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"60 Minutes" favorable to cold fusion on April 19, 2009

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

A videoclip and a transcript of the favorable piece (titled Cold Fusion Is Hot Again ) appear on the cbsnews website.

Within the text: Scientists today like to call it a nuclear effect rather than cold fusion. At least 20 labs working independently have published reports of excess heat - heat up to 25 times greater than the electricity going in.

The interested reader should review the 2004 IPBiz post Scientific Mafias, which includes the text:

These problems, Hagelstein and McKubre argue, are all
tied to the 1989 DOE review. While the report's
language was measured, pointing out the lack of
experimental evidence, "it was absolutely the
intention of most of the framers of that document to
kill cold fusion," McKubre says.

**Comment to IAM:

As an interesting coincidence, "60 Minutes" aired a favorable piece on "cold fusion" on April 19. The way the media covered this informs the coverage of patent reform. "To resonate with the readership" the initial work was over-hyped, and then the work was overkilled, and now, after 20 years it's back. You might ask Fleischman what he thought of the media coverage or simply view the end of the clip. "To heighten the contrast" mainstream media has depicted the need for patent reform in dire terms, with the current situation blocking innovation. The real story would not sell as many newspapers.

Full post as published by IPBiz on April 20, 2009 (boomark / email).