Cold Fusion (E-Cat)

[Gosso]

I originally posted this under the Saudi Reserve thread, but it seemed to have gotten lost in the hot fusion talk.  I thought it might be fun to keep tabs on the latest news and research coming from the cold fusion field.  I realize it all sounds like some giant scam (and maybe it is) but I'm gullible, so I'll play along.

Where is fusion research currently at?

There are a lot of theories, and a few (very expensive) experiments.  The past century was full of failed fusion experiments, and lot of scientific scandal surrounding them.

I believe you are referring to the famously discredited "cold fusion" experiments. Hot fusion is a reality, but it's nowhere near ready for prime time. Here's a good article on the current state of Fusion:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science ... y-for-real

I have a soft spot in my heart for cold fusion.  I remember watching a documentary on the original experiments conducted by Pons and Fleischmann in 1989, and kept asking myself what they had to gain by showcasing this technology to the press.  Since this one press conference completely ruined their careers, I fail to see any dishonesty on their part.  I think they truly believed that they had discovered something.  But since the experiment was not repeatable EVERYTIME, they were discredited by the scientific community.  Also going against them was the fact that this defied physics as defined at the time.

The fact that the experiments worked sometimes shows that there was something there that just needed to be refined and perfected.  I truly believe that in the end they will be vindicated.

Cold Fusion is back in the news with the E-Cat device produced by Andrea Rossi.  Here is an article on it:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46342612/ns ... 0MZy4f2af4

If Italian inventor Andrea Rossi's cold fusion machine, called the E-Cat, really works, then the world's energy problems are all but solved. Rossi claims that a small amount of input energy drives a fusion reaction between hydrogen and nickel atoms inside his machine, producing an outpouring of surplus heat that can be used to generate electricity. And instead of the nasty radioactive byproducts given off by nuclear fission reactors — think Fukushima or Chernobyl — the E-Cat spits out just a teaspoon of copper.

In the past year, at least 15 reputable scientists have watched live demonstrations of Rossi's E-Cat (short for Energy Catalyzer) and have declared it to be a success. Government documents reveal that NASA scientists have discussed the E-Cat extensively in meetings, and in December, Rossi even visited a senator in Massachusetts to explore the possibility of opening an energy plant in the state.

The E-Cat is fast becoming an international star. But most scientists couldn't raise their eyebrows any higher, and now, an Australian engineer has provided an alternative explanation for where all the E-Cat's excess heat is coming from, and how Rossi is possibly scamming the world.

[Gumby]

E-Cat seems to be more scam than science. I'm not holding my breath.

[Lone Wolf]

I also find this story really fascinating.  I don't believe it... but I really, really want to believe it.  Badly.  The level of human progress that an invention like that would open up is difficult to imagine.  Wouldn't the concerns about "peak oil" seem so very quaint?

Unfortunately, all of the E-Cat's closed tests, the chain-yanking, almost total secrecy... they're all the classic hallmarks of a scam.  It really tickles the imagination though.

[Gosso]

Unfortunately, all of the E-Cat's closed tests, the chain-yanking, almost total secrecy... they're all the classic hallmarks of a scam.  It really tickles the imagination though.

I agree that there is a lot of shadiness going on, and my brain is yelling "You dumbass, this is so obviously a scam, move along nothing to see here".  But my gut keeps telling me "Just think of the possibilities!! We'll all be living on the Enterprise in a few years!!"

The reason for the shadiness is because it is impossible to obtain a patent on anything that is related to "Cold Fusion" because it is labelled a hoax and you cannot patent a hoax.  If I had invented the potential energy source of the future, then I would protect it as much as possible as well -- after all we live in a capitalistic society and if you contribute something great to society then your reward needs to be just as great.

I like to think of how the steam engine came into existence and cannot help but compare the two, from Wikipedia:

The idea of using boiling water to produce mechanical motion has a long history, going back about 2,000 years. Early devices were not practical power producers, but more advanced designs producing usable power have become a major source of mechanical power over the last 300 years, beginning with applications for removing water from mines using vacuum engines.
...
Modern steam turbines generate about 90% of the electric power in the United States using a variety of heat sources.[2]

Imagine the first attempt at trying to develop a steam engine over 2000 years ago.  I have a hard time believing that it succeeded EVERYTIME in efficiently converting heat into mechanical energy.

