Talk:Cold fusion/Archive 31
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Excess heat is "confirmed"
In his most recent reversion Abd states that "Well, the observations [of excess heat] are not only not challenged in the literature, they are confirmed massively." This, of course, is not true. Said observations are challenged as experimental error in multiple sources, including, but not limited to, "What is the current scientific thinking on cold fusion? Is there any possible validity to this phenomenon?" Sci.Am. October 21, 1999 - "The case for experimental error is supported by the unreliability and lack of independent replication of key results." "The NHE lab of MITI described a large series of experiments devised to check the original claims of Fleischmann and Pons. No excess heat was found," amongst others. I suggest that stating excess heat is a fact is misniforming our readers. Excess heat is measured in some experiments, perhaps, but that is considered by reliable sources to be experimental error. Hipocrite (talk) 13:52, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
- Hipocrite, the problem with that quote is that it is approaching ten years out-of-date. At the rate Science progresses, ten-year-old conclusions can hardly be called "current" in at least one sense of the term. Offhand, I'd guess that the actual majority current state is more like "trying to save a sinking ship" against a flood of data from the minority view. It will certainly be entertaining to see if that minority can hold the interest of the Popular Press, because only the Popular Press has the power to influence hard-core detractors into actually paying some attention to that data (when the data is everywhere, how can it be completely ignored?). SOMEONE among the "moderates" (like Robert Duncan originally was) will eventually be able to decide to put some resources into mediating an Experiment refereed by the detractors (who will know and watch out for all the pitfalls) and performed by the proponents (who will know what detailed experimental procedure is most likely to produce interesting results). I can hardly wait for the outcome! V (talk) 22:23, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
- Agreed in principle. It is considered by some reliable sources to be experimental error. But that seems to imply that it logically follows that it is experimental error. (due to the meaning of the word "reliable") Problem is is that many -- if not all -- of these reliable sources can't possibly know whether or not the excess heat observed in these experiments were due to excess error because they were not at the "positive" experiments, they did not examine the particular run, they did not check over the equipment, etc. etc. - there's no way for them to know whether or not those particular experiments were false positives. Unfortunately, many of them seem to like to give people the impression that they were there (or does the logic really elude them?), when, in fact, the most they can say is that the excess heat could be due to experimental error. Let's be careful not to misinform our readers in this regard, either. Kevin Baastalk 14:41, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
- For the record, APPARENT excess heat has been confirmed many times. It is difficult to get and very irreproducible. However, the calibration constant shift systematic error is fully capable of explaining these observations, so in the article, the idea that excess heat has been shown to exist should be clearly labelled as a CF advocate position, not a scientific fact. Kevin Baas points out that there is no way to know if reports of excess heat are false positives. This is completely correct, but likewise there is know way to know if they are not. The correct position to take in such a situation is to state clearly that experimentation to date has been inconclusive, not to conclude for one or the other alternative. KirkShanahan (talk) 15:51, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
- If a thing is at all "irreproducable", it simply cannot be reproduced; there is no "very" or "somewhat". If you want to say "very" i think you need to say something like very "difficult to reproduce", or "not very reproducable". The "ir-" implies an absolute. You bring up "calibration constant shift systematic error" again. Why don't you just say they could have mis-calibrated it? That's a lot simpler and usually simpler is better when it comes to writting or speaking. And it's not fully capable of "explaining away" - it is only capable of explaining a corresponding amount of error when it is in fact a cause of error. And when it can be completely ruled out as a source of error it's "capability" is zilch. I don't agree that the idea that excess heat has been shown to exist should be clearly labelled as a CF advocate position. I certainly don't think it should be labelled as a scientific fact, but I certainly don't remember when we got into the habit of "clearly label"ing things as CF-advocate or CF-?antagonist? - nor do i think such a dichotomy would benefit the article -, and it is certainly a feasable position to take that there is excess heat but it is not due to fusion or any nuclear process whatever; i.e. one can hold that position and not be an advocate. One can also hold a neutral/impartial position - one can hold that the experimental evidence seems to suggest excess heat -- a purely empirical stance --, yet have no opinion or stance as to the source/cause. Finally, I do not point out "that there is no way to know if reports of excess heat are false positives." and this is in fact in-correct. There are ways to test hypthesis on the cause of the apparent excess heat by reproducing the exact experiments such that u get the positives. There are ways to apply the scientific method to determine the cause. And there are historical instances of such approaches. One has only to look at polywater to see how it is possible to conclusively demonstrate the falsity of a positive. (excuse the awkward phrasing) Kevin Baastalk 21:45, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
No Kevin, irreproducibility and reproduciblity are not binary terms. Random error always exists in all scientific experiments, so nothing is _ever_ totally reproducible. The relative proportion of error to signal is the measure of reproducibility. Somewhere around 10-20% error, we can begin to use the term ‘irreproducible’. It is a judgement call based on what the judge is considering at the moment. ‘Very’ irreproducible means a very large % error apparent in the data.
- Look it up: [1] [2] I never said they are binary terms. I said that "irreproducible" is an absoltue term, and then showed how "reproducable" can be used to show varying degrees. How could I show how reproducible can be used to show varying degrees if it is an absolute? More to the point, why would I if my aim was to show that it was an absolute; that it couldn't be used to show varying degrees? Please try not to over-generalize what i say to the point of making me out to say things that i disagree with. Kevin Baastalk 17:37, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
The CCS has nothing to do with the experimenters ‘miscalibrating’. It’s not their fault. Specifically, the proposed mechanism for the CCS is purely chemistry. What the whole CCS package says is that the experimenters calibrate (assume perfectly for the sake of discussion) and then chemistry happens, shifting the system dynamics. That means the perfect prior calibration is now inapplicable, which in turn requires recalibration. However, the process of shutting down the experiment seems to cause the system to change again (see my 2006 pub for deails), which is a nasty, nasty experimental problem for anyone.
“And it's not fully capable of "explaining away"” – Sorry for trying to be compact. I guess I should have written that: “The CCS has the potential to induce errors of very large proportion. Thus without having published information to judge the potential magnitude of a CCS-induced error, the observation of apparent excess heat signals cannot be taken as any kind of evidence that true excess heat has been produced, by any process, not just a nuclear one. Two relevant pieces of information would be the time-to-time variation in calibration constants, and the amount of input energy that is registered by the system when the unitless part of the calibration constant that adjusts for losses is arbitrarily set to 1.” – would that have been better?
- a little overdone, IMO -- but I understand that's intentional for rhetorical purposes, i.e. you know that. i thought my wording struck a nice balance between brevity and accuracy - though it was in response to what u were saying rather than a rewording of what you were saying, so the subject matter was somewhat different. anyways, i would change "cannot be taken as any kind of evidence" to something more like "cannot be taken as conclusive evidence", and in any case less absolute. It might be an indication, but other factors still need to be ruled out. but to say outright that it has absolutely no merit ("cannot be taken as any kind of evidence") is excessive and unjustified. (and remember, evidence doesn't need to always point to the right conclusion - for instance, both sides in a court case have "evidence", but one of them is inevitably wrong.) But yeah, my main qualm is that you seem to be using absolutes where things are not absolute, whether it just be in subtle nuances of phrasing or word choice (e.g. "irreproducible"). So I admit I'm being nit-picky, but I mention these things because I'm concerned that they may be an indication / symptom of a latent bias. Kevin Baastalk 17:37, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
“I don't agree that the idea that excess heat has been shown to exist should be clearly labelled as a CF advocate position.” - Well, I don’t think it is anything but. The scientific position is that the case is unproven. We have an anomaly, yes, but proof that excess heat is real? No way. Only the CF advocates take that position, so I contend that it should be labeled such, as there is no RS for the alternative position.
- Well in addition to the other arguments I've made, I think it would be original research to label it. Kevin Baastalk 17:37, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
“Finally, I do not point out "that there is no way to know if reports of excess heat are false positives." and this is in fact in-correct. “ - previously you wrote: “there's no way for them to know whether or not those particular experiments were false positives”. If I take what I wrote and 1) contract ‘there is’, 2) insert ‘for them’, 3) replace ‘if’ with ‘whether or not’), and 4) replace ‘are’ with ‘were’, the only conceptual difference between what you wrote and what I wrote is that you wrote ‘those particular experiments’ and I wrote ‘reports of excess heat’. Now, I believe that one can correctly say” “Cold fusion researchers reported on ‘those particular experiments’ and claimed ‘excess heat’ (i.e. made ‘reports of excess heat’)”. That’s good English, right? So, I don’t get your point. Am I supposed to only ‘exactly quote’ all the time, and never reword concepts, even when I am not quoting?
- you need to be more conservative in your interpretation. logical nuances abound and it's quite easy to accidently twist a person's words. people do that too often, i'm afraid, and it causes a lot of unnecessary suffering. i guess i'm saying that if you read what i write more like a question on an LSAT and less like a poem, esp. when we're talking about technical things, we might be able to understand each other better. (and more efficiently.) I try to be precise when i write, because there are a lot of things nearby that i don't mean. but that effort's wasted if the reader doesn't make a similiar effort. Kevin Baastalk 17:37, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
- Though if i'm not mistaken, this misinterpretation here is a simple matter of a failure to recognize the difference between "did not" and "can not": I said they did not I did not say they can not. Kevin Baastalk 20:07, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
“There are ways to apply the scientific method to determine the cause.” – Absolutely, I use them myself whenver needed. I’m talking about statistically designed experiments. I do my own, don’t need to consult statiticians for help. CFers never do. That’s the primary reason, when combined with their refusal to consider anything but a nuclear source, that their results are still so irreproducible 20 years on. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kirk shanahan (talk • contribs) 13:10, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
- I would say that not having discovered and mastered control of all of the conditions would be the primary factor in making any result difficult to reproduce. Whether those conditions be errors, unknown circumstances, or what have you. Kevin Baastalk 17:37, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
Let's see what Hipocrite is talking about. He had changed a long-standing part of the article with [3]:
- An excess heat observation is based on an energy balance. Various sources of energy input and output are continuously measured. Under normal condition, the energy input can be matched to the energy output to within experimental error. In experiments such as those run by Fleischmann and Pons, a cell operating steadily at one temperature
transitionswas alleged to have transitioned to operating at a higher temperature with no increase in applied current.[1]At the higher temperature, the energy balance shows an unaccounted term. In the Fleischmann and Pons experiments, theFleischmann and Pons alleged a rate of excess heat generationwas in the range offrom 10-20% of total input. The high temperature conditionwouldwas alleged to last for an extended period, making the total excess heat disproportionate to what might be obtained by ordinary chemical reaction of the material contained within the cell at any one time. These high temperature phasesdid notwere not found to last indefinitely and did not occur in every experiment, but in those experiments where they did occur, they would usually reoccur several times.
What's the problem with this? Well, it totally side-steps scientific tradition, and the reason why we place preferential reliance on peer-reviewed sources. The tradition is that experimental reports are accepted as more than allegations or arguments or volleys in debate, they are accepted as true testimony. The testimony is not as to underlying fact, but to observation. Fleischmann reported experimental results showing a measurement of excess heat. He could be wrong, i.e., there could certainly be experimental error. But his observations (which include his calculations) aren't "allegations," they are reports. And that is exactly how we should report them, ourselves. We do not report that there was actual, real, excess heat. We report that the experimental technique and analysis indicated excess heat. These are not "allegations," they are reports of the work done by the experimenter, which includes analysis. Now, if Fleischmann said that this was nuclear fusion, that was a conclusion and we could call that an allegation.
I reverted, with an explanation in my edit summary of (Well, the observations are not only not challenged in the literature, they are confirmed massively. The open question is interpretation; the apparent excess energy could be artifact.) It appears that Hipocrite did not understand this, from his objections above. Shanahan, a strong critic of cold fusion, above confirms this. The "observations" are massively confirmed, what Shanahan contests is the interpretation that the apparent excess heat is real, i.e., not just some kind of common problem with the experimental setup, or, if I'm reading Shanahan correctly, some unanticipated effect that causes calibration to go out of whack in a consistent way (i.e., always toward apparent excess heat, when this effect arises, not in the other direction).
I modified the language in an attempt to satisfy a possibly legitimate objection, as can be easily seen in the diff, I was simply adding a little language to make it clear that we are talking about an experimental report, an interpretation of data through a known method of analysis, as previously described, not necessarily actual excess heat.
Hipocrite removed this, with (excess heat is considered an experimental artifact. Replication failures do not make the fact that broken experiments break repeatedly meaningful - WP:SYN), substituting his own synthesis and giving undue weight, in this case, to outright rejection of the apparent excess heat findings, citing a 1999 source, the Scientific American article, apparently to justify this text (bolded):
- In other experiments, however, no excess heat was discovered, and, in fact, even the heat from successful experiments was unreliable and could not be replicated independently.[ref] If higher temperatures were real, and not experimental artifact, the energy balance would show an unaccounted term. In the Fleischmann and Pons experiments, the rate of inferred excess heat generation was in the range of 10-20% of total input. The high temperature condition would last for an extended period, making the total excess heat appear to be disproportionate to what might be obtained by ordinary chemical reaction of the material contained within the cell at any one time, though this could not be reliably replicated.
He cites page 2 of the SciAm article. What does it say?
- There is no widely accepted theory that might explain such effects, however. Therefore, most of the scientific community concluded that the 'Pons and Fleischmann effect' was experimental error.
- Even so, several laboratories continued cold fusion experiments. Excess power remained small and sporadic. If some of the recent reports of new work can be verified, however, the years of effort might be paying off. Pons and Fleischmann now report excess powers of 100 watt (150 percent of the input power) sustained over a 30-day run. The Pons and Fleischmann technique calls for about 20 days of electrolytic conditioning, after which the cell is allowed to heat to boiling for the power run. This technique was reportedly reproduced by a separate group under G. Lonchampt, with support by the French Atomic Energy Commission and in consultation with Pons. Other groups in Japan and Italy are beginning to report excess powers in the 30 to 100 percent range. Experimental results of this magnitude are far beyond ordinary chemistry and point toward the possible existence of some new effect. It might not be 'cold fusion' at all. Whether the effect is a new kind of chemical reaction, a new pathway for nuclear reactions, or something either more surprising or more mundane will only be known after more research.
