 Welcome to The Randy's Show. I am JRF Field Coordinator Brian Thompson and with me is James Randy. Good to be here. How you doing? Uh, hanging in there let's say just hanging in there. Are you doing something different with your beard? Well I I did have it professionally trimmed you see. It's very hard to get these beards that professionally trimmed properly. Most of them just want to hack away at it and make it square or long or whatever. I I'm looking more like Darwin every day and less like uh like uh someone on his last legs but uh well Darwin was on his last legs at 1.2. So the first thing we're going to talk about is this news story that's come out about another gentleman who claims to have created a successful cold fusion machine. So what do you what do you know about cold fusion? Well first of all uh my only experience with the uh not the creators but uh one of the original pair that came up with the idea of cold fusion ponds and Fleischmann was uh oh many many years ago I think it was in Baltimore at a meeting of the American Association of Physics or a I forgot what it is but Carl Sagan was there and Carl and I stood at the back of the auditorium because the the night before the conference officially got started they were actually going to interview ponds and Fleischmann and uh I was happy to see that Carl and I looked at one another after the first three or four questions and did this kind of thing into the other way you know uh and we both came up with exactly the same comment uh they were being asked questions by the from the audience and they were answering them or apparently answering them but as I said when I turned to Carl I said do you get the same idea that I do and he said yes they're not answering the questions I said exactly but they're doing and every question they were asked you're saying that's a very good question which is a sure sign that it's not a very good question for them to answer and uh they usually start out that way by complimenting you on your uh your astute observations you see but what they're really trying to do is say I'm not really going to answer this question and they didn't they did not address any of the questions that up until that point they had presented with and Carl and I sort of solved that and we just turned around and walked out the reporters outside asked what did you think and I just looked at one of the reporters and I said cold not fusion and uh and uh Carl chuckled at that and we walked away but uh that was my only confrontation with pawns and Fleischman they simply couldn't answer questions and as we know we don't talk about pawns and Fleischman anymore but this one is just another one of so many of these stories that come up and and you notice from the from the text of the article that you sent me there for consideration he's not really saying anything anywhere he's playing cagey he's almost saying things but not quite so basically the story is uh this guy Andrea Rossi um he's a physicist in Italy and he claims to have created a machine that successfully uh performs cold fusion he calls it an ecat machine and uh for those who may not know cold fusion is the fusion of atoms using less energy than what would typically be required which is basically you know the interior of the sun yeah in other words low temperature experiments that will produce fusion at a slower rate and uh not quite as dangerous as we might think because it wouldn't go up in our faces so to speak it may make us where we're sitting but it wouldn't go up in our faces like an atomic explosion yeah and uh I guess if somebody actually did create a cold fusion machine that worked it would completely redefine how energy was created across the entire planet we would absolutely yes so this person is in for a lot of fame and fortune if this thing actually does work um so why don't you think that this is this is why isn't this making gigantic news well first of all I think maybe people are considering the fact that they were burned by pawns of Fleischman because governments Japan for example spent millions and millions of dollars to set them up with their whole laboratory from which nothing emerged whatsoever but people um people will go for anything if it becomes a business and they're going to sell stock and I think that's probably the next thing we're going to hear about that they're going to sell stock in their company or this gentleman is going to sell stock in his company if he owns the thing outright the idea that is and they'll always be promising something or other there's always just around the corner in two weeks we'll have the definitive demonstration for you and it's going to go on like that for quite some time and then suddenly the the stock market in in his respect will completely collapse and the investors will lose their money they'll shake their heads and say wonder if anybody else has got a scheme I can invest in the research behind this machine hasn't been published in any sort of scientific journal yet according to the article though there are a few eyewitnesses that have seen it work apparently there was a demonstration on October 28th at the university this might be ironic I I can't say I'm not going to say one way or another whether this machine actually works I've never seen it but it was demonstrated at the university of what we would pronounce baloney the uh university yeah I spotted that I wasn't going to mention that I'm glad you did I'm not sure how they would pronounce it in Italy uh balonia is that it I don't know yeah I'm not Italian um so yeah university of baloney this was uh demonstrated and uh a few people saw it work someone who runs a website devoted to alternative energy says that he vouches for it oh yes of course because that's his be all and end all he's got to have something like that uh or he hasn't got anything to cling to and remember these people said they saw what appeared to them to be successful demonstration but what are their qualifications did they have any control over the demonstration itself did they have any any look at the innards of this thing no of course not because we gotta hold on to our secrets you know till we sell this off and then we move to to southern Spain or wherever uh and he says that uh they don't have to prove this to scientists they don't have to prove it to anyone but their customers well of course that their customers constitute a few scientists who might have something to say about that that might be a different matter altogether but again they probably won't allow them to really look at the innards of the thing all right so do you think that there's a future for um the e-cat machine and leonardo court i suspect not i'm always willing to be shown and uh i can be shown and the world can be shown but i i predict that as i said just a moment ago there that this man will probably go on the stock market and sell all kinds of shares and issue all kinds of wonderful reports left and right and um the reports will influence everybody and not everybody but those who have money to waste and uh they will invest in it and then gradually it will become apparent to everybody gee maybe it doesn't work now that's what i predict but then i'm not a very good prognosticator i can't even tell what tomorrow is but if i look at a calendar i can figure it out because i i depend on authority you see but it is a shame you know that people aren't better informed on matters like this that they don't actually go through the trouble of calling in a scientist of course they call it scientist after scientist after scientist until they get one who says well now it's not impossible oh that's what i want to hear they just want to get some sort of reassurance because they don't really want this to be true brand they need it to be true they need something they can spend their money on or invest their faith in or or their emotional security or whatever they have to invest they really need something like this and these people who invent these things almost overnight they they know that they understand human psychology the randy show is a production of the james randy educational foundation to learn more about how we promote science and critical thinking go to randy.org