[Gumby]

Imagine the first attempt at trying to develop a steam engine over 2000 years ago.  I have a hard time believing that it succeeded EVERYTIME in efficiently converting heat into mechanical energy.

Cold fusion is something that might be theoretically possible. But, that's very different from steam or hot fusion — which already occurs naturally throughout the Universe. I'm not aware of any examples of cold fusion that occur naturally in the Universe. Doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. But, I doubt humans will have an easy time finding a way to make it happen in a bottle. But, hey, you never know.

[Gosso]

Imagine the first attempt at trying to develop a steam engine over 2000 years ago.  I have a hard time believing that it succeeded EVERYTIME in efficiently converting heat into mechanical energy.

Cold fusion is something that might be theoretically possible. But, that's very different from steam or hot fusion — which already occurs naturally throughout the Universe. I'm not aware of any examples of cold fusion that occur naturally in the Universe. Doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. But, I doubt humans will have an easy time finding a way to make it happen in a bottle. But, hey, you never know.

Actually cold fusion is theoretically impossible given our current understanding of physics.  The amount of energy needed to fuse two atoms together requires the energy of the sun or some sort of hot fusion reactor.  This is why cold fusion was so easily and quickly labelled a hoax.

I agree that we don't see this in nature (I usually go through the same thought process as well).  But if you take a look at my profile pic, you will see one of the most mysterious things in the Universe, a black hole.  I think it was Neil deGrasse Tyson that said that once you enter a blackhole, all known laws of physics cease to exist.  This blew my mind.  It made me appreciate the fact that we are simple minded creatures doing our best to put together a puzzle far greater than what even we can imagine.

If anyone is interested in Neil deGrasse Tyson check out his 1.5 hour interview with Stephen Colbert, or some of his shorter clips on YouTube...he's a fascinating and very articulate guy.

Ultimately I have no idea if cold fusion will become a reality, I just like an underdog story, and this fits the bill perfectly.

[MediumTex]

I think it's hilarious that Rossi is taking "pre-orders" for the ECAT home model.

There is one mildly cautionary note:

The small ECAT Home unit will not be available in all countries in the beginning.

He makes it all sound like such a routine matter, like casually booking a seat on an alien spaceship or having Bigfoot do an appearance at your kid's birthday party.

[Gosso]

I think it's hilarious that Rossi is taking "pre-orders" for the ECAT home model.

There is one mildly cautionary note:

The small ECAT Home unit will not be available in all countries in the beginning.

He makes it all sound like such a routine matter, like casually booking a seat on an alien spaceship or having Bigfoot do an appearance at your kid's birthday party.

I agree that Rossi is making a very compelling argument that he is a scam artist.  I first heard about the E-Cat in early 2011, and at the time Rossi was promising to have an assembly-line manufacturing E-Cat's by the end of Oct 2011.  At the time I gave him the benefit of the doubt, but now he seems to be either incompetent or pulling some sort of scam.

If it is a scam then this has got to be one of the most elaborate ever conceived of, at least it has got to be up there with Bre-X.  Should be fun to watch.

[MediumTex]

Note that Rossi spent time in prison in the 1990s as a result of illegal activity involving another alternative energy company.

That might not mean a thing, but it certainly doesn't make you less inclined to think that the ECAT story is a hoax.

[Gosso]

Note that Rossi spent time in prison in the 1990s as a result of illegal activity involving another alternative energy company.

That might not mean a thing, but it certainly doesn't make you less inclined to think that the ECAT story is a hoax.

That's true but he was always up front about it.  If I recall correctly it was some sort of misunderstanding with the illegal use of toxic waste in a recycling program he invented, but he was later acquitted.

Here's a blurb from his Wikipedia:

Andrea Rossi (born 3 June 1950) is an Italian inventor[1] and entrepreneur. He is the inventor of the Energy Catalyzer (also called E-Cat), a supposed cold fusion or Low-Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) thermal power source.[2] He also invented a process to convert organic waste into oil for which, in 1978, he founded a company named Petroldragon. In the 1990s, following the collapse of the company, he was jailed for environmental crimes and tax fraud, serving time in prison. He was later acquitted.[3]

He just seems like a decent guy that's trying to save the planet. (read with some sarcasm)

[MediumTex]

Note that Rossi spent time in prison in the 1990s as a result of illegal activity involving another alternative energy company.

