After the optimism from recent progress in cold fusion, as demonstrated in Italy, Nature surprised us with a severe cold winter in some parts of the world. However, we should not blame climate change for the human suffering when the solution to the problem is in the hands of our civilization.

The expectation that the 21st century will bring improved welfare for humanity seems to be an illusion. We are experiencing global crises in different areas such as economics, politics, ideology, natural resources, and the environment. Is there a fundamental reason for the crises and, if yes, what could be the solution? One serious problem today is the mismanagement of our resources—natural, economic, and scientific. The shortsighted view of policy makers is correlated with stagnation in contemporary science. While the science of today is highly dependent on government funding, irresponsible decision makers have made it a servant of dominant groups with common interests. As a result, not only the media and policy makers but also many honest scientists are misinformed. To be more specific, the blame is on the scientific establishments with their bureaucratic style of management. How has this happened?

Today, government institutions that fund science consist of hierarchical bureaucracies whose main function is funds management. The bureaucracy is naturally against changes that challenge the status quo. Some scientific groups with common interests have successfully infiltrated the bureaucracy by putting their sympathizers in key positions. In order to ensure that they receive the lion’s share of government funds, they created defensive barriers. This was done by occupying editorial positions of peer review journals, and by controlling government sponsored conferences and the distribution of the research funds. In that way, the favored common-interest groups have enough government funds for research, conferences, international collaboration and advertisements of their work in the popular journals and media. Some of these journals claim to influence the direction of contemporary science. This has a strong impact on politicians, policy makers and investors. The international influence of the favored interest groups allowed them to appropriate the name “mainstream science”. They impose the opinion that scientific achievement or discovery is impossible outside of their perimeter of expertise. Furthermore, published research on any fundamental issue is expected to comply with officially established concepts. This is the major reason for the apparent lack of new discoveries in the past few decades, especially if they are of a fundamental nature. On the one hand, new concepts could not be envisioned by management at the top and, on the other hand, any challenging idea, theory or discovery coming from outside of the established groups was heavily suppressed.

The emerging field of cold fusion is a typical example of suppression imposed by some well-funded scientific groups that are involved with research on hot fusion. After Fleischmann and Pons announced a successful cold fusion experiment in 1989, interest in this field, later called Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR), continued to grow despite the lack of government support due to severe denial by mainstream science. Finally, the year 2011 marked significant progress by the Focardi-Rossi method of Ni + Hi LENR implemented in the E-cat reactor. It is important to note that the E-cat technology does not create hazardous radioactive waste. Further, it cannot be weaponized and cannot cause nuclear catastrophes such as Chernobyl and Fukushima. While the experimental evidence for cold fusion can no longer be denied, the last card of its opponents is now the lack of a physical theory. Yet, theories exist that challenge the current understanding of nuclear reactions, some of them having been around for decades. However, they have not been allowed to appear in peer review journals controlled by the favored interest groups, so the policy makers controlling funding from government and investors are misinformed.

In 2004, the censorship barrier was further elevated with a rule change for publishing in the moderated physical archive, arxive.org. The archive initially allowed rapid announcement of new achievements, while the peer review process could take years. With the new rule of endorsement, even a new discovery could not be published if the author was not supported by an endorser. An endorser could lose his or her own right to post if an article were supported that challenges the status quo. For scientists searching for the unbiased truth, the only option left was to post on some other on-line archive. One of these archives, vixra.org, gained popularity despite not being officially recognized by mainstream science. The favored scientific groups carefully avoid mentioning some of the challenging scientific theories, even if their authors are able to publish in some peer-reviewed journals. This attitude of mainstream science is nothing less than a sign of stagnation. A typical example is the way the BSM – Supergravitation Unified Theory was ignored. This theory was first published in 2001, followed by multiple reports in scientific conferences and some peer review journals outside the scope of mainstream science.

 The author of this article worked for 35 years in scientific institutions in different countries. From his own experience, he knows how easy it is to publish in the peer review journals of mainstream science if complying with the status quo, and how difficult or impossible it is to publish some challenging theoretical work with experimental evidence or even a challenging experiment. In the mass media, the tactic of the favored common-interest groups is debunking by misinformation. Therefore, the only option for those who do not want to be misled is to make a little more effort to determine the truth. In that respect, the advice of the author of this article is to read the paper about cold fusion posted in the physical archive.

Summarizing, the denial of cold fusion is just one example. Today our civilization is experiencing a crisis that is not only environmental, but also economic, political, and scientific. The only solution to such problems is a new technological breakthrough that must come via a breakthrough in physics. Accumulated evidence for such a breakthrough already exists. It will open the opportunity for expanding our presence to other planets or satellites of the solar system. This will be possible only by defying the status quo, and it depends on our will to do so.