The source he cites is far from confirming his text, his text is made up to promote his personal conclusions, and he doesn't understand the text he is editing, he made mincemeat of the "energy balance unaccounted term" language. There is an unaccounted term, that's not in controversy; what has been in controversy (to the point that in 2004 the DoE panel was evenly divided on the question, half saying "convincing," the other half "not conclusive," which, by the way, isn't "rejected.") is whether or not there is real excess heat.
Note that since the 1999 SciAm report (which had another, more skeptical section), there has been a lot of work, and reproducibility is apparently way up. I'll pull up the reference from prior Talk here. See, folks, I put my research notes in Talk, I share them, and all this research into sources is dedicated to improving the article, in the end. There are also techniques that produce steady heat ("reliable,") and they've apparently been confirmed (I'm thinking of Arata in Japan, with gas-loaded nanoparticle palladium deuteride, no electrolysis energy put in to complicate things, published in Japanese peer-reviewed physics journals, and McKubre's confirmation, not sure about publication of that.) --Abd (talk) 01:15, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
Reproducibility of "cold fusion" experiments.
The issue of reproducibility in cold fusion experiments is a complex one. The first difficulty is that no clear and consistent definition of reproducibility is used. If the cold fusion researchers are correct, what Storms calls the Nuclear Active Environment, or NAE, is difficult to form, and, for classic Pons-Fleischmann electrolytic cells, forms chaotically, and under conditions which are still poorly understood. So researchers may take what seems to be the same exact experiment, same everything as far as they know, and come up with different results. There are many phenomena in nature where this kind of result may be found. Simple example: toss a coin, repeatedly, and record the results. You may think that you toss every coin with the same starting conditions, it's even the same coin, but unless you control all the variables with insane accuracy, you are quite likely in a series of ten tosses, to come up with a range of results. If you manage to control the coin toss and catch very precisely, you might still come up with one set of results being "heads confirmed," and another group comes up with another set, "tails confirmed." Depending, of course, on the exact initial condition of the coin. Nevertheless, with statistical analysis you could show a probable frequency for the results, and many such studies would show confirmation of the frequency, not of the specific results for each study.
However, there are other techniques that apparently create an NAE, more reliably, but are these "replications"? If we look at the field in general, and ask, is there confirmation of the concept that excess energy is possible? (To take one result.) The answer is yes; but what is common is that the experiments vary in approach. One of the reasons is that researchers are searching for ways to improve reliability as well as to increase excess energy, questions of utmost importance for possible ultimate applications, and someone finding such a technique will be, to put it bluntly, rich. Whereas reproducing the work of someone else, years before, who got, say, 35% of cells to produce excess heat, and that was, at the time, considered inadequate, and the absolute amount of energy generated of no commercial interest, and a reproduction of the old result is likely to be rejected for publication (after all, it's the same-old, same-old), is boring and not likely to attract the serious effort required, given that there isn't funding for this. Complicating this is the fact that the U.S. Patent Office will reject patents, so researchers who do find a technique to increase reliability and energy output are highly motivated to keep it as a trade secret until they can develop into a product. Which, of course, has become much more difficult because various research groups may not be sharing successes! One of the early complications with Fleischmann's work, which is pretty well documented, is that his group didn't disclose exact techniques, on the advice, apparently, of their lawyers.
However, there is a document which examines publications in the field, put together by Jed Rothwell of lenr-canr.org, it's at http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJtallyofcol.pdf. By its nature, the information in this document is verifiable. I'm not proposing the document as a source for our article, but for review by those editors who are willing to take a neutral view of the subject. It shows some reason to suspect the common claim that negative papers outweigh positive ones in this field, and it shows an increase in publication frequency after 2004 or 2005, pretty clearly a nadir. (see p. 4 for the Britz bibliography chart and p. 5 for the lenr-canr.org chart). It should be known that Britz is skeptical about cold fusion, and, of course, Rothwell is quite sure cold fusion is real. I am most interested, for our purposes here, in an examination of the most recent publications in peer-reviewed journals, academic publications, and popular media. The graph on p. 11 shows publication by year of positive and negative results, as classified by Britz. Rothwell, later, challenges some of the interpretations, giving some specifics. In 1989, negative publications outweighed positive, roughly 83:46 (reading off the graph). Remember, by the end of 1989, the physics community was shouting "junk science." For 1990, the figure was about 76:75. And for every year after that, positive papers greatly outnumbered negative, there really are only a handful of negative papers after 1996. After 2005, there appear to be no negative papers.
Now, as to recent results, I recommend a review of HE Jing-tang, Nuclear fusion inside condense matters, a review article, from Front. Phys. China (2007) 1: 96―102. The journal and the paper were discussed at some length above, see Talk:Cold_fusion/Archive_24#Holy_Grail_Found.3F_--_2007_Review_article. Regardless of that discussion, this is reliable source, coming from a hot fusion researcher at a major fusion research group in China. In his section on "Reproducibility of cold fusion," he writes that In the process of electrolysis of heavy water using Pd as the cathode and Pt as the anode, if the following two conditions are satisfied spontaneously, excess energy will be produced. And then he gives the conditions:
- D/Pd ratio larger than 0.88
- The current density of the electrolysis is larger than 280 mA/cm2
In his table on p. 98, looking at excess heat, he gives results for groups that have done a total of 14,720 experiments, and he reports results for five years ago of 45% average reproducibility. For the last year before closing his paper, he reports average reproducibility of 83%, and he shows four research groups, in Japan, Romania, the United States, and Russia, as reporting 100% reproducibility. Garwin used to say that when there was 50% reproducibility, he'd be satisfied. He now wants two cups of tea brewed, which, of course, has nothing to do with the science. We don't reject muon-catalyzed fusion because you can't brew tea with it. The lowest reported reproducibility in the previous year was 50%, from an Italian group which we can speculate, from other data provided, has the least experience with cold fusion.
While I regret that this paper didn't provide detail on the sources involved, and is ambiguous in certain respects, this is of higher quality than any popular media source, and with media sources, we generally wouldn't have that kind of detail either. I am aware of no recent academic publications which negate the claim of excess heat. If we read the 2004 DoE review, and especially if we read the individual reviewer papers (they are available on both lenr-canr.org and newenergytimes.com), we can see that, then, there was very substantial opinion (fifty-fifty among the reviewers) that evidence for excess heat was "convincing." The other reviewers were less convinced, to be sure, but not entirely negative. What if the DoE panel had been looking at recent results, instead of older ones? In any case, the He Jing-tang paper is a secondary source, published in a peer-reviewed journal, which would support a much stronger statement in the article than anyone has attempted to place in it, to my knowledge. And against this source is what?
There are those who have been noting that Wikipedia is not the place to right great wrongs, and I agree. However, if we follow WP:RS without bias, we'd have to conclude that, on a matter of scientific research, the most reliable sources almost entirely favor cold fusion, because the "mainstream," whatever they are, abandoned the field. That could be unfair, but tough. If they aren't publishing, they don't exist, would be a hard-line view. However, my own opinion is that we don't reject sources of lower quality, we report them with caution. At this point, there isn't any real controversy over the claim that "most scientists" are of the opinion that cold fusion is bogus. But that view isn't based on current publications, it's based on very old work. Only in 1989 did the negative publications truly outnumber the positive ones, every year after that, positive publications outweighed them.
And, please remember, in 1989 hardly anyone knew how to get the damn experiment to work, Fleischmann's work came to a screeching halt for a while when their original supply of palladium ran out, until it was found how to process the stuff to get it to work. They'd been lucky, the first time, as were other research groups that reported positive results. Absence of proof is not proof of absence, it's a lesson too easily forgotten.
Further, a lot of the original negative work was reporting that there wasn't neutron radiation. And we now know that there isn't neutron radiation at anything like the expected levels, whatever there is, it's way down; enough above background to be quite sure that it's real (now, with the SPAWAR group results, which are confirming earlier results done with other techniques), but it has practically nothing to do with cold fusion; as Mosier-Boss considers likely, it's hot fusion, at very low levels, resulting from the energy release of cold fusion. 24 MeV alpha particles can do that!
He Jing-Tang also cites Takahashi, by the way, about the Be-8 hypothesis. Coming soon to an article near you. --Abd (talk) 19:05, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
- Abd, this is not what we should do in the article because a) your analysis is based on the numbers run by Jed Rothwell, who is not a reliable source and has a huge POV here b) your conclusions about mainstream sources go against what WP:PARITY says c) you know that Storms is a fringe non-reliable source, as discussed here d) you already tried to introduce He Jing-tang's article in Frontiers of Physics in China by raising the issue here, here and it was explained to you how it was a non-notable new journal of unknown reliability, but you still keep raising the issue regularly.
- Your edits are getting increasingly non-helpful as you keep raising the same discarded issues again and again and adding more issues along the way until it all becomes a huge mess that you refuse to untangle. You are now very clearly going into naked fringe POV pushing and tendentious editing. Consider this a formal warning to stop this behaviour. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:38, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
- Basically, Enric, because I'm implying an intention to follow WP:RS and not a distorted local consensus cobbed together by a phony poll (i.e., a poll which asked leading questions asking for judgments based on inadequate information and inadequate prior discussion), I'm being "non-helpful" and the issues have been "discarded"? No, I don't think you understand dispute resolution. There is enough support here to assert edits; I've been abstaining from that because it's obvious that there are several involved editors willing to edit war, and I was occupied with RfC and ArbComm, where many of the same editors, including yourself, were pushing for me to be banned. I wasn't. ArbComm didn't even think it worthy of mention. That doesn't mean it's over, Enric, that means it's about to begin. A group of editors at this article, and to some extent elsewhere, are blatantly violating Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science. That can't be allowed to stand. I have a suggestion, Enric. Take a look at who preceded you, take a look at whom you are supporting and who is supporting you. And notice the road they are going down, and where it led. ScienceApologist was topic-banned from anything to do with Fringe science, and then Hipocrite assisted him in creating such disruption over it, trying to discredit anyone who dared to enforce the topic ban, that SA was given a lengthy block. SA was highly defended. Are you ready for this? Think about it. You have been able to compromise in the past. You are now working with take-no-prisoners editors who don't compromise. Some of that could fall on your head. Since you have been so kind as to warn me, I'll return the favor on your Talk page, just so it's clear. --Abd (talk) 00:56, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- As to the Rothwell document, it's essentially a collection of lists with some simple verifiable analysis. Against this you have? What I know of are old statements that were made with no actual statistics, they were mere opinions, which have then been repeated over and over. In particular, the chart of positive/negative/undecided publications is simply a graphical presentation of data from Britz. I'm not suggesting that we put this into the article! -- but it is surely appropriate for our consideration here, when we need to make considerations of due weight. Numbers of peer-reviewed publications are indicators of due weight. Britz isn't a "cold fusioneer," according to Rothwell, he's one of the few electrochemists who is still skeptical. (Read the paper, you'll see, Rothwell tears into Britz a bit, even though I know that they extensively cooperate in maintaining their bibliographies.) Rothwell claims that some of what Britz presents as "undecided" were positive, but the graph doesn't reflect those judgments. --Abd (talk) 01:57, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- You mean that *I* might get topic banned from fringe science topics if I pursue this? Not *you*? Seriously? That's... so out of touch with reality.... Do you *really* think that *I* might get topic banned from this page?
- About the content. You are still asking us to use an unreliable biased source from Jed Rothwell, in his analysis of an unpublished compilation of papers by Britz in his personal page. And against all the better sources saying that the evidence for cold fusion is unsufficient and flawed. And all because of your personal opinion that the evidence is good (you keep cherrypicking the DOE 2004 by forgetting to take into account that "Most reviewers, including those who accepted the evidence and those who did not, stated that the effects are not repeatable, the magnitude of the effect has not increased in over a decade of work, and that many of the reported experiments were not well documented."), and without taking into account the many discussions here about most if not all of the publications not being good-quality or notable physics or chemics journals, included the one where Moussier-Boss published. And you keep trying to use fringe sources because mainstream no longer publishes about it. And you didn't want to sue media articles when they were negative, but then you had no trouble using the CBS 60 minutes positive coverage. And you said that we shouldn't use some certain negative sources because they used the word "background" without defining but you had no problem citing the positive Storms source who made the same thing. And you kept throwing things like "Mr. or Ms. Mainstream" [4], when in that same page I had gathered already enough RS to show what mainstream thinks [5], not to mention the RS in the section above about how mainstream sources plainly stating that cold fusion is similar to N-rays and polywater. Plain no, this has gone too far. Stop the fringe pushing right now and start acknowledging consensus when it goes against you. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:33, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- How ArbComm would deal with an AE request on this is unclear. But to imagine oneself as above reproach is naive. I'll note that Enric Naval has been calling for my topic ban for some time. "Cherry-picking"? That's the conclusions of the report, where the science is reviewed! The Rothwell source is documented, everything in it is verifiable, except for his stated opinions. These are bibliographies and bibliographic analysis, Enric, and against this, for the claims you make about the state of the science, what, exactly, do you have? "Most reviewers stated that the effects are not repeatable." You have to know some science to know what that means. The effects -- until quite recently, after the 2004 review -- weren't repeatable, for the most part. You'd run twenty cells and see a few with excess heat. However, if you look at only the cells with excess heat, other effects could be seen, in association, correlated. Not in the cells without excess heat. That's a form of repeatability, actually a strong one, and it seems that the 2004 DoE review largely neglected that, but still came up with some substantial support for this being real science, worthy of investigation. You are incorrect about using media coverage, rather, there is an issue with media coverage where clearly what is being said is simply regurgitation of old media coverage. The "couldn't be replicated" claim found in some of the media coverage is a sign of that. That's an old claim that has been repeated over and over. Enric, I'm making substantive arguments and it seems you are stuck. Consider the N-rays and polywater claims. Yes, that's been said. In peer-reviewed reliable source? When? Is it still relevant? But have I ever removed reliably sourced and properly attributed opinion like that?
