How many times has the Pons-Fleischmann Anomalous Heating Event been replicated in peer reviewed journals?

The first ~100 replications came in from a veritable Who's Who of electrochemistry.

#4 Ok, I see. It's Appendix A, List 2 of Jed's tallies. 153 documented peer reviewed Excess Heat findings.

List 2. Peer-reviewed excess heat papers, from both databases 1. Agelao, G. and M.C. Romano, Heat and helium production during exothermic reactions between gases through palladium geometrical elements loaded with hydrogen. Fusion Technol., 2000. 38: p. 224. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Aoki, T., et al., Search for nuclear products of the D + D nuclear fusion. Int. J. Soc. Mat. Eng. Resources, 1998. 6(1): p. 22.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

3. Arata, Y. and Y.C. Zhang, Achievement of intense 'cold fusion' reaction. Kaku Yugo Kenkyu, 1989. 62: p. 398 (In Japanese). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 4. Arata, Y. and Y.C. Zhang, Achievement of an intense cold fusion reaction. Fusion Technol., 1990. 18: p. 95. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 5. Arata, Y. and Y.C. Zhang, Achievement of intense 'cold' fusion reaction. Proc. Jpn. Acad., Ser. B, 1990. 66: p. 1. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 6. Arata, Y. and Y.C. Zhang, Corroborating evidence for 'cold' fusion reaction. Proc. Jpn. Acad., Ser. B, 1990. 66(B): p. 110. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 7. Arata, Y. and Y.C. Zhang, 'Cold' fusion caused by a weak 'on-off effect'. Proc. Jpn. Acad., Ser. B, 1992. 66: p. 33. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 8. Arata, Y. and Y.C. Zhang, 'Cold' fusion in deuterated complex cathode. Kaku Yugo Kenkyu, 1992. 67((5)): p. 432 (in Japanese). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 9. Arata, Y. and Y.C. Zhang, Reproducible "Cold" Fusion Reaction Using A Complex Cathode. Fusion Technol., 1992. 22: p. 287. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 10. Arata, Y. and Y.C. Zhang, Excess heat in a double structure deuterated cathode. Kaku Yugo Kenkyu, 1993. 69((8)): p. 963 (in Japanese). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 11. Arata, Y. and Y.C. Zhang, A new energy caused by "Spillover-deuterium". Proc. Jpn. Acad., Ser. B, 1994. 70 ser. B: p. 106. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 12. Arata, Y. and Y.C. Zhang, A new energy generated in DS-cathode with 'Pd-black'. Koon Gakkaishi, 1994. 20(4): p. 148 (in Japanese). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 13. Arata, Y. and Y.C. Zhang, Achievement of solid-state plasma fusion ("cold fusion"). Koon Gakkaishi, 1995. 21((6)): p. 303 (in Japanese). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 14. Arata, Y. and Y.C. Zhang, Deuterium nuclear reaction process within solid. Proc. Jpn. Acad., Ser. B, 1996. 72 Ser. B: p. 179. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 15. Arata, Y. and C. Zhang, Presence of helium (4/2He, 3/2He) confirmed in highly deuterated Pd-black by the new detecting methodology. J. High Temp. Soc., 1997. 23: p. 110 (in Japanese). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 16. Arata, Y. and Y.C. Zhang, Solid-state plasma fusion ('cold fusion'). J. High Temp. Soc., 1997. 23 (special volume): p. 1-56. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 17. Arata, Y. and Y.C. Zhang, Observation of Anomalous Heat Release and Helium-4 Production from Highly Deuterated Fine Particles. Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. Part 2, 1999. 38: p. L774. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 18. Arata, Y. and Y.C. Zhang, Formation of Condensed Metallic Deuterium Lattice and Nuclear Fusion. Proc. Jpn. Acad., Ser. B, 2002. 78(Ser. B): p. 57. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 19. Arata, Y. and Y. Zhang, The Establishment of Solid Nuclear Fusion Reactor. J. High Temp. Soc., 2008. 34(2): p. 85. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 20. Babu, K.S.C., et al., On the formation of palladium deuteride and its relationship to suspected cold fusion. Adv. Hydrogen Energy, 1990. 8 Hydrogen Energy Prog. VIII, Vol. 2),: p. 1051. 19 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 21. Battaglia, A., et al., Neutron emission in Ni-H systems. Nuovo Cimento Soc. Ital. Fis. A, 1999. 112 A: p. 921. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 22. Belzner, A., et al., Two fast mixed-conductor systems: deuterium and hydrogen in palladium - thermal measurements and experimental considerations. J. Fusion Energy, 1990. 9(2): p. 219. 23. Belzner, -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A., et al., Recent results on mixed conductors containing hydrogen or deuterium. Solid State Ionics, 1990. 40/41: p. 519.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 24. Bertalot, L., et al., Study of deuterium charging in palladium by the electrolysis of heavy water: heat excess production. Nuovo Cimento Soc. Ital. Fis. A, 1993. 15 D: p. 1435.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 25. Birgul, O., et al., Electrochemically induced fusion of deuterium using surface modified palladium electrodes. J. Eng. Env. Sci., 1990. 14(3): p. 373.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 26. Brudanin, V.B., et al., Search for the cold fusion d(d,(4)He) in electrolysis of D2O. Phys. Lett. A, 1990. 151(9): p. 543.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 27. Bush, B.F., et al., Helium production during the electrolysis of D2O in cold fusion experiments. J. Electroanal. Chem., 1991. 304: p. 271.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 28. Bush, R.T., A light water excess heat reaction suggests that 'cold fusion' may be 'alkalihydrogen fusion'. Fusion Technol., 1992. 22: p. 301.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 29. Bush, R.T. and R.D. Eagleton, Evidence for Electrolytically Induced Transmutation and Radioactivity Correlated with Excess Heat in Electrolytic Cells with Light Water Rubidium Salt Electrolytes. Trans. Fusion Technol., 1994. 26(4T): p. 334.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 30. Celani, F., et al., Deuterium overloading of palladium wires by means of high power microsecond pulsed electrolysis and electromigration: suggestions of a "phase transition" and related excess heat. Phys. Lett. A, 1996. 214: p. 1.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 31. Celani, F., et al., Reproducible D/Pd ratio > 1 and excess heat correlation by 1-microsecpulse, high-current electrolysis. Fusion Technol., 1996. 29: p. 398.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 32. Dash, J., G. Noble, and D. Diman, Surface Morphology and Microcomposition of Palladium Cathodes After Electrolysis in Acified Light and Heavy Water: Correlation With Excess Heat. Trans. Fusion Technol., 1994. 26(4T): p. 299.

34. Dufour, J., et al., Interaction of palladium/hydrogen and palladium/deuterium to measure the excess energy per atom for each isotope. Fusion Technol., 1997. 31: p. 198.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 35. Fleischmann, M., S. Pons, and M. Hawkins, Electrochemically induced nuclear fusion of deuterium. J. Electroanal. Chem., 1989. 261: p. 301 and errata in Vol. 263.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 36. Fleischmann, M., et al., Calorimetry of the palladium-deuterium-heavy water system. J. Electroanal. Chem., 1990. 287: p. 293.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 37. Fleischmann, M. and S. Pons, Some comments on the paper Analysis of experiments on the calorimetry of LiOD-D2O electrochemical cells, R.H. Wilson et al., J. Electroanal. Chem. 332 [1992] 1. J. Electroanal. Chem., 1992. 332: p. 33.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 38. Fleischmann, M. and S. Pons, Calorimetry of the Pd-D2O system: from simplicity via complications to simplicity. Phys. Lett. A, 1993. 176: p. 118.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 39. Fleischmann, M. and S. Pons, Reply to the critique by Morrison entitled 'Comments on claims of excess enthalpy by Fleischmann and Pons using simple cells made to boil. Phys. Lett. A, 1994. 187: p. 276.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 40. Focardi, S., R. Habel, and F. Piantelli, Anomalous heat production in Ni-H systems. Nuovo Cimento Soc. Ital. Fis. A, 1994. 107A: p. 163. 20

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 41. Focardi, S., et al., Large excess heat production in Ni-H systems. Nuovo Cimento Soc. Ital. Fis. A, 1998. 111A: p. 1233.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 42. Gozzi, D., et al., Evidences for associated heat generation and nuclear products release in palladium heavy-water electrolysis. Nuovo Cimento Soc. Ital. Fis. A, 1990. 103: p. 143.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 43. Gozzi, D., et al., Nuclear and thermal effects during electrolytic reduction of deuterium at palladium cathode. J. Fusion Energy, 1990. 9(3): p. 241.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 44. Gozzi, D., et al., Calorimetric and nuclear byproduct measurements in electrochemical confinement of deuterium in palladium. J. Electroanal. Chem., 1995. 380: p. 91.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 45. Gozzi, D., et al., Quantitative measurements of helium-4 in the gas phase of Pd + D2O electrolysis. J. Electroanal. Chem., 1995. 380: p. 109.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 46. Gozzi, D., et al., X-ray, heat excess and 4He in the D/Pd system. J. Electroanal. Chem., 1998. 452: p. 251.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 47. Isagawa, S., Y. Kanda, and T. Suzuki, Present status of cold fusion experiment at KEK". Int. J. Soc. Mat. Eng. Resources, 1998. 65(1): p. 60.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 48. Isobe, Y., et al., Search for multibody nuclear reactions in metal deuteride induced with ion beam and electrolysis methods. Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. A, 2002. 41(part 1): p. 1546.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 49. Iwamura, Y., et al., Detection of anomalous elements, x-ray, and excess heat in a D2-Pd system and its interpretation by the electron-induced nuclear reaction model. Fusion Technol., 1998. 33: p. 476.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 50. Iyengar, P.K., et al., Bhabha Atomic Research Centre studies on cold fusion. Fusion Technol., 1990. 18: p. 32.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 51. Kainthla, R.C., et al., Eight chemical explanations of the Fleischmann-Pons effect. J. Hydrogen Energy, 1989. 14(11): p. 771.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 52. Kainthla, R.C., et al., Sporadic observation of the Fleischmann-Pons heat effect. Electrochim. Acta, 1989. 34: p. 1315.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 53. Kamada, K., H. Kinoshita, and H. Takahashi, Anomalous heat evolution of deuteriumimplanted Al upon electron bombardment. Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. A, 1996. 35: p. 738.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 54. Kamada, K., Heating of deuteron implanted Al on electron bombardment and its possible relation to 'cold fusion' experiment. Fusion Eng. Des., 2001. 55: p. 541.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 55. Karabut, A.B., Y.R. Kucherov, and I.B. Savvatimova. Cold Fusion Observation at GasDischarge Device Cathode. in Anniversary Specialist Conf. on Nucl. Power Eng. in Space. 1990. Obninsk, Russia.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 56. Karabut, A.B., Y.R. Kucherov, and I.B. Savvatimova, Nuclear reactions at the cathode in a gas discharge. Sov. Tech. Phys. Lett., 1990. 16(6): p. 463.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 57. Karabut, A.B., Y.R. Kucherov, and I.B. Savvatimova, The investigation of deuterium nuclei fusion at glow discharge cathode. Fusion Technol., 1991. 20: p. 924.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 58. Kirkinskii, V.A., V.A. Drebushchak, and A.I. Khmelnikov, Excess heat release during deuterium sorption-desorption by finely powdered palladium deuteride. Europhys. Lett., 2002. 58: p. 462.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 59. Kunimatsu, K., Current status of room-temperature nuclear fusion. Excess heat measurement. Petrotech. (Tokyo), 1994. 17(12): p. 998 (in Japanese).

