We are aware that there is a large number of new people that are starting to pay attention to this field and our work also. Below, we discuss some of how we came to do what we are doing and the potential wider impact of the approach.
During the summer of 2012, an idea was born at the annual International Conference on Cold Fusion. The field of cold fusion had been marginalised for 23 years, despite the profound potential of this new low cost, clean, and sustainable energy source to address many urgent global needs. Inspired by the devoted scientists in this field, a small group of attendees proposed a new approach to this research area that just might accelerate its realisation.
The proposal was for an exceptionally inclusive and open exploration of the scientific field, where every element of the process, from hypothesis to conclusion, would be laid bare for anybody to challenge and improve. The aim was to invite criticism and immediately publish data as it was collected, such that questions about the veracity of the data would be dispelled and more credibility would result. While drafting our charter during the first days of the conference, we applied the same principles employed in open-source technology development to this research. We found that we were doing something that we could not find good evidence of before, so we had to give it a name. Since we are open about what we do, and we publish data live, we decided to call it Live Open Science.
Live Open Science (LOS) evolves scientific discovery further from the individual or closed group to the collective. It has an inherent peer review which is democratic and inclusive, and because the whole endeavour is documented and recorded for posterity, the value added by individuals is in the record.
All participants receive recognition for their individual effort and can at the same time feel they are taking part in something that is bigger than them, which can span ages, religion and nationality. The retired can leverage their wealth of experience with the free thinking and catalytic energy of the youth. The willing can participate on an equal footing without prejudice about their appropriateness to the task.
LOS is more human and community building in nature. The ownership is shared and the correctness of the endeavour automatically moderated by the choice, judgement and will of the participants. The understanding and truth in the work is disseminated before work is concluded, thereby ensuring that effort cannot be misunderstood or lost. It fosters better work and makes it more certain that the fruits of that work are secured.
In matters where the outcome of new science could have profound and disruptive effects, such as areas that could give an intense advantage to one segment of humanity, LOS is a vital philosophy that ensures that the benefits of a discovery are realised faster and for the good of all. The process will prevent subjugation and exploitation that can occur when science is restricted to an elite. This will ensure that good science is done for good reasons and the benefits shared. For the people ... By the people.
To this end, it is appropriate that its first wide application is to resolving the mystery of low energy nuclear reactions. This field of scientific work has the potential to yield some of humanities greatest rewards in history, ranging from ending the inequality that stems from energy access disparity, to allowing us to build the elements we need to survive as a species from that which we have access to, and gives us a real prospect of securing diversity of life on earth.
It is fitting that, in a field where the researchers have been derided and ignored for so long, LOS can demonstrate the ability to circumvent the kind of protectionism that has historically so often held discovery back, while at the same time verify the credibility of the efforts of scientific work that may otherwise be repressed because of the power of vested and political interests. In doing so, it can free the ingenuity of man from the ignorance of the strong arm of an elite.
This approach has the potential to disrupt the vicious circle of patent trolling that is killing innovation and serves only the richest that can defend their own. Intellectual property owners are currently discarding or restricting too many innovations that could make our lives better. LOS allows people with relevant patents or a priority filing date to have their inventions tested and exposed widely for applicability sooner, so that the potential benefit and return to the inventor can be realised sooner in a win-win scenario. Often inventors re-invent things only to discover that their time has been wasted because of the challenge of matching ideas with solutions.
To elaborate, we are publishing to the Internet the mechanical and electrical schematics, the experimental protocols, and regular updates including graphs, analysis, pictures and videos, as well as the final paper that will be published into a journal, for everybody to comment and discuss as it proceeds. Most radical is that we are live-broadcasting the measurements and the scientific logbook directly to the Web. To do this, we make use of many of the cutting edge internet collaboration tools and had to create a few of our own.
This is, to our understanding, rather unique, and we have successfully gathered a large part of the scientific community in this specific field to support of our effort. With our audience getting bigger every day, our project is reaching a critical point where we have to scale up our endeavour.
We are being told that several groups are starting research in LENR because of the LOS approach and specifically citing that they are working off designs and discussion on our web platform. In addition, we have seen researchers in the field starting to adopt aspects of LOS, and even say they are willing to share ideas and insight, including proprietary technologies, precisely because we have demonstrated the value of being open.
