I am most grateful to Professor Phillips for his career choices in following science. If science is dying, it is not because of the undying curiosity, very hard work and stern stuff of people like Dr. Mills and this author. I also appreciate the effort to produce material that may be digested by the more casual student of science.
You probably don't remember me, Dr. Phillips, but you were doing a poster session in the hallway during ICCF-14. You approached me and asked if I was aware of Randell Mills. I responded that I was aware of him, but that he "didn't believe in quantum mechanics," so I kept walking and you kept at me, explaining your work with him and offered to give me 3 recently published papers. You told me about your troubles at UNM. There are some grifters who work the ICCF and I tended to stick with people who I knew, but I sure thank you for persisting. You planted a seed that grew, however slowly, and still grows. I found your experimental work to be first rate.
Another interesting chapter and great insight into Randy’s thought process and of course the current restrictive establishment which can only have a detrimental effect on all sciences where consensus is the doctrine that drives funding and peer review…
To paraphrase General Paton, “if everyone in the room is thinking the same thing, someone’s not thinking…..”
I've participated in many discussion forums about BLP, many of which were monitored by Dr. John Ferrell, Dr. Mills' undergraduate chemistry professor, and Dr. Mills himself. Your question is perfectly reasonable, but engineering a system from scratch (first principles) requires a lot of false starts and blind alleys. I am an engineer, but I've only engineered from "canned" products, sort of like assembling Legos, only with a lot more constraints. Developing a reactor that must run close to thermal runaway has got to be very challenging. I've watched Dr. Mills face problems and overcome them, again and again with beautifully simple and cheap methods, while I only imagined very expensive and high maintenances approaches. Even with my relatively easy projects, my estimates on completion dates were usually premature by a lot. is Dr. Mills is by nature, quite optimistic, or he wouldn't be trying such a great work and his estimated completion dates have been quite optimistic and were based on assumption of support from people who could obviously observe that the reactions are real. As Dr. Phillips explains, career success is not usually built on supporting unorthodox thinkers. So, no surprise that he's been wrong about people. The competition has had unlimited capital, legions of engineers and scientists and centuries to develop the systems that Dr. Mills must out-compete.
I am most grateful to Professor Phillips for his career choices in following science. If science is dying, it is not because of the undying curiosity, very hard work and stern stuff of people like Dr. Mills and this author. I also appreciate the effort to produce material that may be digested by the more casual student of science.
You probably don't remember me, Dr. Phillips, but you were doing a poster session in the hallway during ICCF-14. You approached me and asked if I was aware of Randell Mills. I responded that I was aware of him, but that he "didn't believe in quantum mechanics," so I kept walking and you kept at me, explaining your work with him and offered to give me 3 recently published papers. You told me about your troubles at UNM. There are some grifters who work the ICCF and I tended to stick with people who I knew, but I sure thank you for persisting. You planted a seed that grew, however slowly, and still grows. I found your experimental work to be first rate.
https://youtu.be/KW4yBSV4U38?si=rs_pguhlPjioaM0Z
Sabine Hossenfelder video, 'Is Science Dying?'
Another interesting chapter and great insight into Randy’s thought process and of course the current restrictive establishment which can only have a detrimental effect on all sciences where consensus is the doctrine that drives funding and peer review…
To paraphrase General Paton, “if everyone in the room is thinking the same thing, someone’s not thinking…..”
When?????
I've participated in many discussion forums about BLP, many of which were monitored by Dr. John Ferrell, Dr. Mills' undergraduate chemistry professor, and Dr. Mills himself. Your question is perfectly reasonable, but engineering a system from scratch (first principles) requires a lot of false starts and blind alleys. I am an engineer, but I've only engineered from "canned" products, sort of like assembling Legos, only with a lot more constraints. Developing a reactor that must run close to thermal runaway has got to be very challenging. I've watched Dr. Mills face problems and overcome them, again and again with beautifully simple and cheap methods, while I only imagined very expensive and high maintenances approaches. Even with my relatively easy projects, my estimates on completion dates were usually premature by a lot. is Dr. Mills is by nature, quite optimistic, or he wouldn't be trying such a great work and his estimated completion dates have been quite optimistic and were based on assumption of support from people who could obviously observe that the reactions are real. As Dr. Phillips explains, career success is not usually built on supporting unorthodox thinkers. So, no surprise that he's been wrong about people. The competition has had unlimited capital, legions of engineers and scientists and centuries to develop the systems that Dr. Mills must out-compete.