Chapter 15 Postscript – In the Age of Paradigm Revolution

What is the object to study physics? The object is, in the author's opinion, classified into three, in general. One is to study physics itself professionally. Second is to study it for a tool to use in application just like a physicist studies mathematics as a tool in physics. And the third is to study it by intellectual interest to understand nature. Of course, these three elements are mingled together in one person who study physics, or more generally science.

One of main purposes to write this book is to appeal people not engaged in physics that it is interesting and enjoyable to consider questions in nature using the cold fusion phenomenon as an example which is full of mystery and with possibility of promising applications. The author have been teaching general physics course for students major in social and cultural sciences and liberal arts for many years. A lot of the students had expressed their surprise discovering fun in studying physics without using calculus and knowing spread of physics over almost all phenomena in nature. They had unfortunately had impression that physics is a subject where one has to remember various formulae to use them properly to solve examination questions in their former studies until high school where the education had been spoiled largely and profoundly by the characteristic entrance examinations for higher institutions in Japan.

It seems nowadays that science has degraded to only a knowledge used as a tool to solve technical problems despite it had born as a child of combination of intellectual curiosity and necessity in technology.

It is very happy experience to the author as a physicist that he is able to enjoy a process to read out a story of truth disclosed by various events belonging to the cold fusion phenomenon discovered by M. Fleischmann and S. Pons for the first time in 1989. In the same time, it has been irritating unpleasant experience to see that the cold fusion phenomenon has been treated as a scandalous fiasco or fraud by malicious and hostile competitors in science and technology.

Such a hostility has been raised against a new revolutionary viewpoint from establishment as a historian T. Kuhn formulated it by a concept paradigm in his book¹³³⁾ "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." In the age of revolution, there have appeared many scandalous episodes woven with personality of scientists and conflict of interests in the society. It will be advisable to recollect some of them from a book¹³²⁾ by W. Broad and N. Wade "Betrayers of the Truth" to endure unreasonable bias from malicious and ignorant critiques against sincere scientists and their works.

The first example is about one of the greatest scientists and mathematicians, I. Newton.

"Both sides of this ambiguous attitude to data reached full expression in the work of Isaac Newton. The founder of physics and perhaps the greatest scientist in history, Newton in his Principia of 1687 established the goals, methods, and boundaries of modern science. Yet this exemplar of the scientific method was not above bolstering his case with false data when the real results failed to win acceptance for his theories. --- To make the Principia more persuasive, Newton in later editions of his work improved the accuracy of certain supporting measurements."

"--- More than 250 years passed before the manipulation was completely revealed. As [historian R.S.] Westfall comments, 'Having proposed exact correlation as the criterion of truth, [Newton] took care to see that exact correlation was presented, whether or not it was properly achieved. Not the least part of the Principia's persuasiveness was its deliberate pretense to a degree of precision quite beyond its legitimate claim. If the Principia established the quantitative pattern of modern science, it equally suggested a less sublime truth - that no one can manipulate the fudge factor so effectively as the master mathematician himself'."

"\tenten What was shameful about Newton's behavior was the hypocrisy with which he paid lip service to fair procedure but followed the very opposite course. It would be an iniquitous judge 'who would admit anyone as a witness in his own cause,' announced the preface of a Royal Society report of 1712 which examined the question of priority in calculus.

Ostensibly the work of a committee of impartial scientists, the report was a complete vindication of Newton's claims and even accused Leibniz of plagiary. In fact the whole report, sanctimonious preface included, had been written by Newton himself. Historians now believe that Leibniz invention of calculus was made independently of Newton."

The second is about a chemist J. Dalton who discovered simple ratio of atoms in a molecule and put a basis of modern atomic theory.

"Modern inquiry raises considerable doubts about Dalton's data. For one thing, historians are now sure that Dalton first speculated on the law and then made experiments in order to prove it. For another, he seems to have selected his data, publishing only the 'best' results, in other words those that supported his theory. His best results are distinctly hard to duplicate. 'From my own experiments I am convinced that it is almost impossible to get these simple ratios in mixing nitric oxide and air over water,' says historian J.R. Partington."

The third is about a physicist R.A. Millikan who won the Nobel prize in 1923 for determining the electric charge on the electron.

"--- To rebut Ehrenhaft, Millikan published an article in 1913 full of new and more accurate results favoring a single charge for the electron. He emphasized, in italics, that this is not a selected group of drops but represents all of the drops experimented upon during 60 days."

"--- However, a look through Medawar's keyhole shows a quite different situation. Harvard historian G. Holton went back to the original notebook on which Millikan based his 1913 paper and found major gaps in the reporting of data. Despite his specific assurance to the contrary, Millikan had selected only his best data for publication.