We are eager to address what is perhaps the most disruptive technology that humankind has faced. Time is critical.
The Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project Team
UPDATE#1 - LOS Posters
Here is the final version of the poster that we presented at ICCF18. (click each image for the full size pdf file)
Comments
Wow. Thank you for the lesson in MFMP argumentation. I'm glad you only had words available . . . you stood your ground and "Zimmer'd" me.
I hope you are easier on the lab equipment.
@Mason: No apologies needed! In fact, I regret leaving you with the impression that you offended me in some way. I'm not at all offended by your arguments, nor do I ascribe the rhetorical devices I employed in my argument to your expressed ideas.
I'm not hating on you here, I'm just arguing a point
You apparently have noticed that statements or arguments put forth by individual members of the MFMP are not always in perfect synchrony; I hope this gives you some idea of the evolving, open, and inclusive nature of our organization's discussions! Your voice is welcome here too.
I apologize if my words somehow implied that MFMP is looking to take others IP. To read the Open Letter and conclude MFMP is going to be an IP pirate does not stand to reason.
'Litigation' is a hot button. I was focusing on the preparatory effort to establish a legally defensible position which supports the mission of MFMP as stated in the Open Letter. This is was Robert Greenyer, Bob, and Ryan Hunt are discussing in this thread: the rationale underlying the legal framework to support the long term goals of MFMP. (I am understanding these to include: the protection of LOS intellectual capital having practical value, protection of this capital's access to market as the technology evolves, and protection of the growth and maintenance of the MFMP foundation.)
Sadly, in the face of a $5Trillion industry, said to be 10% of the global economy, some of those eager to capitalize on the movement from 'old' to 'new' may choose to play 'dirty tricks'. And, regrettably, a license only has the value of the paper it is printed on if there is no intent, will, or follow through to defend MFMP's repository of shared intellectual capital.
Regarding Tragedy of the Commons, it has been used as a metaphor in political philosophy. It helps to explain humanity's creation of laws and institutions whose purpose is the protection of the Public Good, like the fire department, police department, public education, the military, the courts, etc. IMHO and to paraphrase, I laud MFMP's stated purpose to defend 'Shared Intellectual Capital for Critical Practical Solutions' as a Public Good. And I support what the LOS outlines as the benefits of protecting LENR as a Public Good.
Again, my apologies for any misunderstandin g I created. I deeply believe in the full scope of what you Open Letter describes.
This licence in particular looks promising:
creativecommons.org/.../3.0
Still not clear if it could be made to apply to ideas and or stuff.
The investible angle is trickier still. Many players make lots of money with GPL licenced software. What they can't make money on, however, is hording the software source code. Our case will be similar. Players will have to make money building, distributing and servicing real products which incorporate the new fire. They won't be able to make money gathering and licencing the underlying intellectual property. As long as no one can ever own the MFMP intellectual property and the access to that knowledge pool is entirely level for all participants, I believe there will be a compelling case for such businesses contributing LENR R&D to the pool. As soon as we "tinker" with that principle and allow special member privileges to make the intellectual property investible the whole house will come down in my opinion. Somehow we have to enshrine the "give to get" mentality.
As for asserting our own litigation against parties infringing on our IP, I do not see the point of doing this. Once we publish our inventions, they are by default thereafter in the public domain unless we have taken a series of time-consuming and expensive steps to patent them. Why should we patent them, exactly, when the whole point is to give them away? The tragedy of the commons is based on scarcity of a shared commodity, such as the actual grass growing on the "commons" ground itself, which is an inherently limited resource. The ability to copy the technologies we publish would only be limited by private parties asserting ownership of those technologies. As long as they don't actually own the technologies in question, because we have established prior art, then they have no case. I know from personal experience that malicious litigation extracts the cost of a defense even from the innocent. What more, specifically, do you think we should do to protect against malicious litigation other than clearly establishing prior art? Once we start paying lawyers to chase down every conceivable avenue of preemption, we have already started losing the game before an opponent has started playing it!
A big challenge, IMHO, is facing the reality you must use the tools of the same civilization with the elite you describe. One path has already been developed with LINUX and the creative commons license.
