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By the way, if anyone else is irritated by the fact that we have to pussyfoot around the blacklist, and that we have papers referenced in the article for which we can't provide a link where the papers can be freely read, we can request whitelisting of some specific pages, or of the whole sites. (lenr-canr.org is globally blacklisted, newenergytimes.com is locally blacklisted, so whole-site with NET would just be delisting.) I've been somewhat successful at this (with other blacklisted sites, and, with Enric Naval, one lenr-canr.org page). The politics at meta, right now, make it unlikely that we could succeed in globally delisting the whole site globally, but there was, in fact, no sound reason for the blacklisting in the first place; the blacklist is designed to control linkspam, and there wasn't linkspamming, the links alleged as linkspam for lenr-canr.org were like many here in Talk: not links, so blacklisting didn't prevent them. No linkspamming at all was alleged for newenergytimes.com. There is also alleged copyright violation at lenr-canr.org, but consensus at Martin Fleischmann seems to be that this is a non-issue, and no specific violation has reasonably been alleged. That lenr-canr.org is allegedly fringe should be moot; linking to a specific page that is a permitted copy of a paper, as a convenience link, does not dump the reader into a polemic for cold fusion. In any case, there is about zero chance of getting lenr-canr.org delisted globally if we don't have specific pages whitelisted here on en.wikipedia, or a whitelisting of the whole site here, the argument will be made, and it will be effective, that it isn't needed, don't bother them. -- Abd ( talk) 15:15, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
(dedent) Since that discussion isn't formally closed as to conclusion, and since it can be reopened even as to subquestions that have been closed, anyone is welcome to join, but I would ask, please, read the preceding discussion first and consider the specific points made, and try to delink the issues, linking of issues is often what keeps us from finding consensus. Further, if there is agreement already expressed there, and you differ, how important is it, because reopening a decided question will take up more time. Decisions in a local RfC-type discussion like that aren't binding, they don't create any kind of precedent that will prevent better decisions from being made in the future. Or at least they shouldn't! However, and this was indeed the intention, they may establish that whatever is agreed there is at least a reasonable decision, to start, not just the unsupported opinion of a deranged tl;dr editor like me.
"We must not X because A and B and C and D and E." "B isn't true." "Maybe, but there are still A and C and D and E." "But D isn't true either!" "It's true!" "(diff showing D is preposterous)". "Maybe, but there are still A and B and C and E. Would you please stop beating a dead horse?"
... and this can go on for a long time. Instead, we can look at A. Is A true? If not, why not? If so, what's the evidence? Why do you believe this? And we can continue doing this, getting more and more specific. In such a process, it becomes really obvious if someone is reasoning from conclusions, and most people, realizing that this just isn't right and that the world will not end if they agree on a narrow point with someone "on the other side," will back down, and agree on the specific point or suggest some acceptable compromise (or shut up and go away). It can become a habit, and points of agreement build. And I've seen this kind of process result in total agreement when previously the sides were digging their heels in.
"But A and B are connected!" Fine. We still should try to find agreement on them separately, then, once we understand and agree on each subissue, we can consider possible connections before addressing a higher-level question.
Just in case someone thinks otherwise, this process often will not lead to X. It will lead to something else that enjoys higher consensus. I.e., perhaps argument A came to be considered valid, and action Y satisfied the concern, as well as the concerns of those proposing X. But when we have a big pile of issues, fringe linkspam copyvio uncivil alters documents kook SPA nonsense conflict of interest block evasion banned unnecessary anyway, WTF do we begin?
We find consensus by pursuing, at least initially, one little teeny-tiny question at a time.
As to the page and section on linking, I don't see the term "reasonably certain" there, and we are not obligated by policy or copyright law to be "reasonably certain" that there is no violation; indeed, read the guideline, it's the opposite: we should not link if we "know that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of the creator's copyright," and the relevant case law cited has to do with "Knowingly and intentionally directing others to a site that violates copyright." When I noticed the blacklisting (I'm here because of that, not the reverse, I did not arrive at this article with an agenda), I asked a knowledgeable administrator, DGG, about the copyright issue. I think his opinions are cited there, and he showed up to confirm it (as he did previously on the blacklist pages). And that is fully consistent with policy and guidelines, and I haven't the foggiest what LeadSongDog was trying to point to. -- Abd ( talk) 18:20, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
(unindent) Eh? What would be standard is that an editor does it, and reports the result. Testimony is presumed true unless controverted. What do you need OTRS for? If the Foundation wants to get involved in copyright verification, then such confirmation would be done by the foundation and by trusted volunteers, so, perhaps, OTRS could do it, but consider the volume of such requests that might be needed, if the tight standards being proposed were followed more generally. I'd advise against it. There is no legal risk to the project at the "absence of intention to link to copyvio" level, error in this doesn't establish legal risk, unless error persists after notice. I.e., a copyright holder says, "stop linking to that site!" Much more likely, with links that would be likely to be used here, the page goes dead, as the site pulls it from a copyright infringement notice, or the site goes dead when it ignores that. We really don't need to worry about it with sites like lenr-canr.org or newenergytimes.com; these are sites with known and responsible owners with much to lose if they infringe copyright, and all signs are that they are careful about this. -- Abd ( talk) 20:02, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
Here is the situation. In short, it's about wikipolitics and minimal disruption.
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see http://lenr-canr.org/LibFrame1.html
Up to G, more tomorrow, I assume. -- Abd ( talk) 03:00, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
The latest experiments were done in May 2007 by Yoshiaka Arata and Yue-Chang Zang. It is noted that the conducted the experiment somewhat else (they used palladiumpowder in the electrode that was made by injecting the powder with deuteriumgas under high pressure). It was reported that 70% more heat was generated than the electricty put into the experiment.
According to anata, pycnodeuterium is formed in the experiment and they believe the scientific formula that would explain the reaction would be possible if a fonon was included (which they believe was present)
the experiment was documented in Journal of the high temperature society —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.246.135.164 ( talk) 14:55, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
Just noting that this reference was removed from the article, in case editors may find it useful either in developing this page or related pages:
(unindent) Something should be clear. The mention of quantum electrodynamical considerations as the basis for the research was in the article when the link was removed without discussion. What I've done is only to restore, roughly, what was there, and a link that was used. I have now addressed the issue of anachronism, but, please consider this: any reference about what they were doing when they discovered the effect is going to be retrospective. It wasn't published, at all, prior to 1989, it was, after all, secret, and this is describing what they had been doing for years at that time. This is an important piece of information about the history. It's now attributed, with a date. The removal of the paper from the bibliography has not been justified by Noren, he simply did it. That's reversion without discussion, based only on a technical claim that somehow I was wrong to put it back in, without giving any reason but process, I.e., supposedly I should have discussed it. But I did discuss it. Too much, some would say! I restored what was there before Noren's edits, addressing the objection about "anachronism." If it can be improved, please improve it. I think there may be other earlier sources on this, if people are offended by the delay, Fleischmann has written about this in more than one paper, but this was the most complete discussion of it I've seen. -- Abd ( talk) 17:50, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
(edit conflict) More of the history. This is the edit that removed the mention of quantum electrodynamics. There had been a discussion in Talk. Shanahan suggested language which is fairly close to what I've put in. Keller wrote, Dr. Shanahan is right that Fleischmann and Pons statement as to motivation made in 1989 is more reliable that the one Fleischmann gave 14 years later, particularly as their original hypothesis was proven wrong in the intervening period. I have made changes accordingly and attempted to improve the experimental description while I was at it. ~Paul V. Keller 02:59, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
What the article now has may be a combination of both reports. I haven't seen Legget. I'm a bit puzzled by "their original hypothesis was proven wrong in the intervening period." What hypothesis? The hypothesis mentioned in the present text hasn't been proven wrong. It's still controversial, to my knowledge. The only measure we have of any reliability as to current scientific consensus is the 2004 DOE report, which asserts no such "proof," it merely reports that low-energy nuclear reaction of the kind under consideration had not been "conclusively demonstrated." One reviewer thought it had. The general hypothesis reported here is of the nature of a hunch, that something might be different in the lattice than in a plasma. That, actually, isn't controversial, what remains controversial is the hypothesis that it is different enough to allow fusion. -- Abd ( talk) 18:17, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
I'm looking for other references on this topic of Fleischmann and what he was looking for when he found what he believed was cold fusion. http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanbackground.pdf
In this paper presented at ICCF12, 2003, Fleischmann is even more specific. In the 1960s we started a series of research projects aimed at answering the Question, "Can we find illustrations in Chemistry (especially in Electrochemistry) of the need to invoke the Q.E.D. paradigm to explain the results obtained?" His continued discussion shows that the work he was doing was fundamental research, it was not aimed at finding cold fusion. It was aimed at discovering if Q.E.D., or field dynamics was needed to explain results in chemistry. Now, from my non-expert position, it would be surprising if it were not necessary to explain, at least, some minor effects, shifts in predicted values, etc. The question, really, is how significant the effects of the condensed matter state are, not whether there are any effects. (As an example, the Mossbauer effect exemplifies a change in nuclear behavior due to the nucleus being embedded in a crystal. To be sure, this involves lower energies and not nuclear transformations other than excitation/de-excitation). That this is the work Fleischmann was doing is plausible, and in the absence of evidence to the contrary, should be accepted as his description without being impeached by claims of "spin" or distortion. Because of the lapse of time, certainly, attribution is appropriate; but this statement, if made in the 1989 article, would simply have added to the controversy without improving the basic experimental science. In the 1989 paper, his overall research project wasn't relevant and he deliberately avoided publicising it. There may be earlier work consistent with this claim. My the way, Shanahan might be gratified to notice that in this paper Fleischmann notes the problems involved in calibration of calorimeters when there is unequal distribution of heat generation, thus Fleischmann refers to the need for controls as distinct from simply measuring alleged anomalous heat. -- Abd ( talk) 22:15, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
[3] 1998. Fleischmann paper on a similar theme: the breakdown of quantum mechanics in describing a condensed matter system. -- Abd ( talk) 22:29, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
[4] book slightly earlier than the 2002 paper which describes the goal of their research. It describes the "hidden agenda" very explicitly. The research was thus into fundamental physics, actually. They were not looking for "free energy." I'm finding this fascinating. -- Abd ( talk) 22:41, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
In 2000, a Fleischmann article was published in Accountability in Research. Here is a copy. [5]. This paper explores in detail the theoretical underpinnings of the work, specifically the inadequacy of classical quantum mechanics in describing the condenses matter state. It's quite clear that this is a deep and long-term interest of his. -- Abd ( talk) 22:41, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
Cold fusion, first announced 20 years ago on Monday, was claimed to be a boundless source of clean energy by Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons.
Fleischmann and Pons announced a set of experimental results, on a topic that many considered could possibly imply a revolution in energy generation. However, Fleischmann himself was working on basic theoretical issues having to do with the relationship between quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics, and research into the possibility of deuterium fusion in a palladium lattice was really just an example that took over. What F and P actually claimed was generation of anomalous heat and detection of neutrons. If I've got it right, the hype was generated by the media. I just noticed that we don't seem to have any citation of the original articles on the announcement, an oversight, I'm sure.
Look at [7], the report May 3, 1989, about the famous disparagement of Fleischmann's work at the American Physical Society meeting. Fleischmann and Pons are described as having claimed "nuclear fusion in a jar of water at room temperature." That was, itself, misleading. "Jar of water?" No, in a palladium lattice loaded with deuterium gas at very high effective pressure, roughly as high as the deuterium would be if it were a solid (which doesn't happen except at very high pressures or very low temperatures). But presenting it as a "jar of water" makes it sound kooky, and this was quite typical as the rejection mounted. This article does mention "Hopes that a new kind of nuclear fusion might give the world an unlimited source of cheap energy." However, that's not attributed to anyone.
Attempts to replicate their experiments failed, but a number of researchers insist that cold fusion is possible.