- Absolutely, you've been cooperating with the agenda of those who would exclude all positive information about cold fusion, and, yes, that could result in a topic ban. Just as my own work could result in a topic ban; some of it depends on the politics of the moment. However, some editors, including yourself, tried hard to get ArbComm to sanction me or at least criticize me for POV-pushing here, and they failed. That time. They are still trying. Can't say what will happen if it goes back. As it might, if we can't resolve this at a lower level. How about starting to seriously work on that?
- What I see on this article isn't consensus, it's lack of consensus. You can gather together, sometimes, a group of editors to support an opinion, and the names are quite familiar. Remember, these are almost all in favor of what JzG was doing, and at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/JzG 3, two-thirds of the editors were more or less screaming for my head. Was that consensus? No, it was a concentration of interested and largely involved editors. The polls above were a travesty of process, and they certainly don't show the consensus you and Hipocrite have claimed. We will, I assume, do some real RfCs here. Watch and see how it's done, Enric, you might learn something.
- Arrogant? Perhaps. But I do have well over thirty years of experience with consensus process. There never was a scientific consensus on cold fusion, there was a popular consensus. Lack of proof was widely considered proof of lack. The situation was very, very different with N-rays and polywater, there were very strong refutations and then the fields died. Yes, people sometimes are die-hards. Good thing, actually, but cold fusion has outlasted that. The biggest problem was the loss of funding, institutional support, and the radical deprivation of graduate students to assist in the research; Simon documents this in Undead Science: graduate students were threatened with career loss if they helped cold fusion research. That's reliable source, Enric. One of the editors here claimed to me that if he let it be known that he was in any way involved with writing about cold fusion, there would go his career. And he's a skeptic. Why isn't this history in the article? Do you have any interest in this side of the story? Or are you only only interested in one side? If you are only interested in one side, and you have worked on this article for a long time, yes, that is the kind of thing that could lead to a topic ban. I'd consider that unfortunate. --Abd (talk) 14:47, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
On Improving the Article
- Despite certain claims made by Hipocrite, the previous section did have a few things in it about improving the article. For example, I quote something I wrote to Hipocrite:
- "... it is about Wikipedia editors acting as if Generally Reliable Authority is identical to Always Reliable Authority, and that only the things they say can be included in articles here. It will seldom hurt an article to include off-the-wall claims that are marked as claims. --and inclusions of such, perhaps in their own section, could make an article more interesting to casual readers. That's because all sorts of History are about people, not just facts, and most people typically find the foibles of other people to be interesting. Is there no guideline anywhere about that? That is, is Wikipedia supposed to be "dry" or "interesting"? Or, from another angle, consider the cliche that "knowledge is power", and its logical corollary that ignorance is slavery. Thus those who would limit the spread of knowledge, in whatever manner, are in effect claiming some kind of right to have power over those who they would keep uninformed. It is therefore extremely important, in an encyclopedia, to include as much relevant data as possible. For example (I haven't looked yet as I write this), articles on Moon Landings can include claims/data/logic by those who say the events were staged and not real--and counter-logic can be included, too. The readers, of course, should be free to make up their own minds --and they should have the data that allows them to do it. Does Alexander of Macedon really deserve to be called "Great" when his actions appear to have consisted largely of large-scale theft of other rulers' territories? Winners may write the history books, but an encyclopedia (I haven't looked at that article either) doesn't have to restrict itself to the POV of the winners. I'm still waiting to hear about somebody on a witness stand, having sworn to tell the whole truth, object to the Judge that one of the attorneys is interfering with his/her ability to fulfill that oath. Well, with respect to CF, the "whole truth" includes a lot of claims that are not Officially Reliably Sourced. You do not deny that fact, do you? Yet your actions appear to be describe-able as attempts to suppress parts of that whole truth. Why?"
- Hipocrite failed to reply to my question at the end of that, tsk, tsk. If Hipocrite was really interested in improving the article, instead of skewing it one way or another, an answer to my question should have been posted.
- Then there is Kirk Shanahan wanting us to believe that a small amount of chemical heat from hydrogen-oxygen recombination can throw off a calorimeter designed to register lots more than a "small amount" of heat, and throw its calibration off to the extent that if it measures a lot of heat while an electrolysis cell boils its electrolyte away and melts one of its electrodes, we have to pretend it didn't actually happen; that it was all an illusion associated with a temporarily uncalibrated calorimeter. I agree that that speculation should be in the article, for entertainment purposes if nothing else! I disagree on giving it any more weight than claims that hydrinos can explain cold fusion. V (talk) 15:24, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
- More ad hominem from V. I will post a reply on my Talk page immediately. KirkShanahan (talk) 15:54, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
- ( Partly because his talk page does not have a reply there yet)... More bad logic by Shanahan. My paragraph above contains a description of the CCS hypothesis, admittedly written to blatantly expose its most fundamental flaw (excess heat can possibly be detected by means other than a calorimeter). Since CCS is "pushed" and defended by Shanahan, there is nothing faulty in writing about "Kirk Shanahan wanting us to believe" it. NOR is there an inherent fault in, generically, Person A wanting Person B to believe something-or-other (sometimes that desire is even vitally important, like when Person A discovers the house they are in to be on fire). But somehow Shanahan has concluded that my statement somehow describes a flaw in Shanahan; by definition the statement "More ad hominem from V" can only be true if my statement describes a flaw in Shanahan. WELL, WHERE IS THAT DESCRIPTION??? I'm fully aware that THIS paragraph is not properly relevant to immediately improving the CF article, but I'm also aware that the only way to discourage people from injecting wildly flawed remarks like the one in the immediately-previous paragraph...the only way to get them to stop is to expose the wild flaw as publicly as possible. I explain my stance in more detail in the "ways and means" section near the bottom of my own talk page. And after they stop, then this page will be improved thereby (along with, in the longer run, the main article) --which means this paragraph (and any others like it in the future) might not be such a waste, after all. V (talk) 19:28, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
- More ad hominem from V. I will post a reply on my Talk page immediately. KirkShanahan (talk) 15:54, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
- Unfortunately, your description of the CCS is woefully inadequate. It is the fact that I have said this to you many times (now repeated on my Talk page, again...) that brands you clearly as a fanatic who repeats what he reads/is told by the CF advocates, and doesn't think for himself, i.e. a fanatic. Kirk shanahan (talk) 19:54, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
- Tsk, tsk, look who's really doing the "ad hominem" thing, instead of answering my question about where **I** supposedly did the ad hominem thing. So, your ad hominem statement is another obvious example of bad logic presented by you, Kirk (read the article to see why). Care to attempt it yet again? V (talk) 21:50, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
- Ummm...'check my Talk page' - What is it about that you can't understand. Especially note the answer to Abd I posted in response to his 'chastisement'. Why is it you can't focus on improving the article here? (Note to others: the current CF article has no significant description of the mainline reasons why 'CF' is not nuclear. I would think an interested reader hitting that page would like to know that. I came here to add such, and have been repeatedly blocked (note that I don't add edits unless there is consensus first, so the 'blocking' has occured primarily on the Talk pages. However my original edits of Sept. 17, 2008 and before were block deleted by Pcarbonn)). Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:46, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
- I do not object at all, to there being a section in the article about non-nuclear explanations for the evidence. I might note, though, that your POV is showing, in your description above, "mainline reasons why 'CF' is not nuclear", since the phrase "is not" presumes itself to be fact, when that is not known to be fact. Regarding your talk page (haven't yet studied the stuff that's now there), I am remembering that some time ago Abd asked you to write an "idiot's guide to CCS", and have been wondering where that is, just so I can see how different it is from the impression I already have of it. The longer you take to write it, the more I'm going to think I understand it well enough. For example, I'm encouraged by your description above, "woefully inadequate" of my description above that, simply because you did not say outright I was wrong (nor in what way I was wrong). V (talk) 13:30, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
- OK, outright: You are wrong. Actually, that's difficult to say since you have never responded to the standard scientifc challenge I issued to any of you to prove you understood any of my comments by repeating back what I was trying to get across and then by discussing the implications of that. Abd started but fizzled out. You haven't even tried. What you write implies strongly that you have no understanding of what I am trying to say (and get into the article somewhere). Prove I am wrong by successfully answering my challenge and I will be happy to recant my assessment of you.
- P.S. For teh record, rspond to my challenge on my talk page, not here. Kirk shanahan (talk) 14:12, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
- I have written the "idiot's guide" several time here and on my Talk page. You (and Abd) didn't understand it.
- I don't recall ever seeing something described as an idiot's guide to CCS. And if Abd saw one and didn't understand it, then I would tend to think that you didn't describe it well enough; it wasn't written for the really uninformed person (as little as one word of specialists' jargon can lead to misunderstanding). Fixing that could mean going so far as to define all terms used, plus defining all the key terms in those definitions, just for starters. For Examples of How To Do It Right, read lots of nonfiction by Isaac Asimov. V (talk) 17:01, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
- Yes, I have a POV. It is a 'mainline scientist' POV. It needs to be in the article for balance. I have no intention of contributing to a pro-CF POV. BUT, I DO NOT BLOCK SUCH AN ADDITION TO THE ARTICLE. Pcarbonn blocked my additions. I tried to gain consensus on this page. He never agreed. Others supported him. He was then banned. Next, up pops V and Abd to take his place (with kevin Baas chipping in through all ot this). I do not 'POV-push' as you imply by bringing this up (another indirect ad hominem) since I FREELY ALLOW THE ALTERNATE POSITION TO BE EXPRESSED. Who else do you know who will defend my CCS proposal and the deceased Brian Clarke's work? The mainline gave up on the field years ago, they usually don't care. It is only because I work in this field that I do. If you want mainline thought in the article for balance, I am it. But, it is obvious from your vehement objections to everything I write, that you don't. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:54, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
- You may have misinterpreted what I wrote above about POV. Ideas and facts associated with a particular POV are completely allowed, but the wording used to describe them needs to be non-POV in any place where ideas and facts are in contention. That means one cannot describe an idea in terms that assume the idea is True, when the idea is not certainly known to be true. Also, it helps if the idea makes logical sense. So far, from your descriptions of CCS that I've read, it does not, as I've pointed out here and there. But it's been a while since the last time I examined it; perhaps your descriptions have improved. We shall see.... V (talk) 17:01, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
- OK, outright: You are wrong. Actually, that's difficult to say since you have never responded to the standard scientifc challenge I issued to any of you to prove you understood any of my comments by repeating back what I was trying to get across and then by discussing the implications of that. Abd started but fizzled out. You haven't even tried. What you write implies strongly that you have no understanding of what I am trying to say (and get into the article somewhere). Prove I am wrong by successfully answering my challenge and I will be happy to recant my assessment of you.
- I do not object at all, to there being a section in the article about non-nuclear explanations for the evidence. I might note, though, that your POV is showing, in your description above, "mainline reasons why 'CF' is not nuclear", since the phrase "is not" presumes itself to be fact, when that is not known to be fact. Regarding your talk page (haven't yet studied the stuff that's now there), I am remembering that some time ago Abd asked you to write an "idiot's guide to CCS", and have been wondering where that is, just so I can see how different it is from the impression I already have of it. The longer you take to write it, the more I'm going to think I understand it well enough. For example, I'm encouraged by your description above, "woefully inadequate" of my description above that, simply because you did not say outright I was wrong (nor in what way I was wrong). V (talk) 13:30, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
- Ummm...'check my Talk page' - What is it about that you can't understand. Especially note the answer to Abd I posted in response to his 'chastisement'. Why is it you can't focus on improving the article here? (Note to others: the current CF article has no significant description of the mainline reasons why 'CF' is not nuclear. I would think an interested reader hitting that page would like to know that. I came here to add such, and have been repeatedly blocked (note that I don't add edits unless there is consensus first, so the 'blocking' has occured primarily on the Talk pages. However my original edits of Sept. 17, 2008 and before were block deleted by Pcarbonn)). Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:46, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
- Tsk, tsk, look who's really doing the "ad hominem" thing, instead of answering my question about where **I** supposedly did the ad hominem thing. So, your ad hominem statement is another obvious example of bad logic presented by you, Kirk (read the article to see why). Care to attempt it yet again? V (talk) 21:50, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
- Unfortunately, your description of the CCS is woefully inadequate. It is the fact that I have said this to you many times (now repeated on my Talk page, again...) that brands you clearly as a fanatic who repeats what he reads/is told by the CF advocates, and doesn't think for himself, i.e. a fanatic. Kirk shanahan (talk) 19:54, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
I don't respond to people who ask me why I'm beating my wife ("Yet your actions appear to be describe-able as attempts to suppress parts of that whole truth. Why?") The "Whole Truth" for the purposes of Wikipedia includes only claims in Reliable Sources. Wikipedia cannot solve the GREAT WRONG that mainstream science has perpetuated on Cold Fusion. You'll have to get it published elsewhere. Hipocrite (talk) 19:57, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
- "The "Whole Truth" for the purposes of Wikipedia includes only claims in Reliable Sources." --that is a false statement, as proved by the existence of articles on completely fictitious things such as Star Wars, Dracula, etc. The WP:Verify rules are what allows those articles to exist. And in a contentious science-oriented article, while RS may be preferred, there is no rationale to give it a monopoly. For a less extreme example, consider the high temperature superconductor article --there is no argument about the existence of that phenomenon, but there is plenty of speculation as to how it happens, even plenty of RS speculation. As soon as one of those guesses emerges from the debate as the "winner", all the others, despite the fact that they are currently RS, will have to be "demoted" at the least. Should they be deleted as irrelevant, and the winner be given a monopoly on the article? Why? The presence of those other ideas would stand as a testament to the creativity exhibited in tackling the problem; there will be historical value there.
