translating a physical phenomena into a quantitive, deterministic model and that's a shame. Neural networks are not an accurate representation of what our eyes and brains are doing. But, it's produced more promising results for the time being, and so we've entered a cycle of funding that promotes machine learning over other approaches. There is recognition of this fact usually, and small pools of money continue to exist for off-the-wall ideas, so the rest of us can make do until the phase passes. Science moves in fits and starts.

Research in high energy physics (cold fusion is a sub-category), is difficult to cobble together on small amounts however. That's why you see profs and labs banding together to raise sufficient resources just for a couple of experiments. And unfortunately for LENR, a great deal of money was spent in the 50s to 70s with no appreciable outcomes, therefore the funding bodies have become jaded and cynical about continuing to fund further research. The area will likely see a resurgence once those board members retire and bright-eyed folks revisit the field.

[api]

Once a topic is associated with something fringe or woo-woo, it becomes extremely difficult to discuss it rationally.

Try bringing up the possibility that at least some small fraction of UFOs actually are extraterrestrial. We have a decent number of compelling radar/visual encounters that suggest something artificial with maneuvering and propulsion capabilities beyond anything we know how to achieve. They could be illusions, unknown natural phenomena, hoaxes, classified tech, or equipment failures, but they are anomalies nonetheless.

The Fermi paradox really is a paradox, especially now that we've found planets in habitable zones orbiting stars within "reasonable" (less than a thousand years) distance if one were traveling at a meaningful fraction of the speed of light. One possible solution to the paradox that is always left off the table is "they are in fact here, they're just not making overt contact." There are numerous rational reasons that an intelligence would choose not to "land on the White House lawn" from planetary protection protocols akin to ours to self-interested concerns about triggering a violent response from the demonstrably violent and rapidly technologically advancing inhabitants of Earth. We'd be no threat to them now, but give us another few hundred years and we could be capable of e.g. sending a relativistic impactor their way.

But nope... the fact that the UFO topic is linked to fringe, new age, and wacky stuff means that it can't be discussed and must be absolutely dismissed. Also means that if someone wishes to discredit a topic, all they have to do is get new agey woo woo types to start talking about it.

This is just how humans think. We use ideas as signifiers of group membership and apply primate in-group / out-group behavior to them. Scientists are human, so science is not immune. IMHO this tendency is one of our species' greatest weaknesses.

[cb321]

I agree with much else said here about the failure -> crank -> taboo problem, but it bears noting that the Fermi paradox is not really a paradox. There is this https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02404 . The 2 minute layman's version is that multiplying several to many very uncertain numbers "drives your error bars to the fringes". So, there is not some credible, high probability estimate that we are not (EDIT: locally) alone. Without that estimate there is no paradox.

[jeffreyrogers]

> But nope... the fact that the UFO topic is linked to fringe, new age, and wacky stuff means that it can't be discussed and must be absolutely dismissed.

I think it's more that the recent claims about the UFOs (moving at hypersonic speeds but leaving no emissions nor heating the atmosphere) are so implausible that they don't fit our current understanding of physics.

[api]

I thought several of these did show infrared heating? Or maybe I'm thinking of a different case than you.

In any case a lack of heat is problematic. Even if they're using some unknown means of propulsion, the second law of thermodynamics is absolutely settled bedrock science. They must dump waste heat somewhere.

[himinlomax]

> We have a decent number of compelling radar/visual encounters that suggest something artificial with maneuvering and propulsion capabilities

No we don't. We have radar readings that are anomalous, and that could be aliens ... or dozens of other mundane explanations that are each more likely.

[PaulAJ]

The other problem with something like this at a Masters level is that you run a big risk of making no progress, even if you tackle some kind of sub-problem. When that happens it becomes hard to get your degree.

Better to get the degree first, then start poking around the fringes.

[naringas]

Science is functioning as a religion. it aids the mainstream state system in maintaining social stability. It informs people's beliefs about what is feasible and possible to do and what isn't.

It even answers the question "how to be happy?" (there are many "science-based" modern approaches sold in self-help books and the like)

modern science is basically a religion. there are even some "atheists" going around trying to get "religious people" to think critically and give up their superstitious beliefs.

granted, it's a more sophisticated social construction than old-world religion, but I base this claim in terms of their role and function.

[Mikhail_K]

Your professor was right. Cold fusion is known to be pseudoscience.

[jakeva]

".. is known to be pseudoscience" could be correct, until it is not. Dismissing someone's research interests is not just rude but also the attitude that led to this individual dropping out of academia altogether.