An example of how to mislead with truth: just tell part of it, implying what is false. Sure, "attempts failed." Many attempts failed, some reported, some not, I'm sure. However, when one is dealing with an effect that, it ought to have been recognized from the beginning, must be rare and unusual, requiring special conditions, or else it would have been discovered before, it might not be just a matter of that jar of water. It might not even be a matter of doing electrolysis using a palladium cathode in heavy water. And, indeed, it wasn't. Elsewhere on this page I point to the Bayesian analysis of a set of failed and successful attempts to replicate the anomalous heat effect, presented in 2008 at ICCF14. The failed experiments did not follow Fleischmann's protocol, which hadn't been published yet, and, even later, attempts to reproduce often varied the experimental conditions in ways that turn out to have a predictable effect: no heat. The paper is worth reading. I've seen a list of successful reproductions of the anomalous heat effect, published in peer-reviewed journals. 153 papers. Many more presented at conferences. So, yes, attempts failed, but, once it was understood how to do it, most efforts succeeded, the replication rate has become high.
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/CravensDtheenablin.pdf
Look at Table 2 on p. 4. Bayesian criteria were developed to test protocol compliance. I won't deal with the details of this kind of analysis, but it's cogent (and there is also a potential problem, though it looks to me like it doesn't apply here).
And, yes, a number of researchers insist that it's possible. Is it just "a number of researchers," and are they basing that on theory, after all, according to the implication of the first phrase, they haven't actually replicated the experiment? So what the article presents is a picture of isolated theorists hanging on to a failed experiment that nobody could reproduce. Way to go, BBC.
But then they do a little better:
The American Chemical Society has organised sessions surrounding the research at its meetings before, suggesting that the field would otherwise have no suitable forum for debate. In a bid to avoid the negative connotations of a largely discredited approach, research in the field now appears under the umbrella of "low-energy nuclear reactions", or LENR. Gopal Coimbatore, ACS program chair for an LENR session at the 2007 national meeting, said that "with the world facing an energy crisis, it is worth exploring all possibilities". Who suggested? Who taught the reporter how to write? Lost performative, a debate trick, in fact. It's a way to make a suggestion while not taking responsibility for it.
Question: Does Gopal Coimbatore think that cold fusion is a possibility? The statement implies it.
As to "avoid," this is about motivation. Okay, who is motivated? The fact is that there is no settled explanation of the excess heat. Maybe it isn't fusion, maybe it's something else, but this is what we know from the 2004 DOE review: The reviewers were evenly split on the question of excess heat, half of them finding evidence for it "compelling." Okay, 18 reviewers, so, roughly, 9 found evidence for excess heat compelling, 9 were not convinced. Then they state that "Two-thirds of the reviewers commenting on Charge Element 1 did not feel the evidence was conclusive for low energy nuclear reactions, one found the evidence convincing, and the remainder indicated they were somewhat convinced." I really should do a summary of the actual reviews, which are available on newenergytimes.com, but if we have six reviewers at least "somewhat convinced" that LENR is real, and if we assume that the more dedicated skeptics also don't accept the excess heat, we'd have two-thirds of those who accept excess heat being somewhat convinced, at least, that the origin is nuclear.
And they seem to have universally agreed that further research was called for, and claims here that this was just bureaucratic boilerplate are not supported by looking at the actual reviews. It was an active recommendation by the reviewers.
There were early critiques of the Pons-Fleischmann experiment, and it's accepted, I think, that they were wrong about the neutrons (though neutrons are reported using other techniques in later experiments; I think at lower levels). However, the critiques that were most broadly accepted and considered convincing about experimental failure, turned out to be flawed themselves, and the Fleischmann report of excess heat hasn't been, according to a number of neutral sources, successfully impeached. But those who, for understandable theoretical reasons, strongly against the very idea of LENR, are quite likely to look at excess heat with a jaundiced eye. I really should do that review of the reviewer reports. There is nothing wrong with skepticism, and nothing wrong with pointing out possible sources of experimental error. But there is something wrong with widespread assumptions that, because someone has pointed out a possible error, an experiment has therefore been impeached. Some of the early replications, by the way, were also in error.
Frank Close, a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Oxford, says that the far greater problem with cold fusion claims is that results from any given study have never been independently verified - a problem that plagued that first announcement.
Again, it's highly misleading. This is appeal to authority, and what's the authority? A professor of theoretical physics, a field which Fleischmann was directly challenging with his research program, I imagine the reporter called him up, having no clue about the issues. Was it about turf, chemistry vs. physics? No, it was actually about physics: quantum mechanics, an approximation, vs. the more accurate model, quantum electrodynamics. QM is much simpler to apply; Fleischmann theorized that in condensed matter, it is sometimes necessary to use the more sophisticated -- and mathematically difficult -- quantum electrodynamics. He was looking for examples of situations where QM would be inadequate to explain what is observed by experiment. He didn't expect, he reported later, to find fusion, he thought it was a long shot. Specifically, he thought that fusion would occur, but the reaction rate would be too low to detect. Still, any finding of fusion would be of high interest. He was not trying to fix the energy crisis. He would have been quite happy with a barely detectable rate, not usable for energy generation, like the cold muon-catalyzed fusion that is known to work. He got more than he expected.
There are lots of unverified studies, which is partly a consequence of the funding problem and the general rejection problem. However, there are also verifications. For example, deuterium loading into palladium black has been verified to generate the effects. The SPAWAR codeposition work has been verified. How much of this verification has been published in peer-reviewed journals? Some of it. In a sense, any work with condensed matter showing low-energy nuclear reactions is a kind of verification, though, obviously, specific experiment verifications are quite desirable. The BBC did a terrible job with this article, basically the reporter should have known that the field was controversial, and taken care to check out the nature of the controversy, avoiding reporting only one side of it. We can do better, can't we? Using reliable sources and reviews, with balance.
Close's dismissive comments were more extensively reported. Why Close? Okay, pick a random "theoretical physicist." Remember, there is no accepted theory to explain cold fusion. What's this random physicist going to think? Likely, he knows little or nothing about the field beyond what was widely reported in 1989, and his entire training for his entire career has implied that it's impossible, though theory doesn't actually show cold fusion as being impossible -- and we know of an example of it that is accepted. The people to ask would be scientists who have actually studied the field, and there are plenty of them. In China, papers on cold fusion are being published in peer-reviewed journals by experts on hot fusion. The barriers apparently aren't as strong there.
It's a good example of pathological science, all right, it's actually a very, very old problem, where theory trumps experiment. It's quite a story to be told, we have reliable sources on it, and we should be telling it, now that there is some hope that the "fringe wars" are over. Let's get to work! -- Abd ( talk) 21:22, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
Count Iblis, did you read the paper cited in the section above, Talk:Cold_fusion#Cold_fusion_theory.2C_possible_electron-catalyzed_fusion? Have you read Fleischmann's papers on what he was looking for? Hint: it was not cold fusion, as such, that was just a possible example. He was, he's reported numerous times, pursuing the difference between quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics or quantum field theory. Quantum mechanics has indeed proved itself as an approximation. If you have the scientific muscle to examine the theory paper critically, by all means, do so. Now, as to the claim of "cannot get there," this certainly is commonly said, and it is obviously false. You can get there with muons. What other situations are possible? How would you know?
And one more point. The first and most basic issue with cold fusion is whether or not reports of excess heat are correct. Is there excess heat? Then we can look at reports of radiation, say, or other nuclear ash. Then we can look at reports that correlate the two. Is it fusion? How would we know? Maybe it's something else, and that's the point that Krivit is making as described by V in the section above.
This article focuses on "cold fusion." Low-temperature nuclear reactions, of which fusion is a theoretical example, are a hypothesis proposed to explain the Fleischmann-Pons effect. That's a redirect to this article (I created it). However, what's the "Fleischmann-Pons effect." What is the scientific consensus regarding it?
There are many more scientists who think the effect is real than think that it is caused by fusion.
There is a review paper that was presented at ICCF-14 (2008), http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/CravensDtheenablin.pdf
Abstract:
From the paper:
Low-temperature nuclear fusion of deuterium in palladium [10] in the mainstream science journal, Nature. In November 1989, D.E. Williams’ group at Harwell Laboratory published a negative paper Upper bounds on cold fusion in electrolytic cells [15] in Nature. Mainstream science writers and patent agents have referred to these papers for years when seeking to deny scientific legitimacy or patent protection for CMNS researchers. The failed papers have made a lasting impression since Nature refuses to publish more recent experimental results. The editors consider the matter settled: the Fleischmann-Pons Effect is not real.
experimental factors were known from the Kainthla and Fleischmann-Pons papers. The lead investigators chose to follow their own protocol resulting in two failed experiments and a negative image for CMNS.
The 2004 DOE review reports this:
convincing evidence that excess power is produced when integrated over the life of an experiment. The reviewers were split approximately evenly on this topic. Those reviewers who accepted the production of excess power typically suggest that the effect seen often, and under some understood conditions, is compelling. The reviewers who did not find the production of excess power convincing cite a number of issues including: excess power in the short term is not the same as net energy production over the entire of time of an experiment; all possible chemical and solid state causes of excess heat have not been investigated and eliminated as an explanation; and production of power over a period of time is a few percent of the external power applied and hence calibration and systematic effects could account for the purported net effect. 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.
This field does not resemble any other "fringe science" I'm aware of. The literature is massive. I've seen a bibliography showing publications in peer-reviewed journals, showing positive excess heat results (i.e, this total excludes negative reports such as the Nature publications that closed that door), with 50 different journals, 153 papers, 348 authors and co-authors, from 62 institutions. The document claims that "there are actually many more institutions involved in cold fusion than this. These numbers are more of an indication of how much peer-reviewed journal editors resist publishing than a comprehensive tally." By comparison, and to explain why the compiler of the bibliography considers that "resistance" may be involved, the lenr-canr.org bibliography shows about 3000 technical papers; but most of them are, I think, conference proceedings and other alternate publications, some of which seem high quality, and some not. -- Abd ( talk) 03:09, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
Polywater was (quickly) fringe science. Reproductions were difficult but did take place. Sure, the analogy is a good one, to a point. Beyond that point it fails. Later work with cold fusion improved the reproducibility, and more accurate measurements, more precise conditions, all improved reproducibility and clarity of results.
There is an interesting powerpoint presentation on this at Bad Science, which ends up using Polywater and Cold fusion as poster boys. Page 16 of the presentation shows a chart of publications per year on the topic. Polywater did not get serious notice until 1966-68. It hit Science in 1969. Research publication peaked and fell off, and by 1974, there was very little publication. It is hard to interpret the chart. A similarity is mass media involvement. Our article on Polywater is pretty bad, with little technical detail and without the key references. There was a cogent negative paper by Rousseau, published a year and a half later in Science, which explained the experimental results with reasonable power. Because there remained some possibility of error in the negative results, debate did not immediately cease; our article claims, however, that when glassware was more thoroughly cleaned, the polywater results disappeared. Again, the source of the "effect" was identified with reasonable certainty.
The presentation, however, in examining Cold fusion, starts with the assumption that there are only two pathways to fusion. There are three known and accepted for hot fusion, plus muon-catalyzed fusion which takes place at low temperatures. Slide 31 asserts that neutrons and protons are released in cold fusion. There is some question over neutrons, but protons aren't reported, and neutrons are reported at levels so low that clearly, if what is happening is fusion, it isn't a pathway that normally generates fast neutrons. The author of the presentation has not taken the time to review the actual papers and state of the science, but is relying, apparently, on media presentation (the very thing decried) and superficial review, at best.
Slide 32 is "The Signs of Fusion." It shows Excess Heat, Neutrons, Tritium, Helium-3, and Protons. These are, of course, the characteristics of the predominant reaction pathways in hot fusion. However, there is another pathway that is known and accepted, but in hot fusion, it only occurs in small abundance: Deuterium fusion to Helium-4, with an emitted gamma ray. Cold fusion isn't hot fusion, that ought to be obvious. It might involve the third pathway, usually, but then there is the gamma ray, which is a pure release of energy; it's penetrating radiation. However, if the energy could be, as one example, coupled through some Q.E.D. effect to the crystal, that energy release would become, simply, heat. Good thing, too, or else we'd have been seeing the dead graduate student effect....