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 60. Kunimatsu, K., Surface modification of the cathode in the study of cold fusion. Hyomen Gijutsu, 1996. 47(3): p. 218 (in Japanese).

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 61. Lewis, D. and K. Sk'ld, A phenomenological study of the Fleischmann-Pons effect. J. Electroanal. Chem., 1990. 294: p. 275. 21

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 62. Lewis, D., Some regularities and coincidences in thermal, electrochemical and radiation phenomena observed in experiments at Studsvik on the Fleischmann-Pons effect. J. Electroanal. Chem., 1991. 316: p. 353.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 63. Li, X.Z., A new approach towards nuclear fusion without strong nuclear radiation. Nucl. Fusion Plasma Phys., 1996. 16(2): p. 1 (in Chinese).

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 64. Li, X.Z., et al., Correlation between abnormal deuterium flux and heat flow in a D/Pd system. J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys., 2003. 36: p. 3095-3097.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 65. Liaw, B.Y., et al., Elevated-temperature excess heat production in a Pd + D system. J. Electroanal. Chem., 1991. 319: p. 161. 66. Liaw, B.Y., P.L. Tao, and B.E. Liebert, Helium analysis of palladium electrodes after molten salt electrolysis. Fusion Technol., 1993. 23: p. 92.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 68. Lipson, A.G., et al., Generation of the products of DD nuclear fusion in high-temperature superconductors YBa2Cu3O7-deltaDy near the superconducting phase transition. Tech. Phys., 1995. 40: p. 839.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 69. Lipson, A.G., et al., The nature of excess energy liberated in a Pd/PdO heterostructure electrochemically saturated with hydrogen (deuterium). Russ. J. Phys. Chem., 1995. 69: p. 1810.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 70. Lyakhov, B.F., et al., Anomalous heat release in the Pd/PdO system electrolytically saturated with hydrogen. Russ. J. Phys. Chem., 1993. 67: p. 491.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 71. Mathews, C.K., et al., On the possibility of nuclear fusion by the electrolysis of heavy water. Indian J. Technol., 1989. 27: p. 229.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 72. McKubre, M.C.H., et al., Isothermal Flow Calorimetric Investigations of the D/Pd and H/Pd Systems. J. Electroanal. Chem., 1994. 368: p. 55.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 73. Mengoli, G., et al., Absorption-desorption of deuterium at Pd95%-Rh5% alloy. I: Environment and temperature effects. J. Electroanal. Chem., 1995. 390: p. 135.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 74. Mengoli, G., et al., Anomalous heat effects correlated with electrochemical hydriding of nickel. Nuovo Cimento Soc. Ital. Fis. A, 1998. 20 D: p. 331.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 75. Mengoli, G., et al., Calorimetry close to the boiling temperature of the D2O/Pd electrolytic system. J. Electroanal. Chem., 1998. 444: p. 155.

76. Miao, B., Experimental exploration on the possible mechanism of D-D cold fusion in titanium lattice. Xibei Shifan Xuebao. Ziran Kexueban, 1994. 30(1): p. 39 (in Chinese).

77. Miao, B., Experimental exploration on possible mechanism of D-D cold fusion in titanium lattice. Xibei Shifan Daxue Xuebao, Ziran Kexueban, 1994. 30: p. 44 (in Chinese).

78. Miles, M., K.H. Park, and D.E. Stilwell, Electrochemical calorimetric evidence for cold fusion in the palladium-deuterium system. J. Electroanal. Chem., 1990. 296: p. 241.

79. Miles, M., et al. Heat and Helium Production in Cold Fusion Experiments. in Second Annual Conference on Cold Fusion, "The Science of Cold Fusion". 1991. Como, Italy: Societa Italiana di Fisica, Bologna, Italy.

80. Miles, M., et al., Correlation of excess power and helium production during D2O and H2O electrolysis using palladium cathodes. J. Electroanal. Chem., 1993. 346: p. 99.

81. Miles, M., B.F. Bush, and J.J. Lagowski, Anomalous effects involving excess power, radiation, and helium production during D2O electrolysis using palladium cathodes. Fusion Technol., 1994. 25: p. 478. 22

82. Miles, M., B.F. Bush, and D.E. Stilwell, Calorimetric principles and problems in measurements of excess power during Pd-D2O electrolysis. J. Phys. Chem., 1994. 98: p. 1948.

83. Miles, M. and B.F. Bush, Heat and Helium Measurements in Deuterated Palladium. Trans. Fusion Technol., 1994. 26(4T): p. 156.

84. Miles, M. and B.F. Bush, Heat and Helium Measurements in Deuterated Palladium. Trans. Fusion Technol., 1994. 26(4T): p. 156.

85. Miles, M., Reply to 'An assessment of claims of excess heat in cold fusion calorimetry'. J. Phys. Chem. B, 1998. 102: p. 3648.

86. Miles, M., Reply to 'Examination of claims of Miles et al. in Pons-Fleischmann-type cold fusion experiments'. J. Phys. Chem. B, 1998. 102: p. 3642.

87. Miles, M., Calorimetric studies of Pd/D2O+LiOD electrolysis cells. J. Electroanal. Chem., 2000. 482: p. 56.

88. Miles, M., M.A. Imam, and M. Fleischmann, Calorimetric analysis of a heavy water electrolysis experiment using a Pd-B alloy cathode. Proc. Electrochem. Soc., 2001. 2001-23: p. 194.

89. Miles, M., M.A. Imam, and M. Fleischmann, Calorimetric analysis of a heavy water electrolysis experiment using a Pd-B alloy cathode. Proc. Electrochem. Soc., 2001. 2001-23: p. 194.

90. Miley, G.H., et al., Electrolytic Cell with Multilayer Thin-Film Electrodes. Trans. Fusion Technol., 1994. 26(4T): p. 313.

91. Mills, R.L. and P. Kneizys, Excess heat production by the electrolysis of an aqueous potassium carbonate electrolyte and the implications for cold fusion. Fusion Technol., 1991. 20: p. 65.

92. Mills, R.L., Reply to 'Comments on "Excess heat production by the electrolysis of an aqueous potassium carbonate electrolyte and the implications for cold fusion"'. Fusion Technol., 1992. 21: p. 96.

93. Mizuno, T., et al., Anomalous heat evolution from a solid-state electrolyte under alternating current in high-temperature D2 gas. Fusion Technol., 1996. 29: p. 385.

94. Mizuno, T., et al., Production of Heat During Plasma Electrolysis. Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. A, 2000. 39: p. 6055.

95. Mizuno, T., et al., Hydrogen Evolution by Plasma Electrolysis in Aqueous Solution. Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. A, 2005. 44(1A): p. 396-401.

96. Mosier-Boss, P.A. and S. Szpak, The Pd/(n)H system: transport processes and development of thermal instabilities. Nuovo Cimento Soc. Ital. Fis. A, 1999. 112: p. 577.

97. Nakamura, K., T. Kawase, and I. Ogura, Possibility of element transmutation by arcing in water. Kinki Daigaku Genshiryoku Kenkyusho Nenpo, 1996. 33: p. 25 (in Japanese).

98. Noninski, V.C. and C.I. Noninski, Determination of the excess energy obtained during the electrolysis of heavy water. Fusion Technol., 1991. 19: p. 364.

99. Noninski, V.C., Excess heat during the electrolysis of a light water solution of K2CO3 with a nickel cathode. Fusion Technol., 1992. 21: p. 163.

100. Notoya, R., Cold fusion by electrolysis in a light water-potassium carbonate solution with a nickel electrode. Fusion Technol., 1993. 24: p. 202.

101. Notoya, R., Y. Noya, and T. Ohnishi, Tritium generation and large excess heat evolution by electrolysis in light and heavy water-potassium carbonate solutions with nickel electrodes. Fusion Technol., 1994. 26: p. 179. 23

102. Numata, H. and M. Fukuhara, Low-temperature elastic anomalies and heat generation of deuterated palladium. Fusion Technol., 1997. 31: p. 300.

103. Ohmori, T. and M. Enyo, Excess heat evolution during electrolysis of H2O with nickel, gold, silver, and tin cathodes. Fusion Technol., 1993. 24: p. 293.

104. Ohmori, T. and T. Mizuno, Nuclear transmutation occurring in the electrolysis on several metal electrodes. Curr. Topics Electrochem., 1997. 5: p. 37.

105. Ohmori, T., et al., Transmutation in the electrolysis of lightwater - excess energy and iron production in a gold electrode. Fusion Technol., 1997. 31: p. 210.

106. Ohmori, T., et al., Transmutation in a gold-light water electrolysis system. Fusion Technol., 1998. 33: p. 367.

107. Okamoto, M., et al., Excess Heat Generation, Voltage Deviation, and Neutron Emission in D2O-LiOD Systems. Trans. Fusion Technol., 1994. 26(4T): p. 176.

108. Okamoto, M., et al., Excess Heat Generation, Voltage Deviation, and Neutron Emission in D2O-LiOD Systems. Trans. Fusion Technol., 1994. 26(4T): p. 176.

109. Oriani, R.A., et al., Calorimetric measurements of excess power output during the cathodic charging of deuterium into palladium. Fusion Technol., 1990. 18: p. 652.

110. Oriani, R.A., An investigation of anomalous thermal power generation from a protonconducting oxide. Fusion Technol., 1996. 30: p. 281.

111. Ota, K., H. Yoshitake, and N. Kamiya, Present status of cold fusion. Hyomen Kagaku, 1993. 14(9): p. 570 (in Japanese).

112. Ota, K. and T. Kobayashi, Cold fusion and calorimetry. Netsu Sokutei, 1997. 24(3): p. 138 (Japan., Engl. abstr.).

113. Ota, K., et al., Effect of boron for the heat production during the heavy water electrolysis using palladium cathode. Int. J. Soc. Mat. Eng. Resources, 1998. 6(1): p. 26.

114. Oyama, N., et al., Electrochemical calorimetry of D2O electrolysis using a palladium cathode - an undivided, open cell system -. Bull. Chem. Soc. Japan, 1990. 63: p. 2659.

115. Oyama, N., et al., Probing absorption of deuterium into palladium cathodes during D2O electrolysis with an in situ electrochemical microbalance technique. Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. Part 2, 1990. 29(5): p. L818.

116. Oyama, N. and O. Hatozaki, Present and future of cold fusion - nuclear fusion induced by electrochemical reaction. Oyo Butsuri, 1991. 60: p. 220 (in Japanese).

117. Pons, S. and M. Fleischmann, Calorimetric measurements of the palladium/deuterium system: fact and fiction. Fusion Technol., 1990. 17: p. 669.

118. Pons, S. and M. Fleischmann, Etalonnage du systeme Pd-D2O: effets de protocole et feed-back positif. ["Calibration of the Pd-D2O system: protocol and positive feed-back effects"]. J. Chim. Phys., 1996. 93: p. 711 (in French).

119. Preparata, G., M. Scorletti, and M. Verpelli, Isoperibolic calorimetry on modified Fleischmann-Pons cells. J. Electroanal. Chem., 1996. 411: p. 9.