This is the sort of response the doctor who suggested washing hands after surgery received and is not particularly useful.

[Mikhail_K]

No, you don't get it. "Cold fusion" is akin to dismissing the recommendation to wash hands before surgery, because the experiments promoted by the proponents were repeatedly shown not to give the results they claim.

[czzr]

It’s also the sort of response this got: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/N_ray

To pick one of many, many examples. There are errors in both directions (dismissing correct ideas, accepting pseudoscience), and overly simplistically suggesting all iconoclasts should be entertained is probably unreasonable.

[theptip]

I think there is a big difference in what you steer your students to do, and what you do as an established scientist.

A Masters level education in Physics is not the time to be going off the beaten track; you still have 5 years or more before you even understand the territory enough to offer corrections on the map.

Replace “cold fusion” with “homeopathy”, do you still think your statement applies?

I think cold fusion is closer to homeopathy than stellar fusion.

[jakeva]

That may be true, and maybe the professor was right to discourage that track. A key difference I'd point out, however, is that one is more universally accepted among researchers as pseudoscience than the other.

For instance, the first sentence of the wikipedia entry for homeopathy: "Homeopathy or homoeopathy is a pseudoscientific system of alternative medicine."

First sentence for cold fusion: "Cold fusion is a hypothesized type of nuclear reaction that would occur at, or near, room temperature."

The failures of Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, or the fallout of that case, do not in my mind constitute pseudoscience. Skepticism notwithstanding, it is an actual area of research still funded by universities around the world - from wikipedia, as recently as 2015 "the Indian multidisciplinary journal Current Science published a special section devoted entirely to cold fusion related papers. https://web.archive.org/web/20170805185756/http://www.curren..."

I personally think it's more interesting than homeopathy or linking vaccines to autism. I think the research has yielded more tangible real world benefits, such as improvements to the sophistication of calorimeters. Furthermore, I think lack of reproducibility is not the same as proof of its impossibility or that it is pseudoscience.

Maybe it's my personal longing for a future with cold fusion speaking - and I don't think it's a good career move to focus on it - but I don't like seeing it dismissed in the same pile of detritus as homeopathy.

[theptip]

Fair, perhaps the comparison with homeopathy was overly harsh. I'd certainly not say they were at exactly the same point on the spectrum of "hard science <> pseudoscience". My intention with that point was to highlight that there _is_ a point where professors do need to discourage students, and the rate/vigor of discouragement should be proportional to the current priors on "likelihood of being junk".

I'd happily retract that point and stick to the point around the professor's duty to keep their students from falling into intellectual quicksand or other impediments; I think that's the more important one anyway.

And I certainly agree that cold fusion would be revolutionary if it turns out to be physically possible. However based on my understanding, there's a solid body of nuclear physics -- both theory and experiment -- that show that this process is many orders of magnitude away from being activatable at room temperature. So I'd personally rather fund modern fission, hot fusion, and renewables as significant research targets.

[dekhn]

This is absolutely not correct. It's correct to say that Fleishman and Pons shat the bed for everybody when their University's PR had a press release before a paper had been accepted.

It's not correct to say that all research into cold fusion (LENR as it's called now) is psuedoscience.

However, were I a professor, anybody who proposed LENR research to me would get a lecture: hey, there may be some interesting science in there, but you're gonna have to work harder than anybody else in the room to get people to trust your results. Some scientists don't mind signing up for spending 30 years proving their case, others want faster results, in which case you should find areas of research that are more likely to lead to accepted publications.

[dumbfoundded]

It's like you didn't even read the article. There's also an actual cold fusion using muons. Only problem is muons take more energy to create than they help create through fusion. If you had a free muon source (like the sun), you could potentially create a space-based fusion reactor operating at room temperature.

[fsh]

The sun is not a muon source. Muons have a 2 us lifetime, so even highly relativistic ones don't get very far before decaying.

[dumbfoundded]

The sun is absolutely a muon source. Almost every muon that hits Earth's surface is caused by cosmic rays from the upper atmosphere creating pions that decay into muons. (1) The average flux is 1 muon per cm^2 per sec (2). Muons only live a few microseconds but this is plenty of time to catalyze fusion reactions. The two problems with muon-assisted fusion are the energy cost of producing muons with current technology and the potential of muons to stick to alpha particles. Both limit the efficiency of the technique. (3)

(1) https://muonsources.org/science-with-muons/how-are-muons-pro...

(2) https://cosmic.lbl.gov/SKliewer/Cosmic_Rays/Muons.htm#:~:tex....

