Talk:Cold fusion/Archive 6

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New version of this article by E. Storms is available

Happy New Year everyone.

At the top of this article there is a notice: "This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject."

I think this is true. Fortunately, I was able to persuade Edmund Storms (Los Alamos, ret.) to write a revised version of this article. Storms is widely regarded as one of the world's leading experts in this field, and he has written a number of reviews including two peer-reviewed journal articles. Storms prepared a draft incorporating most of the statements and issues raised in the current article, except for the early history. It is shorter than the present article (4,300 words versus 7,800) and it is written in the style of a formal scientific paper or encyclopedia entry, much like the Wikipedia article on plasma fusion.

The draft is written in Microsoft Word, and the footnotes are in EndNote format. Before I upload it, I will have to convert these formats to the Wikipedia format. (Is this basically HTML?) This will take some time. I also have to insert some last-minute changes from the main article that people made after Storms began editing.

The skeptics may or may not be happy with this draft. I would not want to do all this work only to have them undo it. So before I upload, let me post it here. I am not sure how to proceed and I would appreciate advice, especially from the skeptics. I would also appreciate advice on how to deal with the footnotes. If the article is changed in the future we will have to manually renumber them. Is there some way to make them automatically numbered? Some of them can be hyperlinked to online papers, but most of these references are not on line.

If the skeptics object to this version, I suggest we split the article down the middle. The skeptics can write the first 3,200 words, then we insert Storms' 3,200 words, and then 1,100 in common, starting with "Cold fusion in fiction." I realize this is not how Wikipedia articles are formatted, but I see no reason why they all have to be formatted the same way. What harm would there be in making an exception for this subject?

In the first section, the skeptics would be welcome to delete all references to the literature, all of the rebuttals to their claims, quotes from Schwinger and so on, and they can say that the "vast majority of scientists" think that cold fusion is pseudoscience. They can even quote Robert Park, who says it is fraud.

Anyway, the unformatted draft is here.

--JedRothwell 16:51, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Comments

Jed - first let me say this is very cool, I'd love to get this contribution in. It needs minimal formatting (headers etc), wikification, and a merge with some parts of the current text (especially web links). I think a few areas could be expanded a bit, and it needs some copyediting, but we can do that later. Do you happen to know which exact version of this page it was based on? (so we can merge later changes?) Some docs on Wikipedia formatting (which is not at all like HTML) are at Wikipedia:How_to_edit_a_page#Wiki_markup, and for formatting footnotes WP:CITET and Template:Ref/examples. I will be quite happy to handle those parts, if you don't mind. ObsidianOrder 10:57, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

P.S. regarding the "split it down the middle" idea, I don't think that's necessary (or usual practice). If there's anything notable that is missing, people can simply add it. I don't see this as an "us vs them", "supporters vs skeptics" kind of thing, and I sincerely hope other people don't either. We are all simply trying to make this a better article, and I think most editors will agree the Storms draft is hands down better than the current version. ObsidianOrder 11:01, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

It would be unusual to split the article. Perhaps unprecedented. But I see no harm in doing it. If I were a skeptic, and I believed that the vast majority of scientists think that cold fusion is pathological science, and that cold fusion has never been replicated, I would not be satisfied by Storms' draft. I would want my views represented. It is difficult to integrate both views in the same stream of text, so why not separate them? Also, the skeptics may wish to preserve statements about the early history of cold fusion. Storms felt these were irrelevant. Perhaps they should be moved to a new encyclopedia article, "History of Cold Fusion"?

I sincerely wish to avoid squelching the skeptical point of view, or riling the skeptics, so I favor letting them have their say, but I cannot see how their views can be added to the Storms draft and still have the document make any sense. It would sound schizophrenic. I would like see Noren or some other skeptic here take the present article and delete everything he disagrees with. We can place that version first. I, for one, would promise not to touch it. --JedRothwell 16:51, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Please see a first try at a formatted version at User:ObsidianOrder/Cold_fusion. Comments? I'm trying to decide whether it would be better to use Harvard style references in the text eg. (Bockris 1990) instead of [17]. ObsidianOrder 11:56, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

That looks great, except that the footnotes are out of synch. There was a problem with the EndNote records and I think one of the DoE footnotes is missing. It is supposed to list the DoE summary + the DoE review panel members comments.