120. Ray, M.K.S., et al., The Fleischmann-Pons phenomenon - a different perspective. Fusion Technol., 1992. 22: p. 395.

121. Santhanam, K.S.V., et al., Electrochemically initiated cold fusion of deuterium. Indian J. Technol., 1989. 27: p. 175.

122. Santhanam, K.S.V., et al., Excess enthalpy during electrolysis of D2O. Curr. Sci., 1989. 58: p. 1139.

123. Savvatimova, I. and A.B. Karabut, Nuclear reaction products detected at the cathode after a glow discharge in deuterium. Poverkhnost, 1996(1): p. 63 (in Russian). 24

124. Savvatimova, I. and A.B. Karabut, Radioactivity of palladium cathodes after irradiation in a glow discharge. Poverkhnost, 1996(1): p. 76 (in Russian).

125. Scott, C.D., et al., Measurement of excess heat and apparent coincident increases in the neutron and gamma-ray count rates during the electrolysis of heavy water. Fusion Technol., 1990. 18: p. 103.

126. Scott, C.D., et al., Preliminary Investigation of Possible Low-Temperature Fusion. J. Fusion Energy, 1990. 9(2): p. 115.

127. Shirai, O., et al., Some experimental results relating to cold nuclear fusion. Bull. Inst. Chem. Res., Kyoto Univ., 1991. 69: p. 550.

128. Srinivasan, M., Nuclear fusion in an atomic lattice: An update on the international status of cold fusion research. Curr. Sci., 1991. 60: p. 417.

129. Storms, E., Measurements of excess heat from a Pons-Fleischmann-type electrolytic cell using palladium sheet. Fusion Technol., 1993. 23: p. 230.

130. Storms, E., Some Characteristics of Heat Production Using the "Cold Fusion" Effect. Trans. Fusion Technol., 1994. 26(4T): p. 96.

131. Storms, E., How to produce the Pons-Fleischmann effect. Fusion Technol., 1996. 29: p. 261.

132. Swartz, M.R., Codeposition of palladium and deuterium. Fusion Technol., 1997. 32: p. 126.

133. Swartz, M.R., Consistency of the biphasic nature of excess enthalpy in solid-state anomalous phenomena with the quasi-one-dimensional model of isotope loading into a material. Fusion Technol., 1997. 31: p. 63.

134. Szpak, S., et al., Electrochemical charging of Pd rods. J. Electroanal. Chem., 1991. 309: p. 273.

135. Szpak, S., P.A. Mosier-Boss, and J.J. Smith, On the behavior of Pd deposited in the presence of evolving deuterium. J. Electroanal. Chem., 1991. 302: p. 255.

136. Szpak, S., P.A. Mosier-Boss, and S.R. Scharber, Charging of the Pd/(n)H system: role of the interphase. J. Electroanal. Chem., 1992. 337: p. 147.

137. Szpak, S., et al., Cyclic voltammetry of Pd + D codeposition. J. Electroanal. Chem., 1995. 380: p. 1.

138. Szpak, S. and P.A. Mosier-Boss, Nuclear and Thermal Events Associated with Pd + D Codeposition. J. New Energy, 1996. 1(3): p. 54.

139. Szpak, S. and P.A. Mosier-Boss, On the behavior of the cathodically polarized Pd/D system: a response to Vigier's comments. Phys. Lett. A, 1996. 221: p. 141.

140. Szpak, S., P.A. Mosier-Boss, and J.J. Smith, On the behavior of the cathodically polarized Pd/D system: Search for emanating radiation. Phys. Lett. A, 1996. 210: p. 382.

141. Szpak, S., et al., On the behavior of the Pd/D system: Evidence for tritium production. Fusion Technol., 1998. 33: p. 38.

142. Szpak, S. and P.A. Mosier-Boss, On the release of n/1H from cathodically polarized palladium electrodes. Fusion Technol., 1998. 34: p. 273.

143. Szpak, S., P.A. Mosier-Boss, and M. Miles, Calorimetry of the Pd+D codeposition. Fusion Technol., 1999. 36: p. 234.

144. Szpak, S., et al., Thermal behavior of polarized Pd/D electrodes prepared by codeposition. Thermochim. Acta, 2004. 410: p. 101.

145. Szpak, S., et al., Evidence of nuclear reactions in the Pd lattice. Naturwiss., 2005. 92(8): p. 394-397. 25

146. Takahashi, A., et al., Excess heat and nuclear products by D2O/Pd electrolysis and multibody fusion. Int. J. Appl. Electromagn. Mater., 1992. 3: p. 221.

147. Takahashi, A., Cold fusion research: present status. Koon Gakkaishi, 1993. 19(5): p. 179 (in Japanese).

148. Takahashi, A., Production of neutron, tritium and excess heat. Oyo Butsuri, 1993. 62: p. 707 (In Japanese).

149. Takahashi, A., et al., Experimental study on correlation between excess heat and nuclear products by D2O/Pd electrolysis. Int. J. Soc. Mat. Eng. Resources, 1998. 6(1): p. 4.

150. Velev, O.A. and R.C. Kainthla, Heat flow calorimeter with a personal-computer-based data acquisition system. Fusion Technol., 1990. 18: p. 351.

151. Yun, K.S., et al., Calorimetric observation of heat production during electrolysis of 0.1 M LiOD + D2O solution. J. Electroanal. Chem., 1991. 306: p. 279.

152. Zhang, Q., et al., The excess heat experiments on cold fusion in titanium lattice. Chin. J.

#5 and for those , not just failing to reproduce, but proposing an explanation in an article that was published (some got published in surprising way, and some were not retracted in surprising way), 4 articles. Kirk Shanahan battle to make the 5th published.

Quote from Charles Beaudette Unfortunately, physicists did not generally claim expertise in calorimetry, the measurement of calories of heat energy. Nor did they countenance clever chemists declaring hypotheses about nuclear physics. Their outspoken commentary largely ignored the heat measurements along with the offer of an hypothesis about unknown nuclear processes. They did not acquaint themselves with the laboratory procedures that produced anomalous heat data. These attitudes held firm throughout the first decade, causing a sustained controversy.

The upshot of this conflict was that the scientific community failed to give anomalous heat the evaluation that was its due. Scientists of orthodox views, in the first six years of this episode, produced only four critical reviews of the two chemists’ calorimetry work. The first report came in 1989 (N. S. Lewis). It dismissed the Utah claim for anomalous power on grounds of faulty laboratory technique. A second review was produced in 1991 (W. N. Hansen) that strongly supported the claim. It was based on an independent analysis of cell data that was provided by the two chemists. An extensive review completed in 1992 (R. H. Wilson) was highly critical though not conclusive. But it did recognize the existence of anomalous power, which carried the implication that the Lewis dismissal was mistaken. A fourth review was produced in 1994 (D. R. O. Morrison) which was itself unsatisfactory. It was rebutted strongly to the point of dismissal and correctly in my view. No defense was offered against the rebuttal. During those first six years, the community of orthodox scientists produced no report of a flaw in the heat measurements that was subsequently sustained by other reports.

The community of scientists at large never saw or knew about this minimalist critique of the claim. It was buried in the avalanche of skepticism that issued forth in the first three months. This skepticism was buttressed by the failure of the two chemists’ nuclear measurements, the lack of a theoretical understanding of how their claim could work, a mistaken concern with the number of failed experiments, a wholly unrealistic expectation of the time and resource the evaluation would need, and the substantial ad hominem attacks on them. However, their original claim of measurement of the anomalous power remained unscathed during all of this furor. A decade later, it was not generally realized that this claim remained essentially unevaluated by the scientific community. Confusion necessarily arose when the skeptics refused without argument to recognize the heat measurement and its corresponding hypothesis of a nuclear source. As a consequence, the story of the excess heat phenomenon has never been told.

Few people realize how weak is the consensus. Consensus exploit mostly failures by people whose competence don't apply (physicists) to the experiment. They exploit failures in a reverted Poperian logic. They ignore refutation of proposed explanation. They ignore the weak number and weak quality of the refutations. They ignore reference experimenters who confirmed the results. They ignore well known problems experience daily in material science.

In a way for someone experience in history of science, in epistemology, in semi-conductors, they are incredibly naive and uneducated, and incredibly tolerant with incompetence and fraud when on their side.

In fact the fallacy at the core of LENR denial is the reverted poperian logic, that things cannot happen if they have no theory. If you get that fallacy as true, then LENR was falsified because every theory was refuted, theory that it was easy , that just electrolysis was enough, that it was hot fusion in a jar, and all pet theories, This reverted logic is core to today's pathology of science, who prefer unproven coherent theories, refuted numerical models, unrefutable infinitely tunable models, to uncertain experimental results and unexplained anomalies. We are back at a dogmatic age. Sincerely, Galileo was more respected scientifically than today's experimenters without (official) theory, and got home-arrested only for having insulted the Pope (who did not let his executors burn him)... Today, not only science is politicized, but even when not politic, there is dogma you cannot challenge even with data.

Even LENR community suffer from that fallacy with pet theory meditations more popular than old experimenters intuitions.

Alan Smith Administrator Reactions Received 12,941 Jun 15th 2017

#7 Hi Kirk. Thank you for your posts, which are appreciated, even when not agreed with. Can I ask a broader question - do you believe in the reality of any of the hundreds of reported LENR phenomena at all? Not just Pd/D, but any?

kirkshanahan Member Reactions Received 543 Jun 15th 2017

Quote from Alan Smith do you believe in the reality of any of the hundreds of reported LENR phenomena at all? Not just Pd/D, but any?

The problem with answering your question is that the field has become so inclusive of anomalous results that a 'reported LENR phenomena' could be anything. So let me answer you this way - I do not automatically reject LENR claims, but I am very skeptical. This is based on my interaction with the field since 1995. I usually find LTA efforts to define what could be causing the anomalous results, and I usually find aggressively dismissive consideration of skeptical commentary.

As I've said before, I work with almost all the materials people talk about in the LENR field, and if LENR is true, I need to know. It involves my and my coworkers safety. That's why I studied the F&P-type studies. There was enough crude reproduction of results to suggest something real was going on, and I wanted to know what it might be. I believe I figured it out, but it ain't nuclear, and that has led to mass rejection out-of-hand of my views by those who think it is. That's fine I guess. I just hate it when a newb gets caught up in the fantasy of an free energy world, *and* I am dumb enough to believe scientists try to find the truth, so I keep plugging away. My interactions with the field have gone a long way towards disabusing me of the latter belief in fact.

Bring me something that shows at least a little reproducibility and I'll look at it...

Alan Smith Administrator Reactions Received 12,941 Jun 15th 2017

#9 So 'not really' then. Or at least, 'ain't seen nuthin yet'. Thank you.

------------------------------------------------------------

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member Reactions Received 846 Jun 16th 2017

#11

Quote from kirkshanahan I believe I figured it out, but it ain't nuclear, ....

Bring me something that shows at least a little reproducibility and I'll look at it... There are 153 published peer reviewed replications according to Britz/Jed. It's a good place to start. If you have it figured out then generate a product for us to buy. Even if it is a space heater that is more expensive than using natural gas, it will provoke the next generation to look into it to see if improvements can be made. That seems like such a high duhh factor to me.