From my experience in working with IP attorneys in court, you must be prepared for litigation from the VERY Beginning. This means that when you are ready with your basic framework, when you TRULY know the details of what you are protecting, set your appointment with an extremely solid IP attorney for patents and inventions, and develop your legal documentation, contracts, and associated supporting administrative process.
Do it correctly now and you will save yourself from being caught in simple preventable mistakes. You will need to save your energy and resources for all the challenges and dirty tricks that will likely come from those who condemn your perspective and look to maintain the status quo. You must prepare well to prevent another "Tragedy of the Commons". They certainly have.
Indeed, requesting participants to work under LOS is a good approach.
There are other and perhaps better uses of oil but i do wonder what will happen to the price (especially of gas) if LENR becomes main stream. We would end up with a whole bunch of stuff if we convert all the oil and gas we burn on a daily basis into physical products.
I wholeheartedly agree with you that we need this technology a.s.a.p. Yet, i find the idea of building this product in secret and at some point starting to sell large quantities rather irresponsible. This can be good for your own bottom line but might also have all sorts of unforeseen consequences. Markets are highly sensitive to shocks and panic behavior and fossil fuel companies are one of the most favorite stocks. I am suggesting that we need a communication plan in case we were to establish the reality of LENR+ beyond any doubt.
I also think that if we do things well there will be inherent value in our crowd and the LOS infrastructure.
The GPL is clever in that it doesn't forbid the sale of derivative products, it simply says that you can't change the terms under which the original software was donated even for the new portion. In practice this forces the donation of derivative source back to the common pool. Ideally we would want to "force" our crowd to contribute derivative designs and protocols back to the common pool.
The New Fire will allow practically free energy to extract hydrocarbons so the Net Return on Energy Invested equations become interesting.
A gold miners product has little value in energy terms - it is basically valued in the energy and cost of labour that it took to extract + a perceived value.
If the cost of the energy to extract goes down to near zero - it then becomes a commodity that has great value as a feedstock for other needs other than energy.
I have long believed that OIL and its products should be reserved for a few things like Pharmaceutical, Farming (pesticides, fertilisers and herbicides) and plastics. These will always have a need...
So if LENR/New Fire does not exist - the Arabs have a problem if the OIL price does not allow for the energy of extraction. Take out the energy cost and you are left with a highly valuable product to sell.
It is a CRIME that humanity is *burning* the best chemical feedstock that humanity has been endowed with in limited quantities.
Also, if there is ANY risk of damaging water supplies for generations with non-conventiona l HC energy production, there is even more reason to accelerate research in this field.
Thanks - it is new uncharted waters we are crossing, but it is FUN and if it gets more people into science, then all the better!
Maybe "designs" could be protected and software.
A core tech reference reactor tech could contain patented elements, indeed it may need to. We can still do LOS on it to characterise it... others may then see ways to improve that somehow the crowd misses.
People could build unique product on the core tech. The market is literally as big as one could conceive.
Lots of companies in the Open Source movement make a living off supply of training and customisation and this may be a way that participants in the effort could make a living. We are constantly buying plugins for Joomla (which is OS) to enhance our site for instance.
The sooner this tech is delivered and accessible the sooner a new industrial revolution can happen and this will benefit all.
So i am happy to read that it was not so radical after all.
I have always been told that sharing is caring. Love and passion should be at the basis of human action, not monetary necessity or greed. If we work together we could develop the technology needed for a world of abundance where there is no need for money. I must admit, i am a trekkie so my ideas for the future are somewhat colored but it sounds good to me.
One thing that worries me though is how a fast implementation, lets say 10 - 20 years, of lenr is going to impact energy producing countries especially in the Middle east. Without sufficient petro-dollars they are doomed to financial failure. Not so good in an already unstable region. If LENR+ is real and products can be made than we have an obligation to warn people so they can plan ahead. There is a lot on the line, the stakes are astronomical, the better prepared people are the smoother the transition will be.
At risk of repeating myself too many times, what LOS needs is the equivalent of the GPL to ultimately be successful. Without a licence to govern derivative products there is nothing to stop organizations poaching all of MFMP technology and calling it their own.
This is new territory and I understand the complexities when compared with simple source code on a computer. The GPL relies on copyright laws for its effectiveness. As far as I understand things you can't copyright stuff. eg. experimental apparatus. I'd hate to see us having to use patent laws in a "copyleft" manner to provide our protection.
Any ideas?
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