LPP’s policy on data release

Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, Inc. (LPP) policy on data release, as stated by Eric Lerner, President:

Now that our Focus-Fusion-1 device is operational, we know that many people who have been following this project will be eagerly awaiting our experimental results. LPP firmly believes that scientific advances occur when results, both positive and negative, are freely shared and discussed throughout the community.

However, it is important to understand that experimental data have to be analyzed, digested and interpreted before they can become meaningful results. This takes time and affects the way that results are released.

Eric describes three main ways of publishing scientific results:

Announcing results on a website

The fastest way to release results is to announce them to the press and put them on our website. The disadvantage of this route is that it lacks the feedback from our scientific colleagues, who might point out alternative explanations of the data or flaws in our analysis. It increase the risk of publicizing results that may in fact later prove to be in error, which can have a big negative impact on the credibility of our effort.

Announcing results at scientific conferences

The second fastest way, which we intend to use in most circumstances, is to announce results at scientific conferences. Here, even if the results are preliminary, we have an opportunity to get our colleagues reactions, get suggestions from them, and either get confirmation of our conclusions or, possibly, modify them. LPP is currently lining up conferences that we intend to participate in, including the Conference on Future Energy this month and the International Conference on Plasma Physics (ICOPS) next spring.

Peer-reviewed scientific journals

The slowest method is publication in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. This method is useful for highly controversial results, where we expect considerable skepticism from some in the scientific community and the public in general—especially results that may seem “too good to be true”. The peer-review process, although it has very significant flaws, does allow us to answer some skeptical arguments and gives to our work, once published, a greater degree of credibility. Avoiding this process could very well bog us down in unproductive debate.

Since any positive result with hydrogen-boron fuel will in fact be highly controversial, we will almost certainly wait for peer-reviewed publication before publicizing these results, which we will not in any case be expecting until 2010.

So, we ask for everyone’s patience as we let them know, as rapidly as possible, of our results.

For those of you who were hoping for a webcam in the lab to watch it all unfold in real time, this may come as a disappointment.  Here’s a little humor on scientific results to ease the pain. 

Rest assured, we will be documenting LPP’s process as much as possible - even if we don’t get to publish everything right away.