THHuxleynew Verified User Reactions Received 4,707 Jun 16th 2017

#12

Quote from kevmolenr@gmail.com There are 153 published peer reviewed replications according to Britz/Jed. It's a good place to start. If you have it figured out then generate a product for us to buy. Even if it is a space heater that is more expensive than using natural gas, it will provoke the next generation to look into it to see if improvements can be made. That seems like such a high duhh factor to me.

Kevin. Kirk's point I believe is that those replications have not proved repeatable and (Kirk claims) many (and the most promising ones) could likely result from a systemic error he has noted that could apply specifically to LENR-type electrochemistry.

I think you can get the wrong idea here if you see a scientific paper as fact from heaven, rather than as a thing to read, read around all the related work, and only then come to a conclusion as to what it really means. Young doctoral candidates, on their initial literature survey, start with the idea that the headline results in each paper they read mean what they superficially say. Each paper appears to be making some crucial and significant new discovery.

It is only after reading 50 or so, and comparing what they say with your own understanding, that you start to generate an internal model of what it all means.

You should view this 150 paper list as a starting point for your own LS here. After having done it you will be in a much better position to decide whether Kirk's point is valid or no, and also (independently) whether this constitutes good evidence of new physics.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member Reactions Received 846 Jun 17th 2017

#16

Quote from THHuxleynew Kevin. Kirk's point I believe is that those replications have not proved repeatable and (Kirk claims) many (and the most promising ones) could likely result from a systemic error he has noted that could apply specifically to LENR-type electrochemistry.

That's 153 replications he's trying to undo. That's quite the tall order. I doubt his finding is significant enough to do it, or otherwise we would have been hearing more about it these last 15 years.

I think you can get the wrong idea here if you see a scientific paper as fact from heaven, Do you see Dolly the Sheep as a "fact from heaven"? It's never been replicated. Lots of "facts from heaven" have had only 2 or 3 replications. 153 replications, well that's significant, especially if they're from what Jed calls the "who's who of electrochemistry".

It is only after reading 50 or so, and comparing what they say with your own understanding, that you start to generate an internal model of what it all means. Not all of us are PhD scientists with the time on our hadns to read 50 replication papers, even if we did spend time trying to get access to them. Did you see my question about "where are those papers"?

You should view this 150 paper list as a starting point for your own LS here. What is an LS? You obviously used an acronym in order to save time and effort, and yet here you are going to have to go back and explain it. Not a very efficient usage of your time.

After having done it you will be in a much better position to decide whether Kirk's point is valid or no, and also (independently) whether this constitutes good evidence of new physics. Kirk wrote 1 paper, right? And yet there are 153 papers that seem to disagree with his stance. Perhaps Kirk should prove how brilliant he is and write his own retort to those 153 papers. There are other papers too, ones that aren't peer reviewed, etc. Kirk should have been a busy man these past 15 years but instead he wants guys like us to do his busywork.

You see the problem here; few (certainly not me) have the patience or time to do this for real. Skimming headlines just does not work - as I can confirm here from having looked at just a very few of these papers. But if you have ever done a scientific or engineering LS you will realise this because it is a general truth. I obviously haven't done enough engineering LS's to know what the acronym stands for. My impression from reading a bunch of the papers in LENR-CANR library (and asking for more) is that Kirk's hypothesis doesn't stand up. It was basically ignored, as far as I can tell. That makes him not too bright, because if he has the SOLUTION to this LENR thing, he could have generated tons of data, material, money, and interest by selling chemically based space heaters. I would buy one, just to be able to play with it. Display Less

Rigel Member Reactions Received 332 Jun 17th 2017

#17 kirkshanahan Thank you for the link above. It will take time but I will read it. I am glad you post here. I also appreciate your help when questions arise. Other than Rossi I try to keep my ego out of it and just the facts. Others argue to argue but I argue to learn.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member Reactions Received 846 Jun 17th 2017

#18

Quote from kirkshanahan keV

none of the other 148 papers is likely to have enough information on their method to tell if their calorimetry is correct or not because they weren’t aware of the problem. Then you should write a paper that replicates their setups and induce the error you claim is happening. In the meantime you could be making a MINT selling LENR calorimetric space heaters.

One of the 5 post-2002 papers is the one by Szpak, et al (ref#144) that I replied to with my second publication in 2005. There I showed that their results were consistent with a CCS being present. You should do it with dozens more. Start with the biggest names on the list. Make a name for yourself.

Since the reception I have received from the CF community has been universally negative, I feel safe in saying that you won’t find any studies to date that contain enough information relevant to the calorimetric method to evaluate the CCS potential. I’d love to be proven wrong on that statement. I am certain that the journal NATURE would accept your paper and peer review it if you took on all the best replications of LENR and showed your CCS thingamajig explains the data. I have no idea how scientists of such magnitude can be so far off when they're looking at a device generating a COP of 10 or more. In my mind there should be some glaring indications of their mistake.

Further, there is a classic problem present in the list, namely the mixing of experimental types, many are not even based in calorimetry. Here is where you can add some value to the field, regardless if someone is a LENR 'believer' or not. You can put together a credible list of how many times the Pons-Fleischmann Anomalous Heating Event has been replicated in peer reviewed journals. That is the starting point of investigation and you're saying that even this starting point is flawed. Add some value, whydoncha?

For example, my papers deal specifically with F&P-type electrolysis cells, but this list mixes those in with plasma discharge experiments and arcs in water experiments and possibly others. That is kinda one indication that this effect is real, if it shows up in other experimental cells than just PdD calorimeters. I gather your hypothesis of error does not apply to the other mixed cells.

That is a typical CFer (cold fusion researcher or cold fusion engineer (the last as per Gene Mallove)) illegitimate tactic. The idea that LENRs are present is about the only thing that links these divergent experimental setups, and they shouldn’t be linked like this until they are actually shown separately to have LENRs present. That has not been done. That is valuable scientific data that you should publish to the community as a whole. If I had the knowledge and wherewithal, that's what I would be doing. There is gonna be some hungry physicist who's itching to take a crack at those other cells and come up with his own error hypothesis.

The calorimetric experiments in F&P-type cells is the largest block of related experiments, and that is what my papers address. I point out that in all cases known to me the calorimetric method used the lumped parameter approach that is susceptible to the calibration constant shift (CCS) problem I outline in my papers. Would it be something you could state categorically that the larger the COP, the larger the error and the more expectation we should have had of these experimenters to see their error?

It is usually impossible to tell if that problem is relevant, since the CFer authors never give sufficient calibration details and results to allow testing its relevance. Then, do it. Make a name for yourself. Be the go-to guy for generating a scientific baseline in LENR explorations.

Miles is about the only author who does anything along these lines in that he often quotes the standard deviation of his determinations of the ‘heat transfer coefficients’ (which are just the calibration constants of his calibration equation). They typically are about 1% relative standard deviations. I found approximately the same was all that was required to zero out Ed Storms’ 780 mW excess heat signals in his data I reanalyzed. In Storms’ ICCF8 paper on that data, he shows calibration constants obtained by two methods, electrolytic heating and Joule heating, and they differ. He also says he gets different electrolytic calibration results over time, which is consistent with Miles. What does that mean? If you derive a calibration constant by two different methods, how far out of agreement are they expected to be? Or are they expected to be within 6 sigma agreement (which I would highly doubt). If someone gets different electrolytic calibration results over time, does this happen when there is no indication of LENR? If so it could be one of those indications that LENR might be present, assuming there's other indications. Maybe all of this leads to an issue with electrolytic calibration constants, which could be something that gets you nobel prize level recognition.

So, to eliminate the CCS problem from consideration, a paper should list the calibration equation and specify the variation of the calibration constants over time and/or method and/or anything else that might be relevant. You came out with your hypothesis after all those papers so the onus should be on you to back-apply your approach.

This is universally missing to my knowledge. If they don’t give that info, you can’t tell if their excess heat signals are real or an artifact of the math.

It's your theory so you should take ownership of it. Back-apply your hypothesis to a few of the best replications and someone will take notice. Display Less

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member Reactions Received 846 Jun 17th 2017

#19

Quote from kirkshanahan keV

Note that I agree that there is something going on in F&P cells. I agree. And furthermore I have advocated NOT calling it 'Nuclear' but more like something along the lines of "super-chemical heat generation". That way you can sell boxes and not have the NRC regulate your business.

I proposed a non-nuclear mechanism for what it could be. That has been was attacked by Storms in 2006, but I rebutted his points. The Szpak, et al derogatory comments were non-specific or irrelevant, as were the ones in the Fleischmann version published by Miles in Infinite Energy vol. 132 (2017). I responded to Szpak, et al in 2005, and posted a few comments here about the recent Miles IE132 publication. The upshot is that they don’t rebut my ATER/CCS mechanism. Then set up your own website where you take down every replication using your mechanism. And sell space heaters & electrocalorimeters. There's thousand dollar bills on the ground, just pick them up.

The other 4 post-2002 papers are Ararta, ref 19; Li, ref 64; Mizuno, ref 95; and Szpak, ref 145. The Arata paper is on the Pd/ZrO2 system, which was replicated by Kitamura, et al, in Phys Lett A, 373 (2009) 3109. That paper was one I attempted to rebut, since it had enough details presented to be able to analyze them, but was not allowed to publish. The manuscript for that rebuttal is in the whitepaper I have previously mentioned. (The whitepaper is supposed to be here: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B3d7yWtb1doPc3otVGFUNDZKUDQ)

You really should set up your own website and have at it with all those replication papers. You'd be doing yourself and everyone else a favor. And you could have a bunch of cash in your pocket also.

My thesis there is that the observations are consistent with known Pd/Zr/ZrO2/H2 chemistry. That would apply to Arata’s paper as well, if enough information had been presented to do so. The Li, et al paper is on D2 permeation through a Pd tube and gives nothing but a single figure claiming abnormal heat flow observation. No details at all to allow one to assess errors, plus it isn’t an F&P-type electrolysis.

Just focus on F&P type electrolysis to begin with and you'll make a name for yourself. The level of heat all these experimentalists claim over months is enough to give you the Nobel prize if you sell just half a dozen space heaters that replicate their results.

The Mizuno paper is on plasma electrolysis with a W cathode, also not an F&P type cell. The Szpak 2005 paper seems to have no information in it regarding excess heat except a mention of ‘hot spots’, so I fail to see why it is on the list at all. It only presents SEM/EDX data.

Set up a website and critique ALL of them. My interest is in generating a trustworthy starting point for further investigation. If, like you say, there's something to this effect, then give us the list of genuine results. And especially, how not to make your CSS error. Display Less

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member Reactions Received 846 Jun 17th 2017

#20

Quote from kirkshanahan An interesting side note from the discussion we had (email) was that Miles admitted he has never read my papers. I have to wonder how he can know they are ‘wrong’ when he hasn’t. Interestingly enough, I believe it was hyper-critical Jones who said the same thing about LENR papers.

I would encourage you to collect all these incidents and papers into one website where people can go to get their own information. I had my own run-in with Ed Storms. What I would like to see is a relatively lightly refereed forum where guys like you and Ed go at it and we can all see for ourselves who gives the most scientific answers. I suggested the same thing to Ed when he was badmouthing Y.E. Kim but it was Kim who backed away from engaging, to my surprise.