The raw observations in his notebook are individually annotated with private comments such as 'beauty, publish this surely, beautiful.' and 'very low, something wrong.' The 58 observations presented in his 1913 article were in fact selected from a total of 140. Even if observations are counted only after February 13, 1912, the date that the first published observation was taken, there are still 49 drops that have been excluded."

The first example tells us that man behaves unreasonably even if he is a great scientist like I. Newton. In the case of the cold fusion phenomenon, we have to content to have a little fair people at first in majority who are biased by their preconception and by personal interests. The second and third examples tell us subtlety of scientific discovery. If Millikan did not discard the data not fit to the value e = 1.6×10 ¹⁹ C (coulomb), he could not determine the value destined now to the elementary charge. The same has been pointed out about the Kepler's laws in history. If the data observed by his teacher Tico Brahe is more accurate than those obtained by the technique of that time, the regularity in behaviors of Planets discovered by Kepler would be obscured by minor deviations from it.

The example of Millikan shows a role of intuition in a discovery not a simple deceit in the hall of science as Broad and Wade declare.

The same subtlety exists everywhere in the field of creative activity of human being. One example of theoretical case was expressed by J.W.N. Sullivan¹³⁷⁾ as follows:

"Then, by some obscure process of reason and intuition that cannot be clearly analyzed, Maxwell developed his equation. He started with mechanical concepts not unlike those of his predecessors, but in developing them he made jumps - flashes of genius - that took him outside the mechanical scheme. He had arrived at the correct mathematical formulation of light-processes. He had thus, in a sense, reached the goal at which all the ether theorists had been aiming. But his mathematical formulation was not reducible to mechanical terms. Then what is Maxwell's Theory? Is it true, as Hertz said, that 'Maxwell's theory is Maxwell's system of equations'? In view of recent controversies this question conceals an ambiguity which it is desirable to make plain."

Fortunately, truth of the cold fusion has been obscure except a false prejudice of direct d-d fusion reactions in solids at room temperature and, therefore, there are almost no space in brain to distort experimental data to fit some program in it. But, unfortunately, there are many scientists who did not understand the subtlety of creative activity of human being.

There are, in addition to this, some people around researchers who had interest in uncertainty in the effort to find out truth in the cold fusion phenomenon and wrote popular stories to sell in book shops. Then, rooters in scientific world, who are drowned in flood of information but pretending scientists, armed with knowledge supplied from the books and popular periodicals, governed the world of science journalism to rule out whole information about the cold fusion phenomenon from society of scientists.

In 1993, the author who submitted a letter on the cold fusion phenomenon to a periodical "Butsuri", which is published monthly for its members by The Physical Society of Japan (in Japanese), asked by one of two referees to read the Japanese translation "Scandal" of "Bad Science" written by G. Taubes ¹³⁵⁾ translated and read sensationally at that time.

Science now is deeply interrelated with popular journalism and commercialism. Growing up and prosperity of a branch of science are influenced too strongly, in reality, by social situation to keep autonomy inherent in it which is necessary to keep the essential nature of science and therefore its benefit for the society.

In fact, however in contrast to the description in those books condemning to death, various events showing reality of the cold fusion phenomenon have been observed with certainty in these nine years and it is sure that a new science, solid state - nuclear physics, will be established soon as explained in this book from the author's point of view. Therefore, it is certain that the books with titles in which are words like "bad" or "fiasco" remain in history as evidences of scandalous episodes of the discovery of the cold fusion phenomenon.

On the other hand, there are some scientists who forced to express their judgment on the new phenomenon in a limited time, which made them express non-scientific decision. Two typical examples of them are J. Huizenga, University of Rochester, USA and D. Morrison, CERN, EU.

Huizenga published a book¹³⁴⁾ in 1992 based on the Report¹³⁶⁾ to DOE in 1989 as explained in Chapter 1, in which he wrote "I conclude that the insist of the cold fusion producing the excess heat of several watt without generating corresponding nuclear products is a phantom and is a pathological science" (Translation into English by the author from Japanese version).

This Huizenga's conclusion is one deduced by a poor brain only working on an extension line from muon catalyzed nuclear fusion where occurs surely d-d direct fusion reaction.

The same is to Morrison's comments expressed often in the International Conferences on the Cold Fusion from Third to Sixth which were always only "It does not fit with d-d fusion reaction."

These critiques are typical examples committing the words

"Neither do men put new wine into old bottles; else the bottles break and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish; but they put new wine into new bottles, and the both preserved." (Matthew 9-17)

The limitation of freedom imposed by these prejudice could be expressed as "conceptual barrier" or "mental barrier" for the development of new science in contrast to another "patent barrier" imposed by secrecy due to protection of interest for patents.

United States of America is a great country in several meanings. A giant with various phases composed of many communities with characteristics of English utilitarianism, German idealism, French revolutionalism and Spanish romanticism.

