NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/sci/physics/fusion/3398

Text File | 1993-01-27 | 4.6 KB | 84 lines

Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion
Path: sparky!uunet!munnari.oz.au!sgiblab!pacbell.com!tandem!zorch!fusion
From: Jed Rothwell <ub-gate.UB.com!compuserve.com!72240.1256>
Subject: Discretionary Spending
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail] (Scott Hazen Mueller)
Reply-To: Jed Rothwell <ub-gate.UB.com!compuserve.com!72240.1256>
Organization: Sci.physics.fusion/Mail Gateway
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 04:31:22 GMT
Lines: 72

To: >INTERNET:[e-mail]

Rusty Perrin and J. A. Carr have questioned whether the DoE has any legal
authority to conduct CF experiments in the first place, without authorization
from Congress. This is a reasonable question. I have discussed it with
Members of Congress and with officials in the DoE, and as I understand it,
the rules are as follows:

1. The DoE has various discretionary funds, both at headquarters and at the
individual research institutions, like LANL. These represent only a small
fraction of the total DoE budget (I do not know what percent). In 1989, many
CF experiments were performed using these funds. (Far too many, in my
opinion.)

2. Congress does not micromanage on this level. The DoE could not perform CF
experiments costing $100 million, but they certainly could perform scattered
work amounting to a few hundred thousand, or even a few million, as long as
each experiment did not exceed the authorized discretionary limit of the
worker.

3. Dr. Walter Polansky, Director of the Division of Advanced Energy Projects,
has told me and many other people that his Department does have the authority
to fund CF work. He said that the 1989 DoE panel, headed by Huizenga, "was
sympathetic towards modest support for carefully focussed and cooperative
experiments within the present funding system. The Department of Energy
accepted the report and its recommendations. We have been monitoring the cold
fusion research area since the issuance of that report and believe its
recommendations are still valid. We continue to be available to review any
research proposal of interest to the Department."

That's what the man says, but actually, as far as I can tell, Polansky is a
hatchet man who goes around shutting down CF experiments, overriding other
people's spending authority, and cutting everything including your telephone
if you try anything related to CF. So, if you are thinking of submitting a
proposal, I suggest you steer clear of the man.

Under normal circumstances, if a scientist at LANL, Fermilab or some other
DoE lab had some level of discretionary spending authority, and he or she
wished to, he could conduct experiments relating to energy. As long as the
experiments stayed within the allowed budget, there would be no problem.
Certainly, if he could show that his Japanese colleagues were spending 10's
of millions on the subject, nobody would object to a few simple replications
of the Japanese work costing $10 or $20 thousand. Nothing about CF is normal,
so these customs do not apply.

"Discretionary" is a loose term, subject to definition and revision. There is
no such thing as perfectly 100% discretionary money, in any institution. No
DoE honcho would get away with funding a study of orgasmic energy sources.
The closest thing I can think of to a real Discretionary Fund is the 5
million Yen Japanese professors get just for showing up at work: when I
attended a National University, I took a nice day trip or two, and used a lot
of "discretionary" video and computer equipment for purposes not directly
related to the Department's work. Also, we had several pet chickens and a
large turtle, whose sustenance came out that funding I believe.

In most institutions, however, discretionary expenditures that get too far
away from the subject would be reviewed and censured. Projects which are too
wild and flakey, like ESP spoon bending energy in the DoE, or faith-healing at
NIH would get anyone into trouble, which seems reasonable to me.
Unfortunately, anything remotely related to CF falls in this category: too
flakey and weird to be allowed. Research institution heads and other people
with discretionary authorization have been explicitly ordered *not* to spend
anymoney or allow any experiments in CF. The ostensible reason is that it is
too far beyond the pale, too "pathological." This may, in fact, be one of the
reasons it is banned, but I believe the main reason it that the people who
are fighting against it know that if it succeeds, their reputations will go
down in flames; and also because the hot fusion program, and many other
energy programs, will be rapidly terminated. People engaged in a turf war
find it easy to convince themselves that their opponents are flakes.

- Jed