Ed has sent me some minor changes and patches. This version is based on a copy of the existing article made Dec. 30, 2005, so it is mostly up to date.

I can change the footnote formats to Harvard style by changing a parameter in EndNote. Either way is fine with me. After this is uploaded I will insert the hyperlinks to the footnoted documents that are available on line, such as the DoE document (at the DoE website). I have a master list of these.

--JedRothwell 16:37, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Jed - you probably don't need to re-export from EndNote, I think just change {{ref|Bockris1990}} to {{ref_harvard|Bockris1990|Bockris 1990|}} should work. I can run a script to do that en-masse. I changed the first footnote on User:ObsidianOrder/Cold_fusion to that style as a test, see if it works for you. ObsidianOrder 22:48, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

This is better than the current state of the article and does represent a great starting point to move forward. There are some problems, but overall I believe they're all reasonably easily fixable. Some are simple style problems such as the first paragraph of a Wikipedia article shouldn't give a historically derived explanation for a term, but an overview or definition of what it is currently considered to be. That's not an insurmountable problem. Overall it too many times states opinions of the writer as facts, even those that are later discussed to be disputed. An egregious example is "Most disagreement over the validity of the results, that continue to the present day, ignores the fact that all of the demands by skeptics have been met." Obviously they are not met to the satisfaction of many very prominent scientists or there wouldn't be a controversy. Instead of being stated as a fact, the debate must be characterized. That could more neutrally be written as "Cold fusion researchers [possibly including "such as foo and bar"] believe that all the demands...". There are similar examples, but I believe they are all fixable. Another problem that is carried over from the previous article is it is not made clear what we are talking about with cold fusion. Are we only accepting processes that involve excess heat or is muon catalyzed that doesn't involve excess heat counted? It still suffers from the obvious problem of being written from the perspective of a cold fusion proponent, but it's closer. Again this is an improvement and a better starting point. I suggest improving it in a temp page such as cold fusion/temp until there is a consensus that the version is better than what is in the current article. - Taxman ^Talk 18:09, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Taxman writes:

"Another problem that is carried over from the previous article is it is not made clear what we are talking about with cold fusion. Are we only accepting processes that involve excess heat or is muon catalyzed . . ."

In the interests of clarity, I think this article should be devoted to metal-deuteride cold fusion. Other Wikipedia articles (or "stubs") can be established to cover muon catalyzed fusion, sono-fusion and so on. Naturally these articles should include links to one-another.

"Overall it too many times states opinions of the writer as facts, even those that are later discussed to be disputed."

I figured you would feel that way. You can amend or delete these sections to make minor adjustments, but if you wish to make major changes, I urge you add a section to the beginning instead. (Call it a sort of "mini-split"). I have in mind something along these lines:

Skeptical Assertions [claims, views, opinions . . . or whatever you would like to call them]

Many skeptics do not believe that cold fusion exists. They make the following assertions:

The vast majority of scientists believe it does not exist.

The effect has never been replicated.

While the output power is higher than the input power during the power burst, the power balance over the whole experiment does not show significant imbalances. . . . A "power store" discovery would yield only a new, and very expensive, kind of storage battery, not a source of abundant cheap fusion power.

etc., etc. Make it as long as you feel necessary to express the views not covered by Storms, plus the views that you feel are his opinions. (You can be sure, however, that all cold researchers agree with him. He only included consensus views.) I am not recommending this in order to "segregate" views or invent a new Wikipedia standard, but only because the article is very difficult to follow when polar opposite views are mixed together in the same paragraph.

If Taxman agrees this is a good start, I think we should move it into the main article soon, so that we do not accidentally erase or overwrite recent changes.

