ACS Endorses Quackery

I’ll be attending the ACS-Philadelphia conference next week. One of the sessions sponsored by the Environmental division is called “New Energy Technology” on Wednesday morning out at the DoubleTree-Maestro B. The title implies itself to wonderful talks discussing frontiers in applied energy chemistry. Unfortunately, the session is completely dominated by the left-field cold fusion people. A list of the talks are shown below

• Cold fusion in light of green chemistry (Jan Marwan)
• Low energy nuclear reactions research: 2008 update (Steven B. Krivit)
• Overview of LENR research: Critical steps on the pathway to technology(Michael Charles Harold McKubre)
• Macroscopic quantum dynamics and the problems of loading in Pd-H(D) systems (Antonella De Ninno, Emilio Del Giudice, Antonio Frattolillo)
• CR-39 studies of Pd/D codeposition (P. A. Mosier-Boss, Stanislaw Szpak, Frank E. Gordon, Lawrence Forsley)
• Study of the nanostructured palladium deuterium system (Jan Marwan)
• Sonofusion from deuterons to helium (Roger Stringham)

My feelings on cold fusion research have been stated previously here: The difference between cold fusion and cold fusion

It would be in good taste to attend the session, and let them have the opportunity to present their research, but I question whether I could sit through it. If you find yourself bored on Wednesday morning and ready for a lively debate, I’d recommend attending this session.

P.S. Expect dispatches from the conference. I’ll be covering a wide slice of the sessions with my new ACS press-pass: ACS-2008 Philadelphia.

Mitch

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