The presentation reports the media hysteria, and massive attempts at confirmation based on limited information. Then, however, it reports the Confirmations. Listed there is the Georgia Tech finding of neutrons. That information was released by press conference and retracted several days later as being due to limited information. Some later cold fusion work, with much more cautious work and with more sensitive detectors, have found neutrons, but the Georgia Tech work didn't have excess heat, if I'm correct, and therefore neutrons would not have been expected. Now, why is a simple experimental error included in this presentation? It's pretty obvious: the reviewer is convinced that it was bogus science, and including an experimental error, of a kind that would not ordinarily have attracted any attention, helps make that point. The slide gives six confirmations, the sixth is "Bob's Discount House of Knowledge."
The presentation then reviews the Compton peak problem with Fleischmann's original gamma radiation report (that would have indicated neutrons), and that is an aspect of Fleischmann's work that was never confirmed, I'm not sure how Fleischmann responded, and I'm not aware of other reports of that radiation, so I assume this criticism is cogent.
They note some retractions, and then show the Harwell work, referring to it as "the most extensive set of cold fusion tests in the world." Harwell published in November, 1989. They may indeed have been the most extensive individual set of tests at that time. However, as the analysis mentioned above ( http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/CravensDtheenablin.pdf ) shows, and while they may have been "working with advice from Fleischmann," they did not follow the protocol (and to be fair, some aspects of the protocol, necessary conditions for the effect to be seen, may not have been known at that time, the protocol that works only gradually came to be known through many failures and successes). The basic protocol was known, for anyone following work in the field, by the mid-1990s. The Chinese paper mentioned above shows an analysis of something on the order of 10,000 experimental runs, which would be, I'm sure, far more extensive than the Harwell work, and it shows increase in positive results in recent years.
Other negative results are shown, such as failure to detect radiation expected from classical fusion and now known not to be present with the Fleischman-Pons effect, or at least not at levels that would be easily detectable. (There are some cogent and fairly recent claims of neutron detection using methods that are effectively more sensitive, but that's another story.)
Then one of the characteristics of Bad Science is described: researchers working in isolation. That is not the case with cold fusion, witness the regular conferences, plus continued publication, up to the present, in peer-reviewed journals outside the specific "fringe" field, and vast numbers of research reports as conference papers. Some idea of the level of publication is cited above. The reasons for the early negative findings are fairly well established. And then there is the 2004 DOE report, which is, quite simply, inconsistent with this judgment of Bad Science. It shows the existence of a genuine scientific controversy.
The polywater example is, I believe, notable, as is the N ray example, but they should be presented in the History article that I've been proposing, beyond, possibly, a attributed note that Cold fusion has been so compared. The slide show discussed above isn't RS, but it is, for us, a clear example of how misconceptions about this research have been promoted and taught for years. It's not isolated. Cold fusion is Bad Science, end of topic, and, please, don't confuse me with the latest research. -- Abd ( talk) 17:12, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
So we have this source comparing polywater to cold fusion: "Critical Issues in Biomedical Science: A Guide for Biochemistry and Molecular & Cell Biology Graduate", 2002, Leland L. Smith [8]
Comparison also made by:
So, multiple independient reliable and non-reliable sources making the same statement, sorry im in a hurry to finish writing this -- Enric Naval ( talk) 19:21, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
“ | cold fusion got the denomination of pathological science after being compared to polywater by some guy from Toronto and "(if cold fusion is given the category of scientific death, it) passes into the history of failed scientific claims, and joins N-rays, polywater, and ESP" and compares it with Irving Langmuir's definition of pathological science [16] 'Undead science', Bart Simon, 2002, Rutgers University Press. | ” |
“ | "For most natural scientists now, the case for cold fusion is closed and the veredict unequivocal: 'pathological science'. Irving Langmuir's space for scientific fantasies was retrieved and put to cartographic use in dennouncing the claim and in castigating its pitchmen, Pons and Fleischmann, as the episode quickly entered the annals of science next to other illusions: N-rays, polywater and martian canals. It was hardly coincidence (...) that Physics Today chose to reprint Langmuir's 1953 talk in its October 1989 issue." (footnote 3 on page 184 gives another 4 books using comparisons from Langmuir, who talked about "sick" science, including N-rays, mitogenetic rays and ESP [17], before polywater was "discovered") Cultural Boundaries of Science, Thomas F. Gieryn, 1999, University of Chicago Press | ” |
“ | This book analyzes how rethoric and humor were used to ridiculize cold fusion in "the short history of this controversy" [18] Science, reason, and rhetoric, Henry Krips, J. E. McGuire, Trevor Melia, 1995, Univ of Pittsburgh Press. | ” |
“ | Entirely discredited, the notion of cold fusion today denotes an infamous episode of sloppy science that chemists, especially, would prefer to forget Draw the lightning down, Michael B. Schiffer, Kacy L. Hollenback, Carrie L. Bell, 2003, University of California Press | ” |
“ | "A literature review uncovered six distinctive indicators of failed information epidemics in the scientific journal literature: (1) presence of seminal papers(s), (2) rapid growth/decline in author frequency, (3) multi-disciplinary research, (4) epidemic growth/decline in journal publication frequency, (5) predominance of rapid communication journal publications, and (6) increased multi-authorship. These indicators were applied to journal publication data from two known failed information epidemics, Polywater and Cold Nuclear Fusion." "Indicators of failed information epidemics in the scientific journal literature: A publication analysis of Polywater and Cold Nuclear Fusion", E. Ackermann, Scientometrics 66, 451-466 (2006) [19] | ” |
Letter exchange between
Edmund Storms, Jed Rothwell, and two editors-in-chief of Scientific American,
John Rennie and
Jonathan Piel, in 1991 and 2003 respectively
http://lenr-canr.org/AppealandSciAm.pdf |
---|
"'even though its precise physical mechanism is not fully understood at present' such characteristic is typical of another kind of event in science, one which Irving Langmuir accurately described in a classic paper in the 1950's [in reference to the paper coining the term 'pathological science'"
"As you suggested, I did look over a number of the offerings at www.lenr-canr.org. Unfortunately, I still don't see evidence in those papers, or in the mainstream physics literature, that LENR-CANR has achieved any significantly new level of credibility in the eyes of the general physics community. The site does point to a large number of publications that ostensibly offer evidence of the phenomenon, but sheer numbers of papers is not sufficiently compelling-- as I'm sure you know, even the creationists can point to thousands of "publications" and "scientists" seemingly supporting their position."
"I notice that although you called Jonathan Piel's decision 'a catastrophic misjudgment' almost a dozen [years] ago, the scientific mainstream would still side with him. Not bad as catastrophes go. (...) it does you no good to curse Scientific American because the people you need to convince about the scientific credibility of cold fusion aren't journalists. They're professional physicists who review submissions for respectable technical journals. If you can convince mainstream scientists that LENR-CANR is real and significant, magazines like Scientific American will drop into line."
"If so much of the scientific community outside the U.S. and U.K. is supportive of LENR-CANR, it hardly seems necessary for you to try so hard to enlist Scientific American to publicize your cause. It is odd, though, that although we have editions and well-respected scientific contacts all around the world, I have never heard any of them request an article making the case for the phenomenon." "(...) The editors of Scientific American were right to be skeptical about such poorly documented claims at the time [the distances covered by Wright brothers in their flights, not about whether they actually flew!], just as its editors today are right to be skeptical of mountains of cold fusion "evidence" that somehow fail to convince most physicists that the phenomenon is real and significant."
"The first one is apparently a misconception about how scientific method works. You are claiming that unless we (or, more properly, mainstream physicists) establish a technical basis for disbelieving claims of LENR-CANR, we have no basis for dismissing it. But it is not up to mainstream physicists to disprove LENR-CANR; it is up to LENR-CANR's physicists to come up with convincing proofs. The burden of evidence is on those who wish to establish a new proposition." "(...) We don't claim to be authorities on physics or any other discipline (for all that there is quite a lot of real expertise built into our staff). For that reason, the scientific points of view we choose to publish are ones that have already been vetted in the technical, peer-reviewed literature and that generally seem to represent a consensus within the scientific community. (...) " "(As for whether we're entitled to mock cold fusion...well, sorry if you disagree, but that opinion reflects the consensus of most scientists, too.)" "So it really doesn't make a difference to me if LENR-CANR advocates petition me for articles on the subject; I'll put them on the stack of similar requests from the scientific creationists, the global warming deniers the face-on-Mars people, the crypto-archaeologists, and all the others who want publicity and scientific respectability but can't make their case convincingly to the community of scientists. But I'll say this again, too: if LENR-CANR's physicists can convince the mainstream physics community that they've got a credible case and articles to that effect start appearing in major peer-reviewed journals, Scientific American would be glad to write about it."
|
(cut from section above because of topic change -- Enric Naval ( talk) 09:11, 25 March 2009 (UTC))
“ | "On the one hand, many experts say that cold fusion is dead, but on the other hand we can always find scientists who will disagree. Latour has left us with the knotty problem of figuring out how many dissenting experts it takes to keep a controversy alive." Undead Science, pag 11 [20] | ” |
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0901/0901.2411.pdf Papers on arxiv may sometimes be used, depends. See Wikipedia:Reliable_source_examples#arXiv_preprints_and_conference_abstracts
Sinha, K.P. and A. Meulenberg, A model for enhanced fusion reaction in a solid matrix of metal deuterides.
I'm putting this here because there has been some discussion of the idea that electrons may be functioning similarly to how muons function in muon-catalyzed fusion. This is a recent paper, presented at ICCF-14, the International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science, Washington, DC, 2008, uploaded to arXiv, January, 2009.
The authors claim to predict observed fusion rates and phenomena from this theory, using standard physics models.:
It is a goal of this paper to provide an understandable, standard-physics basis (under special conditions) for the extensive body of results presently available from LENR.1
It will be interesting to watch for whether or not there is any response to this from those who know those "standard physics models" and can judge if the models are accurately applied to the peculiar environment of highly loaded palladium or the like. I'm not holding my breath, but sooner or later this kind of response will be needed from those outside the narrow field. I'll say, though, that theory starts looking good when it can predict the numbers. It can then become falsifiable.-- Abd ( talk) 16:48, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
See also: http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0603213 and http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.0595v1.
Here's some News Just In: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16820-roomtemperature-fusion-in-from-the-cold.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news --The funny part is the editor of the New Energy Times being skeptical. V ( talk) 19:29, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
LSD, what are you talking about? The paper this section was started about was presented at a conference, yes, but also uploaded to arXiv, which does have standards. The arXiv acceptance is a notch above conference publication. However, this has nothing to do with the New Scientist article that V pointed to. As to skepticism, there is lots of skeptical criticism in the LENR community. I've been looking into the Arata work, and the most pointed commentary is coming from our old friend, Jed Rothwell. The basic work is probably accurate (i.e, there is indeed heat generation), Rothwell points out prior work and confirmation, but the research is frustratingly short on detail, such as calibration, which should be fairly easy with the setup they have (what steady heat dissipation in the cell does it take to maintain that temperature differential), or other important details are missing. Rothwell reads Japanese, too. -- Abd ( talk) 22:32, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
The point about Krivit being "skeptical," above, may have been missed by the author of the New Scientist piece. Krivit is really just being careful. The experimental results are a very strong indicator of a nuclear process. To pin this down as "fusion," at this point, remains unconfirmed, though if, as it looks, we are taking deuterium and getting helium out, it sure looks like fusion. The neutrons are actually occurring at quite low levels (though above background, for sure; the neutrons are spatially correlated with the cathode, and they don't get them with hydrogen in place of deuterium). There are quite a number of different hypotheses asserted for what might be going on, and some don't involve "simple" fusion reactions. But if deuterium is going in one side of the black box, and helium is coming out the other, there has been fusion, in the end. Krivit's real point is to look at the experimental evidence and don't focus on the theory that might explain them. The first thing to do is to consider the experiment. If this were not work that has already been largely confirmed, it would be one thing. What's new here is the neutrons.