--JedRothwell 19:34, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Taxman - I agree with your comments, I think there are quite a few places that could use editing precisely as you describe. I would like to see if I can come up with something which is both substantial and fair, but as you say I think we should start trying to get there from the Storms draft which is quite good in some respects. ObsidianOrder 22:19, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

The draft has serious problems with POV. I really wish there were someone competent and willing to evenhandedly revise it. The sentence

Most disagreement over the validity of the results, that continue to the present day, ignores the fact that all of the demands by skeptics have been met.

is, as noted above, about as POV as you can get. If you look at the references, the work of Pons and Fleischmann occurred in 1989. If you look at the references, after 1991 the only peer reviewed papers referenced are [11] and [20], published in 1993 and 1994 in the Journal of Electroanalytic Chemistry, and [27], published in the Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, in 2002. Where are publications in top flight journals, like the Physical Review, Nuclear Physics, Nature or Science? Or any of the fusion journals? Peer review is the scientific gold standard and it is outside the competence of Wikipedia to judge the status of cold fusion research outside of the publication record. Storms writes:

The issue has left the realm of trivial skepticism and has now entered the process described by the historian and philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn in his seminal work on scientific revolutions. [31] The stakes are now too high for trivial skepticism to operate. All of the world needs the energy and the country that finds the secret first will dominate for a long time.

Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. Any historian, Kuhn amongst them, would agree that you cannot identify the stages in a historical event as they are happening. –Joke 19:19, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Joke writes:

Most disagreement over the validity of the results, that continue to the present day, ignores the fact that all of the demands by skeptics have been met. is, as noted above, about as POV as you can get.

It is the point of view of the researchers. If you assert that the demands of the skeptics have not been met, that would be the point of view of a skeptic. Your view is also "as POV as you can get" because you are saying all the experiments are ignored, and they should be ignored (presumably because they are all wrong). You are saying, for example, the autoradiograph from BARC and hundreds of others like it prove nothing because they are mistakes.

There is simply no reconciling these two views. The only thing we can do is clearly spell out both.

If you look at the references, after 1991 the only peer reviewed papers referenced are [11] and [20], published in 1993 and 1994 in the Journal of Electroanalytic Chemistry, and [27], published in the Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, in 2002.

Those are only examples. There are hundreds of others. See the indexes at LENR-CANR.org.

Or any of the fusion journals?

See: Li, X.Z., et al., A Chinese View on Summary of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science. J. Fusion Energy, 2004. 23(3): p. 217-221. lenr-canr.org/acrobat/LiXZachinesevi.pdf]

This paper confirms that cold fusion produces tritium, and it calls for additional funding for cold fusion research. I gather J. Fusion Energy is a major fusion journal, because it is edited by the plasma fusion lobbying group in Washington, DC, Fusion Power Associates [1]. They send experts to testify before Congress every year so I assume they represent the consensus views of plasma fusion researchers. I am delighted to see they now endorse cold fusion.

--JedRothwell 19:50, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

An article is not meant to be written from the point of view of proponents or skeptics. It is meant to be written from a neutral point of view, so that it represents the point of view of the majority and any significant minority points of view. Anyways, I tool a look at lenr-canr.org, and found that some papers were published in Phys. Lett. A in the 90's, one in Phys. Rev. C, one in J. Fusion Energy since 1990, one in JETP since 1993, three in Europhys. Lett., nothing in J. Appl. Phys. or Appl. Phys. Lett. or Rev. Sci. Inst. or Nucl. Phys. or Nucl. Fusion or Rev. Mod. Phys. nothing in Nature since 1990, nothing in Phys. Plasmas, Physics of Plasma (not that that's surprising) etc... In short, the recent publication record in prestigious, mainstream journals that physicists and (hot) fusion researchers publish in amounts to almost nothing. That is clear evidence to me that the majority scientific view is one of doubt and that this should clearly be presented as the majority point of view in the article. Storms' draft is cheerleading. –Joke 20:33, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Joke writes:

It is meant to be written from a neutral point of view, so that it represents the point of view of the majority and any significant minority points of view.

Well, as I pointed about previously, there has been no poll so we do not know what the majority view might be. The DoE review panel was split evenly, 7 No, 5 Yes, 7 maybe. However, if you are convinced this is the majority view, you should write a section or sections explaining this point of view. Put it in the front, as I said. You can make it as long as Storms, or longer.