- In this article the primary subject has the major problem that the evidence, if it is to be regarded as real, needs to be explained in a way that appears to require some significant modifications or additions to certain well-verified facts. And the initial difficulty in replicating the original experiments did not help at all. So years have gone by while the experimenters kept trying different things, to isolate relevant variables. According to them, in non-RS publications of course, they can now fairly frequently replicate the original experiments. And according to one actual RS source, neutrons have been detected above the natural background level. Eventually that claim will be either verified or not-verified. For the moment, there is a good logical reason to include a fair amount of non-RS stuff in the article: There is currently no RS regarding neutrons-not-verified, and non-RS is the only place to find proposed explanations for HOW (detailed "how", not just "Duh, fusion did it") those RS-reported neutrons happened to appear during certain CF experiments. In other words, it would be a lie to say, in effect, by restricting the article to RS-only, "There is no detailed explanation for those neutrons." It is certainly true that there is no agreed-upon explanation, even in the non-RS literature. Very equivalent, that, to the high-temperature-superconductivity guesses.... V (talk) 21:50, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
- If a claim is not made in reliable sources it cannot be used in Wikipedia. Period. End of discussion. Hipocrite (talk) 22:24, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
- Then you "lose" because speculations, such as detailed suppositions regarding how CF could happen, are not identical to claims, and therefore RS is not required for speculations, exactly as RS is not required for pure fiction. Only verifiability-of-publication is required, regarding that aspect of this field. V (talk) 13:06, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
- No, I'm sorry, that's not how wikipedia works. Hipocrite (talk) 13:08, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
- Prove it. And just to spice things up, I might mention Chain Reaction (film), a movie which seems to have a variety of a cold fusion reactor in it. Verifiable/fictional stuff, that. (That article mentions bubble fusion, but the phrase never actually is used in the movie, leaving the audience to wonder.) How many articles are there in Wikipedia that talk about one aspect of science fiction or another? Anyone who wants to claim that "cold fusion" is fictitious science should be willing to accept non-RS stuff in the article. V (talk) 13:34, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
- WP:V is a policy, which reads "Material challenged or likely to be challenged, and all quotations, must be attributed to a reliable, published source." I have no idea why you are talking about sourced information in fiction articles. Perhaps you should broaden your editing from just Cold Fusion to something else, also, to understand how Wikipedia works. Hipocrite (talk) 13:53, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
- It is exactly because you have no idea why Wikipedia allows articles about fictional things, that you fail to understand my argument. The definition of "reliable" is the key point of contention here. If I have a reprint of "Frankenstein" (note the novel is in public domain) published by somebody selling old-fashioned computer printouts, and I quote text from it (in that article), will you automatically assume that the quoted text does not actually exist in any other editions, such as a reprint published by a major publisher? It seems to me that if you can grab a random copy from any publisher, and find the quoted text, then my computer-printout copy qualifies just as much as a "reliable" source for quotes, as any other copy. Or, how about the "reliability" of publishers like "New Energy Times" and "Infinite Energy", in publishing CF articles? You cannot deny that they are reliably publishing, when new issues become available at regular intervals, and they have been doing that for years. You cannot even deny that they can be relied on to publish artices about CF. And will those CF articles reliably contain claims about the subject??? Almost certainly!!! Therefore, if this Wikipedia article contains a claim, which is described in the article as being a claim, and it is easy to verify that that claim was indeed published in a source that can be relied upon to publish claims, then just exactly what is your problem about including it in the article???? V (talk) 16:21, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
- Our policy on reliable sources is clear. What part of "Extremist and fringe sources" and "Self-published sources" from WP:RS are you having a hard time grasping? Hipocrite (talk) 16:33, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
- Apparently WP:RS#Overview and WP:RS#Scholarship.LeadSongDog come howl 16:38, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
- Well, I see this: "How reliable a source is depends on context." Both of you know full well the context here is controversial. That means if the average highly educated CF-detractor eventually turns out to be wrong, the average highly educated CF-detractor suddenly becomes, by definition, an unreliable source on this subject. The mere fact that there is controversy over interpreting the data here means that nobody is truly the sort of Reliable Source you are talking about. Especially since the average "RS" in this field has, apparently, ever since the initial failures to reproduce excess heat, has turned a blind eye to improvements in experimental technique, that are claimed to more-reliably produce excess heat. When has ignorance ever been a valid Reliable Source???
- Next, I see this: "if an article topic has no reliable sources, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." This does not explain why there are many thousands of articles on fictional things, which have no sources other than their original publications, for example Star Trek (film), which just came out and there has been no time for any ordinary/traditional RS material to have been published on it. So, the fact that such articles are quite-well allowed/tolerated (especially in light of the "Scholarship" section) means that there is leeway in interpreting the Rules -- and any claims by you to the contrary can be completely ignored!
- Next, in the "Overview" section is this: "The following specific examples ... are not intended to be exhaustive. Proper sourcing always depends on context; common sense and editorial judgment are an indispensable part of the process." WHERE IS YOUR COMMON SENSE, HERE? A while back I wrote this: "Well, with respect to CF, the "whole truth" includes a lot of claims that are not Officially Reliably Sourced. You do not deny that fact, do you?" How do you expect to get away with claiming that Sources who are Reliable on other subjects are also Reliable on this one, when evidence is accumulating against the things they concluded more than a decade ago, and all they have done since is pretend that that evidence does not exist???
- Just to spell out more completely what I'm talking about, Hipocrite, while I care not that you have chosen a handle that reminds one of double standards, I do care about the application of double standards toward Wikipedia articles. So I challenge you and LeadSongDog and anyone else who wants to insist that RS must strictly apply to this article ...I challenge you to see how far you really get, trying to strictly apply it to ALL the other articles in this encyclopedia. Because if you can't do it everywhere in Wikipedia, you have no basis to insist upon doing it here. V (talk) 13:10, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- So, untill we fix every other article on the encyclopedia, we can't fix this one? Hipocrite (talk) 13:13, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- PS - [6]. Hipocrite (talk) 13:26, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- Straw man argument. He's saying that the same RS standards apply here as elsewhere. Otherwise, V is barking up the wrong tree, a bit. The problem isn't WP:RS, i.e., that "the whole truth" isn't found in RS, the problem is biased and POV-pushing application of the standards. We should and we must follow WP:V at all times; WP:RS is a documented way of doing that; other ways do exist, but they depend on consensus. --Abd (talk) 13:31, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- (Heh, and now to bring up the definition of "fix", as used in the classic phrase, "to fix the race"....) No, Hipocrite, I challenged you to see how far you get, trying to do that. I fully expect you to fail, for example, to be able to enforce a deletion of the article about the new Star Trek (film), since there is no scholarly RS for it anywhere, yet (although I admit I could be wrong about that finicky detail, given the nature of the Internet and the popularity of that particular fictional universe). Or, you would likely fail to enforce deletion of News articles on the front page of this site. I'm sure that with very little research quite a few articles could be identified, about fictional things, for which there is no Official Reliable Source other than the original publication of a fictional work. They exist for a reason, in spite of the RS rules. "Common sense" likely has something to do with that reason. Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, you only need to fail just once, to strictly apply the RS rules to another article, to lose any right to strictly enforce them here. V (talk) 13:36, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- Abd, you are wrong about what Objectivist is stating - he has now said multiple times that it's ok to use unreliable sources in articles about Star Trek films (this, of course, is wrong), and that it's thus ok to use unreliable sources here. The article on the Star Trek film is reliably sourced to the following sources - the British Board of Film Classification, Entertainment Weekly, The Wall Street Journal, The Courier-Mail, MTV, the Los Angeles Times, TV Guide, IGN, Rotten Tomatoes, and scores of other reliable sources. That there are problems in the Star Trek article are undeniable. That I have any interest in fixing them is fabrication. Am I required to fix every article before I fix this one? I think not. Hipocrite (talk) 13:43, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- Hipocrite, in what way are all of those publications more "reliable" than Infinite Energy or New Energy Times? V (talk) 13:52, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- That's easy! WP:V "Articles should be based upon reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." "Questionable sources are those with a poor reputation for fact-checking. Such sources include websites and publications expressing views that are widely acknowledged as extremist, or promotional in nature, or which rely heavily on rumors and personal opinions. Questionable sources should only be used as sources of material on themselves, especially in articles about themselves. Questionable sources are generally unsuitable as a basis for citing contentious claims about third parties." "Certain red flags should prompt editors to examine the sources for a given claim: 1. surprising or apparently important claims not covered by mainstream sources ... 3. claims that are contradicted by the prevailing view within the relevant community, or which would significantly alter mainstream assumptions, especially in science, medicine, history, politics, and biographies of living persons. This is especially true when proponents consider that there is a conspiracy to silence them." Hipocrite (talk) 14:04, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- Nice try, but there are two flaws. The first is simple; the list of publications referenced in the Star Trek article are all second-party, not third-party. Likewise are NET and IE second-party publications. The second flaw relates to "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" --who decides what a reputation should be? Consider the evidence that the mainstream science publications have mostly ignored information published in IE and NET --how can those mainstream publications claim that NET and IE are not checking the data (and therefore are unreliable) when they themselves are not checking the data? (Please remember that that "CF" is one particular interpretation of the data about excess heat; the data deserves examination regardless of whatever interpretations are applied to it.) V (talk) 14:20, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- That's easy! WP:V "Articles should be based upon reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." "Questionable sources are those with a poor reputation for fact-checking. Such sources include websites and publications expressing views that are widely acknowledged as extremist, or promotional in nature, or which rely heavily on rumors and personal opinions. Questionable sources should only be used as sources of material on themselves, especially in articles about themselves. Questionable sources are generally unsuitable as a basis for citing contentious claims about third parties." "Certain red flags should prompt editors to examine the sources for a given claim: 1. surprising or apparently important claims not covered by mainstream sources ... 3. claims that are contradicted by the prevailing view within the relevant community, or which would significantly alter mainstream assumptions, especially in science, medicine, history, politics, and biographies of living persons. This is especially true when proponents consider that there is a conspiracy to silence them." Hipocrite (talk) 14:04, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- Hipocrite, in what way are all of those publications more "reliable" than Infinite Energy or New Energy Times? V (talk) 13:52, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- Abd, you are wrong about what Objectivist is stating - he has now said multiple times that it's ok to use unreliable sources in articles about Star Trek films (this, of course, is wrong), and that it's thus ok to use unreliable sources here. The article on the Star Trek film is reliably sourced to the following sources - the British Board of Film Classification, Entertainment Weekly, The Wall Street Journal, The Courier-Mail, MTV, the Los Angeles Times, TV Guide, IGN, Rotten Tomatoes, and scores of other reliable sources. That there are problems in the Star Trek article are undeniable. That I have any interest in fixing them is fabrication. Am I required to fix every article before I fix this one? I think not. Hipocrite (talk) 13:43, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- (Heh, and now to bring up the definition of "fix", as used in the classic phrase, "to fix the race"....) No, Hipocrite, I challenged you to see how far you get, trying to do that. I fully expect you to fail, for example, to be able to enforce a deletion of the article about the new Star Trek (film), since there is no scholarly RS for it anywhere, yet (although I admit I could be wrong about that finicky detail, given the nature of the Internet and the popularity of that particular fictional universe). Or, you would likely fail to enforce deletion of News articles on the front page of this site. I'm sure that with very little research quite a few articles could be identified, about fictional things, for which there is no Official Reliable Source other than the original publication of a fictional work. They exist for a reason, in spite of the RS rules. "Common sense" likely has something to do with that reason. Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, you only need to fail just once, to strictly apply the RS rules to another article, to lose any right to strictly enforce them here. V (talk) 13:36, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- Straw man argument. He's saying that the same RS standards apply here as elsewhere. Otherwise, V is barking up the wrong tree, a bit. The problem isn't WP:RS, i.e., that "the whole truth" isn't found in RS, the problem is biased and POV-pushing application of the standards. We should and we must follow WP:V at all times; WP:RS is a documented way of doing that; other ways do exist, but they depend on consensus. --Abd (talk) 13:31, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- Apparently WP:RS#Overview and WP:RS#Scholarship.LeadSongDog come howl 16:38, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
- Our policy on reliable sources is clear. What part of "Extremist and fringe sources" and "Self-published sources" from WP:RS are you having a hard time grasping? Hipocrite (talk) 16:33, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
- It is exactly because you have no idea why Wikipedia allows articles about fictional things, that you fail to understand my argument. The definition of "reliable" is the key point of contention here. If I have a reprint of "Frankenstein" (note the novel is in public domain) published by somebody selling old-fashioned computer printouts, and I quote text from it (in that article), will you automatically assume that the quoted text does not actually exist in any other editions, such as a reprint published by a major publisher? It seems to me that if you can grab a random copy from any publisher, and find the quoted text, then my computer-printout copy qualifies just as much as a "reliable" source for quotes, as any other copy. Or, how about the "reliability" of publishers like "New Energy Times" and "Infinite Energy", in publishing CF articles? You cannot deny that they are reliably publishing, when new issues become available at regular intervals, and they have been doing that for years. You cannot even deny that they can be relied on to publish artices about CF. And will those CF articles reliably contain claims about the subject??? Almost certainly!!! Therefore, if this Wikipedia article contains a claim, which is described in the article as being a claim, and it is easy to verify that that claim was indeed published in a source that can be relied upon to publish claims, then just exactly what is your problem about including it in the article???? V (talk) 16:21, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
- WP:V is a policy, which reads "Material challenged or likely to be challenged, and all quotations, must be attributed to a reliable, published source." I have no idea why you are talking about sourced information in fiction articles. Perhaps you should broaden your editing from just Cold Fusion to something else, also, to understand how Wikipedia works. Hipocrite (talk) 13:53, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
- Prove it. And just to spice things up, I might mention Chain Reaction (film), a movie which seems to have a variety of a cold fusion reactor in it. Verifiable/fictional stuff, that. (That article mentions bubble fusion, but the phrase never actually is used in the movie, leaving the audience to wonder.) How many articles are there in Wikipedia that talk about one aspect of science fiction or another? Anyone who wants to claim that "cold fusion" is fictitious science should be willing to accept non-RS stuff in the article. V (talk) 13:34, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
- No, I'm sorry, that's not how wikipedia works. Hipocrite (talk) 13:08, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
- Then you "lose" because speculations, such as detailed suppositions regarding how CF could happen, are not identical to claims, and therefore RS is not required for speculations, exactly as RS is not required for pure fiction. Only verifiability-of-publication is required, regarding that aspect of this field. V (talk) 13:06, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
- If a claim is not made in reliable sources it cannot be used in Wikipedia. Period. End of discussion. Hipocrite (talk) 22:24, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
{unindent}The mainstream journals have not ignored cold fusion. As a reviewer for some of these journals, I have reviewed several submissions in recent years. I have found in all cases that they are technically inadequate. Obviously, other reviewers have agreed with me, because they don't get publshed until they hit IE and NET, and I am one reviewer out of 2 (if the other agrees with me) or 3 (if not). Also, we have the Goodstein reference in the CF article that states that CFers do not conduct critical reviews of collegues work. This negates the purpose of peer-review. So, if submitted papers are rejected by mainlne journals as inadequate, and are then published unchanged in IE or NET, what does this say about the 'fact-checking' that goes on at IE and NET?