The New Scientist piece, though, is head and shoulders above the rest of the media response to the ACS National Meeting. The writer seems to have actually done some research and interviewing, more than, say, calling up one skeptical physicist. He mentions controls. -- Abd ( talk) 02:49, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
http://www.livescience.com/technology/090323-cold-fusion.html
discussed above some:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7959183.stm
In fact, google search: [27]
Pretty hot for something cold, eh? -- Abd ( talk) 23:05, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
Navy scientist announces possible cold fusion reactions But evidence also could indicate another type of nuclear reaction, she cautions Houston Chronicle -- Abd ( talk) 23:07, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
ScienceDaily (Mar. 23, 2009) — Researchers are reporting compelling new scientific evidence for the existence of low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR), the process once called "cold fusion" that may promise a new source of energy. One group of scientists, for instance, describes what it terms the first clear visual evidence that LENR devices can produce neutrons, subatomic particles that scientists view as tell-tale signs that nuclear reactions are occurring. [28]
Ahem. For some time now, I've been pointing to the neutrons found by the SPAWAR group as remarkable evidence, but I haven't attempted to put it in the article because of a lack of secondary sources. Today it rained, and it poured. I do remember that science isn't run by newspapers, but .... Wikipedia sometimes is. We have reliable source here for a whole series of facts and claims that would have been difficult to put in before now, given the contentious environment and the marginal notability. Don't worry, I'm not going to rush. -- Abd ( talk) 23:14, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
Interesting thing about these reports: they are typical of media reports, even the ones in the science-related media: they show a shallow knowledge of the very research they are describing. We have been discussing the neutron findings here for months; the SPAWAR group has found plentiful ionizing radiation, probably alpha particles; the neutrons were found almost by accident, on the back side of the CR-39 chips, where arguments about dendrites causing damage to the plastic don't apply. The media reports don't show any awareness of the work, duplication of the work, criticisms of the work, etc.
Other scientists were unable to duplicate the 1989 results, thereby discrediting the work. I just don't know how they manage to keep repeating that. Apparently, if a hasty review in 1989, ignoring reproductions that did already exist, concludes that the work could not be reproduced, way over a hundred papers in peer-reviewed publications, plus many more presented to conferences, don't exist. It's truly weird. The media should ask someone who actually knows about the subject to proof their work! (They don't normally do that, it's supposed to hamper neutrality, which, I suppose, it might.) Anyway, these reports aren't valuable for the science, they are valuable for the context, the notability of the SPAWAR research and other efforts that are being reported.)
Three separate groups of researchers - including one group from the US Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Centre (SPAWAR) - are reporting "compelling" new evidence for the existence of cold fusion.
Gee, I thought so too, when they reported this stuff quite a while ago. However, there isn't a lot of confirmation yet, only some aspects have been confirmed. That is, the work is striking, and, if confirmed, compelling indeed. Some aspects of this, are really confirming prior work. Radiation and other nuclear products have been found before. I think the Italians did a lot of work in a cave, underground, to get away from cosmic ray background, detecting neutrons. The articles don't mention that neutrons are probably only an occasional product, that most of the reactions taking place apparently don't generate neutrons, but rather alpha particles and maybe heat through coupling to the lattice. And it is not over until those outside the relatively narrow body of researchers in the field -- even though there are apparently hundreds of them -- start smelling the coffee and manage to confirm. The experimental details are very important. What is really happening here, to confirm what V wrote above, is that the media is noticing: hey, wait a minute, the consensus has been for years that this field was dead, pathological science, as far as we've been told. And here comes these Navy researchers (you know, that much of fringe fanatics) with credible research results, getting increasingly difficult to just pooh-pooh. Something broke through the barriers. Now comes the real work. Mosier-Boss and others did it right. They published in a peer-reviewed journal, they didn't announce at a press conference, they didn't insist on theoretical explanations, they just said, hey, this is what we found. And what they found, if confirmed, is a smoking gun. Same is true for some of the other work, in fact, it was really only a matter of time until the veil of rejection was pierced. It's still not over, the curtain could possibly descend again if Mosier-Boss et al screwed up in some way. But they have been a very careful research group, steadily building a publication history, one step at a time. It is claimed that their approach is easily verified. So ... is it? Kowalski, pretty much an amateur, verified the heat (even though he criticized some conclusions about the "radiation") -- Abd ( talk) 03:53, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
The plot thickens. Now we know where the media is getting this news. Press release. I shoulda known! American Chemical Society press release
Many of the news articles are practically verbatim from this. Who is Michael Bernstein? -- Abd ( talk) 03:57, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
Michael Bernstein is the contact for all the ACS releases seen at [29]. Apparently he is with the ACS Office of Public Affairs.
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/acslive has clips possibly live, I'm listening now. --
Abd (
talk)
04:07, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
The Wired report is interesting. It was presented today, but the headline is March 23, 1989: Cold Fusion Gets Cold Shoulder, and it is almost entirely about the very early situation, with this tacked on at the end:
After it couldn't replicate the earlier results, the University of Utah discontinued cold-fusion research in 1991 and allowed its cold-fusion patents to lapse in 1998. Pons and Fleischmann left for for the south of France in 1992 to continue research for a Toyota subsidiary. But even Japan's government stopped funding cold-fusion research in 1997.
Nonetheless, a network of dedicated cold-fusionists still toils away in a vineyard that looks pretty barren to almost everyone else.
Nothing about yesterday's news or the recent work, beyond "network of dedicated cold-fusionists" and the barren vineyard. So why was this article put up? Beats me. It's a fascinating demonstration of bad journalism. -- Abd ( talk) 14:43, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
Arggh. Well, I've known since I was in high school that if I read a newspaper account on a topic where I had knowledge, it was almost always wrong about something, and quite often wrong about much. One day, I'd like to do something about that. It's possible, you know.
The headline. Who has the "idea of free energy"? That isn't being said at the conference. In fact, there is quite a bit of opinion among cold fusion researchers that it might never be commercially useful to the extent that "free energy" would be an appropriate term. Consider: with 7 g of palladium black and a little deuterium gas, less than a gram, I think, you could have a little capsule that will, if Arata's work is not mistaken and I'm reading it correctly, maintain, for a long time a temperature perhaps 4 degrees C above ambient. If it's insulated. While I think the math works out to more energy than you could get from any possible chemical reaction (because this is sustained) Palladium is running over $200 per ounce, so that represents roughly $50 worth of palladium. However, the price of palladium is low right now because of the recession in the auto industry, which is the main consumer of palladium for catalytic converters. It was running at about $900 per ounce at the peak. If usage of palladium on a mass scale develops, it will almost certainly rise to the former peak or higher. So $200 worth of palladium, forget the processing cost to palladium black. To get a small amount of heat. Sure, engineering may be able to greatly increase the efficiency and power output. That little cell would probably still work at temperatures boiling water, but a lot more palladium may be needed. Fleischmann said, long ago, that it would take a Manhattan-scale project to make this commercially viable. And who is going to make that kind of investment if the science is not established?
What is "making a comeback" is the science. It should have come back long ago, if the mainstream journals hadn't stuck their head in their quantum mechanics. This is a story waiting to be told here, there is plenty of reliable source on it, this is not just the claim of a small band of disgruntled crackpot graybeards. (And for those tempted to make some comment, my gruntle is in fine shape, thank you very much.)
The results were announced today at a meeting of the American Chemical Society to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the first enthusiastic – and ultimately doomed – claims for cold fusion at the University of Utah.
But wait a minute? The whole story is about the field still being alive. "Ultimately doomed?" Definitely discredited and ridiculed in the short term, but if we look at reliable source over the last five or ten years, not. This is a great example of institutional and public inertia; I've seen it happen elsewhere, I know of another major field of research where, a bit more than five years ago, the research and publication tide shifted and ideas that were considered "consensus" were challenged, in fact, they were basically demolished, but ... still, that consensus is repeated over and over in the media, as if nothing happened. Ironically, the best book on this subject was written by Gary Taubes, well-known for his debunking of Cold fusion in the nineties, in his recent book, Good Calories, Bad Calories.
As researchers rushed to harness cold fusion for themselves, it became clear there was more than a little problem. No one could get it to work. What had been touted as one of the greatest discoveries of the century fell to pieces. The field of cold fusion lost almost all of its funding and is now so tainted by the farce that scientists have been forced to rename it. It is now called "low-energy nuclear reactions".
Hmmmm. "Scientists" call the field LENR. Any implications for us? "No one could get it to work." What was never true. It took time to get it to work, it wasn't nearly as easy as the groups that rushed to attempt replication thought. It was still difficult after Fleischmann's publication. Over twenty years, methods were found that are reliably replicable, and Mosier-Boss is using one of these methods, but my guess is that it is still tricky, there are lots of ways to spoil the reaction. Still, replication rates, according to the Chinese paper I've cited above, are tending recently toward 100%. It may still turn out to be "one of the greatest discoveries of the century." Or it may turn out to be a scientific curiosity, like muon-catalyzed cold fusion. Or ... it seems unlikely now, to me, having spent the last two months reading up on this, but nothing should be ruled out in science. Maybe it's a really good example of how you can find something if you look for it, no matter whether it exists or not. On the other hand, the scientific method was designed to address this problem; but what happened with cold fusion is that the scientific method was set aside in favor of polemic and press conferences and ridicule and entrenched contempt for people who were simply doing basic experimental research and reporting the results.
The 1989 DOE report is widely cited as sounding the death knell for cold fusion, but that report never did dismiss it as "junk science," merely as "not conclusively demonstrated." It's hard to overstate the gap between those two framings of their findings.
The scientists passed an electric current through the solution and used a plastic detector to pick up neutrons being emitted from the beaker. At the end of the experiment, they found what they believe are three track marks caused by particles released as neutrons smashed into the detector. Mosier-Boss believes the neutrons were thrown out of fusion reactions in the device.
I can see the reactions. I've been reading comments in the newspapers, and this text, I'm sure, will attract this: "Three track marks, is that all? Background cosmic radiation will produce more than that!" But, of course, it's not three track marks, it is quite a number of "triple-track" marks, tracks found in a close pattern indicating a characteristic proton recoil reaction from the influence of a fast neutron. The text shows that the writer didn't have the foggiest. -- Abd ( talk) 19:41, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
The Guardian writer commented there about his writing of the piece. The comment explains his lack of depth:
I only wrote a brief piece on this SPAWAR research to flag it up to people who might be interested. My view on fringe science like this is the old cliche, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and in my personal opinion, this work does not fulfill that criteria. If it had, I would have gone into far more detail...and I'm sure so would everyone else! Let me know though: should we just not cover this stuff? I firmly believe we should, as long as it's in an appropriate manner (i.e. a short online piece vs splashing it across the front pages). There seem to be some people who think we shouldn't cover it, but that to me seems a little miserable. Surely it's interesting the US are still funding research on this, and it's nice to at least be aware of their latest findings or non-findings...