This is your POV, and there is not a single cold fusion researcher who would agree with you. Just because you do not agree with them, that does not make your POV magically neutral. You have a bias just as strong as Storms and I do. Storms and I believe that hundreds of replicated, high sigma autoradiographs, calorimeters and mass spectrometer results are correct, and you think they are all mistakes. That is really all there is to it. Both are points of view and both should be represented.

NOTE: The article has been reverted to the previous, mainly skeptical point of view, so all you have to do is delete a few sentences that support cold fusion, delete all references to the experimental literature, and your version will be ready. Then we will slip in the Storms version and write a few paragraphs tying them together, as it were. Why is this such a problem? I will do it if you feel it is too much work, but I think a skeptic who agrees with the present, reverted, version can do a better job eliminating all traces of "pathological science." It is sometimes difficult for me to judge what it is that bothers the skeptics so much, and what exactly their point of view is. They seem to be on a campaign to eliminate the conservation of energy.

--JedRothwell 21:08, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Your characterization of the DoE responses is unusual to say the least. Calling people that find some aspects to be convincing, but do not believe there is valid evidence for fusion to be yeses is outright bias. It does appear the DoE summary was a bit more negative than I would characterize the responses, but the DoE's summary is closer than your even split. Given that the DoE review did consider the most important and what proponents considered the best evidence for cold fusion, and found it wanting, that establishes where the NPOV policy has to emphasize and not. - Taxman ^Talk 22:10, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Taxman wrote:

Your characterization of the DoE responses is unusual to say the least.

Not that unusual. Most of the reviewers themselves agreed with me. That is why they leaked their reviews, and why the DoE tried to cover them up. Anyway, you are welcome to read through the reviews, make your own tally, and come to your own conclusions.

Given that the DoE review did consider the most important and what proponents considered the best evidence for cold fusion, and found it wanting. . .

The review found it wanting; the reviewers themselves were split 7 No, 5 Yes, 7 undecided. That's my tally, but the fellow who wrote the DoE summary tallied it differently. You can decide for yourself who is right. --JedRothwell 22:43, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

OO's outline for rewrite

I find OO's outline for rewrite very good. For example, I like the "proposed mechanism" section. (I would replace the "Other kinds of cold fusion" section with a link to the fusion article).

I'm in favor of a full rewrite. Rewriting the article would make it shorter while more informative: a big plus. Also, the new article should avoid arguing with itself. I believe this is easier to do by starting a new article rather than editing the current one. Pcarbonn 22:02, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Citing sources will help in the rewrite, but a big issue is "which sources should we trust?". I suggest to have a discussion on this, i.e. to define the minimum criteria we set for source citation in cold fusion. Pcarbonn 22:02, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Also, the article should reflect the world view, not the American one. (see Anglo-American focus policy). The skeptical view is very strong in America, but much less so elsewhere (at least that's what I perceive from here in Belgium). This is something to keep in mind when rewriting the article. Maybe we need more international contributors on this page. Pcarbonn 22:02, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Pcarbonn - thank you ;) The draft is on hold for a month or so since I am extremely busy. I hope to pick it up afterwards, depending on what people have done in the meantime. My notion for how to write something based on the draft was basically to expand each bullet point to one or two sentences, without changin its meaning and for the most part keeping the wording as well - a direct translation, in other words ;)

I agree the article shouldn't argue with itself, and yes, that would be easier in a rewrite.

Sources to trust (or at least include, if not "trust"): I would say published work by anyone who is a scientist with some work outside the field of cold fusion. "Published" here does not mean necessarily in a peer-reviewed journal, it could be a tech report or something presented at a conference - most of the really interesting stuff only exists in that form anyway - but not stuff that wikipedia usually regards as self-publishing. The rationale is that if there is a bias in editorial boards against CF, then requiring journal articles would be unfair. On the other hand, if a scientist with a reputation to worry about is willing to go on the record (in print) saying that X, then, regardless of any concerns about technique, experimental errors, data analysis etc (which are all the reasons why per review exists), it is a fair bet they believe that X, which is in this context noteworthy. ObsidianOrder 14:10, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Adopt a summary style ?