That might not mean a thing, but it certainly doesn't make you less inclined to think that the ECAT story is a hoax.

That's true but he was always up front about it.  If I recall correctly it was some sort of misunderstanding with the illegal use of toxic waste in a recycling program he invented, but he was later acquitted.

Here's a blurb from his Wikipedia:

Andrea Rossi (born 3 June 1950) is an Italian inventor[1] and entrepreneur. He is the inventor of the Energy Catalyzer (also called E-Cat), a supposed cold fusion or Low-Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) thermal power source.[2] He also invented a process to convert organic waste into oil for which, in 1978, he founded a company named Petroldragon. In the 1990s, following the collapse of the company, he was jailed for environmental crimes and tax fraud, serving time in prison. He was later acquitted.[3]

He just seems like a decent guy that's trying to save the planet. (read with some sarcasm)

I hope he succeeds.

If he does it will truly be a game changer and will take a lot of the sting out of some of the peak oil-related arguments I make.

Every time something like ECAT breaks your heart, though, it just makes the energy song a little sadder. 

[Gosso]

I hope he succeeds.

If he does it will truly be a game changer and will take a lot of the sting out of some of the peak oil-related arguments I make.

Every time something like ECAT breaks your heart, though, it just makes the energy song a little sadder.  :'(

I think there is a good chance that what Rossi is doing is a hoax.  He is making the claim that he can produce consistent energy from a cold fusion device by simply adding some sort of catalyst (we don't know what it is since he cannot patent it).  No other cold fusion scientist has ever made this claim.  So even if Rossi is a fraud, then I still believe that there is something to this technology.

Also, this technology never should have been called "fusion", since that is not exactly what is happening.  I'm not sure what the actual process is, but it does somehow extract energy from that palladium...although it is sporadic.

Here is a wonderful video from 60 Minutes on this technology, even before Andrea Rossi rose to fame (12 minutes):

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4955212n

As an engineer this makes my eyes water-up a bit (seriously).  I think to myself what would happen if I discovered something as important as this, tried to bring it to the public (or was forced to by the University), and then had my entire career destroyed.  I think I would look exactly like Fleischmann does at the end of that clip...it's heart breaking.

[MachineGhost]

I think there is a good chance that what Rossi is doing is a hoax.  He is making the claim that he can produce consistent energy from a cold fusion device by simply adding some sort of catalyst (we don't know what it is since he cannot patent it).  No other cold fusion scientist has ever made this claim.  So even if Rossi is a fraud, then I still believe that there is something to this technology.

Of course its a hoax.  We've seen this show many, many, many times before.  It never fails to take up bandwidth and get everyone excited, both pro and con.  Careeers will soon be destroyed, including politicial and guilt by assocation.  It gives me the same feeling as those overebullient individuals in the cult-loke MLM industry. 

MG

[Gosso]

Of course its a hoax.  We've seen this show many, many, many times before.  It never fails to take up bandwidth and get everyone excited, both pro and con.  Careeers will soon be destroyed, including politicial and guilt by assocation.  It gives me the same feeling as those overebullient individuals in the cult-loke MLM industry. 

MG

Oh crap, so I shouldn't have just ordered 20 E-Cat devices! Shit, I wonder what their return policy is? 

I'm glad you're so sure.  I on the other hand am not so quick to judge.  I think of it as a tabloid story for scientists and engineers.  You know its probably all made up, but you cannot help but think that there is some underlying truth.  Time will tell.