Alan Smith
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#21

Quote from kevmolenr@gmail.com
What I would like to see is a relatively lightly refereed forum where guys like you and Ed go at it and we can all see for ourselves who gives the most scientific answers

The fallacy in this otherwise excellent suggestion is the ‘relatively lightly refereed’ part. As soon as anybody who is clearly identifiable as part of the ‘old guard’ starts posting publicly the abuse begins. Jed has suffered such abuse for years- but he is a feisty beggar and can look after himself. Don’t hold your breath waiting for many others to join such an argument- they have done it a hundred times before without any result.

I think there is a huge tendency to spend far too much time and energy picking over the 28 year old bones of Pons and Fleischman’s work to the huge detriment of current work in the field. it’s 2017, time to wake up and smell the coffee instead of bickering over theory . Pd-D has been a great experimental tool, for sure - but it will never sort out the problems we currently face - and neither will hot fusion. What the field needs is a concerted effort to do what Rossi has done (or attempted - for the purposes of this discussion it is irrelevant). Cute experiments are all very well, but they butter no toast. Someone with the resources and the intellectual wherewithal needs to pick up the LENR ball and run with it. The money can be found, the arguments overcome, the legacy systems (the grid for example) protected for long enough for present investors to exit gracefully. There are billions of dollars to be lost, but trillions to be gained.

End of rant. Alan

Zephir_AWT
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#22

Quote
Pd-D has been a great experimental tool, for sure - but it will never sort out the problems we currently face - and neither will hot fusion

Yep, due to high price of palladium this reaction cannot serve as an economically feasible source of energy by now. But the modern scientists don’t care if something is usefull or not until their money are going and from the same reason they also don’t research anything, until they’re not perfectly sure by its reproducibility (so that they can see the perspective of future grants) . From this perspective the palladium-deuterium fusion is still one of model examples worth of renewal of interest about cold fusion in mainstream physics.

THHuxleynew
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#23

Quote from kevmolenr@gmail.com

LS = Literature Survey. Apologies, i was careless in forgetting that would not be widely known.

Otherwise there is little in your comments above I need to answer. To summarise:
You judge number of papers without looking at the strength of the evidence in the papers and putting this into context
You judge contrary evidence again on basis of number of papers
My point is that content not numbers are the point here
You say that even one paper (Dolly) is enough. That is true, when the evidence, a living breathing sheep, is strong and can be determined without a scientific paper. And the work on Dolly has been used in 100s of other experiments with success.

You ask why KS 5th paper was not published? Possibly because mainstream editors felt that the to and fro wrangle was highly uninteresting because the original papers are generally thought to have no merit. Hence Shanahan’s claim to have shown why they have no merit is not something of much use to anyone (except the few who believe differently, and they were not interested in Shanahan’s points).

You ask (I think) why are there not 150 rebuttal papers? Surely that is obvious. This is a phenomena that is broadly viewed as experimental error with unconvincing and incoherent results. The set of papers with coherent results KS shows could be something mundane - but most people don’t bother because the effect is so low when if nuclear it would be expected to be easy to get it much higher and easily measurable. The papers showing excess heat are viewed as unconvincing. Writing a refutation is both something few people want to do (what is the point) and something few people want to publish (it makes no contribution, rebutting something not generally accepted is a particularly pointless thing to do).

kevmolenr@gmail.com

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#25

Quote from THHuxleynew
You judge number of papers without looking at the strength of the evidence in the papers and putting this into context
***The context is that these are the first hundred or so replications of the effect, and that Jed calls some of them the “who’s who of electrochemistry”.

Quote from THHuxleynew
You judge contrary evidence again on basis of number of papers
***Yes, on first pass. And on 2nd pass, reputation of the authors, and 3rd pass how significant the science investigation is.

My point is that content not numbers are the point here
***I agree, but since I didn’t go much into the content, you’re engaging in a straw argument.

Quote from THHuxleynew
You say that even one paper (Dolly) is enough. That is true, when the evidence, a living breathing sheep, is strong and can be determined without a scientific paper. And the work on Dolly has been used in 100s of other experiments with success.

***Hagelstein had his experiment up and running for months, inviting his colleagues to come on over and have a look. They REFUSED. Pons & Fleischmann published enough detail that 153 papers were published in replication of their efforts (okay, in deference to Shanahan, maybe about a hundred). The cold fusioneers engaged in proper science, it was their counterparts who screwed the pooch.

You ask (I think) why are there not 150 rebuttal papers? Surely that is obvious. This is a phenomena that is broadly viewed as experimental error with unconvincing and incoherent results.
***From what I can see that “broad view” is incorrect. Even Shahanan thinks there’s something to this effect. This triggered a turf war between electrochemists and physicists. It proved that physicists were fantastic bullshitters.

The set of papers with coherent results KS shows could be something mundane - but most people don’t bother because the effect is so low when if nuclear it would be expected to be easy
***Easy? EASY? You obviously haven’t been reading LENR papers.

to get it much higher and easily measurable. The papers showing excess heat are viewed as unconvincing.
***That view is justifiably suspect.

Writing a refutation is both something few people want to do (what is the point) and something few people want to publish (it makes no contribution, rebutting something not generally accepted is a particularly pointless thing to do).
Display More
You’re not getting the point. No one cares about a refutation, but Shanahan claims to know why these experimentalists see such high COP in their cells. If it’s purely chemical and can generate an appearance of a COP>6, it would make a fantastic new addition to our energy ecosystem. If what he’s saying is true, he is sitting on a gold mine.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

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#26

Quote from Alan Smith
What the field needs is a concerted effort to do what Rossi has done (or attempted - for the purposes of this discussion it is irrelevant).
I see MaryYugo answered your suggestion with his standard anti-LENR jargon. MFMP is trying to do what you say but they lack resources.

THHuxleynew
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#27

Quote from kevmolenr@gmail.com
The context is that these are the first hundred or so replications of the effect, and that Jed calls some of them the “who’s who of electrochemistry”.
I agree, but since I didn’t go much into the content, you’re engaging in a straw argument.
You’re not getting the point. No one cares about a refutation, but Shanahan claims to know why these experimentalists see such high COP in their cells. If it’s purely chemical and can generate an appearance of a COP>6, it would make a fantastic new addition to our energy ecosystem. If what he’s saying is true, he is sitting on a gold mine.

You need more care with this one. The experiments Shanahan critiques are the (better quality ones) with COP = 1.2 or so. No goldmine. And his point is that this apparent COP is not in fact real, but a calorimetry artifact.

The high COP results I’ve looked at are all flaky - based on assumptions, non-equilibrium systems not properly characterised, boil-offs again not fully characterised, one-off results never replicated even when this is attempted by the groups who generated them, etc. Fleishmann has contributed to these, and if you reckon his eminence as an electrochemist means you should believe his results (as many people did initially when the CF debacle was prematurely announced) there is your goldmine. But, since then, no-one has been able to locate the gold though many have tried. What does remain is some interesting anomalies that look above chemical level. Shanahan claims to have explained some (perhaps all) of these. The ones he does not cover would be flakier experiments where the headline results cannot be properly justified, due to lack of control.

Now, maybe he is right, or maybe not. But his work has not been properly considered by the LENR advocates whose papers it addresses, nor by subsequent work in the field. That, to me, is a shame.

ZenoOfElea
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Jun 18th 2017

#28
Fascinating insight into the sociology of science whereby a group that works on LENR anomolies claims they are being ignored/ostracized by the main stream, and there is probably some truth in this, but then when a critic appears the LENR group ignores/ostracizes that critic.
So is LENR real or not?
There are over 150 papers.
But numbers and effort do not necessarily amount to anything.
How many smart people wasted their lives trying to turn lead into gold?
Reminds me of the old saying eat cow poop 100 billion flies can’t be wrong.

Eric Walker
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Jun 18th 2017

#29
I agree that Shanahan and his opponents seem to be talking past one another and that some of his claims have probably been mischaracterized. But having dug into one of his proposed alternative explanations sometime back, it felt to me all at once implausible, difficult to pin down and difficult or impossible to falsify. I don’t think that researchers working on a shoestring can be faulted for neglecting claims that seem to them improbable, roughly akin to “what you see is real but just a misinterpretation of the data,” a suggestion that requires a lot of bending over backwards to stay onboard with under scrutiny. Kirk’s claims are difficult to pin down because he will often quibble with and dispute whatever restatement one attempts.

Even if Kirk is addressing claims of experimental phenomena that many people would find suspect or even tendentious, that does not make his own ambitious counterarguments more compelling as a result. His critiques are something that some enterprising researcher who finds them interesting should pick up and look into experimentally. But simply in virtue of being critiques that are out there they do not impose a general obligation on researchers to put time into investigating and rebutting.

That said, I do like a few things that Kirk has brought up. The analysis of magnitude of errors is quite interesting. (I forget what he called this.) The point about putative excess energy being a small fraction of input energy in many cases is very important and worth really thinking about. A consequence is that there are some instances where a small modification of an important calorimetric equation will null out an excess heat results. What is wanted, then, is a signal that is too far above the baseline to raise questions about being an artifact of some small but defensible adjustment of an equation. (I recall there being such cases.)

THHuxleynew
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#30

Quote from Eric Walker
I agree that Shanahan and his opponents seem to be talking past one another and that some of his claims have probably been mischaracterized. But having dug into one of his proposed alternative explanations sometime back, it felt to me all at once implausible, difficult to pin down and difficult or impossible to falsify. I don’t think that researchers working on a shoestring can be faulted for neglecting claims that seem to them improbable, roughly akin to “what you see is real but just a misinterpretation of the data,” a suggestion that requires a lot of bending over backwards to stay onboard with under scrutiny. Kirk’s claims are difficult to pin down because he will often quibble with and dispute whatever restatement one attempts.

Even if Kirk is addressing claims of experimental phenomena that many people would find suspect or even tendentious, that does not make his own ambitious counterarguments more compelling as a result. His critiques are something that some enterprising researcher who finds them interesting should pick up and look into experimentally. But simply in virtue of being critiques that are out there they do not impose an obligation on all LENR researchers to put time into investigating and rebutting.

So: I’d broadly agree, but with a few additions.

Any researcher claiming anomalous heat from an experiment that could be affected by Shanahan’s issue really must address it for their work to be taken seriously. In some cases it will be easy to bound Shanahan’s putative effect. If that cannot be done, the fact that it looks in some nebulous way unlikely, and is difficult to disprove, does not help us, since LENR is the same. But Shanahan’s criticisms can be quantified and avoided with a bit of effort, so unlike LENR they can be positively disproved in a specific experiment.

Shanahan’s point is really quite simple, and reasonable:

(1) a change in cell temperature gradients during active electrolysis compared with control will result in cal errors that even if small get amplified by the ratio between overall power in, and size of claimed anomalous effect. This potential error must be bounded
(2) One possible mechanism for this is ATER, which in the case of: closed cells, recombiner at top of cell, heat losses higher at top of cell, would systematically result in false positives from systems in which ATER occured (it is generally expected by electrochemists not to occur).

Note that (1) is more general than (2) but without (2) (1) is a good deal more nebulous.

Similarly, any researcher claiming old papers that show excess heat as evidence should be aware of this potential explanation and either hold it open as a mundane explanation of the anomaly or note that it could not apply. There are a number of experiments it cannot apply to - but I believe those are ones that for a variety of other reasons are less convincing. I may be wrong here. But the very tightly controlled closed cell electrolysis experiments looked the best to me, and those are the ones that Shanahan’s idea most directly could affect.