Why don't we adopt the Wikipedia:Summary style, and create spin-off articles on Cold fusion controversy and Continuing efforts on cold fusion ? The controversy could be discussed in full (eg. discuss each criteria of pathological science), and other chemically assisted nuclear reactions could be discussed in more details in "continuing work". Pcarbonn 09:44, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Moved Sound waves induce nuclear fusion

I moved Sound waves induce nuclear fusion Physorg.com (January 2006) to the bubble fusion page because that is where it belongs. Not trying to be a jerk or anything, but there is an established page for bubble fusion and there is no reason to post an off-topic article like this one on the cold fusion page. Rock nj 03:15, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Irrelevent news section additions

We seem to be getting a lot of links added in the news section regarding work on bubble fusion and pyroelectric fusion — both of which have their own articles, but are often referred to as cold fusion by the media (perhaps due to the emotional impact of saying things like "X University Team makes Cold Fusion Work". Should we add a comment to the effect that these two phenomena have their own articles at the beginning or end of the news section? -- Pakaran 18:25, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Good idea. --JedRothwell 22:14, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps, since these are identified in the press so often as cold fusion (and, literally, the claims meet the definition of a process that is both cold and fusion) links ought to go in the article's leader, as well. –Joke 22:19, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Ed Storms and others think the Taleyarkhan effect is plasma fusion (hot fusion) that occurs on a microscopic scale. The Taleyarkhan cell walls are cold, but for that matter so are the walls of a tokamak reactor. You might say that with the Taleyarkhan effect the bubble is the containment vessel. We listed some other differences between the two at lenr-canr.org/News.htm:

The Taleyarkhan effect produces a neutron/tritium ratio of ~1.2, which is close to conventional plasma fusion (n/t = 1), whereas cold fusion produces a ratio of roughly 10E-9. There are other important differences:

• Cold fusion produces far more concentrated excess heat, so it seems more likely to become a practical source of useful energy.
• Cold fusion appears to be a more radical departure from textbook expectations about fusion.
• Cold fusion has been replicated hundreds of times; the Taleyarkhan effect has only been replicated once so far, by Xu and Butt (Perdue). This is no reflection on the quality of Taleyarkhan’s work; only a few people have undertaken replications.

We conclude: "Despite these differences, Taleyarkhan’s research is important and it bears watching, so even though it is somewhat off-topic, we may add material about it soon."

--JedRothwell 20:19, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

The other difference, for better or worse, is that the Taleyarkhan effect is accepted science. Cold fusion is not. Whether it *should be* is not something for Wikipedia to decide, but I honestly think the article needs to say more about critical views. The problem is finding critics who make actual arguments, rather than dismissing it out of hand (we can't have every other sentence be "again, it should be emphasized that most physicists disagree with this and believe cold fusion is utter crap"). Just a thought, I'm very concerned that this article is swinging to pro-cold-fusion bias (which I happen to share, but that's beside the point). I also believe that the role of theory is to reflect reality. The fact that there's no theory for CF does not, by itself, mean CF does not exist. Before Einstein there was no theory to explain anomalies in the orbit of mercury; this was not reason to conclude that all observations of Mercury were made up by pseudoscientific cranks. -- Pakaran 19:16, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. Nonetheless, I don't think adding a link would do any harm. –Joke 18:09, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Certainly. A link is called for. And actually, McKubre and some others suspect that Taleyarkhan could be seeing a cold fusion effect after all. They think he should look more closely at the ratio of heat to neutrons, and "he may be surprised by the results." So perhaps the discussion belongs here after all. Maybe we should mention that a few cold fusion researchers feel this way? McKubre calls this a "hunch," but he usually has good reasons for his hunches. --JedRothwell 20:04, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Plasma, liquid or solid: what phase is better?

With all due respect, and interest in your expertise on the subject matter, I must point out several problems with your contribution.

1. Your post seems to be more of a "chat" type discussion rather than something to be considered as part of an encyclopedic reference.

2. Your post is highly technical, somewhat speculative, and your point is not clear. These aspectcs too, are not a good fit of your post for this article as it is written.

3. This is a minor point, and I respect that English is probably not your first language, but the English that you used here is unnacceptable for Wiki. Don't let this be a barrier for you however.