[Gumby]

Sounds like the beginning of a conspiracy movie. An honest scientist discovers the secret to potentially unlocking unlimited energy and a secret shadow government agency discredits him by fabricating a fictitious backstory mired with fraud and illegal activity. The scientist becomes so paranoid that he keep his findings secret until he can find someone he can trust. But, he can't trust anyone...  :)

[Gosso]

Sounds like the beginning of a conspiracy movie. An honest scientist discovers the secret to potentially unlocking unlimited energy and a secret shadow government agency discredits him by fabricating a fictitious backstory mired with fraud and illegal activity. The scientist becomes so paranoid that he keep his findings secret until he can find someone he can trust. But, he can't trust anyone...  :)

That's what I'm talking about!  This stuff is better than TV, and it's all happening in reality.

I mean the exact same thing happened to Nikola Tesla when he tried to introduce AC electricity.  Thomas Edison did everything in his power to discredit Tesla, simply because Edison held all the DC patents.  (note: I'm basing all of this on the Drunk History video ).  Tesla was IMO the greatest inventor of all time, yet barely anyone has heard of him because of the negative (or lack of) PR he received.  

Scientists can be just as stubborn in their beliefs as religious fundamentalists.

As Max Planck stated:

Science advances one funeral at a time.

[Gumby]

I mean the exact same thing happened to Nikola Tesla when he tried to introduce AC electricity.  Thomas Edison did everything in his power to discredit Tesla, simply because Edison held all the DC patents.  (note: I'm basing all of this on the Drunk History video ).  Tesla was IMO the greatest inventor of all time, yet barely anyone has heard of him because of the negative (or lack of) PR he received.

You're right! I never knew that.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents

Edison carried out a campaign to discourage the use of alternating current, including spreading disinformation on fatal AC accidents, publicly killing animals, and lobbying against the use of AC in state legislatures. Edison directed his technicians, primarily Arthur Kennelly and Harold P. Brown, to preside over several AC-driven killings of animals, primarily stray cats and dogs but also unwanted cattle and horses. Acting on these directives, they were to demonstrate to the press that alternating current was more dangerous than Edison's system of direct current. He also tried to popularize the term for being electrocuted as being "Westinghoused". Years after DC had lost the "war of the currents," in 1903, his film crew made a movie of the electrocution with high voltage AC, supervised by Edison employees, of Topsy, a Coney Island circus elephant which had recently killed three men.

Edison opposed capital punishment, but his desire to disparage the system of alternating current led to the invention of the electric chair. Harold P. Brown, who was being secretly paid by Edison, built the first electric chair for the state of New York to promote the idea that alternating current was deadlier than DC.

When the chair was first used, on August 6, 1890, the technicians on hand misjudged the voltage needed to kill the condemned prisoner, William Kemmler. The first jolt of electricity was not enough to kill Kemmler, and only left him badly injured. The procedure had to be repeated and a reporter on hand described it as "an awful spectacle, far worse than hanging." George Westinghouse commented: "They would have done better using an axe."
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents

Holy crap!

[MediumTex]

I have heard the following story before, and I have always thought that perhaps Thomas Edison was actually a real jackass and sort of stumbled into notoriety by screwing other inventors who might have shared in Edison's fame:

In addition to the business rivalry of companies like Oerlikon, Siemens, Westinghouse (all AC promotors) and the powerful Edison Electric, a personal rivalry developed between Nikola Tesla and Thomas A. Edison due to certain events: Tesla had worked for Edison but felt he was undervalued (for example, when Edison first learned of the idea of alternating-current power transmission, he dismissed it: "[Tesla's] ideas are splendid, but they are utterly impractical." Bad feelings were exacerbated because Tesla had been cheated by Edison of promised compensation for his work. Tesla was promised 50,000 dollars for work to improve Edison's inefficient dynamo. Tesla did improve the dynamos after nearly a year's worth of work, but Edison did not pay him the promised money. Edison went as far as trying to say he was joking, saying “Tesla, you don't understand our American humor”?.

You never read about that sort of thing in school.  I can't even imagine how upset Tesla must have been at such a betrayal.

[Gumby]

You never read about that sort of thing in school.

I had the exact same thought. Why do history textbooks leave this stuff out? I feel duped.

[MediumTex]

You never read about that sort of thing in school.

I had the exact same thought. Why do history textbooks leave this stuff out? I feel duped.

It's too interesting and requires people to think in more nuanced terms about great figures in history.

