User talk:Kirk shanahan/Archives/2009/March

Constant calibration shift

Hi. I've started to read a little of the discussion about CCS at Talk:Cold fusion. I don't know why one editor says your theory is impossible to explain in an easily understandable manner: I haven't read any details about it yet (though I'm curious) but think that the name, "constant calibration shift", is self-explanatory. Also, I think the burden of proof is on the CF-ers to show that this is not happening.

I think you mentioned a Wikipedia page which had been deleted, which had information that would help explain things. If you can find the name of the page (or give some clues; there should be links to it from previous versions of the Cold fusion page) we can request to have it userfied (undeleted and place in a user's subspace) as was done for User:Abd/Calorimetry in cold fusion experiments. It might be helpful to userfy all the deleted cold fusion subpages. The purpose of userfication is to improve the article or to get material to put into other articles, i.e. generally to work on improving the encyclopedia; userspace is not part of the encyclopedia. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 12:10, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

The name is 'calibration constant shift', not 'constant calibration shift'. The calibration constant is the experimentally determined number in a calibration equation. The shift is what is observed by the CF researcher Ed Storms in 'initial' and 'final' calibrations, and in 'electrolytic' and 'joule heater' calibrations. I reanalyzed his data to show that his observed shift could explain his apparent excess energy peaks. The concept of the shift impacting the signal is extensible to any calibrated method in any field. Quickly, at t=0 you determine K = 4, so you need to multiply your observable O by 4 to get the correct answer. Then at time t1, K shifts to 5, but you don't know this because you haven't recalibrated. You run your experiment, multiply your O by 4, and get the wrong answer, because you should have multiplied it by 5. That's it, hard isn't it. Note that in the real world, recalibration is routine. People do that because they need to. How do they know they need to? They get inconsistent answers if they don't. Apparent excess energy peaks are those inconsistencies, traceable back to a calibration constant shift.

However, the problem with the Wiki article and the CF field is not just in the calorimetry. I will be overly bold and say in ALL cases, a conventional explanation for the reported result (which is them used to claim cold fusion has occurred) is available and has not been excluded. In Science when you have more than one available explanation, it is illegitimate to claim one is the only correct one. You need data to show that. No such data is available from the CFers. Ergo, no one should be claiming 'CF' is nuclear. They should be saying that more research is needed, research specifically designed to eliminate one or the other explanation. The Wiki article needs to have this spelled out fot the reader, but people don't seem to understand what having the field decalred 'pariah' did to 'RS'. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:13, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry I got the words in the wrong order, but your explanation matches what I thought (except that I was imagining adding a calibration constant to something, not multiplying). Now I'm curious as to exactly what is being calibrated and how, etc. I don't find any page named "Calibration constant shift" in the deletion log. Do you remember the name of the page you mean when you said "I also note in passing that the secondary page PCarbonn set up to isolate the impact of my work has now diasppeared as I predicted" at Talk:Cold fusion, or approximately when that page might have existed? Thanks. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 17:43, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

It is the one that Abd tried to resurrect. Initially the parts on the Shkedi work were in the main article. Then I added an explanation of my work, and PCarbonn decided it suddenly was 'too big' and he clipped it all out and put it into the subpage. I protested as I feel it is unlikely that the average reader would read it, so the average reader would read the Cold Fusion page and get the impression that there was no strong conventional alternative to interpreting apparent excess heat data as a nuclear reaction. The reason P didn't mind the Shkedi work being in was that the CFers had done some studies to delineate it well, and showed it most likely was not important (which I agreed with in print in my 2002 paper). So what P had written into the article was more 'already answered' objections, instead of outstanding unresolved ones, giving the reader the impression that the CFers were slogging through their critics comments and resolving them ("as we all knew they would") as opposed to ignoring alternative explanations as they are actually doing. Kirk shanahan (talk) 19:57, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

P.S. I predicted the deletion because when I tried to edit the article similarly in 2006, the same thing happened. A subpage was set up (cold fusion controversy) that disappeared as soon as I stopped watching the page. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:00, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

What is being calibrated is the calorimeter. There are multiple types, isoperibolic (original F&P, Arata 2008 demo, usually open cells where the D2 and O2 are allowed to escape to the atmosphere); closed cells where the gas is reconverted to water by an internal catalyst that usually use an integrating calorimetry approach like mass flow or Seebeck. Most use a simple linear type calibration equation, with the exception of the original F&P design that used a more complicated form taking radiative losses into account. The linear form is Pout = m * "X" + b, where "X" depends on the type. The b is an additive constant like you were thinking, but that just causes baseline shifts (observed in real data), while the m factor causes the spurious signals that people call excess heat. You have to calibrate calorimeters because when you put a known Pin through it, and use the equations without the constants (i.e. absolute measurement) you don't get the full Pout value due to losses. The calibration equation 'adjusts' the real world data for this problem (this is standard procedure, absolute measurements are notoriously difficult, 99.99+% of measurements are done with calibration equations). Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:14, 18 March 2009 (UTC)