My suggestions:

1. Make use of the TALK page to engage in a dialogue with others to help develop your contribution so it is more appropriate to Wiki.

2. Refine your content on the TALK page and ask for help to improve the English - I'm sure there are numerous people who would be glad to help you out.

STemplar 17:56, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

"thousands" of articles published???

I would like to see a specific source or otherwise some validation for the claim that "thousands of peer-reviewed cold fusion papers have been published." The link in the article does not provide any information for this claim. MrDarwin 15:11, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

That should be "hundreds" or "about a thousand." The LENR-CANR database lists 3,300 papers. Roughly a third are in peer-reviewed journals. See: lenr-canr.org/DetailOnly.htm There are probably several hundred more we have not heard about, especially in Chinese, Japanese and Italian. --JedRothwell 18:45, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Powerpedia

I'm a bit concerned about the link to PowerPedia, which seems to have content regarding, for example, companies claiming to have systems which violate the laws of thermodynamics (permanent magnet motors, etc). For better or worse, it seems very likely that such systems are scams. Should we put a disclaimer on the link that material at that wiki (and particularly non-CF material) should be taken with a large pile of salt? -- Pakaran 19:23, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

All of those things are very similar- the same people claiming cold electrolytic fusion works are claiming methods to obtain energy from ether, perpetual motion, etcetera work. It is unfortunate that this article doesn't reflect this, but it all should be taken with large piles of salt, no need to qualify it with particularly non-CF. --Noren 20:48, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

"the same people claiming cold electrolytic fusion works are claiming methods to obtain energy from ether..." - and your source for this is? (e.g. please quote any such statement by Fleischmann, Bockris, Oriani, Miley, McCubre, Szpak, Iwamura, Mizuno, Mallove, Storms, ... or in fact any other prominent CF researcher). If you cannot back up your statement, please kindly retract it. ObsidianOrder 01:03, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Certainly. [Here's] a letter written by Eugene Mallove proclaiming immenent 'breakthroughs' in the fields of 1. Cold Fusion, 2. "Vacuum energy, Zero Point Energy or "ZPE" for short, aether energy, or space energy." and 3. "Environmental energy, i.e. energy from sensible thermal energy (in particular, energy of molecular motion), through significant extensions to the Second Law of Thermodynamics." --Noren 07:28, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Heh, touche. However Mallove can only very loosely be described as a researcher - he was fairly well known, but more on the popular-science side of things. Also, to nitpick, he didn't actually say you can do those right now as you imply. What anyone thinks may be discovered in the future is necessarily extremely speculative. ObsidianOrder 14:54, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

It is inconsistent for you to argue the legitimacy of Mallove as a CF researcher immediately after you listed 10 "prominent CF researcher"s including his name. If your position is so poorly thought out yet so firmly held that you must retract your own description of people on your own list, I wonder if any argument or evidence would suffice to sway your position or if any conflicting fact would be dismissed similarly. Also, your nitpick is factually incorrect. In the letter under 2. Mallove claimed of a ZPE experiment "In its several embodiments, it already produces kilowatt-level electrical, thermal, and mechanical output power." To use your phrasing, if you cannot back up your statement, please kindly retract it. --Noren 00:21, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

As ObsidianOrder said, Touche. You have listed one person, and you might be able to find a few others. For that matter, if you look closely at plasma fusion researchers, or people working on wind power, or Members of Congress, you might find a few. You can also find some plasma fusion researchers who believe in magic, faith healing and creationism. (I have met one or two like that.) However, that would not justify the statement: "the same people claiming plasma fusion works are claiming that creationism works." That would be an unfair generalization. You should say: "some of the same people" or "at least one or two of the same people" That does not have much impact, does it? --JedRothwell 15:51, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Atomic temperatures

Last thing I remember is that temperature is related to the average energy of a large number of particles -- thus talking about the "atomic temperature" doesn't make sense -- it does make sense to talk about atomic energies, and one can even use K, but it's still energy. I've thuse removed references to "atomic" temperature from the first paragraph.