A great example is Abraham Lincoln.  Politically, he was perceived to be a backwards hick for much of his presidency, even by his allies.  To his friends, he was a warm and very funny guy who was probably a little moody.

Today we think of him as this almost mythic figure, which would probably astonish all who knew him, and would probably surprise Lincoln himself the most.

[Lone Wolf]

I mean the exact same thing happened to Nikola Tesla when he tried to introduce AC electricity.  Thomas Edison did everything in his power to discredit Tesla, simply because Edison held all the DC patents.  (note: I'm basing all of this on the Drunk History video ).  Tesla was IMO the greatest inventor of all time, yet barely anyone has heard of him because of the negative (or lack of) PR he received.  

Oh man, Edison and Tesla had a titanic rivalry!  Edison was completely overmatched by Tesla intellectually but was such a savvy, determined, resourceful guy that DC held on for a long while against the superior alternating current.

The vicious Edison-Tesla rivalry was used as a great backdrop to the main storyline of Christopher Nolan's The Prestige (a film that I enjoyed very much.)  One of the important themes that the movie explores is the almost total destruction that an escalating rivalry leaves in its wake.  David Bowie does a surprisingly good job as Tesla in that one.
.

[Gumby]

I came across this amazing list...

RIDICULED DISCOVERERS, VINDICATED MAVERICKS

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed.
Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Arrhenius (ion chemistry)
His idea that electrolytes are full of charged atoms was considered crazy. The atomic theory was new at the time, and everyone "knew" that atoms were indivisible (and hence they could not lose or gain any electric charge.) Because of his heretical idea, he only received his university degree by a very narrow margin. More.

Hans Alfven (galaxy-scale plasma dynamics)
Astronomers thought that gravity alone is important in solar systems, in galaxies, etc. Alfven's idea that plasma physics is of equal or greater importance to gravity was derided for decades.

John L. Baird (television camera)
When the first television system was demonstrated to the Royal Society (British scientists,) they scoffed and ridiculed it.

Robert Bakker (fast, warm-blooded dinosaurs)
Everyone knows that dinosaurs are like Gila monsters or big tortoises: large, slow, and intolerant of the cold. And they're all colored olive drab too!

Bardeen & Brattain (transistor)
Not ridiculed, but their boss W. Shockley nixed their idea, and when they started investigating it, he made them stop. They assembled their point-contact experiment on a wheeled cart and continued. They could shove it into a closet whenever the boss came by.

J Harlen Bretz (ice age geology)
Endured decades of scorn as the laughingstock of the geology world. His crime was to insist that enormous amounts of evidence showed that the "scabland" desert landscape of Eastern Washington state had endured an ancient catastrophy: a flood of staggering proportions. This was outright heresy, since the geology community of the time had dogmatic belief in a "uniformitarian" position, where all changes must take place incrementally over vast time scales. Bretz was vindicated by the 1950s. Quote: "All my enemies are dead, so I have no one to gloat over."

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (black holes in 1930, squashed by Eddington)
Chandra originated Black Hole theory and published several papers. He was attacked viciously by his close colleague Sir Arthur Eddington, and his theory was discredited in the eyes of the research community. They were wrong, and Eddington apparently took such strong action based on an incorrect pet theory of his own. In the end Chandra could not even pursue a career in England, and he moved his research to the U. of Chicago in 1937, laboring in relative obscurity for decades. Others rediscovered Black Hole theory thirty years later. He won the 1983 Nobel Prize in physics, major recognition only fifty years. Never underestimate the authority-following tendency of the physics community, or the power of ridicule when used by people of stature such as Eddington.

Chladni (meteorites in 1800)
The scientific community regarded Meteorites in the same way that modern scientists regard UFO abductions and psychic phenomenon: quaint superstitions only believed by peasant folk. All the eyewitness reports were disbelieved. At one point the ridicule became so intense that many museums with meteorites in their geology collections decided to trash those valuable samples. (Sometimes hostile skepticism controls reality, and the strongest evidence is edited to conform to concensus disbeliefs.) Finally in the early 1800's Ernst Chladni actually sat down and inspected the evidence professionally, and found that claimed meteorites were entirely unlike known earth rocks. His study changed some minds. At the same time some large meteor falls were witnessed by scientists, and the majority who insisted that only ignorant peasants ever saw such things were shamed into silence. The tide of disbelief shifted... yet this important event is not taught to science students, and those ignorant of such history repeat such failures over and over, as with the hostile disbelief regarding Ball Lightning.