Basically, it seems that this writer looked, like everyone else, at the press release, didn't do any deeper research but depended on his prior knowledge, isn't aware of the extent to which the SPAWAR research is just one more reasonably clear confirmation out of many, etc. But at least he recognizes that there is something worth writing about. Other sources have gone into more detail, and my guess is that there will be some pieces, after there is time to do some study, with greater depth. And, yes, someone wrote that they were not impressed by three tracks! Someone else pointed out that this was the triple track signature of neutron interaction. I'm just trying to figure out why excess heat correlated with He-4 production and neutrons and other radiation isn't "extraordinary evidence."? Sure it out to be confirmed to death, but converting that old "extraordinary claims" quotation into some kind of law that can be used to assume that nothing new can be learned unless it punches us in the nose is little short of bizarre. It's definitely not science. -- Abd ( talk) 01:35, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 20 | ← | Archive 24 | Archive 25 | Archive 26 | Archive 27 | Archive 28 | → | Archive 30 |
By the way, if anyone else is irritated by the fact that we have to pussyfoot around the blacklist, and that we have papers referenced in the article for which we can't provide a link where the papers can be freely read, we can request whitelisting of some specific pages, or of the whole sites. (lenr-canr.org is globally blacklisted, newenergytimes.com is locally blacklisted, so whole-site with NET would just be delisting.) I've been somewhat successful at this (with other blacklisted sites, and, with Enric Naval, one lenr-canr.org page). The politics at meta, right now, make it unlikely that we could succeed in globally delisting the whole site globally, but there was, in fact, no sound reason for the blacklisting in the first place; the blacklist is designed to control linkspam, and there wasn't linkspamming, the links alleged as linkspam for lenr-canr.org were like many here in Talk: not links, so blacklisting didn't prevent them. No linkspamming at all was alleged for newenergytimes.com. There is also alleged copyright violation at lenr-canr.org, but consensus at Martin Fleischmann seems to be that this is a non-issue, and no specific violation has reasonably been alleged. That lenr-canr.org is allegedly fringe should be moot; linking to a specific page that is a permitted copy of a paper, as a convenience link, does not dump the reader into a polemic for cold fusion. In any case, there is about zero chance of getting lenr-canr.org delisted globally if we don't have specific pages whitelisted here on en.wikipedia, or a whitelisting of the whole site here, the argument will be made, and it will be effective, that it isn't needed, don't bother them. -- Abd ( talk) 15:15, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
(dedent) Since that discussion isn't formally closed as to conclusion, and since it can be reopened even as to subquestions that have been closed, anyone is welcome to join, but I would ask, please, read the preceding discussion first and consider the specific points made, and try to delink the issues, linking of issues is often what keeps us from finding consensus. Further, if there is agreement already expressed there, and you differ, how important is it, because reopening a decided question will take up more time. Decisions in a local RfC-type discussion like that aren't binding, they don't create any kind of precedent that will prevent better decisions from being made in the future. Or at least they shouldn't! However, and this was indeed the intention, they may establish that whatever is agreed there is at least a reasonable decision, to start, not just the unsupported opinion of a deranged tl;dr editor like me.
"We must not X because A and B and C and D and E." "B isn't true." "Maybe, but there are still A and C and D and E." "But D isn't true either!" "It's true!" "(diff showing D is preposterous)". "Maybe, but there are still A and B and C and E. Would you please stop beating a dead horse?"
... and this can go on for a long time. Instead, we can look at A. Is A true? If not, why not? If so, what's the evidence? Why do you believe this? And we can continue doing this, getting more and more specific. In such a process, it becomes really obvious if someone is reasoning from conclusions, and most people, realizing that this just isn't right and that the world will not end if they agree on a narrow point with someone "on the other side," will back down, and agree on the specific point or suggest some acceptable compromise (or shut up and go away). It can become a habit, and points of agreement build. And I've seen this kind of process result in total agreement when previously the sides were digging their heels in.
"But A and B are connected!" Fine. We still should try to find agreement on them separately, then, once we understand and agree on each subissue, we can consider possible connections before addressing a higher-level question.
Just in case someone thinks otherwise, this process often will not lead to X. It will lead to something else that enjoys higher consensus. I.e., perhaps argument A came to be considered valid, and action Y satisfied the concern, as well as the concerns of those proposing X. But when we have a big pile of issues, fringe linkspam copyvio uncivil alters documents kook SPA nonsense conflict of interest block evasion banned unnecessary anyway, WTF do we begin?
We find consensus by pursuing, at least initially, one little teeny-tiny question at a time.
As to the page and section on linking, I don't see the term "reasonably certain" there, and we are not obligated by policy or copyright law to be "reasonably certain" that there is no violation; indeed, read the guideline, it's the opposite: we should not link if we "know that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of the creator's copyright," and the relevant case law cited has to do with "Knowingly and intentionally directing others to a site that violates copyright." When I noticed the blacklisting (I'm here because of that, not the reverse, I did not arrive at this article with an agenda), I asked a knowledgeable administrator, DGG, about the copyright issue. I think his opinions are cited there, and he showed up to confirm it (as he did previously on the blacklist pages). And that is fully consistent with policy and guidelines, and I haven't the foggiest what LeadSongDog was trying to point to. -- Abd ( talk) 18:20, 9 March 2009 (UTC)
(unindent) Eh? What would be standard is that an editor does it, and reports the result. Testimony is presumed true unless controverted. What do you need OTRS for? If the Foundation wants to get involved in copyright verification, then such confirmation would be done by the foundation and by trusted volunteers, so, perhaps, OTRS could do it, but consider the volume of such requests that might be needed, if the tight standards being proposed were followed more generally. I'd advise against it. There is no legal risk to the project at the "absence of intention to link to copyvio" level, error in this doesn't establish legal risk, unless error persists after notice. I.e., a copyright holder says, "stop linking to that site!" Much more likely, with links that would be likely to be used here, the page goes dead, as the site pulls it from a copyright infringement notice, or the site goes dead when it ignores that. We really don't need to worry about it with sites like lenr-canr.org or newenergytimes.com; these are sites with known and responsible owners with much to lose if they infringe copyright, and all signs are that they are careful about this. -- Abd ( talk) 20:02, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
Here is the situation. In short, it's about wikipolitics and minimal disruption.
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see http://lenr-canr.org/LibFrame1.html
Up to G, more tomorrow, I assume. -- Abd ( talk) 03:00, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
The latest experiments were done in May 2007 by Yoshiaka Arata and Yue-Chang Zang. It is noted that the conducted the experiment somewhat else (they used palladiumpowder in the electrode that was made by injecting the powder with deuteriumgas under high pressure). It was reported that 70% more heat was generated than the electricty put into the experiment.
According to anata, pycnodeuterium is formed in the experiment and they believe the scientific formula that would explain the reaction would be possible if a fonon was included (which they believe was present)
the experiment was documented in Journal of the high temperature society —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.246.135.164 ( talk) 14:55, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
Just noting that this reference was removed from the article, in case editors may find it useful either in developing this page or related pages:
(unindent) Something should be clear. The mention of quantum electrodynamical considerations as the basis for the research was in the article when the link was removed without discussion. What I've done is only to restore, roughly, what was there, and a link that was used. I have now addressed the issue of anachronism, but, please consider this: any reference about what they were doing when they discovered the effect is going to be retrospective. It wasn't published, at all, prior to 1989, it was, after all, secret, and this is describing what they had been doing for years at that time. This is an important piece of information about the history. It's now attributed, with a date. The removal of the paper from the bibliography has not been justified by Noren, he simply did it. That's reversion without discussion, based only on a technical claim that somehow I was wrong to put it back in, without giving any reason but process, I.e., supposedly I should have discussed it. But I did discuss it. Too much, some would say! I restored what was there before Noren's edits, addressing the objection about "anachronism." If it can be improved, please improve it. I think there may be other earlier sources on this, if people are offended by the delay, Fleischmann has written about this in more than one paper, but this was the most complete discussion of it I've seen. -- Abd ( talk) 17:50, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
(edit conflict) More of the history. This is the edit that removed the mention of quantum electrodynamics. There had been a discussion in Talk. Shanahan suggested language which is fairly close to what I've put in. Keller wrote, Dr. Shanahan is right that Fleischmann and Pons statement as to motivation made in 1989 is more reliable that the one Fleischmann gave 14 years later, particularly as their original hypothesis was proven wrong in the intervening period. I have made changes accordingly and attempted to improve the experimental description while I was at it. ~Paul V. Keller 02:59, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
What the article now has may be a combination of both reports. I haven't seen Legget. I'm a bit puzzled by "their original hypothesis was proven wrong in the intervening period." What hypothesis? The hypothesis mentioned in the present text hasn't been proven wrong. It's still controversial, to my knowledge. The only measure we have of any reliability as to current scientific consensus is the 2004 DOE report, which asserts no such "proof," it merely reports that low-energy nuclear reaction of the kind under consideration had not been "conclusively demonstrated." One reviewer thought it had. The general hypothesis reported here is of the nature of a hunch, that something might be different in the lattice than in a plasma. That, actually, isn't controversial, what remains controversial is the hypothesis that it is different enough to allow fusion. -- Abd ( talk) 18:17, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
I'm looking for other references on this topic of Fleischmann and what he was looking for when he found what he believed was cold fusion. http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanbackground.pdf
In this paper presented at ICCF12, 2003, Fleischmann is even more specific. In the 1960s we started a series of research projects aimed at answering the Question, "Can we find illustrations in Chemistry (especially in Electrochemistry) of the need to invoke the Q.E.D. paradigm to explain the results obtained?" His continued discussion shows that the work he was doing was fundamental research, it was not aimed at finding cold fusion. It was aimed at discovering if Q.E.D., or field dynamics was needed to explain results in chemistry. Now, from my non-expert position, it would be surprising if it were not necessary to explain, at least, some minor effects, shifts in predicted values, etc. The question, really, is how significant the effects of the condensed matter state are, not whether there are any effects. (As an example, the Mossbauer effect exemplifies a change in nuclear behavior due to the nucleus being embedded in a crystal. To be sure, this involves lower energies and not nuclear transformations other than excitation/de-excitation). That this is the work Fleischmann was doing is plausible, and in the absence of evidence to the contrary, should be accepted as his description without being impeached by claims of "spin" or distortion. Because of the lapse of time, certainly, attribution is appropriate; but this statement, if made in the 1989 article, would simply have added to the controversy without improving the basic experimental science. In the 1989 paper, his overall research project wasn't relevant and he deliberately avoided publicising it. There may be earlier work consistent with this claim. My the way, Shanahan might be gratified to notice that in this paper Fleischmann notes the problems involved in calibration of calorimeters when there is unequal distribution of heat generation, thus Fleischmann refers to the need for controls as distinct from simply measuring alleged anomalous heat. -- Abd ( talk) 22:15, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
[3] 1998. Fleischmann paper on a similar theme: the breakdown of quantum mechanics in describing a condensed matter system. -- Abd ( talk) 22:29, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
[4] book slightly earlier than the 2002 paper which describes the goal of their research. It describes the "hidden agenda" very explicitly. The research was thus into fundamental physics, actually. They were not looking for "free energy." I'm finding this fascinating. -- Abd ( talk) 22:41, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
In 2000, a Fleischmann article was published in Accountability in Research. Here is a copy. [5]. This paper explores in detail the theoretical underpinnings of the work, specifically the inadequacy of classical quantum mechanics in describing the condenses matter state. It's quite clear that this is a deep and long-term interest of his. -- Abd ( talk) 22:41, 19 March 2009 (UTC)
Cold fusion, first announced 20 years ago on Monday, was claimed to be a boundless source of clean energy by Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons.
Fleischmann and Pons announced a set of experimental results, on a topic that many considered could possibly imply a revolution in energy generation. However, Fleischmann himself was working on basic theoretical issues having to do with the relationship between quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics, and research into the possibility of deuterium fusion in a palladium lattice was really just an example that took over. What F and P actually claimed was generation of anomalous heat and detection of neutrons. If I've got it right, the hype was generated by the media. I just noticed that we don't seem to have any citation of the original articles on the announcement, an oversight, I'm sure.
Look at [7], the report May 3, 1989, about the famous disparagement of Fleischmann's work at the American Physical Society meeting. Fleischmann and Pons are described as having claimed "nuclear fusion in a jar of water at room temperature." That was, itself, misleading. "Jar of water?" No, in a palladium lattice loaded with deuterium gas at very high effective pressure, roughly as high as the deuterium would be if it were a solid (which doesn't happen except at very high pressures or very low temperatures). But presenting it as a "jar of water" makes it sound kooky, and this was quite typical as the rejection mounted. This article does mention "Hopes that a new kind of nuclear fusion might give the world an unlimited source of cheap energy." However, that's not attributed to anyone.
Attempts to replicate their experiments failed, but a number of researchers insist that cold fusion is possible.