Keithdunwoody 18:46, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

A single atom can indeed have an equivalent temperature, which is simply the would-be temperature of a bunch of identical atoms with the same kinetic energy. Assuming classical Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics, a single atom with velocity v has a temperature T = (8*m*v^2)/(pi*k). In some of the "macroscopically" cold fusion (e.g. pyroelectric) there are certainly small numbers of atoms with an very high equivalent temperature. However, there is pretty much no basis for the claim that there must be atoms at near-thermonuclear-fusion temperatures in CF (e.g. compare with muon-catalyzed fusion), so that's a different reason to remove those references. ObsidianOrder 00:54, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Blaming F&P for the Press Conference

It seems as though many people would like to put the entirety, or even a majority of the blame on F&P for holding the press conference. This seems to be more of a biased viewpoint than a factual one.

Look carefully at Gary Taubes' book, pages 96 and 97:

"Initially it was [UofU President Chase]Peterson who suggested the public announcement, but the three lawyers apparently embraced its wisdom [sic]. ... 'The three lawyers were arguing that there is no second place in this kind of business."

[Attorney Peter]Dehlinger's reccolection of the meeting also had Fleischmann "almost in tears" as the consensus finally emerged that they would call a press conference."

STemplar 16:53, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

I cannot imagine Martin Fleischmann crying about something like this! He is a tough and cynical guy. He survived horrible experiences in WWII. However, he has told me many times that he tried to prevent the press conference, and he wanted to keep the research secret for a few more years. Frankly, I am glad it was forced out into the open. (I have told him this, and I assure you he does not appreciate my sentiments!)

Fleischmann knew full well what the press conference would bring. He has studied history. He knew that he and Pons would be booted out of the establishment. Perhaps he did not anticipate the death threats and so on, or that Pons would be driven into exile, but he knew his career would end abruptly, and even being a Fellow of the Royal Society would be no protection. See the letter from him quoted in Beaudette's book, page 147:

After the press conference, [Arrhenius's granddaughter] Dr. Caldwell came up to us and said, "Well, when my grandfather proposed electrolytic disassociation he was dismissed from the University. At least that won't happen to you." I said to her, "But you are entirely mistaken. We shall be dismissed as well."

I cannot imagine why anyone thinks Fleischmann would welcome a press conference, and deliberately bring down a ton of bricks on his head!

Given what happened to most cold fusion researchers, it is astounding that anyone has the guts to publish positive results. It goes to show that some people do have academic integrity, and they are willing to sacrifice their careers and their personal lives in pursuit of the truth. I would say it renews one's faith in humanity, except for those hordes of opposition scientists who have destroyed people's careers and suppressed the truth to satisfy their own venal ambitions. --JedRothwell 19:03, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Maybe add Jones and Rafelski to muon article

The introduction to this article is linked to muon-catalyzed fusion. This article began by saying that Jones and Rafelski "initiated" muon-catalyzed fusion, but as you see from the link, they did not. Sakharov, Frank and Alvarez initiated it. (See the article here and Mallove, p. 108). So I removed Jones and Rafelski from the first paragraph. They did contribute to muon research, however. Perhaps someone should patch up the muon-catalyzed fusion article to include them. I am not familiar with their work, so I cannot do this. --JedRothwell 15:34, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

"Cold fusion controversy" article expanded

Since this article has grown large and unwieldy, it has been agreed [1] that a new article should be established to address a subset of issues relating to cold fusion. See:

http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Cold_fusion_controversy

This is the only way to keep this article within 30 to 50 kB which is approved size. http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Wikipedia:Article_size

Since the skeptics do not seem inclinded to express their own views in writing, and since I know their arguments better than they themselves do, I went ahead and added several of their main arguments. I may have left out a few, so skeptics should check. --JedRothwell 20:15, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

1. This passive voice expression means that that the invisible yet vast majority of scientists agree, so don't argue.

Allegations of Suppression

I'm creating this heading to try and split this particular discussion from other topics. Please present the allegation and citations here. Jefffire 13:19, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks to Pcarbonn for his reword. This section is looking a world of difference now. We may manage NPOV eventually :) Jefffire 13:32, 22 April 2006 (UTC)