Crick and Watson (DNA)
Not ridiculed. But they were instructed to drop their research. They continued it as "bootleg" research.

C.J. Doppler (Doppler effect)
Proposed a theory of the optical Doppler Effect in 1842, but was bitterly opposed for two decades because it did not fit with the accepted physics of the time (it contradicted the Luminiferous Aether theory.) Doppler was finally proven right in 1868 when W. Huggins observed red shifts and blue shifts in stellar spectra. Unfortunately this was fifteen years after Doppler had died.

Robert L. Folk (existence and importance of nanobacteria)
Discovered bacteria with diameters far below 200nM widely present in mineral samples, able to both metabolize metals and to create calcium encrustations. Proposed their large role in creation of "metamorphic" rock and everyday metal corrosion. These ideas were rejected with hostility because the bacterial diameter is too small to include enough genetic material or ribosomes, and they seem immune to common sterilization techniques.

Galvani (bioelectricity)
"They call me the frogs' dance instructor."

William Harvey (circulation of blood)
His discovery of blood circulation caused the scientific community of the time to ostracize him.

Krebs (ATP energy, Krebs cycle)

Galileo (supported the Copernican viewpoint)
It was not the church authorities who refused to look through his telescope. It was his fellow scientists! They thought that using a telescope was a waste of time, since even if they did see evidence for Galileo's claims, it could only be because Galileo had bewitched them.

Karl F. Gauss (nonEuclidean geometery)
Kept secret his discovery of non-Euclidean geometry for thirty years because of fear of ridicule. Lobachevsky later published similar work and WAS ridiculed. After Gauss' death his work was finally published, but even then it took decades for Noneuclidean Geometery to overturn the Greek mathematically "pure" view of geometery, and to win acceptance among the professionals.

Binning/Roher/Gimzewski (scanning-tunneling microscope)
Invented in 1982, other surface scientists refused to believe that atom-scale resolution was possible, and demonstrations of the STM in 1985 were still met by hostility, shouts, and laughter from the specialists in the microscopy field. Its discoverers won the Nobel prize in 1986, which went far in forcing an unusually rapid change in the attitude of colleagues.

R. Goddard (rocket-powered space ships)
Goddard was relatively obscure until late 1944, when those disgusting Jules-Verne fantasies, the rocket-powered space ships, started raining down on London during WWII. (By analogy, imagine the consternation of the scientific community if Iraq responded to Desert Storm with fleets of glowing UFOs w/deathrays!)
"The whole procedure [of shooting rockets into space]...presents difficulties of so fundamental a nature, that we are forced to dismiss the notion as essentially impracticable, in spite of the author's insistent appeal to put aside prejudice and to recollect the supposed impossibility of heavier-than-air flight before it was actually accomplished."
-Sir Richard van der Riet Wooley, British astronomer, reviewing P.E. Cleator's "Rockets in Space", NATURE, March 14, 1936
"This foolish idea of shooting at the moon is an example of the absurd lengths to which vicious specialisation will carry scientists." -A.W. Bickerton, physicist, NZ, 1926

Goethe (Land color theory)

T. Gold (deep non-biological petroleum deposits)

T. Gold (deep mine microbes)

J. Lister (sterilizing)

T. Maiman (Laser)
Not ridiculed, but his boss said no to his 'optical maser' idea. Maiman received funding only after threatening to quit and pursue the laser in his garage. Even so, ongoing research was a battle, and his funding was pulled twice.

Lynn Margulis (endosymbiotic organelles)
In 1970 Margulis was not only denied funding but also subjected to intense scorn by reviewers at the NSF. "I was flatly turned down," Margulis said, and the grants officers added "that I should never apply again." Textbooks today quote her discovery as fact; that plant and animal cells are really communities of cooperating bacteria. But they make no mention of the barriers erected by the biological community against these new ideas. Even today Margulis' ideas about cooperation in Evolution are not widely accepted, and are only making slow headway against the assumption that Evolution exclusively involves absolute selfishness and pure competition.