An example of how to mislead with truth: just tell part of it, implying what is false. Sure, "attempts failed." Many attempts failed, some reported, some not, I'm sure. However, when one is dealing with an effect that, it ought to have been recognized from the beginning, must be rare and unusual, requiring special conditions, or else it would have been discovered before, it might not be just a matter of that jar of water. It might not even be a matter of doing electrolysis using a palladium cathode in heavy water. And, indeed, it wasn't. Elsewhere on this page I point to the Bayesian analysis of a set of failed and successful attempts to replicate the anomalous heat effect, presented in 2008 at ICCF14. The failed experiments did not follow Fleischmann's protocol, which hadn't been published yet, and, even later, attempts to reproduce often varied the experimental conditions in ways that turn out to have a predictable effect: no heat. The paper is worth reading. I've seen a list of successful reproductions of the anomalous heat effect, published in peer-reviewed journals. 153 papers. Many more presented at conferences. So, yes, attempts failed, but, once it was understood how to do it, most efforts succeeded, the replication rate has become high.
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/CravensDtheenablin.pdf
Look at Table 2 on p. 4. Bayesian criteria were developed to test protocol compliance. I won't deal with the details of this kind of analysis, but it's cogent (and there is also a potential problem, though it looks to me like it doesn't apply here).
And, yes, a number of researchers insist that it's possible. Is it just "a number of researchers," and are they basing that on theory, after all, according to the implication of the first phrase, they haven't actually replicated the experiment? So what the article presents is a picture of isolated theorists hanging on to a failed experiment that nobody could reproduce. Way to go, BBC.
But then they do a little better:
The American Chemical Society has organised sessions surrounding the research at its meetings before, suggesting that the field would otherwise have no suitable forum for debate. In a bid to avoid the negative connotations of a largely discredited approach, research in the field now appears under the umbrella of "low-energy nuclear reactions", or LENR. Gopal Coimbatore, ACS program chair for an LENR session at the 2007 national meeting, said that "with the world facing an energy crisis, it is worth exploring all possibilities". Who suggested? Who taught the reporter how to write? Lost performative, a debate trick, in fact. It's a way to make a suggestion while not taking responsibility for it.
Question: Does Gopal Coimbatore think that cold fusion is a possibility? The statement implies it.
As to "avoid," this is about motivation. Okay, who is motivated? The fact is that there is no settled explanation of the excess heat. Maybe it isn't fusion, maybe it's something else, but this is what we know from the 2004 DOE review: The reviewers were evenly split on the question of excess heat, half of them finding evidence for it "compelling." Okay, 18 reviewers, so, roughly, 9 found evidence for excess heat compelling, 9 were not convinced. Then they state that "Two-thirds of the reviewers commenting on Charge Element 1 did not feel the evidence was conclusive for low energy nuclear reactions, one found the evidence convincing, and the remainder indicated they were somewhat convinced." I really should do a summary of the actual reviews, which are available on newenergytimes.com, but if we have six reviewers at least "somewhat convinced" that LENR is real, and if we assume that the more dedicated skeptics also don't accept the excess heat, we'd have two-thirds of those who accept excess heat being somewhat convinced, at least, that the origin is nuclear.
And they seem to have universally agreed that further research was called for, and claims here that this was just bureaucratic boilerplate are not supported by looking at the actual reviews. It was an active recommendation by the reviewers.
There were early critiques of the Pons-Fleischmann experiment, and it's accepted, I think, that they were wrong about the neutrons (though neutrons are reported using other techniques in later experiments; I think at lower levels). However, the critiques that were most broadly accepted and considered convincing about experimental failure, turned out to be flawed themselves, and the Fleischmann report of excess heat hasn't been, according to a number of neutral sources, successfully impeached. But those who, for understandable theoretical reasons, strongly against the very idea of LENR, are quite likely to look at excess heat with a jaundiced eye. I really should do that review of the reviewer reports. There is nothing wrong with skepticism, and nothing wrong with pointing out possible sources of experimental error. But there is something wrong with widespread assumptions that, because someone has pointed out a possible error, an experiment has therefore been impeached. Some of the early replications, by the way, were also in error.
Frank Close, a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Oxford, says that the far greater problem with cold fusion claims is that results from any given study have never been independently verified - a problem that plagued that first announcement.
Again, it's highly misleading. This is appeal to authority, and what's the authority? A professor of theoretical physics, a field which Fleischmann was directly challenging with his research program, I imagine the reporter called him up, having no clue about the issues. Was it about turf, chemistry vs. physics? No, it was actually about physics: quantum mechanics, an approximation, vs. the more accurate model, quantum electrodynamics. QM is much simpler to apply; Fleischmann theorized that in condensed matter, it is sometimes necessary to use the more sophisticated -- and mathematically difficult -- quantum electrodynamics. He was looking for examples of situations where QM would be inadequate to explain what is observed by experiment. He didn't expect, he reported later, to find fusion, he thought it was a long shot. Specifically, he thought that fusion would occur, but the reaction rate would be too low to detect. Still, any finding of fusion would be of high interest. He was not trying to fix the energy crisis. He would have been quite happy with a barely detectable rate, not usable for energy generation, like the cold muon-catalyzed fusion that is known to work. He got more than he expected.
There are lots of unverified studies, which is partly a consequence of the funding problem and the general rejection problem. However, there are also verifications. For example, deuterium loading into palladium black has been verified to generate the effects. The SPAWAR codeposition work has been verified. How much of this verification has been published in peer-reviewed journals? Some of it. In a sense, any work with condensed matter showing low-energy nuclear reactions is a kind of verification, though, obviously, specific experiment verifications are quite desirable. The BBC did a terrible job with this article, basically the reporter should have known that the field was controversial, and taken care to check out the nature of the controversy, avoiding reporting only one side of it. We can do better, can't we? Using reliable sources and reviews, with balance.
Close's dismissive comments were more extensively reported. Why Close? Okay, pick a random "theoretical physicist." Remember, there is no accepted theory to explain cold fusion. What's this random physicist going to think? Likely, he knows little or nothing about the field beyond what was widely reported in 1989, and his entire training for his entire career has implied that it's impossible, though theory doesn't actually show cold fusion as being impossible -- and we know of an example of it that is accepted. The people to ask would be scientists who have actually studied the field, and there are plenty of them. In China, papers on cold fusion are being published in peer-reviewed journals by experts on hot fusion. The barriers apparently aren't as strong there.
It's a good example of pathological science, all right, it's actually a very, very old problem, where theory trumps experiment. It's quite a story to be told, we have reliable sources on it, and we should be telling it, now that there is some hope that the "fringe wars" are over. Let's get to work! -- Abd ( talk) 21:22, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
Count Iblis, did you read the paper cited in the section above, Talk:Cold_fusion#Cold_fusion_theory.2C_possible_electron-catalyzed_fusion? Have you read Fleischmann's papers on what he was looking for? Hint: it was not cold fusion, as such, that was just a possible example. He was, he's reported numerous times, pursuing the difference between quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics or quantum field theory. Quantum mechanics has indeed proved itself as an approximation. If you have the scientific muscle to examine the theory paper critically, by all means, do so. Now, as to the claim of "cannot get there," this certainly is commonly said, and it is obviously false. You can get there with muons. What other situations are possible? How would you know?
And one more point. The first and most basic issue with cold fusion is whether or not reports of excess heat are correct. Is there excess heat? Then we can look at reports of radiation, say, or other nuclear ash. Then we can look at reports that correlate the two. Is it fusion? How would we know? Maybe it's something else, and that's the point that Krivit is making as described by V in the section above.
This article focuses on "cold fusion." Low-temperature nuclear reactions, of which fusion is a theoretical example, are a hypothesis proposed to explain the Fleischmann-Pons effect. That's a redirect to this article (I created it). However, what's the "Fleischmann-Pons effect." What is the scientific consensus regarding it?
There are many more scientists who think the effect is real than think that it is caused by fusion.
There is a review paper that was presented at ICCF-14 (2008), http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/CravensDtheenablin.pdf
Abstract:
From the paper:
Low-temperature nuclear fusion of deuterium in palladium [10] in the mainstream science journal, Nature. In November 1989, D.E. Williams’ group at Harwell Laboratory published a negative paper Upper bounds on cold fusion in electrolytic cells [15] in Nature. Mainstream science writers and patent agents have referred to these papers for years when seeking to deny scientific legitimacy or patent protection for CMNS researchers. The failed papers have made a lasting impression since Nature refuses to publish more recent experimental results. The editors consider the matter settled: the Fleischmann-Pons Effect is not real.
experimental factors were known from the Kainthla and Fleischmann-Pons papers. The lead investigators chose to follow their own protocol resulting in two failed experiments and a negative image for CMNS.
The 2004 DOE review reports this:
convincing evidence that excess power is produced when integrated over the life of an experiment. The reviewers were split approximately evenly on this topic. Those reviewers who accepted the production of excess power typically suggest that the effect seen often, and under some understood conditions, is compelling. The reviewers who did not find the production of excess power convincing cite a number of issues including: excess power in the short term is not the same as net energy production over the entire of time of an experiment; all possible chemical and solid state causes of excess heat have not been investigated and eliminated as an explanation; and production of power over a period of time is a few percent of the external power applied and hence calibration and systematic effects could account for the purported net effect. 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.
This field does not resemble any other "fringe science" I'm aware of. The literature is massive. I've seen a bibliography showing publications in peer-reviewed journals, showing positive excess heat results (i.e, this total excludes negative reports such as the Nature publications that closed that door), with 50 different journals, 153 papers, 348 authors and co-authors, from 62 institutions. The document claims that "there are actually many more institutions involved in cold fusion than this. These numbers are more of an indication of how much peer-reviewed journal editors resist publishing than a comprehensive tally." By comparison, and to explain why the compiler of the bibliography considers that "resistance" may be involved, the lenr-canr.org bibliography shows about 3000 technical papers; but most of them are, I think, conference proceedings and other alternate publications, some of which seem high quality, and some not. -- Abd ( talk) 03:09, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
Polywater was (quickly) fringe science. Reproductions were difficult but did take place. Sure, the analogy is a good one, to a point. Beyond that point it fails. Later work with cold fusion improved the reproducibility, and more accurate measurements, more precise conditions, all improved reproducibility and clarity of results.
There is an interesting powerpoint presentation on this at Bad Science, which ends up using Polywater and Cold fusion as poster boys. Page 16 of the presentation shows a chart of publications per year on the topic. Polywater did not get serious notice until 1966-68. It hit Science in 1969. Research publication peaked and fell off, and by 1974, there was very little publication. It is hard to interpret the chart. A similarity is mass media involvement. Our article on Polywater is pretty bad, with little technical detail and without the key references. There was a cogent negative paper by Rousseau, published a year and a half later in Science, which explained the experimental results with reasonable power. Because there remained some possibility of error in the negative results, debate did not immediately cease; our article claims, however, that when glassware was more thoroughly cleaned, the polywater results disappeared. Again, the source of the "effect" was identified with reasonable certainty.
The presentation, however, in examining Cold fusion, starts with the assumption that there are only two pathways to fusion. There are three known and accepted for hot fusion, plus muon-catalyzed fusion which takes place at low temperatures. Slide 31 asserts that neutrons and protons are released in cold fusion. There is some question over neutrons, but protons aren't reported, and neutrons are reported at levels so low that clearly, if what is happening is fusion, it isn't a pathway that normally generates fast neutrons. The author of the presentation has not taken the time to review the actual papers and state of the science, but is relying, apparently, on media presentation (the very thing decried) and superficial review, at best.
Slide 32 is "The Signs of Fusion." It shows Excess Heat, Neutrons, Tritium, Helium-3, and Protons. These are, of course, the characteristics of the predominant reaction pathways in hot fusion. However, there is another pathway that is known and accepted, but in hot fusion, it only occurs in small abundance: Deuterium fusion to Helium-4, with an emitted gamma ray. Cold fusion isn't hot fusion, that ought to be obvious. It might involve the third pathway, usually, but then there is the gamma ray, which is a pure release of energy; it's penetrating radiation. However, if the energy could be, as one example, coupled through some Q.E.D. effect to the crystal, that energy release would become, simply, heat. Good thing, too, or else we'd have been seeing the dead graduate student effect....