Until LENR has a clear predictive theory, or has clearly replicable evidence, it must be viewed as extraordinary which means to claim it properly requires very careful attention to any possible systematic error.

I’d expect if Shanahan’s ideas were taken into account that a number of old electrolysis experiments would be seen as unsafe. In which case all the arguments about what is the evidence for LENR could be reframed in terms of the other positive evidence. this process of self-criticism would be to the credit of those working in the field. New experiments, such as the Austin ones, would be conducted in a way guaranteed to be safer. Of course, that may happen anyway, i don’t know. But the way Shanahan’s ideas have been dismissed (on incomplete argument) rather than examined and considered makes this uncertain.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Jun 18th 2017

#31
It looks to me that Shanahan’s hypothesis was given due consideration. If you’re aiming to knock out 150 replications you need to put more effort into it.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Jun 18th 2017

#32

Quote from ZenoOfElea
How many smart people wasted their lives trying to turn lead into gold?
Very few. And back then they didn’t have peer review.

Interestingly enough, you can turn lead into gold but the process is far more expensive than what gold is worth.

Eric Walker
Verified User

3,426
Jun 18th 2017

#33

Quote from THHuxleynew
In some cases it will be easy to bound Shanahan’s putative effect. If that cannot be done, the fact that it looks in some nebulous way unlikely, and is difficult to disprove, does not help us, since LENR is the same.

Can you illustrate this first suggestion by way of a hypothetical example? I think that would help to better understand what falsifying Shanahan’s primary critique of the electrochemical work would look like in a concrete context. If the principle is that a positive result must not hinge on a small but defensible adjustment of an equation, I can definitely get on board with it. If the principle is that LENR researchers must simply and always discount 10 percent or 100 percent of whatever it is they’re seeing, that seems overboard and something that must be considered in context and that merits close scrutiny of the critique itself.

In the case where Shanahan’s proposed effect cannot be falsified, if it does not help LENR claims, neither does it succeed in casting doubt on them. But an important distinction must be kept in mind: In most cases LENR researchers are working with unremarkable techniques, and it is the interpretation of the boring positive results that they obtain that calls into question a physical understanding. In Shanahan’s case we have the reverse: unremarkable techniques are given a new physical interpretation, which leads to mundane results. Here Shanahan is front-loading the mysterious cause where the LENR researchers are back-loading it. It seems to me that Shanahan’s argument is on inherently shakier ground in those cases where LENR researchers are indeed following standard and conservative practices. (They don’t always do this.) Otherwise the practical effect is to fudge on the commitment to empiricism.

THHuxleynew
Verified User

4,707
Jun 18th 2017

#34

Quote from Eric Walker
Can you illustrate this first suggestion by way of a hypothetical example? I think that would help to better understand what falsifying Shanahan’s primary critique of the electrochemical work would look like in a concrete context. If the principle is that a positive result must not hinge on a small but defensible adjustment of an equation, I can definitely get on board with it. If the principle is that LENR researchers must simply and always discount 10 percent or 100 percent of whatever it is they’re seeing, that seems overboard and something that must be considered in context and that merits close scrutiny of the critique itself.

Well, a trivial example would be absolute mass calorimetry where the losses are bounded at X%, and the excess heat is > x%. You need a bit more work, to show that ATER or some affect does not much change those losses, but that would not be difficult for example with a few extra TCs.

Less trivially using TC’s to check temperature at a number of different points in the cell (rather more than normal) would allow any cal differences due to changing temperature gradients to be bounded. This could be done precisely with a number of differently positioned heaters used in control runs.

The problem with standard practices is that a systematic anomaly can break them, and anomalies can always happen. We need to look for anomalies when we get unexplained results. LENR electrolytic experiments are pretty unusual.

Online
AlainCo
Tech-watcher, admin

3,155
Jun 19th 2017

#35
A big naive question mirror my naive remarks in 1993.
Maybe is LENR just a never need kind of artifact, which as an engineer I woudl consider as something to investigate deeply in case it can make emerge a real technology, on a surprising domain.

Some critics of LENR have propose super chemistry... naively given that chemistry is older than nuclear physics, i consider it as a bigger breakthrough than cold fusion claim (having surprise in quantum mechanics, given it’s youth and numerous evolutions and surprise especially in material science, is more a confirmed prediction than a surprise).

Some have proposed miraculous extreme energy storage, which I am sure would interest engineers working in thermal solar energy, or in engine design...

Miraculous constant change is very important question in calorimetry, as it could not only put many devices in danger of destruction and dramatic accident, but also may create opportunities to new measurement techniques and why not even new machines and technology.

I suspect that many engineers like me have considered the idea, and have look with better competence at this possibility, with the sincere and greedy hope to exploite this artifact...
then they realized it was not an artifact, that it would cause them trouble, it was not their business, and they had better things to do than fight a desperate battle.

My advice to Kirk Shanahan, is that like all people who work on LENR because their have observed it and think it is a nuclear phenomenon, he try to amplify the phenomenon, characterize it, and why not make money with it.

Battling to negate the hope of others is less important than battling for your hope.
This is the difference between mindguard and innovators.
“Only puny secrets need keeping. The biggest secrets are kept by public incredulity.” (Marshall McLuhan)
See my raw tech-watch on http://www.scoop.it/u/alain-coetmeur & twitter @alain_co

Wyttenbach
Verified User

3,887
Jun 19th 2017

#36

Quote from AlainCo
Maybe is LENR just a never need kind of artifact, which as an engineer I woudl consider as something to investigate deeply in case it can make emerge a real technology, on a surprising domain.

@Stop making such silly comments. Since the Lipinski experiments there is no more doubt about LENR with very high COP.

zorud
Member

1,088
Jun 19th 2017

#37
If there is no doubt, I wonder why there is not yet at least one successful documented replication of this “High-COP-Experiment”? That would for sure boost this entire field...

Online
Alan Smith
Administrator

12,941
Jun 19th 2017

#38

Quote from zorud
f there is no doubt, I wonder why there is not yet at least one successful documented replication of this “High-COP-Experiment”? That would for sure boost this entire field...

I am sure it would- but the equipment required is extensive and expensive- this is one of several variant lists taken from the patent. Not a garage job- and even the inventors are forced to live like Gypsies, traipsing from one lab to another to work.

This work and the theories espoused has not been embraced by any researchers other than the named inventors. As of May 2013, a search on scholar.google.com revealed only one citation to the “Gravity theory” publication, and that was a passing reference. In 2008, editors of Wikipedia went so far as to delete a new article based on the publication. The discovery of the new gravity theory has aroused skepticism by experts and teaching away from acceptance of the new theory.

[0088] To the inventors’ knowledge, no fusion method to date has achieved energy breakeven, i.e. more energy output than input. The inventors’ approach appears to have
generated yields that exceed energy breakeven. Experimental results and breakeven calculations are described in detail in this application.
[0089] This application addresses how to efficiently produce large numbers of energetic helium ions, which is useful for a variety of purposes, including conversion into electricity.
[0090] In summary, the inventors have developed a unique method to produce large numbers of highly energetic helium ions that is a critical step in providing an entirely new source of cheap and safe energy.]

THE INVENTORS’ GRAVITY THEORY
[0091] The Hydrogen-Lithium Fusion Device (HLFD) was developed with years of effort following discovery of the relativistic scalar gravity theory described in “Gravity theory based on mass-energy equivalence,” supra, Acta Physica Polonica B 39, 2823 (2008). With insight and hard work, the technology developed can be seen as consistent with this theory. A more complete discussion of the theory appears in the paper. and not based upon specific experimental findings.

TWENTY FIVE EXPERIMENTAL TESTS
[0124] From March 2007 to March 2014, the inventors conducted 25 series of experimental tests in the course of developing the Hydrogen-Lithium Fusion Device (HLFD). The design of the HLFD and the technology disclosed to achieve proton-lithium fusion draw on the experimental data obtained in these 25 series of experimental tests. Most of the early tests failed to produce the desired levels of fusion. However, beginning in experimental series #13 and following in series #17 - 25, the experimental results showed increasing levels of fusion, ultimately producing sustainable net-energy-positive proton-lithium fusion.

[EQUIPMENT FOR SERIES #1 1 - 15 EXPERIMENTAL TESTS
Series #11 - 14 Laboratory
• Louisiana Accelerator Center, University of Louisiana, Lafayette LA
Series #15 Laboratory
• Physics Department, University of North Texas, Denton TX
Proton Gun
• IonEtch Sputter Ion Gun (Genii) available from tectra GmbH
• Proton plasma beam from 99.9% pure hydrogen gas
• Proton energy between 50 eV and 5 keV
• Proton current between 4 μΑ and 320 μΑ
• Argon plasma beam from argon gas
Target
• 99.9% pure lithium disks available from American Elements Inc
• 3 inch diameter
• 1 mm thick
HLFD Prototype #6
• 8.7 inch diameter aluminum disk with a 78° inward chamfer angle to a 2.5 inch
diameter center hole
• 3 inch diameter x 3 mm deep depression holds the lithium target
• 3 inch diameter x 2 mm aluminum retaining ring holds the target at the center of the aluminum disk
• Target support electrically isolated from reaction chamber by a ceramic support base in series #11 - 13, a rotatable Teflon support base in series #14, and a rotatable nylon/alumina support base in series #15
Bias Voltage Power Supply
• DC power supply capable of -5 kV to +5 kV
• SHV connection flange capable of 5 kV
Particle Detectors
• In series #1 1 - 12 silicon surface barrier detectors available from ORTEC Inc
• In series #13 - 15 silicon p-i-n diode detectors available from Hamamatsu Corporation
• Small Faraday cups with 1/16 inch Teflon insulation
• Two stainless steel bias screens at 4 cm distance in front of each detection device in series #13
• Aluminum foil particle shields in front of each detection device in series #14 - 15
Reaction Chamber (Lafayette LA)
• Modified bell reaction chamber with twelve 2.75 inch diameter radial ports at the
target’s center horizontal plane at a distance of 20 cm
• Turbo pump capable of 10”6 Torr vacuum pressure
Reaction Chamber (Denton TX)
• 38 cm deep by 40 cm diameter cylindrical reaction chamber with eleven 2.75 inch
diameter radial ports, four 2.75 inch diameter bottom ports, and one 8 inch diameter horizontal port used for turbo pump assembly
• Two roughing pumps in combination with a turbo pump capable of vacuum pressures between 2* 10”6 Torr and 760 Torr

zorud
Member

1,088
Jun 19th 2017

#39

Quote from Alan Smith
I am sure it would- but the equipment required is extensive and expensive...
Alan, thanks. Costs / material obvioulsy still far away from todays billions spent in hot fusion....so still I am curious why this group seemed to gave up based on their promising (?) results.

THHuxleynew
Verified User

4,707
Jun 19th 2017

#40

Quote from Alan Smith
I am sure it would- but the equipment required is extensive and expensive- this is one of several variant lists taken from the patent. Not a garage job- and even the inventors are forced to live like Gypsies, traipsing from one lab to another to work.