Julius R. Mayer (The Law of Conservation of Energy)
Mayer's original paper was contemptuously rejected by the leading physics journals of the time.

B. Marshall (ulcers caused by bacteria, helicobacter pylori)
Stomach ulcers are caused by acid. All physicians knew this. Marshall needed about ?? years to convince the medical establishment to change their beliefs and accept that their confident knowledge was wrong; was nothing but a widespread believe, and that ulcers are actually a bacterial disease. See

B. McClintlock (mobile genetic elements, "jumping genes", transposons)
Won the Nobel in 1984 after enduring 32 years being ridiculed and ignored

J. Newlands (pre-Mendeleev periodic table)

Josiah C. Nott (Mosquito transmission of Yellow Fever, Malaria)
Fought an uphill battle against the "toxic gases from swamps" theory of Malaria, etc. His theory was ignored for three decades, then championed by C. Finlay and others, who were ignored an additional two decades (ridiculed as "mosquito men" self-deluded crackpots,) finally Walter Reed penetrated the disbelief ca. 1900, yet still years later the same scoffing halted the eradication of mosquitos during construction of the Panama Canal. See: http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/11-01-26/#feature

Fernando Nottebohm
Mammal brains never grow new neurons after birth? We're given a set number of brain cells, and we can only kill them but not make new ones? After twenty years as a ridiculed minority, Nottebohm's work with songbird brains was finally taken seriously, and the biologists of today now recognize that the age-old dogma was wrong: brains DO regenerate neurons after all. As of the late 1990s the information has not yet reached most of the biological community, nor the general public.

George S. Ohm (Ohm's Law)
Ohm's initial publication was met with ridicule and dismissal; called "a tissue of naked fantasy." Approx. twenty years passed before scientists began to recognize its great importance. See M. Schagrin, "Resistance to Ohm's Law," American Journal of Physics, #31 pp536-547 1963.

L. Pasteur (germ theory of disease)

Prusiner, Stanley (existence of prions, 1982)
Prusiner endured derision from colleagues for his prion theory explaining Mad Cow Disease, but was vidicated by winning the Nobel.

Stanford R. Ovshinsky (amorphous semiconductor devices)
Physicists "knew" that chips and transistors could only be made from expensive slices of ultra-pure single-crystal semiconductor. Ovshinsky's breakthrough invention of glasslike semiconductors was attacked by physicists and then ignored for more than a decade. (When evidence contradicts consensus belief, inspecting that evidence somehow becomes a waste of time.) Ovshinsky was bankrupt and destitute when finally the Japanese took interest and funded his work. The result: the new science of amorphous semiconductor physics, as well as inexpensive thin-film semiconductor technology (in particular the amorphous solar cell, photocopier components, and writeable CDROMS sold by Sharp Inc.) made millions for Japan rather than for the US.

Ignaz Semmelweis (surgeons wash hands, puerperal fever )
Semmelweis brought the medical community the idea that they were killing large numbers of new mothers by working with festering wounds in surgery, then immediately assisting with births without even washing hands. Such a truth was far too shameful for a community of experts to accept, so he was ignored. Semmelweis finally ended up in a mental hospital, and his ideas caught fire after he had died.

Virginia Steen-McIntyre (found that ancient indian villiages date to 300,000BC)
Steen-McIntyre innocently stumbled into heresy when she found wide-ranging evidence that native settlements in the USA southwest were 300,000 years old. This damaged here career, since the dates acceptable to the archeologist community are more like 50,000BC.

N. Tesla (Earth electrical resonance, now called "Schumann" resonance)

N. Tesla (brushless AC motor)
An AC motor which lacks brushes was thought to be an instance of a Perpetual Motion Machine.

Jacobus Henricus van't Hoff (theory of 3D molecules)
As a relative newcomer and unknown, he was attacked and ridiculed for proposing that a 3D tetrahedral structure would explain many problems in chemistry. His foes rapidly went silent, and finally his ridiculous cardboard models won the first nobel prize in chemistry (1901.)