(3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion

[fsh]

Sure, the particle showers that cosmic rays create in the atmosphere contain some muons. Still the sun itself does not emit muons, and even if it did they would decay long before reaching earth (or a satellite).

[eloff]

I wish the education system produced more people like you, rather than trying to force them to conform. Conformism hurts science specifically because to make a new discovery you must beleive something to be true which everyone else disagrees with you about. A lot of currently accepted scientific ideas were heretical when first proposed, and laughed out of the conversation.

If you want to see an example of this happening right now, look at how it's impossible to publish anything exploring a lab-origin hypothesis for Covid-19 in a peer-reviewed journal. Somehow that became heresy among virologists. Now maybe it has a natural origin, but you don't determine that by shutting down the conversation.

If you stop and think for a second, one must admit it's a rather large coincidence that this disease begins in the same city as the world's pre-eminent lab not just studying SARS coronaviruses, but actually conducting gain of function experiments with them. Now perhaps that's just a coincidence, but knowing nothing else, a-priori your assumption must be to favor the lab origin hypothesis. Now that the seafood market origin hypothesis has been found unlikely, the case grows stronger for a lab origin. But you still can't publish a paper making that case.

Some interesting analysis of the evidence for an against on github: https://project-evidence.github.io/

A recent non-peer reviewed paper on the subject: https://zenodo.org/record/4028830

[frafra]

Non-peer reviewed paper tied to Steve Bannon. https://www.factcheck.org/2020/09/report-resurrects-baseless...

Comparing that to two times peer-reviewed paper made by NASA is insulting, and your captatio benevolentiae will not trick the user into considering them to be on the same level or tied to similar fundamental issues.

[eloff]

I don't intend to implicitly compare that paper to the work done by NASA. Two completely separate subjects. And I specifically pointed out that it is not peer reviewed, how can you peer review something if no journal would consider it in the first place?

The paper itself may turn out to be seriously flawed as your link suggests. But I think it's important to have the conversation.

[frafra]

Then I am sorry if I assumed you was trying to diverge from the main topic by comparing the struggle to advance in not-well-established scientific fields with a baseless paper made probably for political reasons. My bad.

[ceejayoz]

> look at how it's impossible to publish anything exploring a lab-origin hypothesis for Covid-19 in a peer-reviewed journal...

How do we "look at" that?

An absence of peer-reviewed articles in reputable journals could be an indicator that this is impossible due to a big conspiracy to hide the truth, but it's also exactly what you'd hope for if there is no good evidence for that hypothesis.

[eloff]

Yes, that could be the reason. The authors of the paper I linked specifically call out censorship by journals, but maybe it's just them left with that impression. They did give citations[1],[2] to backup that claim.

I don't think there is some grand conspiracy going on, just that the experts early on decided it's a natural origin and completely unrelated to the lab, without any evidence I might point out, and now there's a very real and all too human tendency to dismiss anything else as quackery. Whether or not this is actually the case here is debatable, but we know know it's all too common in science and elsewhere.

[1] Segreto, R. & Deigin, Y. Is considering a genetic manipulation origin for SARS CoV 2 a conspiracy theory that must be censored? Preprint (Researchgate)

[2] Robinson, C. Journals censor lab origin theory for SARS CoV 2: https://www.gmwatch.org/en/news/latest-news/19475-journals-c...

[ceejayoz]

> the experts early on decided it's a natural origin and completely unrelated to the lab, without any evidence I might point out

No, that's BS. There is evidence, a quick Google search away, published in Nature back in March.

https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2020/03/26/genomic-research-po...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

[eloff]

You misunderstand me. Lab origin does not imply engineered. That's a possibility, of course, but far more likely is it is a natural virus, possibly altered in experiments, where the mechanism can be a form of selection, not necessarily engineering of any kind.

Lab origin, to define the term clearly here, means a virus, natural or otherwise, that escaped a lab, likely by accident.

This is not farfetched, it happened with SARS-1 twice in Beijing: https://www.who.int/csr/don/2004_04_23/en/

It seems, just by the coincidental location of the emergence of SARS COV2 in Wuhan of all places, to be the most likely origin scenario, just on a probability standpoint.

[ceejayoz]

Demonstrating that - that it's a natural virus released (accidentally or intentionally) from a lab - would be the realm of an intelligence agency or police forensics, not a genetic analysis of the virus like the debunked article linked upthread.

[eximius]

It's not a coincidence because they put the lab there because that's where SARS jumped before. So there is a reason, but it's far less interesting.

[eloff]

No, the SARS epidemic began in Foshan, Guangdong. That's 1000km south of Wuhan. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3323155/