> How do you know it's a false lead and not that someone just hasn't come up with the eureka moment that pulls it all together? F In the case of Pons & Fleisch

> How do you know it's a false lead and not that someone just hasn't come up with the eureka moment that pulls it all together? F In the case of Pons & Fleischman, I still don't know. Did they find some marginal cold fusion effect? It might actually work (even if it's so marginal that it could never be exploited). And that happened when I was in middle school... the late 1980s. There are those who claim even today that it produces excess neutrons that aren't explicable unless atoms are fusing. Judging by that, I don't think I'll ever know if this is some marginal room temp superconductor either. Most will have dismissed it, slow pace work will continue with some reporting results that indicate it really does work, and this will linger on for decades. And I don't really understand why that will be the case. It bothers me. This isn't looking like a case of kooks who "just want to believe". They tend to be emotionally uninvested, non-magical-thinkers, people who have nothing to gain... even status. In fact, it seems like in some cases it undermines their status when they continue to pursue that which has popularly been dismissed.