- Thank you; that's more than I expected to see, having read elsewhere about so many mainstream publications not even bothering to send submissions on this subject out for peer-review. And that is the mental place from which I wrote what I wrote above. On the other hand, what of papers by some of the acknowledged leaders in the field, such as Michael McKubre? (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54964-2004Nov16?language=printer) I'm such they wouldn't say he was among the best if his work was consistently "inadequate". If you haven't happened to have seen any of his preprint papers, what might you say about the paucity of his publications on this subject in the mainstream? V (talk) 19:11, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- The idea that journals reject CF papers out of hand is overblown by the CF advocates. All journals have topic definitions, and CF usually doesn't fit there. Then there was the position the nature editor took way back, which was also overblown, even if reasonable. What the CFers usually say is that their submissions are rejected for bad reasons, which may be true given the mainstream gave up on CF a long time ago.
- Do you realize that McKubre may have published less in peer reviewed journals that I have? He has workd in the field since the beginning, he has 'published' via ICCF proceedings and the like. I know he published 1 paper in '93 that I studied, but I can't think of any more off the top of my head, I'll have to check into it. In any case, why would anyone ever use a newspaper's assessment of who is the 'best' in a field. The reporters ask the CFers "Who should I talk to, who is the best in the field?", and they get some names. Of those McKubre is definitely the smoothest. You figure out the rest. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:15, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- I think I have seen McKubre described in more than one place as one of the best researchers in the field. Even if other workers had been asked, and had given his name, it would be reasonable to think those workers had plenty of names from which to choose, so picking him must mean something. So, if he actually is a good researcher, then it should logically follow that seldom would a paper he submits to an appropriate mainstream journal get rejected for being "inadequate". So all I'm saying is that the paucity of papers published by him (OR by any equivalently competent CF researcher; I would think there should be more than just one among hundreds worldwide) in the mainstream might be evidence of mainstream bias against anything/everything coming from CF researchers. I half-suspect that SpringerLink published that paper about CR-39 partly because it was so out-of-the-ordinary, for the field, and partly because evidence for neutrons has been requested by mainstream physicists since 1989 (how could they refuse to publish what they had been asking for?). V (talk) 21:57, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- Thank you; that's more than I expected to see, having read elsewhere about so many mainstream publications not even bothering to send submissions on this subject out for peer-review. And that is the mental place from which I wrote what I wrote above. On the other hand, what of papers by some of the acknowledged leaders in the field, such as Michael McKubre? (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54964-2004Nov16?language=printer) I'm such they wouldn't say he was among the best if his work was consistently "inadequate". If you haven't happened to have seen any of his preprint papers, what might you say about the paucity of his publications on this subject in the mainstream? V (talk) 19:11, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
One interesting reverse case is the paper by Szpak, Mosier-Boss, Miles and Fleischmann in TA 2005 that I wrote a comment on. That paper was originally 'published' at part of an ICCF Proceedings. Possibly due to reviewer comments, possibly due to the authors knowing they needed 'new' material to satisfy the standard requirement that a submission be new information, they added a section that discussed errors in calorimetry. It was in that section that they denigrated my CCS propsal based on my email to a collegue of theirs (a communication that I was not informed would be used as a reference in a publication). Clearly, the TA reviewers or editors (or indirectly via submission requirements) 'checked the facts' by requiring an attempt at reviewing the potential errors of the technique.Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:09, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- And as you know I would tend to denigrate the idea too, mostly for these two major reasons: (1) Calorimetry equipment has been used reliably for many decades, and only now this particular misbehavior manifests? (2) In control experiments using ordinary water, not heavy water, the excess heat basically does not happen, certainly nothing comparable to the heat measured when deuterium is used. Why would CCS occur only in the heavy water experiments and not in the light water experiments, when that is the only difference between them? V (talk) 19:11, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- Re: (1) - Because never before had the particular experimental configuration been used. The heat redistribution causing the CCS is a unique feature of the F&P cells. That's why Storms should not lump them together (open and closed) with the other types of calorimetric data in his Table in his book. I don't know why the other types of apparati might have a CCS, I haven't studied them. But I know a CCS should be checked for, and isn't.
- I wasn't clear above. The CCS, if caused by my proposed mechanism, is a unique ... Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:05, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- I can't properly respond to that until I have more information (requested at your talk page). V (talk) 21:57, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- Re: (2) Actually there are many claims for light water cold fusion in the lit. They usually use Ni based materials though, as I recall. This eliminates your 2nd objection, but further, H and D are NOT the same. Usually their physical properties are different by about 30%. Their thermoneutral voltages are different, their viscosites (as water) are different, their thermal conductivities as gases are different, etc. One should never expect the same results with H and D under the same nominal experimental conditions. Again, the CFers set up 'controls' with only nuclear effects in mind, and never understand that the chemical effects mess up their attempts. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:03, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- I'm aware that there were some reports of a very small amount of excess heat, proportionate to the natural proportion of deuterium in hydrogen on Earth, but have personally had some doubts about it (1/6500 implies a REALLY REALLY GOOD calorimeter is needed to detect that outside its error range!). If there are claims that might be connected to fusion between two ordinary protium hydrogen nuclei, I'd certainly like to know more about that. I'd MUCH rather build a reactor based on that reaction, than any other, with its fuel being the commonest stuff in the Universe.... I'm also aware that there are some significant differences between ordinary hydrogen chemistry and deuterium chemistry, entirely due to the doubled mass of deuterium, compared to protium. (For example, drinking heavy water exclusively, over regular water, will eventually lead to death; the body's chemistry is fine-tuned for protium reactions. A cup or two is certainly harmless, though.) On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that the energy released by protium chemistry reactions is slightly more than the energy released by deuterium chemistry reactions. This would imply that if CCS could happen as a result of heat redistribution from a hydrogen/oxygen recombination, it should be MORE likely to happen for light water than for heavy water, because there is more heat energy (from the recombination) to redistribute. V (talk) 21:57, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- Re: (2) Actually there are many claims for light water cold fusion in the lit. They usually use Ni based materials though, as I recall. This eliminates your 2nd objection, but further, H and D are NOT the same. Usually their physical properties are different by about 30%. Their thermoneutral voltages are different, their viscosites (as water) are different, their thermal conductivities as gases are different, etc. One should never expect the same results with H and D under the same nominal experimental conditions. Again, the CFers set up 'controls' with only nuclear effects in mind, and never understand that the chemical effects mess up their attempts. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:03, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- Another demo of V's lack of knowledge on the subject, which makes some wonder why he is participating here. Check Britz's bibliography, search on 'nickel'. I quickly found two refs. before I quit. One claimed 20-30 sigma excess heat signals and more reproducibility that heavy water experiments. The maximum power converted into electrolysis products is given by the current times the thermoneutral voltage (TV). H's TV is 1.48, D's is 1.54, thus D provides more power in its electrolysis products. Further, %recombination can vary from 0-100, so which gives more power in a given experiment is unpredictable. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:14, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
- How exactly is the Wall Street Journal related to Star Trek? Do you know what third party means? The Wall Street Journal (and the other sources I listed) have a reputation for accuracy and fact checking. They also have no relation to cold fusion at all. New Energy Times and Infinite Energy have either no reputation for fact checking or a poor reputation for fact checking. They are very related to cold fusion (as advocates). I've finished discussing this. You can take it to the reliable sources noticeboard - please be clear that you are challenging the WSJ as a reliable source in your report. Thanks. Hipocrite (talk) 14:28, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- Perhaps we are using different definitions of "third party". The WSJ is a news publication, right? Does it not subscribe to any news services whatsoever (the Associated Press for example)? Would it not receive, as a part of normal events, descriptions of upcoming productions from the movie studios? To whatever extent they send their reporters out to see a movie and write a review, they are second-parties to the production of the movie. An example of a third-party publication would be something like Storms' book, which reviews lots of data in the second-party publications. I'm almost certain there are none yet of that type, with respect to the new Star Trek movie (and therefore the current article should be deleted until true 3rd-party publications appear, regarding it, see?). Another example would be, even though it occurs in the second-party publication, someone who attempts to replicate a previously-reported experiment, and publishes the results. This is why the CR-39 data is interesting and frustrating, with respect to this article; we await 3rd-party results about that. But there are lots of equivalent 3rd-party results with respect to the older claims of finding excess heat. V (talk) 19:11, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- How exactly is the Wall Street Journal related to Star Trek? Do you know what third party means? The Wall Street Journal (and the other sources I listed) have a reputation for accuracy and fact checking. They also have no relation to cold fusion at all. New Energy Times and Infinite Energy have either no reputation for fact checking or a poor reputation for fact checking. They are very related to cold fusion (as advocates). I've finished discussing this. You can take it to the reliable sources noticeboard - please be clear that you are challenging the WSJ as a reliable source in your report. Thanks. Hipocrite (talk) 14:28, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
(The following part of this overal thread seems to have become orphaned from the message to which it was originally a reply. Please keep that in mind as you read it. V (talk) 21:57, 21 May 2009 (UTC) )
- As to articles, and when they are under examination, this is true. Who is claiming otherwise? And as to neutrons, there is plenty of reliable source on neutrons; most recently, there is the peer-reviewed Naturwissenschaften paper of Mosier-Boss (2009), and there is massive media notice of it. There is, in the paper, some level of explanation of the neutrons, a reasonable hypothesis. By the way, it refers to the Takahashi theory so derisively tossed aside by Hipocrite, above, in beginning his Talk:Cold_fusion#Undue_Weight discussion. There is actually a huge amount of reliable source we could be citing, but if every individual sourced text is immediately reverted out by someone claiming it's not the "mainstream" view, when there is nobody named Mainstream to whom we can ascribe the view, and even though the view was attributed to reliable source, it's impossible to improve the article. I have no problem with attribution of cold fusion "claims." I'm not claiming that cold fusion is "mainstream." But it is, quite simply, no longer acceptable to totally exclude cold fusion research and reviews, it's probably time for Arbitration Enforcement.
- As to lack of theory, there are theories, and Storms is quite clear that, as of 2007, there is no generally accepted theory, even among cold fusion researchers. However, Wikipedia doesn't require an interpretive theory to report facts. Rather, we require verifiability -- that's the actual policy, not WP:RS, which is a guideline, and this is a place where the distinction is important. I'm not rejecting RS standards, au contraire, but how they are interpreted is crucial, and they cannot be interpreted to exclude sources based merely on some alleged support of fringe opinion in them. Storms (2007) is RS, period, otherwise our RS standards have become totally subjective. Sure, if there is conflict of sources, then we consider source quality, with preference being given to peer-reviewed and academic sources. ArbComm has been quite clear on not allowing fringe reliable source to be excluded, and, no, that's not an oxymoron, so I'm thinking it may be time to take this up the ladder. Advice welcome. --Abd (talk) 00:04, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
- To be clear, we have pits, not neutrons. And we have claims the pits come exclusively from neutrons, but there are at least two conventional mechanisms to get pits without neutrons that have not been addressed by the CF authors. If that is to go into the article, we need to make the distinction and problems clear.
- The 'massive media notice' is a flash in the pan because Mar. 23, 2009 was CF's 20th anniversary. The journalists needed _something_ to update their 'same old story'. This is the problem with 'recentism' in editing Wiki articles. Kirk shanahan (talk) 12:05, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
- Sure. With neutrons, we get pits in a characteristic pattern, not ascribable to chemical damage. It's already in the article, Kirk.