The presentation reports the media hysteria, and massive attempts at confirmation based on limited information. Then, however, it reports the Confirmations. Listed there is the Georgia Tech finding of neutrons. That information was released by press conference and retracted several days later as being due to limited information. Some later cold fusion work, with much more cautious work and with more sensitive detectors, have found neutrons, but the Georgia Tech work didn't have excess heat, if I'm correct, and therefore neutrons would not have been expected. Now, why is a simple experimental error included in this presentation? It's pretty obvious: the reviewer is convinced that it was bogus science, and including an experimental error, of a kind that would not ordinarily have attracted any attention, helps make that point. The slide gives six confirmations, the sixth is "Bob's Discount House of Knowledge."
The presentation then reviews the Compton peak problem with Fleischmann's original gamma radiation report (that would have indicated neutrons), and that is an aspect of Fleischmann's work that was never confirmed, I'm not sure how Fleischmann responded, and I'm not aware of other reports of that radiation, so I assume this criticism is cogent.
They note some retractions, and then show the Harwell work, referring to it as "the most extensive set of cold fusion tests in the world." Harwell published in November, 1989. They may indeed have been the most extensive individual set of tests at that time. However, as the analysis mentioned above ( http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/CravensDtheenablin.pdf ) shows, and while they may have been "working with advice from Fleischmann," they did not follow the protocol (and to be fair, some aspects of the protocol, necessary conditions for the effect to be seen, may not have been known at that time, the protocol that works only gradually came to be known through many failures and successes). The basic protocol was known, for anyone following work in the field, by the mid-1990s. The Chinese paper mentioned above shows an analysis of something on the order of 10,000 experimental runs, which would be, I'm sure, far more extensive than the Harwell work, and it shows increase in positive results in recent years.
Other negative results are shown, such as failure to detect radiation expected from classical fusion and now known not to be present with the Fleischman-Pons effect, or at least not at levels that would be easily detectable. (There are some cogent and fairly recent claims of neutron detection using methods that are effectively more sensitive, but that's another story.)
Then one of the characteristics of Bad Science is described: researchers working in isolation. That is not the case with cold fusion, witness the regular conferences, plus continued publication, up to the present, in peer-reviewed journals outside the specific "fringe" field, and vast numbers of research reports as conference papers. Some idea of the level of publication is cited above. The reasons for the early negative findings are fairly well established. And then there is the 2004 DOE report, which is, quite simply, inconsistent with this judgment of Bad Science. It shows the existence of a genuine scientific controversy.
The polywater example is, I believe, notable, as is the N ray example, but they should be presented in the History article that I've been proposing, beyond, possibly, a attributed note that Cold fusion has been so compared. The slide show discussed above isn't RS, but it is, for us, a clear example of how misconceptions about this research have been promoted and taught for years. It's not isolated. Cold fusion is Bad Science, end of topic, and, please, don't confuse me with the latest research. -- Abd ( talk) 17:12, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
So we have this source comparing polywater to cold fusion: "Critical Issues in Biomedical Science: A Guide for Biochemistry and Molecular & Cell Biology Graduate", 2002, Leland L. Smith [8]
Comparison also made by:
So, multiple independient reliable and non-reliable sources making the same statement, sorry im in a hurry to finish writing this -- Enric Naval ( talk) 19:21, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
“ | cold fusion got the denomination of pathological science after being compared to polywater by some guy from Toronto and "(if cold fusion is given the category of scientific death, it) passes into the history of failed scientific claims, and joins N-rays, polywater, and ESP" and compares it with Irving Langmuir's definition of pathological science [16] 'Undead science', Bart Simon, 2002, Rutgers University Press. | ” |
“ | "For most natural scientists now, the case for cold fusion is closed and the veredict unequivocal: 'pathological science'. Irving Langmuir's space for scientific fantasies was retrieved and put to cartographic use in dennouncing the claim and in castigating its pitchmen, Pons and Fleischmann, as the episode quickly entered the annals of science next to other illusions: N-rays, polywater and martian canals. It was hardly coincidence (...) that Physics Today chose to reprint Langmuir's 1953 talk in its October 1989 issue." (footnote 3 on page 184 gives another 4 books using comparisons from Langmuir, who talked about "sick" science, including N-rays, mitogenetic rays and ESP [17], before polywater was "discovered") Cultural Boundaries of Science, Thomas F. Gieryn, 1999, University of Chicago Press | ” |
“ | This book analyzes how rethoric and humor were used to ridiculize cold fusion in "the short history of this controversy" [18] Science, reason, and rhetoric, Henry Krips, J. E. McGuire, Trevor Melia, 1995, Univ of Pittsburgh Press. | ” |
“ | Entirely discredited, the notion of cold fusion today denotes an infamous episode of sloppy science that chemists, especially, would prefer to forget Draw the lightning down, Michael B. Schiffer, Kacy L. Hollenback, Carrie L. Bell, 2003, University of California Press | ” |
“ | "A literature review uncovered six distinctive indicators of failed information epidemics in the scientific journal literature: (1) presence of seminal papers(s), (2) rapid growth/decline in author frequency, (3) multi-disciplinary research, (4) epidemic growth/decline in journal publication frequency, (5) predominance of rapid communication journal publications, and (6) increased multi-authorship. These indicators were applied to journal publication data from two known failed information epidemics, Polywater and Cold Nuclear Fusion." "Indicators of failed information epidemics in the scientific journal literature: A publication analysis of Polywater and Cold Nuclear Fusion", E. Ackermann, Scientometrics 66, 451-466 (2006) [19] | ” |
Letter exchange between
Edmund Storms, Jed Rothwell, and two editors-in-chief of Scientific American,
John Rennie and
Jonathan Piel, in 1991 and 2003 respectively
http://lenr-canr.org/AppealandSciAm.pdf |
---|
"'even though its precise physical mechanism is not fully understood at present' such characteristic is typical of another kind of event in science, one which Irving Langmuir accurately described in a classic paper in the 1950's [in reference to the paper coining the term 'pathological science'"
"As you suggested, I did look over a number of the offerings at www.lenr-canr.org. Unfortunately, I still don't see evidence in those papers, or in the mainstream physics literature, that LENR-CANR has achieved any significantly new level of credibility in the eyes of the general physics community. The site does point to a large number of publications that ostensibly offer evidence of the phenomenon, but sheer numbers of papers is not sufficiently compelling-- as I'm sure you know, even the creationists can point to thousands of "publications" and "scientists" seemingly supporting their position."
"I notice that although you called Jonathan Piel's decision 'a catastrophic misjudgment' almost a dozen [years] ago, the scientific mainstream would still side with him. Not bad as catastrophes go. (...) it does you no good to curse Scientific American because the people you need to convince about the scientific credibility of cold fusion aren't journalists. They're professional physicists who review submissions for respectable technical journals. If you can convince mainstream scientists that LENR-CANR is real and significant, magazines like Scientific American will drop into line."
"If so much of the scientific community outside the U.S. and U.K. is supportive of LENR-CANR, it hardly seems necessary for you to try so hard to enlist Scientific American to publicize your cause. It is odd, though, that although we have editions and well-respected scientific contacts all around the world, I have never heard any of them request an article making the case for the phenomenon." "(...) The editors of Scientific American were right to be skeptical about such poorly documented claims at the time [the distances covered by Wright brothers in their flights, not about whether they actually flew!], just as its editors today are right to be skeptical of mountains of cold fusion "evidence" that somehow fail to convince most physicists that the phenomenon is real and significant."
"The first one is apparently a misconception about how scientific method works. You are claiming that unless we (or, more properly, mainstream physicists) establish a technical basis for disbelieving claims of LENR-CANR, we have no basis for dismissing it. But it is not up to mainstream physicists to disprove LENR-CANR; it is up to LENR-CANR's physicists to come up with convincing proofs. The burden of evidence is on those who wish to establish a new proposition." "(...) We don't claim to be authorities on physics or any other discipline (for all that there is quite a lot of real expertise built into our staff). For that reason, the scientific points of view we choose to publish are ones that have already been vetted in the technical, peer-reviewed literature and that generally seem to represent a consensus within the scientific community. (...) " "(As for whether we're entitled to mock cold fusion...well, sorry if you disagree, but that opinion reflects the consensus of most scientists, too.)" "So it really doesn't make a difference to me if LENR-CANR advocates petition me for articles on the subject; I'll put them on the stack of similar requests from the scientific creationists, the global warming deniers the face-on-Mars people, the crypto-archaeologists, and all the others who want publicity and scientific respectability but can't make their case convincingly to the community of scientists. But I'll say this again, too: if LENR-CANR's physicists can convince the mainstream physics community that they've got a credible case and articles to that effect start appearing in major peer-reviewed journals, Scientific American would be glad to write about it."
|
(cut from section above because of topic change -- Enric Naval ( talk) 09:11, 25 March 2009 (UTC))
“ | "On the one hand, many experts say that cold fusion is dead, but on the other hand we can always find scientists who will disagree. Latour has left us with the knotty problem of figuring out how many dissenting experts it takes to keep a controversy alive." Undead Science, pag 11 [20] | ” |
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0901/0901.2411.pdf Papers on arxiv may sometimes be used, depends. See Wikipedia:Reliable_source_examples#arXiv_preprints_and_conference_abstracts
Sinha, K.P. and A. Meulenberg, A model for enhanced fusion reaction in a solid matrix of metal deuterides.
I'm putting this here because there has been some discussion of the idea that electrons may be functioning similarly to how muons function in muon-catalyzed fusion. This is a recent paper, presented at ICCF-14, the International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science, Washington, DC, 2008, uploaded to arXiv, January, 2009.
The authors claim to predict observed fusion rates and phenomena from this theory, using standard physics models.:
It is a goal of this paper to provide an understandable, standard-physics basis (under special conditions) for the extensive body of results presently available from LENR.1
It will be interesting to watch for whether or not there is any response to this from those who know those "standard physics models" and can judge if the models are accurately applied to the peculiar environment of highly loaded palladium or the like. I'm not holding my breath, but sooner or later this kind of response will be needed from those outside the narrow field. I'll say, though, that theory starts looking good when it can predict the numbers. It can then become falsifiable.-- Abd ( talk) 16:48, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
See also: http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0603213 and http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.0595v1.
Here's some News Just In: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16820-roomtemperature-fusion-in-from-the-cold.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news --The funny part is the editor of the New Energy Times being skeptical. V ( talk) 19:29, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
LSD, what are you talking about? The paper this section was started about was presented at a conference, yes, but also uploaded to arXiv, which does have standards. The arXiv acceptance is a notch above conference publication. However, this has nothing to do with the New Scientist article that V pointed to. As to skepticism, there is lots of skeptical criticism in the LENR community. I've been looking into the Arata work, and the most pointed commentary is coming from our old friend, Jed Rothwell. The basic work is probably accurate (i.e, there is indeed heat generation), Rothwell points out prior work and confirmation, but the research is frustratingly short on detail, such as calibration, which should be fairly easy with the setup they have (what steady heat dissipation in the cell does it take to maintain that temperature differential), or other important details are missing. Rothwell reads Japanese, too. -- Abd ( talk) 22:32, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
The point about Krivit being "skeptical," above, may have been missed by the author of the New Scientist piece. Krivit is really just being careful. The experimental results are a very strong indicator of a nuclear process. To pin this down as "fusion," at this point, remains unconfirmed, though if, as it looks, we are taking deuterium and getting helium out, it sure looks like fusion. The neutrons are actually occurring at quite low levels (though above background, for sure; the neutrons are spatially correlated with the cathode, and they don't get them with hydrogen in place of deuterium). There are quite a number of different hypotheses asserted for what might be going on, and some don't involve "simple" fusion reactions. But if deuterium is going in one side of the black box, and helium is coming out the other, there has been fusion, in the end. Krivit's real point is to look at the experimental evidence and don't focus on the theory that might explain them. The first thing to do is to consider the experiment. If this were not work that has already been largely confirmed, it would be one thing. What's new here is the neutrons.