Alfred Wegener (continental drift)

Peyton Rous (viruses cause cancer)

Warren S. Warren (flaws in MRI theory)
Warren and his team at Princeton tracked down a Magnetic Resonance anomaly and found a new facet to MRI theory: spin interactions between distant molecules, including deterministic Chaos effects. Colleagues knew he was wrong, and warned him that his crazy results were endangering his career. Princeton held a "roast", a mean-spirited bogus presentation mocking his work. Warren then began encountering funding cancellations. After approx. seven years, the tide of ridicule turned and Warren was vindicated. His discoveries are even leading to new MRI techniques. See: SCIENCE NEWS, Jan 20 2001, V159 N3, "spin Control" (cover story)

Wright bros (flying machines)
After their Kitty Hawk success, The Wrights flew their machine in open fields next to a busy rail line in Dayton Ohio for almost an entire year. American authorities refused to come to the demos, and Scientific American Magazine published stories about "The Lying Brothers." Even the local Dayton newspapers never sent a reporter (but they did complain about all the letters they were receiving from local "crazies" who reported the many flights.) Finally the Wrights packed up and moved to Europe, where they caused an overnight sensation and sold aircraft contracts to France, Germany, Britain, etc.

George Zweig (quark theory)
Zweig published quark theory at CERN in 1964 (calling them 'aces'), but everyone knows that no particle can have 1/3 electric charge. Rather than receiving recognition, he encountered stiff barriers and was accused of being a charlatan.

Fritz Zwicky (Dark Matter)
Known in the astro research community as "Crazy Fritz," Zwicky investigated orbit statistics of galactic clusters in 1933 and concluded that the majority of mass had an invisible unknown source. He was ignored, dismissed as an eccentric.

Some ridiculed ideas which had no single supporter:

• Ball lightning (lacking a theory, it was long dismissed as retinal afterimages)
• Catastrophism (ridicule of rapid Earth changes, asteroid mass extinctions)
• Child abuse (before 1950, doctors were mystified by "spontaneous" childhood bruising)
• Cooperation or altruism between animals (versus Evolution's required competition)
• Instantaneous meteor noises (evidence rejected because sound should be delayed by distance)
• Mind-body connection (psychoneuroimmunology, doctors ridiculed any emotional basis for disease)
• Perceptrons (later vindicated as Neural Networks)
• Permanent magnet levitation ("Levitron" shouldn't have worked)

Source: http://amasci.com/weird/vindac.html

The list is followed by this disclaimer:

NOTES: I constantly hear that the number of breakthroughs from crackpots is relatively tiny, or that "vindicated mavericks" are the exception. But we need to be careful with this. After all, the number of uneducated crazy people is enormous, but this has little impact on the statistics regarding new ideas in professional science.  It's not honest to ask how many crazy ideas are actually crazy. Instead ask how many CRAZY FUNDING PROPOSALS from SUCCESSFUL SCIENTISTS have turned out to be genuinely crazy. I'm guessing that the number is quite low. Perhaps the number of vindicated crazy research projects is so high, that it's larger than the number of genuinely crazy research projects.

So, if you're going to dismiss or scoff at some crazy idea without bothering to first take an unbiased look ...at least make sure the idea is from a common crackpot. Make damn certain that "the crazy" isn't coming from a professional scientist who is trying to fund a research project to test that idea.

[Gosso]

I came across this amazing list...

Great list!  It makes you wonder how many other great ideas didn't make it through.

[MediumTex]

One of the guys on that list was named "Warren S. Warren."

As if having the same first and last name wasn't bad enough, he also had to go through people dissing his theory.

[Gumby]

One day we may see the following crazies added to the list...

Warren Mosler (Soft Economics, Modern Monetary Theory)
The mainstream economics community once scoffed and ridiculed Mosler for suggesting that tax revenues did not fund fiat governments, and that fiat governments could easily sustain enormous deficits — when deficits were denominated in a country's own domestic currency, and under certain conditions.

Harry Browne (Permanent Portfolio)
Harry Browne proposed a simple and conservative passive investment portfolio consisting of 4 assets to weather the four possible economic environments: prosperity, inflation, deflation and recession. At the time, most investment advisors ridiculed his 25% allocation to gold bullion.

Any other nominations for the list?