- On 22–25 March 2009, the American Chemical Society held a four-day symposium on "New Energy Technology", in conjunction with the 20th anniversary of the announcement of cold fusion. At the conference, researchers with the U.S. Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR) reported detection of energetic neutrons in a palladium-deuterium co-deposition cell using CR-39,[60] a result previously published in Die Naturwissenschaften.[61] Neutrons are indicative of nuclear reactions.[62]
- Absolutely, you can get pits without neutrons, but the paper extensively analyzes the difference between these triple-track pits and pits formed by non-neutron radiation, and, as well, the paper and prior published papers by the same group, cover with controls and analysis the other possibilities. For example, Kowalski criticized the "radiation" conclusion re the massive pitting (not the later neutron report), and there was response from the SPAWAR group back-to-back with the criticism. Note that Kowalski was reporting excess heat. What is now generally expected is that if there is no excess heat, there won't be any radiation, either. With co-deposition, excess heat has become reliable, apparently, so they do other forms of controls than merely looking for absence of heat, which was a common form of control in earlier work. (they would call these experiments those with "inactive electrodes," and this kind of control is in some ways even more convincing, because the experiments were as alike as they could make them. In other words, the difficulty of reproduction, that each experiment produced, even with attempts to keep conditions the same, different amounts of heat, becomes a tool of investigation, a maximized control; one is then studying, not the initial conditions, but correlation of effects.)
- Sure. With neutrons, we get pits in a characteristic pattern, not ascribable to chemical damage. It's already in the article, Kirk.
- The papers do NOT extensively analyze the non-nuclear mechanisms proposed in 2002 (and well known to the CF community at the time since the proposal was indirectly (through Rothwell) responded to by R. Oriani.) They don't even consider other than nuclear sources. The papers are prime examples of the psuedoscience at work, in that scads of words talk about non-neutronic nuclear pitting, while shock wave or O2 induced pits are almost completely ignored (a grouped statement that H2, O2, and something else was tested is made, but with no data or references supporting it, i.e. supposition presented as fact). This is even when Kowalski himself has posted a picture of pits arising from a simple scratch, many of which look to me very 'tripletish'. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:38, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- Kirks synthetic and improbable tale of the media coverage is pure speculation. While some reports may be ascribed to the 20-year anniversary, some of the reports clearly involved investigative reporting of a greater depth. Further, the CBS Sixty Minutes documentary was very much an investigative report, as we'd expect from them and that program, and Robert Duncan very much a mainstream physicist. It's just one example, to be sure, but it is looking like this: take a mainstream physicist, motivate him or her to read the research, to spend more time than it than a one-day seminar (as in the 2004 DoE review for half the panel), and to talk with the researchers, a skeptic is converted to a "believer." ("Believer" is offensive, actually, it implies that the judgment is biased based on prejudicial assumptions; technically, it could be applied to stubborn skeptics quite as well as to stubborn proponents. Stubborn skeptics, as distinct from natural and rational ones, are attached to rejection, are skeptical only about the views of others, not about their own.) --Abd (talk) 16:19, 20 May 2009
- I didn't say the reporters didn't do some work. But what they did is get the 'newest' stuff, and bring out the 'oldies' like Garwan for 'tried and true' commentary, with precious little in-between. Can you look at their reports and what I have been saying here for over a year, an actually claim they did a good, comprehensive job?? Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:38, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- As I posted on Henry Bauer's blog, Duncan was a 'newbie'. The CCS is subtle since it lies further back up the chain of typical errors. Duncan had no clue about it. I can look at the papers from ET than Rothwell has up, and see clear signs of CCS activity. (P.S. ET doesn't seem to know the difference between flow and isoperiboic calorimetry.) I sent my papers to Duncan after the report, but have heard nothing back, and probably won't. His video shows he is 'convinced', like V and Abd, but he never considered the recent critiques of the work, as V and Abd don't. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:38, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
- Shanahan, it must be frustrating to see your work neglected, and I've tried to do my bit for inclusion, and I'd support the return of User:Abd/Calorimetry in cold fusion experiments so that adequate detail could be shown. There's lots of source on the calorimetry as actually used, experimental results in detail, and criticism, including yours. Sure, Duncan was a "newbie." That, indeed, was the point, someone neutral and not affiliated with one side or the other, except the general "side" of "physics."
- I think you might consider being a bit more sympathetic, surely you can see the problem that research is neglected and there is difficulty getting papers published. I, for one, would like to see a really clear exposition of CCS, and how it applies to the various forms of calorimetry, and, I'm afraid, your expositions so far have been inadequate to explain the material to nonspecialists -- and maybe even to specialists --, and you haven't addressed at all the correlation problem of excess heat/helium. So I'll make up an explanation. CCS is due to some local heating effect, unanticipated, cause not stated, necessarily, though some are proposed (such as recombination). The local heating effect drives helium out of the palladium, thus raising helium levels in association with excess heat. Now I'll shoot down my own explanation. Helium isn't found in the palladium to an extent that would be necessary to explain the rise in helium. Further, excess heat from palladium deuteride in gas-loading experiments would have great difficulty throwing off calorimetric calibration with sealed containers that conduct heat well. Consider the Arata work where there is a cell inside a cell. The interior temperature of the inner cell is recorded, the interior temperature of the outer cell is recorded, and the ambient is recorded. They show a steady two degree C. increment, from ambient to outer and from outer to inner, both, after the heat from the formation of palladium deuteride settles down. With hydrogen, the cells both drop within a couple of hours to ambient. With deuterium, the temperature drops to the differential shown, and stays that way for thousands of hours. Just from a rough estimate, the energy generated in the later steady-state phase would be well over an order of magnitude greater than the energy released from the only known chemical reaction taking place in there. And helium is generated. I fail to see how anything like CCS could explain this. Further, the alpha radiation and X-ray radiation detected by the SPAWAR group, not to mention the neutrons, is hard to explain with CCS. Sure, I know what you do. You essentially claim that the pits aren't radiation, yet the controls used by SPAWAR pretty much rule out every alternate explanation, and the X-ray results from X-ray film are also pretty hard to explain. At some point, Kirk, you are working hard to find alternate explanations, and Occam's Razor collapses. Maybe if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it's a duck.
- I'm sympathetic: you can't seem to get published, when you think you have a plain and simple explanation. But this is the exact problem that cold fusion researchers have faced for almost twenty years now. Some of the conference papers are junk, I have no problem assuming that. But some of them aren't, and yet they still face difficulty publishing in the major journals, they are rejected without peer review, based purely on the assumption that cold fusion research is, ipso facto, junk. And what you've done is cold fusion research. Leaving you out in the cold.
- Your work is notable, though, because Storms responds to it on p. 41 and p. 172. The latter response is a bit more detailed:
- Shanahan has proposed that changes in locations where heat is produced within an electrolytic cell could introduce error when flow calorimetry is used. This error is shown by Storms to apply to neither flow nor to Seebeck calorimetry, although the isoperibolic method can be effected. Swartz used a computer model based on hypothetical temperature errors to question the accuracy of flow calorimetry. No demonstration of the proposed mechanism has been reported. On the other hand, a potential error may occur when D2 and O2 gases are allowed to leave the cell. Jones and co-workers (BYU), and Shkedi and co-workers (Bose Corp., MA) observe the obvious, that an uncertain amount of recombination between D2 and O2 within a cell could introduce an uncertain error. Using this argument, Jones criticized heat reported by Miles, who replied in a series of exchanges. Miles answered by pointing out that he, as do many people, measured the amount of internal recombination occuring in his open cell, for which corrections were made. Accurate correctionss can be made as described in Appendix A [Storms' appendix A]. This error does not occur in a closed cell, which is now used by most people when anomalous heat is observed. [and he goes on].
- Yes, Kirk, I notice that he's citing himself, and I would factor for that in any usage of this passage. I also just edited the Calorimetry article a little. Comments can corrections are welcome. --Abd (talk) 21:39, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
- As I posted on Henry Bauer's blog, Duncan was a 'newbie'. The CCS is subtle since it lies further back up the chain of typical errors. Duncan had no clue about it. I can look at the papers from ET than Rothwell has up, and see clear signs of CCS activity. (P.S. ET doesn't seem to know the difference between flow and isoperiboic calorimetry.) I sent my papers to Duncan after the report, but have heard nothing back, and probably won't. His video shows he is 'convinced', like V and Abd, but he never considered the recent critiques of the work, as V and Abd don't. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:38, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
discussion of editor, not needed for work on article
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Hey Abd, reread Bilby's comment of 00:00 21 May. Do you get the message yet? Here's another _new_ editor who can see what I have been saying. It's very plain to him, and everybody else, except CF fanatics. You can't see it because you have emotionally committed to a nuclear-only position. How can you do that, when you admit you are new to the field?? There is only one explanation, and I've offered it. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:45, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
Until there is real consensus here, this article will be plagued with edit warring and contention. There are some who obviously believe that such contention is unavoidable and necessary. I disagree, and I have life-experience that teaches me otherwise. Many of those who are strongly opposing my work have been doing so for a long time, because I'm opposing what has been called "Majority POV-pushing," and, guess what? -- the majority can tend to think that their POV is neutral. It's a very easy mistake to make, especially when communication between the majority and the minority is poor. Improve that communication, and disputes sometimes disappear. The last thing I'd want is to win here at the expense of other editors. My goal is true consensus, not that my supposed opinion prevails. If we have true consensus, improving and maintaining the article will be much easier, many hands make short work. Do the math: if there is a 2:1 majority, often considered a supermajority, that still means that, compared to 100% effort, we have 33% net effort. The available labor can triple if people are united. --Abd (talk) 21:25, 22 May 2009 (UTC) |
"proposed explanations" section seems too narrow
extended discussion.
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I noticed that the proposed explanations section only covers two expl.: experimental error and hydrino theory. They are many more theories out there- both on sources of error or how fusion could happen - or even how excess heat could happen w/out fusion. ideally, a section called "proposed explanations" would give a good survey of them, but the section as is only lists two, and in so doing give them way too much weight in comparison to other theories (namely, infinity). I think this section should show more of the various explanations - a broad survey - or if this cannot be done well in a reasonable amount of space, we should consider removing it, or perhaps putting a broad survey of explanations in the article in some other way. Kevin Baastalk 15:21, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
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Criticism of hydrino theory
extended discussion.
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Hipocrite, in adding criticism of hydrino theory to balance the proposed explanation of cold fusion, has pointed to some very interesting work. First of all, here is the text he added:
Sources:
Rathke's paper begins with:
This is quite remarkable. First of all, it treats seriously the experimental evidence for the existence of hydrino (I had no idea there was a "wealth of experimental evidence that has been published in peer reviewed journals in favor of the hydrino model), whereas editors here, including Hipocrite, have treated it as ridiculous pseudoscience, perhaps fraud. I sincerely congratulate Hipocrite for bringing this to our attention, and the wonder here is that he referred to this theory as "garbage,"[10] and his comments as "truth." But I presume that by now he's actually read the paper and may have a different opinion. Rathke is not actually criticizing so much hydrino theory, as it would apply to Cold fusion, as much as the deterministic model that predicted other hydrino behavior, Mills' Grand unified theory of classical quantum mechanics. Rathke concludes, however, that hydrinos are incompatible with standard quantum mechanics, which is certainly no surprise; however, in his more detailed text, he leaves wiggle room: a state of the hydrogen atom that is less energetic than the ground state cannot be ruled out completely under some exotic conditions at our current level of understanding. Such conditions are however not likely to be fulfilled in the relatively low-energy, low electromagnetic field environment of the plasmas studied by Mills et al. And he regrets that there hasn't been, at least as of his writing, independent reproduction of Mills' results by other experimental groups. That's something we see all the time with cold fusion. Remarkable experimental results, theoretically verifiable (or refutable). Nobody bothers. So many mysteries, so little time! The IEEE Spectrum article is also quite interesting. It's highly skeptical, "This is part of IEEE Spectrum's SPECIAL REPORT: WINNERS & LOSERS 2009, The Year's Best and Worst of Technology," perhaps this is why Hipocrite cited it three times in three sentences. The New York Times article has this: Its “hydrino” theory isn’t put forth by a single crackpot; instead, the company employs a good handful of high-level scientists who would presumably rebel if the idea was totally false. It has also taken over $60 million in venture funding. Despite a hearty rejection by the scientific mainstream, and being ignored for years on end, its founder, Randell Mills, has plugged on. We covered the company extensively back in May, when it started saying it had a prototype 50 kilowatt reactor. And then, As I noted in May, it would be odd, if Blacklight were a complete sham, for Mills to place himself in an end game in which he would be definitively proven wrong within just a year or two. So there does seem to be something deeper here. Physicists will deny the hydrino theory, and they may be right; perhaps that’s why there was a distinct note of smugness in Mills’ voice as he said, “The controversy and academic debate won’t stop commercialization.” For our purposes here, we don't need to know -- at all -- if hydrino theory is correct, compatible with standard quantum mechanics, accepted or rejected. What we need to know is that it is notable as a theory, advanced to explain the phenomena called cold fusion, and that is certainly true. But I personally wonder that there is a science writer at the New York Times who says, "there does seem to be something deeper here," as he postpones judgment, but we have Wikipedia editors who are dead certain that this is all bogus. What I'll say is, "I don't know." I can only report what is in the sources, and think about it a little. --Abd (talk) 20:02, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
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Review of Storms' book by Eric Sheldon
extended discussion.