I remember looking at this. the patent is honest, and makes clear that he has no clear experimental evidence for his suppositions. The results which he claims support this are very indirect, and could be due to many different things. The results quoted in the rest of the patent are (he says) what he would expect to happen according to his weird theory, not what he has gathered.

It seems flimsy evidence.
Edited once, last by THHuxleynew (Jun 19th 2017).

Online
Alan Fletcher
Member

718
Jun 23rd 2017

#63

Quote from kirkshanahan
Short answer...no enough knowledge available to know.

Long answer...speculating...

.... THAT is not the question I asked.

I also note that you’ve made a transition in your question that many haven’t made yet. Associating CCS with that graphic requires connecting apparent excess heat to an ATER/CCS issue. Most refuse to even consider such.
Display Less

IF the measured COP is real and not Calibration Constant Shift, then we can indeed inquire as to why they get more successes at a particular loading.

But you say it’s a calorimetry error, and there was no actual excess heat. But what artifact of the calorimeter would know whether the loading was 0.94 or 0.92 ? Why weren’t there as many false reports of success at 0.92 or 0.96? (The plot doesn’t indicate how many FAILED runs there were at each loading for the SRI and ENEA data).

(Also see Letts and Cravens / Beyond Reasonable Doubt)

That diagram is from : http://www.currentscience.ac.in/Volumes/108/04/0495.pdf

It references two papers which I haven’t found yet.

10. McKubre, M. C. H., Crouch-Baker, S., Riley, A. M., Smedley, S.
I. and Tanzella, F. L., Excess power observations in electrochemical
studies of the D/Pd system; the influence of loading. In Frontier
of Cold Fusion (ed. Ikegami, H.), Universal Academy Press,
Tokyo, 1993, pp. 5–19.

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHexcesspowe.pdf Fig 7

11. Kunimatsu, K., Hasegawa, N., Kubota, A., Imai, N., Ishikawa, M.,
Akita, H. and Tsuchida, Y., Deuterium loading ratio and excess
heat generation during electrolysis of heavy water by a palladium
cathode in a closed cell using a partially immersed fuel cell anode.
In Frontiers of Cold Fusion (ed. Ikegami, H.), Universal Academy
Press, Tokyo, 1993, pp. 31–45
Edited 3 times, last by Alan Fletcher: link to paper with McKubre plot, link to ref 10 (Jun 23rd 2017).

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Alan Fletcher
Member

718
Jun 23rd 2017

#65
Short summary : I see nothing in McKubre Ref 10 fig 7 to indicate a sudden onset of Calorometric Callibration Shift Errors.

Edited once, last by Alan Fletcher: McKubre Fig 7 (Jun 23rd 2017).
1

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Alan Fletcher
Member

718
Jun 23rd 2017

#66
Likewise Kunimatsu http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/KunimatsuKdeuteriuml.pdf Fig 13

Edited 2 times, last by Alan Fletcher (Jun 23rd 2017).
1

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Jun 23rd 2017

#67

Quote from kirkshanahan
I saw those responses today. My response: No, the CFers have not responded appropriately.
My response: Yes, the CFeers have responded appropriately. Your tldr argument is something to go over piece by piece at a later time when I’m not on probation.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Jun 23rd 2017

#68

Quote from kirkshanahan
But I hate to tell you, you’re going to have a very hard time reaching any valid conclusions about CF if you don’t read.
I read. I just stop reading bloviaters.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Jun 23rd 2017

#69

Quote from Alan Fletcher
Likewise Kunimatsu http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/KunimatsuKdeuteriuml.pdf Fig 13

Considering the title of this thread, how many times do you think the PF AHE has been replicated in peer reviewed journals? And where are those reports?

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Jun 23rd 2017

#70

Quote from Alan Fletcher
Short summary : I see nothing in McKubre Ref 10 fig 7 to indicate a sudden onset of Calorometric Callibration Shift Errors.

Excellent graph. How many of those data points represent peer reviewed Pons-Fleischmann AHE replications?

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Jun 23rd 2017

#71

Quote from kirkshanahan
I have avoided the Rossi stuff because it’s all anecdotal information, and you can’t do science from anecdotes. Maybe they can inspire you to do some work, but science requires reproduction, and Rossi never seems to do anything the same twice....
That was a smart move. Rossi isn’t a scientist, he’s a businessman. He stated explicitly that he didn’t want to do ANY demos except to paying customers, but when Focardi started dying of cancer and wanted recognition for his work, he relented.

Trying to piece information from Rossi’s statements is an excercise in induction, not deduction. Scientists don’t know how to do inductive reasoning.

Online
Alan Fletcher
Member

718
Jun 24th 2017

#72

Quote from kevmolenr@gmail.com
Excellent graph. How many of those data points represent peer reviewed Pons-Fleischmann AHE replications?

Ummm ... those ARE the results (each DOT is one run by SRI and INRA respectively) published in the proceedings of the peer-reviewed ICCF3.

So ..... ALL OF THEM.

Zephir_AWT
Member

1,089
Jun 24th 2017

#73

Quote
Your statement mixes two separate types of experiments which have different issues involved

They were both about palladium and as such supposed to support my point (palladium is currently most reproducible (and also reproduced) LENR system). The number and coherence of experimental points linked above with A. Fletcher speaks for itself.

Wyttenbach
Verified User

3,887
Jun 24th 2017

#74

Quote from kirkshanahan
5.) The McKubre figure illustrates a biased point of view. Enough similar results at D/Pd<0.85 exist to again indicate loading level is of secondary importance.

Kirk always likes to stay in a safe haven. So don’t fight him with old stuff!

Recently (couldn’t find the ref...) Storms? told that only one initial Pd loading around 1:1 is needed. As soon as the reaction is running, it goes on even with loads below 50%! Today loadings above 1:1 are possible and in mixed systems they already talk of factors 2-3.
But Kirk is absolutely right if he says Pdxy D-D fusion is a surface effect.

Please do longer discuss old style Pd-D-D fusion experiments. These may be interesting as demos or as a theory test-bed. Nobody intends to burn down (transmute) Palladium any more, if there are cheaper material around. Mixed fuels containing PdZrOCuNiAlLi work even with hydrogen. See newest Asti papers.

Iwamure Asti : IwamuraYanomaloushea.pdf
Or Hagelstein : lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Hagelsteinnewphysica.pdf
A broad discussion : V.F. Zelensky

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Alan Fletcher
Member

718
Jun 24th 2017

#75

Quote from Wyttenbach
Please do longer discuss old style Pd-D-D fusion experiments.
Iwamure Asti : IwamuraYanomaloushea.pdf
Or Hagelstein : lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Hagelsteinnewphysica.pdf
A broad discussion : V.F. Zelensky

Ah ... but even Zelensky refers to the McKubre (a version of McKubre with error bars) and Kunimatsu results, so my time wasn’t wasted! .

Online
Shane D.
Moderator

7,501
Jun 24th 2017

#76
Well, at least there is still some funding of LENR by the DOE. This clip is from the article posted today about Dr. Claytor receiving the Preparata Award at the recent International Workshop on Anomalies:

“While at LANL, in addition to on and off research into LENR funded by Laboratory Directed Research and Development, Director’s Reserve and technology transfer funds.”

The LDRD is funded by the DOE:

Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD)

The Department of Energy’s Engine of Discovery

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is charged with a large and complex mission—“to ensure America’s security and prosperity by addressing its energy, environmental, and nuclear challenges through transformative science and technology solutions.” The DOE executes this mission to a large extent at its seventeen national laboratories, a group of institutions which were created and are supported by the Federal government to perform research and development (R&D) in areas of importance to the DOE and, where appropriate, to other Federal agencies.

Today, the national laboratories are performing R&D in support of DOE’s goals in catalyzing the transformation of the nation’s energy system, securing our leadership in clean energy, maintaining a vibrant scientific and engineering effort, and enhancing nuclear security through defense, nonproliferation, and environmental efforts. In recognition of the importance of the long-term health of these institutions, the U.S. Congress has authorized and encouraged them to devote a relatively small portion of their research effort to creative and innovative work that serves to maintain their vitality in science and technology (S&T) disciplines relevant to DOE and national security missions. Since 1991, this effort has formally been called Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD).

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Jun 24th 2017

#77

Quote from Alan Fletcher

Ummm ... those ARE the results (each DOT is one run by SRI and INRA respectively) published in the proceedings of the peer-reviewed ICCF3.

So ..... ALL OF THEM.
Now if we can only get guys like Shanahan to agree with your statement, we have a place to begin. How many dots is that, anyways?

THHuxleynew
Verified User

4,707
Jun 24th 2017

#78

Quote from Alan Fletcher
Short summary : I see nothing in McKubre Ref 10 fig 7 to indicate a sudden onset of Calorometric Callibration Shift Errors.

Alan: and everyone else following.

I find your argument here impossible to follow. Perhaps I’m being dim, and you will correct me; but otherwise you (plural) are all misunderstanding the point.

CCS errors from this cell of an ATER type would follow from the special active environment on the electrodes created from the D electrolysis that allows ATER. That is almost the same condition (and equally difficult to pin down) as claimed LENR. So the two hypotheses cannot be distinguished from that graph - they both fit. The difference is that one is a chemical/caorimetric explanation, and the other is a nuclear but surprising because does not seem in other ways to be nuclear mechanism.

As always, should Abd’s pet Austin experiment show convincing evidence of He generated, and correlation between He and excess heat from D at the expected ratio, that statement could be revised.

Also, CCS can be ruled out with a bit more work from people conducting experiments. But it is systematic over a wide range of F&P style experiments and does explain the results - though without extra work that explanation must be speculative.

Online
Alan Fletcher
Member

718
Jun 24th 2017

#79

Quote from Alan Fletcher

Ummm ... those ARE the results (each DOT is one run by SRI and INRA respectively) published in the proceedings of the peer-reviewed ICCF3.

So ..... ALL OF THEM.

Clarification on McKubre. One RUN of a cell takes about 800 hours, with useful results between 300 and 780 hours.

Each DOT on the graph is a reading of the calculated loading and excess power at some (unspecified) time for this ONE cell.

Note: this is the experiment which exploded, with one fatality, 70 hours later.

I don’t have the time (or much inclination) to follow up on kirkshannahan’s comments, particularly as it’s very old data.

JedRothwell
Verified User
Reactions Received
10,094
Jun 24th 2017

#80
For people unaware of the context of this discussion, let me point out that Shananan is a crackpot and his claims were disproved years ago. See:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MarwanJanewlookat.pdf

interested observer
Member

2,435
Jun 24th 2017

#81

The concept of a pathological skeptic has some utility. It is well-suited to Holocaust deniers, moon landing deniers, flatearthers, and the like. Of course, in websites of fringe beliefs (and sorry guys, LENR is still a fringe belief), the term simply means anybody who doesn’t agree with your view of the world. Another perfectly good term turned into a meaningless epithet.

Online
Alan Smith
Administrator

12,941
Jun 24th 2017

#82

Quote from JedRothwell
For people unaware of the context of this discussion, let me point out that Shananan is a crackpot......