One of its characteristics impressed the author was the ability accomplished Atomic Bomb by the Manhattan Project in three years. Another was the drastic shut downs of several machines for plasma fusion in 1970's and 1980's.

And cold fusion had been thrown out after a research in only six months by a board in DOE of 22 scientists, although there were several talented people. This six month is too short to judge reality of a phenomenon in which are various events which need sometimes six months to observe them with low reproducibility.

It is sad to say that research in the cold fusion phenomenon has been disturbed by commercialism related with patent, i.e. information has been not always open in detail and communication has been limited. I have proposed a word "patent barrier," as mentioned above, to express this situation.

Scientific investigation is a pursuit of truth hidden behind facts. The writers of the DOE report¹³⁶⁾ have been anti-scientific in cutting off facts not fit with established concepts in their brain except N.F. Ramsey who, according to the description by Huizenga in his book,¹³⁴⁾ added a scientific comment to the report as explained in Chapter 1. The same tendency is not limited in US but in Japan as explained above about the journal "Butsuri."

The mammoth science prevailing now in the industrialized world is an origin of this tendency where scientists are parts of research groups for projects which are established for some purposes took up by establishment to consume budget with some plausible excuse, of course. Those researchers in projects, in general, can not have own curiosity to open a new door by themselves which is obstacle for their job in the projects.

It is interesting to recall a short private conversation the author had with Prof. Shin-ichiro Tomonaga, a Nobel prize laureate in Physics (1965), in March, 1958. Prof. Tomonaga, the President of Tokyo University of Education at that time, expressed a part of his credo to a friend of mine and me going to take theoretical physics as their major in graduate courses:

"Theoreticians use sometimes a cunning paper!"

To two young students who were astonished with his words, he explained the meaning of the cunning paper:

"They use experimental data to construct their theories."

This is a talk by an excellent physicist pointing out the essential nature of science, positivism. By this metaphor, he taught importance of facts to the young students apt to be too mathematical to think little of experimental data. Later in 1965, Professor S. Tomonaga was laureated the Nobel prize in physics together with J. Schwinger and R.P. Feynman.

Similar thought of another excellent physicist has been told by R. Peierls in his lecture on "The Early Days of Quantum Mechanics" made in Moscow, in 1987 at his age of 81 (Kwant (Quantum) 1988, No.10, p.2 (in Russian)).

He was a student of A. Sommerfeld in Munich from 1926 to 1928.

"Prof. Sommerfeld used to tell us often: 'Theoretical physics as a science should always be based on experimental data.' And he noticed us always to remember experimental facts which are bases of the important theoretical laws in physics."

S. Akasofu, a geophysicist of University of Alaska, had written in an article "Paradigm, Creativity and Science Revolution" published in a journal "Shizen" (Nature) in Japanese (March, 1983) as follows :

"One of the signs expressing the last stage of a paradigm in the field of physics, astrophysics and geophysics is prosperity of mathematical physics and arrogance of mathematical physicists. This is a result induced by oblivion of physical insight into facts by majority of scientists, as pointed out by many physicists."

He also expresses his anxiety about modern physics as follows:

"A scientist is not a robot armed with apparatus for measurements and the sorting of <signal> and <noise> is done subjectively by himself (not by machines automatically)."

"Scientists belonging to an old paradigm criticize a <non-scientific> creation (by their words) as if it is defective for 'non-rigorous character of the created work'." "However, a pioneering work is necessarily not rigorous as a rule. It is the duty of the paradigm to make such a created work rigorous."

"Scientists belonging to an old paradigm criticize creation of a new paradigm by such adjectives as --- fantastic, inexperienced, ignorant, subjective, mad, idiotic --- ."

It is interesting to notice that typical mathematical physicists in physics now are theoreticians in nuclear physics and high-energy physics. Critiques against the cold fusion phenomenon are willing not step out from old paradigms where they are comfortable. It seems necessary to endeavor against old paradigms to create new paradigm and to keep a science vivid.

Academicism is the essence of an University. In Japanese society, we have, unfortunately, academic tradition of only 100 years after the Meiji revolution in 1868. There are many defects in evaluation system of the staffs for their research, teaching and administration in the Japanese higher education system. Only the number of papers published in established journals are solely counted in promotion. It is necessary, however, to take into account of the staff individuality for creation of academicism in University. The entrance examination only by paper test with a mark-sheet is another symbol of non-academic character of Japanese education. Lack of creativity is often pointed out as a typical character of Japanese scientists. Perhaps, this is a result, partially, of education in Japan and inactivity in the cold fusion research in Japan may be its reflection.

Cold fusion research is a creation of a new paradigm as explained in this book. It should be interesting and instructive not only for natural scientists but also for other people who are not engaged in natural science to learn the interesting structure of solid state - nuclear physics revealed by events in the cold fusion phenomenon. The author hopes that this book serves them as such.