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The book of Storms received a four page review by Eric Sheldon here in Contemporary Physics in 2008 (vol 49, pages 375–378). Sheldon is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Massachusetts. This article describes hydrino theory as "nowadays widely-discredited". The article of Rathke, cited above, is also damning in its conclusions. Because it is regarded as pseudophysics, at odds with conventional quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, hydrino theory rightly has no WP article of its own. It's not clear why Abd, who gives every appearance of having had no formal training in quantum theory, should be actively advocating hydrino theory here. It is exactly for that reason that the summarising and evaluation of books on WP is through reviews by professional academics like Sheldon, i.e. secondary sources. Pushing crackpot pseudoscience in this way, ignoring secondary sources (such as Sheldon's review), cherry-picking quotes from negative reviews to create a positive spin — this style of editing seems to run counter to all of wikipedia's core policies. I have no interest in editing the namespace article but have watched with consternation as Abd has attempted to generate pseudoscience fatigue on this talk page by his screeds of endless prose on the subject: why is he unduly pushing pseudophysics? Mathsci (talk) 02:54, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
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Proposal to move "non-nuclear" section to the "Discussion" section
To keep the article structure consistent, we should move the "Non-nuclear explanations for excess heat" section to just after the "experimental error" section. Does anyone object? Olorinish (talk) 13:14, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
- We should remove significant redundancies, aside from the natural redundancy in the lead. I do think it is a bit much to be saying, over and over, "this is rejected by the mainstream." What's accurate is that it was rejected, twenty years ago. Current status is far more ambiguous, with plenty of source that the field is being given more respect and appropriate skepticism, i.e., "show me!" instead of "don't bother!" --Abd (talk) 14:29, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
Let's organize our thoughts
Apparently there are currently two big points of disagreement: Whether the article should have a hydrino section, and whether the article should have a Be8 section. I personally think the article would be fine with or without them, which is why I haven't been commenting much lately. I do, however, think the hydrino section should be smaller (about half of its current size) considering the current level of support for hydrino existence. Perhaps people could use this space for brief, productive discussion of what we should do about these two issues. Olorinish (talk) 13:27, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
- Hydrino theory is notable. Storms gives it several pages. The general theory itself is highly controversial, with continued publication in peer-reviewed journals and a relative paucity of specific criticism; Rathke is the best criticism to date, but doesn't appear to have been confirmed; Blacklight Power hosts a recent refutation of Rathke, citing math errors, but that's not usable unless we simply want to to note that the authors have replied. I think it's been submitted, we'll see if it gets published.
- If you can present hydrino theory in fewer words, fine. What's there now is quite short, and if you want to trim it, the most obvious place is trimming the criticism, which is quite redundant, summarized by what we already know: just as cold fusion is not generally accepted, neither is any theory that proposes an explanation; if such a theory were, in fact, accepted, it would be all over, cold fusion would be accepted. Controversy over Mills' theories is covered at Blacklight Power and only the briefest summary should be in our article; Hipocrite was quite correct to add the reference to the Blacklight Power article.
- By the way, I don't see a controversy over the hydrino section, it looks like it's been accepted. Be8 wasn't accepted by Hipocrite and he edit warred to keep it out, as I did to assert it, though usually with compromise, but I'm not seeing any objection to it now beyond Noren's comment, which simply asked a question about it. --Abd (talk) 14:38, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
- I don't like how the current version dedicates all that space to explain all that theory. I would reduce it to say that it started as an attempt to explain CF as a non-nuclear phenomena, that it theorizes a lower state of the electron in the deuterium molecule, how this is used to try to explain the occasional radiation, and then that it's widely discredited among scientifics (specially theorical physicists?), mainly because the theory goes against known quantum mechanics and doesn't offer experimental evidence.
- That covers the relationship to CF, makes enough explanation to understand the concept, and makes clear where the Hydrino theory stands from the point of current mainstream science and why. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:55, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
- Well, your explanation is inaccurate, for starters. We really should have the full explanation somewhere, what I put in isn't full, at all, it's drastically cut down. The following isn't full either, it's cut down, but it's exact quote from Storms:
- Mills proposes that the electron in a hydrogen isotope can occupy energy levels below those associated with normal Bohr orbits. For an electron to enter these fractional quantum states, a special catalyst atom is required.... This process is exothermic.... [but so far, not nuclear]. Once the electron has reached a sufficiently collapsed state, the nuclear charge would be shielded and the deuteron could fuse or enter another nucleus, thus providing a solution to the Coulomb barrier problem as first proposed by Mills. During fusion, the Mills electron might be ejected as a prompt beta particle, thus providing a solution to the single-product problem [i.e., conservation of momentum].
- Normally, most deuterons are not close enough to a Mills catalyst to react. However, when deuterons are forced to diffuse through the lattice they have a much greater probability of contacting a rare catalyst atom....
- There is much more. Note that none of this is proposed by Storms as "established fact," he is reporting a theory.
- Well, your explanation is inaccurate, for starters. We really should have the full explanation somewhere, what I put in isn't full, at all, it's drastically cut down. The following isn't full either, it's cut down, but it's exact quote from Storms:
- This is what we have now:
- Mills (2006) has suggested that electrons can occupy energy levels lower than previously understood, but that under normal conditions, a barrier exists to prevent transitions to such a reduced energy state. Mills postulates that some atoms with an appropriate available energy level can catalyze the transition of electrons to this state. If an electron has reached a sufficiently collapsed state, this electron may then shield two deuterons similarly to muon-catalyzed fusion, allowing the nuclei to approach and fuse, and the electron could then be emitted as a prompt beta particle, thus explaining the lack of gamma radiation and conserving momentum.[2][3][4]
- This is what we have now:
Plus the critical material Hipocrite added.
- I can boil it down more, I think:
- Mills (2006) has suggested that electrons can occupy energy levels lower than previously understood. If an electron has reached a sufficiently collapsed state, this electron may shield the nuclear charge and allow the nuclei to approach and fuse, and the electron could then be ejected, explaining the lack of gamma radiation and conserving momentum.
- Together with the link to Blacklight Power, where there could be more detail on hydrino theory and its application to cold fusion, this should cover it. On the other hand, some of the same editors have been working on Blacklight Power and I suspect that there might be resistance to inclusion of cold fusion theory there; Blacklight Power's project does not appear to involve cold fusion at all, it allegedly generates energy simply from the collapse of the electron. --Abd (talk) 17:35, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
drastic rewrite
extended discussion.
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moved from Talk:Cold_fusion/to_do, this needs consensus and sources before going into the TODO list --Enric Naval (talk) 20:23, 25 May 2009 (UTC) The entire article needs a drastic rewrite. The Widom-Larsen theory now satisfactorily explains LENR as a weak interaction phenomenon, not a strong force phenomenon. There is no longer much theoretical mystery. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.73.189.162 (talk • contribs) 18:22, 25 May 2009 We probably should cover Widom-Larsen theory. Storms gives it a little space, not much, but here are some references from Storms: Widom, A. and Laarsen, L., ULtra low momentum neutron catalyzed nuclear reactions on metallic hydride surfaces, Eur. Phys. J., C46, 107, 2006. Widom, A. and Larsen, L., Nuclear abundances in metallic hydride electrodes of electrolytic chemical cells, arXiv:cond-mat/062472 v1, 2006 Widom, A. and Larsen. L., Absorption of nuclear gamma radiation by heavy electrons on metallic hydride surfaces, arXiv:cond-mat, 2006. Note that Storms was, above, alleged to have a conflict of interest due to his relationship with Lattice Energy, but he gives short shrift to the theory. I'll note, though, that W-L, as described in the second paper below, also proposes a Be-8 intermediary, it simply gets there in a different way. Here is an article on W-L theory by Larsen: [14] (4 Dec 2008). See also [15] for another account (23 Oct 2007) Steve Krivit of New Energy Times gave a talk at the 2007 ACS conference, video at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1944189360430905288&hl=en; covering the field and reporting on W-L theory a bit, but there is much more depth in the documents above. Point to take home from the Krivit lecture: we don't know WTF is happening. There are theories that might explain cold fusion, but as the introduction to the "Proposed explanations" section said, According to Storms (2007), no published theory has been able to meet all the requirements of basic physical principles, while adequately explaining the experimental results he considers established or otherwise worthy of theoretical consideration. It's beyond me why this statement was taken out. The most complete and tightly organized source of information on W-L theory is on the New Energy Times web site: http://www.newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/WL/WLTheory.shtml. Reading this material should convey some sense of the level of controversy in the field over theory. Krivit is in communication with all the major players. On that page there are many references to peer-reviewed publications, but I haven't gone over it to see if there is enough for us to report this in the article yet. There is a listing of "all" of the W-L papers, with links, at [16]. Certainly Storms thought W-L theory was bogus at the beginning of 2008. A detailed critique from Storms is available at [17]. While New Energy Times is problematic as a source, Krivit is, indeed, a full-time investigative journalist who is paid to research and report on the field, and he appears to do so with energy and accuracy. He's also quite opinionated, sometimes, so care should be exercised with regard to presenting science from NET as "fact" without corroboration. But if Krivit says that so-and-so said such-and-such, he seems to be as reliable or more reliable than an ordinary newspaper. This is now the place I go to find news on the field. I've never found an error in it, but sometimes he's making some point. His whole conversation with Garwin, in the issue cited above, left me with "So?" I.e., he seems to have been extrapolating from a non-conversation, a few words, to some conclusion, basically that Garwin hadn't specifically criticized W-L theory, but only made an off-hand comment implying some criticism, which would be expected from Garwin anyway. Garwin needs a cup of tea, apparently, in order to get started. --Abd (talk) 23:25, 25 May 2009 (UTC) |
Reports of nuclear products in association with excess heat
extended discussion.
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I've discussed this before, but the source of the problem just became apparent to me. There is a paragraph in the 2004 DoE report,[18]:
In our article, we have, "In the report presented to the DOE in 2004, 4He was detected in five out of sixteen cases where electrolytic cells were producing excess heat." I'd looked before to find the material in the McKubre report on which this was based, since there is much stronger evidence in the McKubre report than that on the correlation of excess heat and helium: the phrase above, if correct, would actually be strong evidence against correlation. I found the source. It's a description of the Case experiments, and one reviewer considers it with this language:
These were not electrolytic cells, for starters, as the reviewer notes. They are gas-loaded cells, which produce excess heat with no power input, similar to Arata's work. There were not sixteen cells producing excess heat, at least not as shown in the report. The report actually doesn't state how many produced excess heat. McKubre's interest in this part of the report is behavior of He4 over time, the temporal correlation, not the quantitative one, which is covered in the earlier part of the report, this is Appendix B. One cell only, cell SC2 has excess heat and He4 data reported by time. So not only did the DoE bureaucrat summarizing the reviewer comments get this one wrong, based on misreading the reviewer's report, the reviewer apparently got it wrong as well, misreading the McKubre paper. The reviewer also seems to have ignored chunks of the report, raising questions which are answered in it, but that's a separate problem, and this kind of obtuse response seems common in this field. I just saw a blog by a physicist on the CBS special and it was totally derisive, with him asking why they weren't looking for helium. The CBS special was twenty minutes and that physicist could easily have done his own research and would have found that, indeed, "they" have been looking for, and have found, helium, in just the right quantities to explain the excess heat from d-d fusion, which doesn't prove that the reaction is d-d fusion, but it makes it rather look like it! Note that with these Case cells, the helium level rose as high as double background, so "leakage" starts to look a tad weak. Meanwhile, we should be reporting secondary source review of these experiments, setting aside obvious errors like that above, and both Storms and He Jing-tang, if nothing else, do look at correlation, and the correlation is very strong. (Both He Jing-tang and Storms reproduce McKubre's single-cell plot of Case energy vs He4.) Storms gives, however, much more information than that. He Jing-tang presents some astonishing results from Arata, if I read them right. I'd want to confirm this with the original Arata report. Yes. ( http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ArataYdevelopmena.pdf ). Arata claimed 100 ppm helium generation from D2 gas-loading nanoparticle palladium, stimulated by "laser welding." Air background is 5.2 ppm. "The data for a corresponding study using pure H2 with a Pd sample powder showed no generated 4He." This was presented at ICCF10, August, 2003. Arata's work has been published in peer-reviewed journals in Japan, it may be tricky to find the papers. "Close to background," my eye.) --Abd (talk) 02:22, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
Correlation doesn't exactly show causal relationship (for starters, which of two effects is cause and which is effect?). However, what it shows, done properly, is common cause. The analysis Bilby gives is dead wrong. No, double the level isn't within standard variance. The charts involved show standard error bars. Measurement accuracy is well below the background level. The errors in the DoE summary are blatant. Unless there is something I've missed! (i.e., some other helium result that was 5 out of 16.) These were not electrolysis experiments, period, the reviewer got that absolutely right, this error was only in the summary. Mention of excess heat and helium isn't mention of a correlation. Correlation is, in fact, the strongest evidence for cold fusion. The big complaint in 1989 was lack of evidence for nuclear ash. That complaint was echoed in 2004, even though they had evidence in front of them; the summary shows that the evidence wasn't clearly seen and understood, though some reviewers did understand it (this is the evidence the summary calls "somewhat convincing," a view reportedly held by one-third of the panel). Our article, on helium "associated" with excess heat, is clearly wrong, the supposed results aren't in the McKubre paper that the panel was considering. I'd like to look at the other Case work published by SRI elsewhere to verify details, though. So the immediate relevance is that our article needs to be fixed to make it true to source, the ultimate source that is being cited by the anonymous summary of the DoE review. We are not condemned to repeat errors found in a secondary source. Now, as to correlation. The Case experiments weren't presented to show correlation in multiple experiments, only one experiment was shown to show time correlation of excess heat and helium level. Note that these cells were studied in pairs, a cell with presumed active material and one without. But the presentation of data on this in the McKubre paper is scanty, I'd certainly want to know more. Storms has a better presentation of the heat/helium data, from the more extensive Miles work. For thinking about this, in a way that is, at least, similar to the actual data, suppose there are 33 cold fusion Pd/D electrolysis cells. They are all operated in the same way. At the conclusion of the electrolysis, the cells are sent to an independent lab for helium analysis. 15 of them show no helium, 18 do. Also of the 33 cells, 21 show excess heat, 12 do not. That's uncorrelated data, and it certainly does not look convincing. The helium could be due to leaks. The excess heat could be due to calorimetry error. Now the correlation: the 12 cells that showed no excess heat also showed no helium. Of the 21 cells that showed excess heat, 18 showed helium. Storms notes reasons to suspect the remaining three cells as being different, one he ascribes to an error in heat measurement, the other two were a different alloy electrode, and there are always little mysteries like this. The absence of helium from the cells showing no excess heat is stunning. Now, if the excess heat were at a level that it could compromise the integrity of the cells, that could cause leakage, but it wasn't. Absent a reasonably hypothesis for common cause, this is strong evidence, and it is evidence that the calorimetry is at least qualitatively accurate, and that the helium measurements are likewise. However, there is more. The correlation is also quantitative. In other experiments, as well as with those Miles experiments, the quantity of helium detected correlates with the amount of excess heat determined from the calorimetry. So, again, what we have is evidence that whatever is causing excess heat is also causing helium to be found. Storms gives the figure of 25 +/- 5 MeV/He4. McKubre gives a more direct estimate of a bit over 30 MeV/He4, I forget the figure, but Storms has apparently done more analysis on the issue of missing helium (helium absorbed by the palladium and not recovered for measurement, and helium lost in other ways. (Note that any lost helium will raise the calculated energy/He4. Likewise any other pathways or causes of excess heat findings.) So: We have strong evidence for excess heat, and we have strong evidence for helium associated with it. There is controversy about the exact level of energy/He4, Krivit, in particular, challenges the McKubre and Storms estimates, but Krivit, I'll note, is a journalist, not a scientist. He's quite good on reporting what the people have been doing, the best available. On the science, he's more knowledgeable than your average Wikipedia editor, for sure, but not necessarily than the scientists involved. But, at this point, for those who haven't followed all this, the figure of excess energy/He4 is significant because d+d fusion would generate He4 at 23.8 MeV/He4. That doesn't prove that the reaction is d+d fusion, and simple d+d fusion would be expected, for reasons our article should clearly show, to involve gamma emission to conserve momentum, but 4d fusion to form Be8 -> 2 He4, same energy figure, solves that problem, there is no need for gammas and they wouldn't be expected. What would, in fact, be expected is X-radiation from deacceleration of the alpha particles in the electrolyte or in the electrode, and that radiation has been amply reported. Classic technique: piece of protected X-ray film that, when developed, shows an outline of the electrode. Storms covers all this, I believe, and is a reliable secondary source, we need look for no more, the Sheldon review confirms the reliability, and we aren't likely to find better in the near future, aside from possible magazine coverage here and there, nothing with the depth of Storms. We have no reliable source on the "scientific consensus" at this time that isn't passing mention based on no stated evidence, but I do assume that the general opinion of rejection is still more or less accurate. I've been talking to a lot of scientists on this, and the normal first reaction is rejection based on 1989. However, when they hear about the recent results, that changes rather easily. "I'll have to look that up. If that's true, there definitely is something there." (This is usually regarding the neutron findings of Mosier-Boss.) The ACS Sourcebook will be useful, but is actually, for the most part, a compendium of primary sources; the effect of it is to show notability of those sources, for they were selected for importance, and inclusion decisions there are a form of peer review. There is, however, some summary review there, though, in particular one written by Krivit that I'm looking forward to seeing in print. Storms, for this field, right now, is the gold standard for secondary source, much better and deeper than the McKubre report presented to the DoE. --Abd (talk) 15:04, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
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To summarize, on "association."