The New Scientist piece, though, is head and shoulders above the rest of the media response to the ACS National Meeting. The writer seems to have actually done some research and interviewing, more than, say, calling up one skeptical physicist. He mentions controls. -- Abd ( talk) 02:49, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
http://www.livescience.com/technology/090323-cold-fusion.html
discussed above some:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7959183.stm
In fact, google search: [27]
Pretty hot for something cold, eh? -- Abd ( talk) 23:05, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
Navy scientist announces possible cold fusion reactions But evidence also could indicate another type of nuclear reaction, she cautions Houston Chronicle -- Abd ( talk) 23:07, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
ScienceDaily (Mar. 23, 2009) — Researchers are reporting compelling new scientific evidence for the existence of low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR), the process once called "cold fusion" that may promise a new source of energy. One group of scientists, for instance, describes what it terms the first clear visual evidence that LENR devices can produce neutrons, subatomic particles that scientists view as tell-tale signs that nuclear reactions are occurring. [28]
Ahem. For some time now, I've been pointing to the neutrons found by the SPAWAR group as remarkable evidence, but I haven't attempted to put it in the article because of a lack of secondary sources. Today it rained, and it poured. I do remember that science isn't run by newspapers, but .... Wikipedia sometimes is. We have reliable source here for a whole series of facts and claims that would have been difficult to put in before now, given the contentious environment and the marginal notability. Don't worry, I'm not going to rush. -- Abd ( talk) 23:14, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
Interesting thing about these reports: they are typical of media reports, even the ones in the science-related media: they show a shallow knowledge of the very research they are describing. We have been discussing the neutron findings here for months; the SPAWAR group has found plentiful ionizing radiation, probably alpha particles; the neutrons were found almost by accident, on the back side of the CR-39 chips, where arguments about dendrites causing damage to the plastic don't apply. The media reports don't show any awareness of the work, duplication of the work, criticisms of the work, etc.
Other scientists were unable to duplicate the 1989 results, thereby discrediting the work. I just don't know how they manage to keep repeating that. Apparently, if a hasty review in 1989, ignoring reproductions that did already exist, concludes that the work could not be reproduced, way over a hundred papers in peer-reviewed publications, plus many more presented to conferences, don't exist. It's truly weird. The media should ask someone who actually knows about the subject to proof their work! (They don't normally do that, it's supposed to hamper neutrality, which, I suppose, it might.) Anyway, these reports aren't valuable for the science, they are valuable for the context, the notability of the SPAWAR research and other efforts that are being reported.)
Three separate groups of researchers - including one group from the US Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Centre (SPAWAR) - are reporting "compelling" new evidence for the existence of cold fusion.
Gee, I thought so too, when they reported this stuff quite a while ago. However, there isn't a lot of confirmation yet, only some aspects have been confirmed. That is, the work is striking, and, if confirmed, compelling indeed. Some aspects of this, are really confirming prior work. Radiation and other nuclear products have been found before. I think the Italians did a lot of work in a cave, underground, to get away from cosmic ray background, detecting neutrons. The articles don't mention that neutrons are probably only an occasional product, that most of the reactions taking place apparently don't generate neutrons, but rather alpha particles and maybe heat through coupling to the lattice. And it is not over until those outside the relatively narrow body of researchers in the field -- even though there are apparently hundreds of them -- start smelling the coffee and manage to confirm. The experimental details are very important. What is really happening here, to confirm what V wrote above, is that the media is noticing: hey, wait a minute, the consensus has been for years that this field was dead, pathological science, as far as we've been told. And here comes these Navy researchers (you know, that much of fringe fanatics) with credible research results, getting increasingly difficult to just pooh-pooh. Something broke through the barriers. Now comes the real work. Mosier-Boss and others did it right. They published in a peer-reviewed journal, they didn't announce at a press conference, they didn't insist on theoretical explanations, they just said, hey, this is what we found. And what they found, if confirmed, is a smoking gun. Same is true for some of the other work, in fact, it was really only a matter of time until the veil of rejection was pierced. It's still not over, the curtain could possibly descend again if Mosier-Boss et al screwed up in some way. But they have been a very careful research group, steadily building a publication history, one step at a time. It is claimed that their approach is easily verified. So ... is it? Kowalski, pretty much an amateur, verified the heat (even though he criticized some conclusions about the "radiation") -- Abd ( talk) 03:53, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
The plot thickens. Now we know where the media is getting this news. Press release. I shoulda known! American Chemical Society press release
Many of the news articles are practically verbatim from this. Who is Michael Bernstein? -- Abd ( talk) 03:57, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
Michael Bernstein is the contact for all the ACS releases seen at [29]. Apparently he is with the ACS Office of Public Affairs.
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/acslive has clips possibly live, I'm listening now. --
Abd (
talk)
04:07, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
The Wired report is interesting. It was presented today, but the headline is March 23, 1989: Cold Fusion Gets Cold Shoulder, and it is almost entirely about the very early situation, with this tacked on at the end:
After it couldn't replicate the earlier results, the University of Utah discontinued cold-fusion research in 1991 and allowed its cold-fusion patents to lapse in 1998. Pons and Fleischmann left for for the south of France in 1992 to continue research for a Toyota subsidiary. But even Japan's government stopped funding cold-fusion research in 1997.
Nonetheless, a network of dedicated cold-fusionists still toils away in a vineyard that looks pretty barren to almost everyone else.
Nothing about yesterday's news or the recent work, beyond "network of dedicated cold-fusionists" and the barren vineyard. So why was this article put up? Beats me. It's a fascinating demonstration of bad journalism. -- Abd ( talk) 14:43, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
Arggh. Well, I've known since I was in high school that if I read a newspaper account on a topic where I had knowledge, it was almost always wrong about something, and quite often wrong about much. One day, I'd like to do something about that. It's possible, you know.
The headline. Who has the "idea of free energy"? That isn't being said at the conference. In fact, there is quite a bit of opinion among cold fusion researchers that it might never be commercially useful to the extent that "free energy" would be an appropriate term. Consider: with 7 g of palladium black and a little deuterium gas, less than a gram, I think, you could have a little capsule that will, if Arata's work is not mistaken and I'm reading it correctly, maintain, for a long time a temperature perhaps 4 degrees C above ambient. If it's insulated. While I think the math works out to more energy than you could get from any possible chemical reaction (because this is sustained) Palladium is running over $200 per ounce, so that represents roughly $50 worth of palladium. However, the price of palladium is low right now because of the recession in the auto industry, which is the main consumer of palladium for catalytic converters. It was running at about $900 per ounce at the peak. If usage of palladium on a mass scale develops, it will almost certainly rise to the former peak or higher. So $200 worth of palladium, forget the processing cost to palladium black. To get a small amount of heat. Sure, engineering may be able to greatly increase the efficiency and power output. That little cell would probably still work at temperatures boiling water, but a lot more palladium may be needed. Fleischmann said, long ago, that it would take a Manhattan-scale project to make this commercially viable. And who is going to make that kind of investment if the science is not established?
What is "making a comeback" is the science. It should have come back long ago, if the mainstream journals hadn't stuck their head in their quantum mechanics. This is a story waiting to be told here, there is plenty of reliable source on it, this is not just the claim of a small band of disgruntled crackpot graybeards. (And for those tempted to make some comment, my gruntle is in fine shape, thank you very much.)
The results were announced today at a meeting of the American Chemical Society to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the first enthusiastic – and ultimately doomed – claims for cold fusion at the University of Utah.
But wait a minute? The whole story is about the field still being alive. "Ultimately doomed?" Definitely discredited and ridiculed in the short term, but if we look at reliable source over the last five or ten years, not. This is a great example of institutional and public inertia; I've seen it happen elsewhere, I know of another major field of research where, a bit more than five years ago, the research and publication tide shifted and ideas that were considered "consensus" were challenged, in fact, they were basically demolished, but ... still, that consensus is repeated over and over in the media, as if nothing happened. Ironically, the best book on this subject was written by Gary Taubes, well-known for his debunking of Cold fusion in the nineties, in his recent book, Good Calories, Bad Calories.
As researchers rushed to harness cold fusion for themselves, it became clear there was more than a little problem. No one could get it to work. What had been touted as one of the greatest discoveries of the century fell to pieces. The field of cold fusion lost almost all of its funding and is now so tainted by the farce that scientists have been forced to rename it. It is now called "low-energy nuclear reactions".
Hmmmm. "Scientists" call the field LENR. Any implications for us? "No one could get it to work." What was never true. It took time to get it to work, it wasn't nearly as easy as the groups that rushed to attempt replication thought. It was still difficult after Fleischmann's publication. Over twenty years, methods were found that are reliably replicable, and Mosier-Boss is using one of these methods, but my guess is that it is still tricky, there are lots of ways to spoil the reaction. Still, replication rates, according to the Chinese paper I've cited above, are tending recently toward 100%. It may still turn out to be "one of the greatest discoveries of the century." Or it may turn out to be a scientific curiosity, like muon-catalyzed cold fusion. Or ... it seems unlikely now, to me, having spent the last two months reading up on this, but nothing should be ruled out in science. Maybe it's a really good example of how you can find something if you look for it, no matter whether it exists or not. On the other hand, the scientific method was designed to address this problem; but what happened with cold fusion is that the scientific method was set aside in favor of polemic and press conferences and ridicule and entrenched contempt for people who were simply doing basic experimental research and reporting the results.
The 1989 DOE report is widely cited as sounding the death knell for cold fusion, but that report never did dismiss it as "junk science," merely as "not conclusively demonstrated." It's hard to overstate the gap between those two framings of their findings.
The scientists passed an electric current through the solution and used a plastic detector to pick up neutrons being emitted from the beaker. At the end of the experiment, they found what they believe are three track marks caused by particles released as neutrons smashed into the detector. Mosier-Boss believes the neutrons were thrown out of fusion reactions in the device.
I can see the reactions. I've been reading comments in the newspapers, and this text, I'm sure, will attract this: "Three track marks, is that all? Background cosmic radiation will produce more than that!" But, of course, it's not three track marks, it is quite a number of "triple-track" marks, tracks found in a close pattern indicating a characteristic proton recoil reaction from the influence of a fast neutron. The text shows that the writer didn't have the foggiest. -- Abd ( talk) 19:41, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
The Guardian writer commented there about his writing of the piece. The comment explains his lack of depth:
I only wrote a brief piece on this SPAWAR research to flag it up to people who might be interested. My view on fringe science like this is the old cliche, that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and in my personal opinion, this work does not fulfill that criteria. If it had, I would have gone into far more detail...and I'm sure so would everyone else! Let me know though: should we just not cover this stuff? I firmly believe we should, as long as it's in an appropriate manner (i.e. a short online piece vs splashing it across the front pages). There seem to be some people who think we shouldn't cover it, but that to me seems a little miserable. Surely it's interesting the US are still funding research on this, and it's nice to at least be aware of their latest findings or non-findings...
Basically, it seems that this writer looked, like everyone else, at the press release, didn't do any deeper research but depended on his prior knowledge, isn't aware of the extent to which the SPAWAR research is just one more reasonably clear confirmation out of many, etc. But at least he recognizes that there is something worth writing about. Other sources have gone into more detail, and my guess is that there will be some pieces, after there is time to do some study, with greater depth. And, yes, someone wrote that they were not impressed by three tracks! Someone else pointed out that this was the triple track signature of neutron interaction. I'm just trying to figure out why excess heat correlated with He-4 production and neutrons and other radiation isn't "extraordinary evidence."? Sure it out to be confirmed to death, but converting that old "extraordinary claims" quotation into some kind of law that can be used to assume that nothing new can be learned unless it punches us in the nose is little short of bizarre. It's definitely not science. -- Abd ( talk) 01:35, 25 March 2009 (UTC)