extended discussion.
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Our article has, in Coldfusion#Reports of nuclear products in association with excess heat, no report of association of nuclear products in association with excess heat, except for this: In the report presented to the DOE in 2004, 4He was detected in five out of sixteen cases where electrolytic cells were producing excess heat.[78] The note cites the summary review, but the text attributes to the report itself, which is available. This, on the face, appears to show association, though a very weak one, without the information that would allow the association to be judged. I.e, with two variables (how much helium was detected and how much excess heat was detected), there are four gross categories of association: heat and excess helium, no heat and no excess helium, no heat and excess helium, and heat and no excess helium. What is implied in the sentence is 5 cases of heat and helium, and an implication of 11 cases of heat and no helium, and no indication of how many cases there were of the other two categories. (i.e., we don't know, from our text, how many cells were tested for heat and helium.) As presented, the information is singularly weak, reading this, I'd say, my conclusion would be that helium and excess heat were not related. This is what is in the actual summary report: Results reported in the review document purported to show that 4He was detected in five out of sixteen cases where electrolytic cells were reported to be producing excess heat.[19] This is a citation or interpretation of the review document. Now, is that information actually in the review document? It is not. What we are quoting as fact (that the review document "purports to show" the information) is verifiably false. What is in the review document? interjection by Kirk Shanahan, interrupting comment by Abd, which resumes below next full-left smalltext note
original comment by Abd resumes: Page 7 of the review document has a section on Helium and Excess heat. There is a subsection titled "Correlation of Excess Heat and Helium." This section discusses the work of a number of experimental groups, and includes analysis of the "Q value," i.e, how much heat is associated with each atom of helium found. This is work that is fundamental to both evidence for cold fusion and to the consideration of theories. There is no mention in this section of "sixteen cases." The section does, however, refer to Appendix B for some further discussion of helium and excess heat. There is a mention of sixteen cells that Appendix, page 18, a report of a study of Case cells in which 4He was found. Just to start with, these are not electrolytic cells. Secondly, the total number of cells was sixteen. The total number of cells for which helium measurements were reported was six. One of these is flat, at zero ppm, leaving five which show any helium at all. One of the five shows very low helium, not exceeding roughly 1 ppm. One shows a slow rise to about 4 ppm. Three show sharp rises of helium levels, crossing the background level of about 5.2 ppm with no sign of slowing down, until reaching, for one cell, almost 11 ppm. This is the only cell for which excess heat is reported, in a chart on figure 13 on page 21. As far as we know from this appendix, excess heat was only found in one cell, though that is unlikely to be true. I'll return to that later, I believe there is a more thorough report on this work. This appendix was not a report showing heat/helium correlation in more than one cell. The only reports showing correlation of excess heat and helium over multiple experimental runs were in the earlier section described above. The correlation is quantitative, at a level consistent with d + d -> He4 (or with 4d -> Be8 -> 2 He4). So: the summary report is almost completely erroneous.
The correlation of helium and excess heat is crucial, and the submitters of the review document knew this, and that's why they had a section dedicated to this. It appears that whoever summarized the document was distracted by the information in Appendix B, and misread it and then reported that. There was one individual reviewer report that made some of the mistakes made by the summarizer, but this merely helps us to understand how the summarizer came to make the mistake, being led part of the way there by the reviewer. Without the correlation, or somehow overlooking it, the wonder would be that even one-third of the reviewers thought that the evidence for a nuclear explanation for the excess heat (that half thought was convincing) was "somewhat persuasive." That is, the reviewers did not generally make the same mistake as the summarizer. Now, what do we do with this? Well, we don't quote the DoE summarizer as being what was in the review document, unless we also note that the information allegedly there wasn't. Which I prefer, because that piece of information (the error) is important in understanding subsequent events. The reviewer was a DoE official, and was, I'm sure, singularly unimpressed with the evidence, because the official didn't understand it, read it incorrectly." I would never say this in the article, but readers can come to conclusions themselves, if we provide them with what's verifiable. The statement in the summary report is notable, it's obvious that editors here have agreed on that. The actual review document is notable, for lots of reasons. This is all reliably sourced as released by the DoE. So we report both. And since the energy/helium ratio is considered the strongest evidence for fusion, with a specific mechanism, and we have Storms for that as well as other secondary sources, we present the real evidence that was shown to the DoE, the review of Miles' work as presented by them, or, better, by Storms. I mention subsequent events. The DoE review recommended further research. So did the 1989 review. After 1989, the DoE rejected, apparently, all requests for funding of any research related to cold fusion, and this has been ascribed to the continued influence of Huizenga, who chaired the original panel and who has been a highly skeptical commentator on the field, putting out his own book that gives the most negative possible interpretation on every bit of the work. (But it is still a valuable resource, it is only his conclusions and framing that are problematic. It's like Taubes, which is a goldmine as well.) After 2004, a well-known cold fusion researcher submitted a request to do exactly the kind of work that the report recommended, a modest effort. It was denied without review, apparently. I think it's easy to see why this might have happened. The official who wrote the summary was asked about it, or is the one who made the decision. While in 1989 and 2004 the panels were reasonably neutral, the continued influence was entirely from the most skeptical side. I have, above, refered to the report as the McKubre report. That was an error; McKubre was an author and was crucial in presenting it, but the paper is the Hagelstein paper, this theorist was the lead author, and that's how we have it in our bibliography. --Abd (talk) 16:00, 27 May 2009 (UTC) |
Some comments on the 'heat-He correlation'
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Reference: “PRODUCTION OF 4He IN D2-LOADED PALLADIUM-CARBON CATALYST II”, W. BRIAN CLARKE, STANLEY J. BOS and BRIAN M. OLIVER FUSION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 43, MAR. 2003, 250 It is of interest to look at some quotes from the referenced article in light of the supposed He-excess heat correlation that Abd is pushing so much. In the following I have clipped out some sections, which is indicated by {deletion}, for brevity. This article is the one I attempted to get into the Wiki article, but which has been removed from discussion, even though it still remains in the Bibliography. Note that Dr. M. McKubre heads the SRI effort in this field. The Abstract
Points made in the body:
From the Summary:
Note also that a slow in-leak of air would provide O2 for the H2+O2 reaction, which produces heat. That heat would appear as excess heat. Bottom line: If the He-heat correlation is to be placed in the Wiki article, then a summary of this information needs to be placed there as well, along with the commentary on the CCS, since the evidence is that the CFers don’t correctly measure either excess heat or He. If you can’t measure your X and Y properly, an accidental correlation arising from a plot cannot be considered real. Kirk shanahan (talk) 14:38, 27 May 2009 (UTC)
Shanahan is correct, this information belongs in the article, if the Case work is reported, because it may be the most cogent recent criticism of the helium work. However, the Case work is actually the weakest work on this point, and was used in only one correlation study, of a single cell, as reported to the DoE. (But I haven't reviewed the original Case article.) The Case effect is actually an open mystery, and I'm not convinced that it should be in our article: what was important here was that distorted Case effect results were presented by the DoE summary as if this was the strong evidence of helium correlation presented, when it wasn't. On the Case effect, Storms, p.46:
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Clarke and Hagelstein
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Kirk shanahan wrote:
Shanahan had presented material from “PRODUCTION OF 4He IN D2-LOADED PALLADIUM-CARBON CATALYST II”, W. BRIAN CLARKE, STANLEY J. BOS and BRIAN M. OLIVER FUSION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 43, MAR. 2003, 250. The paper reviewed by the DoE in 2004 does refer to this paper, it is note 119. The context is a footnote on page 18. The samples may have had little or nothing to do with the work of McKubre reported in teh Hagelstein 2004 DoE review paper. The footnote:
Clear as mud. If Shanahan has evidence on what these samples were and how they would bear on the Case cell work reported to the DOE, he's welcome to provide it. Notice the possible contradiction between the claim of Clarke to have measured levels in samples taken from "SRI Case-type stainless steelcells" and the claim in the Hagelstein paper that the samples were in "very small seald Pb pipe sections." Unstated, the provenance of the samples. I don't have direct access to the Clarke paper, maybe there are more details there. Otherwise, it's looking to me like the Clarke work is likely irrelevant to the Case study presented in Appendix B of the Hagelstein paper, which was, itself, a minor part of the energy/helium evidence, Clarke being blown up and stretched by Shanahan to make it appear highly relevant. Very impressive, Kirk. There is more. When was the work done on Case cells at SRI? McKubre reported on this at a conference in 1999: The catalytic fusion process of Dr. Les Case got a significant boost in early June. Dr. Michael McKubre of SRI International reported on a series of convincing experiments. These appear to confirm Case’s conclusion that helium-4 can be produced by the catalytic action of palladium-doped carbon in heated vessels containing pressurized (several atmospheres) heavy hydrogen (D2) gas. McKubre spoke on June 3, 1999 at the Society for Scientific Exploration’s 18th Annual Meeting, which was held at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.[23]. The Clarke study was published in March, 2003. As I mentioned above, we aren't informed as to the provenance of the cells. Samples were "taken from" stainless steel Case-type cells, but how? And when? How had the cells previously been treated? What was the purpose of the provision of samples to Clarke? How long elapsed between the filling of the sample containers (what were the sample containers, how were they sealed, etc) and the Clarke measurements. Pesky little details, some of which might have answers, and some not. Bottom line: these were not measurements reported as part of a study, and the purpose isn't stated by Clarke. Normally, SRI does their own measurement of Helium with their own mass spectrometer. This may have been an attempt to check a calibration, for example, and somebody screwed up. Or open, literally. It's a bit unclear why Clarke even published, the paper as described doesn't assert the significance, though Shanahan does. What I see in the Clarke report is that the containers were very badly sealed, whereas, looking at the helium data from the Hagelstein paper, one container shows no leakage at all, two show possible slow leaks (one very low levels detected, also possible measurement error, and one with a steady rise toward ambient level, could be a leak indication, but then three that show drastic rises, clearly unconnected with and surpassing ambient. I see no relation between this and the Clarke results, except possibly with the slowly leaking cells -- which were all leaking at a lower rate than Clarke speculates (major shift in "a few days" vs data collected for the Hagelstein paper over as long as 45 days.) --Abd (talk) 01:42, 28 May 2009
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- ^ Fleischmann 1990
- ^ Alok Jha, Fuel's paradise? Power source that turns physics on its head, Guardian, Nov. 4, 2005, for background
- ^ William J. Broad, 2 Teams Put New Life in 'Cold' Fusion Theory, New York Times, April 26, 1991, claims "ultradense hydrogen"
- ^ R.L. Mills and S.P. Kneizys, Excess heat production by the electrolysis of an aqueous potassium carbonate electrolyte and the implications for cold fusion, Fusion Technology, 20, pp. 65-81 (1991).