We’re all crackpots here Jed, just that some people seem to use real crack.

axil
Verified User

1,717
Jun 24th 2017

#83
The relationship between loading percentage of hydrogen into the palladium lattice is the probability that metallic hydrogen will be produced by the compressive action of the palladium chemical bonds on hydrogen and the subsequent ejection from the palladium lattice. This probability will increase greatly if lithium is also present on the surface of the palladium. The pressure required to produce metallic hydrogen is reduced by 400% when lithium is present over pure metal.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Jun 24th 2017

#84

Quote from interested observer
Of course, in websites of fringe beliefs (and sorry guys, LENR is still a fringe belief), the term simply means anybody who doesn’t agree with your view of the world. Another perfectly good term turned into a meaningless epithet.
I do not use the term to mean that. In the case of Shanahan, I mean someone who proposes theories or hypotheses that violate elementary laws of physics, are physically impossible & absurd, and that experiments have shown are completely wrong. As you see from the rebuttal to Shanahan, his claims fit all of these categories.

Another thing that makes him a crackpot is the fact that he does not realize his claims have no basis in theory or experiment. A non-crackpot person might make a wild claim that violates the textbook laws, but he will point out that his claim violates these laws. Fleischmann and Pons, for example, claimed that they saw nuclear fusion at ~1 W that did not produce a fatal level of neutron radiation. They understood this violates the known laws of physics. They agreed with that, but they showed experimental evidence that supports their claims and appears to violate the textbook. Obviously, they were old-fashioned scientists who feel that when theory and experiment conflict, the experiment must be right, and the theory must be revised. Younger, modern scientists treat the textbooks as holy writ that cannot be questioned and cannot be wrong, so they throw out experiments instead. Fleischmann, Pons and I regard this as the extreme opposite of science. It is a weird form of religion instead. What Shanahan practices is neither old-fashioned experiment-based science nor the modern textbook based holy writ version, because his claims violate both. I don’t know what to call it, but I think crackpot is a good description.
Edited once, last by JedRothwell (Jun 25th 2017).
3

THHuxleynew
Verified User

4,707
Jun 25th 2017

#88

Quote from JedRothwell
For people unaware of the context of this discussion, let me point out that Shananan is a crackpot and his claims were disproved years ago. See:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MarwanJanewlookat.pdf

Jed. I ignore the personal comment about Shanahan - except to note that it does not in my book constitute any argument for disbelief. Just as somone saying the same of an LENR proponent would be no argument.

You refer to Marwan et al’s contribution to the debate, without comparing that with Shanahan’s response (his white paper published here). you may feel the fact that has never been published ensures it is of bad quality. I’ve read it, compared it with marwan, and the earlier stuff. Shanahan makes valid points which are not answered by Marwan et al. Both, in that some of Marwan et al’s arguments are shown logically wrong, and because some of the points Shanahan has made are not fully addressed by those arguments. That comment, which I make, is a fact, not a judgement. Notice the qualifying some.

That does not mean Shanahan is correct. It does mean that excluding his carefully writtem and substantive points from proper discussion, as Marwan et al do here, is improper.

What M et al do is to say that in their judgement Shanahan’s ideas are wrong. That is fair enough. Just as it is fair for me to say that in my jusgement LENR is wrong. What is not fair (and would not be fair if I did it) is to close down debate, nor refuse to deal with cogent contrary arguments in private or public while continuing to hold the position that these F&P style closed cell experimental results must indicate LENR.

LENR has no clearly understoof mechanism, so the bar here for an alternative explanation is low. Shanahan’s proposal is no way proven, but remains possible until comprehensively disproved. That has not been done and no fair-minded person reading Marwan et al, and Shanahan’s white paer, would say that is has been done. They might reckon that in their judgement Shanahan was wrong. That is a very different statement, and not sound unless a proper reply is made to Shanahan’s white paper.

THHuxleynew
Verified User

4,707
Jun 25th 2017

#89

Quote from maryyugo
Actually, there is a lot on the Internet to prove that Jed was bamboozled by Rossi and that the flavor of his responses to Rossi critics, now proven correct, who questioned him, was the same as his remarks to Shanahan.

That is true, and worth reflection. Jed is rightly popular here as somone who honestly states his views. The difference between him and me, both on IH vs Rossi and on Marwan et al versus Shanahan, is that I am much slower to state something as proven than Jed. I know that assumptions can be wrong, that judgement is often biassed (including my own).

That does not stop me from making judgements, or having biasses, just the same as Jed. But, when pressed especially, I am much less ready to defend a statement that I believe strongly is true but cannot actually substantiate. For me “I think that but if you disagree I cannot prove you wrong - even though I expect you are” is a usual state.

I don’t see any problem with these two positions. Some people (IHFB is a great example) are quick to reach judgement. IHFB’s mild hypocrisy is that he claims to be slower to reach judgement than others here, when in reality his views about IH represent a fixed judgement that he represents as purely factual but is in fact based on his assumptions.

Others are slower to reach judgement. That is sort of boring, and also sort of timid. But it is perfectly proper and I myself will defend it to the last keystroke.

THH

(Thomas Henry Huxley - Darwin’s Bulldog but also the person who coined the word agnostic because he strongly affirmed that he could not reach any judgement over the matter of whether God did or did not exist. At the time that was a big deal)
Edited 2 times, last by THHuxleynew (Jun 25th 2017).

Eric Walker
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3,426
Jun 25th 2017

#90

Quote from THHuxleynew
[1] LENR has no clearly understoof mechanism, so the bar here for an alternative explanation is low. Shanahan’s proposal is no way proven, but remains possible until comprehensively disproved. [2] That has not been done and no fair-minded person reading Marwan et al, and Shanahan’s white paer, would say that is has been done.

I’ve inserted numbers in brackets into your quote. With regard to point (1), let’s go with it for the sake of argument. We allow, then, that Kirk’s CCS might be a thing that might be demonstrated empirically somehow at some time in the future. Your point (2) does not follow as a consequence if you intended for the two to be connected. We will surely agree that the burden falls upon LENR researchers to show that LENR claims, which are varied and defy important expectations, are real in part, and not upon outside skeptics to show that LENR is not real. I cannot report something that I witnessed in my lab that seems to be LENR, and have you raise a good and standard objection, and then say that you must prove that what I said is wrong, or else my report stands. I must answer your objection with a tighter experiment that takes the objection into account or show that there is a logical flaw. Here the burden remains on me to show that some small LENR phenomenon is real, and not on you to set up an experiment to disprove it. This is because your objection was a standard one, and the claimant always carries the burden of evidence in science. By contrast, if your objection was that a whole new category of matter with different qualities was messing up my result, you would need to show that and not me.

Kirk’s CCS hypothesis suggests a novel and ambitious result that is not at all expected. It is similarly something that Kirk must do in making his CCS claim to show that it is real, and not something that LENR researchers must take active steps to show that it is not real. Kirk must prove his hypothesis with a series of experiments of his own, because the claim is his claim. For practical reasons, this is a subtle but important distinction. It can be expensive and time consuming to go on a wild goose chase by incorporating various controls that one suspects are not needed. This is not all or nothing, and there is an element of judgment involved here. But until Kirk establishes that his phenomenon exists and can under certain circumstances impeach mundane calorimetry, his CCS does not really cast further doubt on the mundane calorimetry seen in LENR experiments. There may be other objections that the researchers must attend to, but this objection is one that Kirk himself must move forward, or possibly someone who takes a special interest in it.

THHuxleynew
Verified User

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Jun 25th 2017

#91

Quote from Eric Walker
I’ve inserted numbers in brackets into your quote. With regard to point (1), let’s go with it for the sake of argument. We allow, then, that Kirk’s CCS might be a thing that might be demonstrated empirically somehow at some time in the future. Your point (2) does not follow as a consequence if you intended for the two to be connected. We will surely agree that the burden falls upon LENR researchers to show that LENR claims, which are varied and defy important expectations, are real in part, and not upon outside skeptics to show that LENR is not real. I cannot report something that I witnessed in my lab that seems to be LENR, and have you raise a good and standard objection, and then say that you must prove that what I said is wrong, or else my report stands. I must answer your objection with a tighter experiment that takes the objection into account or show that there is a logical flaw. Here the burden remains on me to show that some small LENR phenomenon is real, and not on you to set up an experiment to disprove it. This is because your objection was a standard one, and the claimant always carries the burden of evidence in science. By contrast, if your objection was that a whole new category of matter with different qualities was messing up my result, you would need to show that and not me.

Kirk’s work is in two parts. the first one - that cal changes (due most likely, but not exclusively, to conditions changing temp distribution in cell between control and active) can result in significant errors is uncontentious. It is a catch-all that should make such results without an explicit check for cal changes somewhat uncertain.

The second part, a proposed mechanism, is as you say novel and ambitious but not nearly as much so as LENR. It is veryy comparable. In both cases a specially prepared surface, loaded with D, is needed to cause the thing to happen. In the ATER case that thing is a plausible chemical reaction that clearly could in principle be catalysed by some surface condition. In the LENR case that is a nuclear reaction, catalysed by some surface condition.

The difference here is that Kirk proposes a specific (but maybe unlikely) mechanism that fits the data. There is no such specific mechanism relating to LENR that fits the data. You need somehow to deal with the lack of alternate reaction paths as well as the Coulomb barrier. Both these issues can be dealt with, but both are highly unexpected.

the difference between us is one of judgment, not fact. How do you way these various unlikelihoods? So I don’t expect it to be resolved. But, the judgement of people who think LENR is likley (or at least plausible) will be different from those who think the reverse and Shanahan’s proposal will stay on the table for everyone without such a view that something else extraordinary (LENR) is in fact likely.

That is then slightly circular because for some (though by no means all) the best evidence for thinking LENR likely comes from things that are possibly invalidated by Shanahan’s idea.

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Alan Smith
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Jun 25th 2017

#92
So what we are balancing here is one person’s thought experiments against many hundreds of data points from real experiments. I agree with Eric that Kirk should maybe think about providing some experimental evidence for his ideas.

THHuxleynew
Verified User

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Jun 25th 2017

#93

Quote from Alan Smith
So what we are balancing here is one person’s thought experiments against many hundreds of data points from real experiments. I agree with Eric that Kirk should maybe think about providing some experimental evidence for his ideas.

What data from real experinents distinguishes between LENR and CCS? Both are hypothetical explanations for something that otherwise does not make sense. Why do you not have this same criteria for LENR (e.g. - prove it is nuclear)?

Eric Walker
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3,426
Jun 25th 2017

#94

Quote from THHuxleynew
The difference here is that Kirk proposes a specific (but maybe unlikely) mechanism that fits the data. There is no such specific mechanism relating to LENR that fits the data. You need somehow to deal with the lack of alternate reaction paths as well as the Coulomb barrier. Both these issues can be dealt with, but both are highly unexpected.

When considering LENR, LENR experiments and LENR theories, it is pretty important (as you know) to distinguish between broad experimental findings, on one hand, and more tentative conclusions, on the other. In the former category is the finding of a correlation of heat with helium in several PdD experiments, and, more generally, a finding that the amount of heat seen in excess of input is sometimes greater than can be accounted for by known chemistry. In the latter category of more tentative conclusions are such things as the notion that in PdD electrochemical experiments there is seen a fusion of deuterium to produce helium, the notion that palladium is somehow involved, and the notion that deuterium is a precursor to a fusion reaction. All of these more tentative conclusions are the proponents’ best guesses as to what is going on, gleaned from incomplete and often contradictory evidence. The latter category of tentative conclusions include all of the conclusions based upon a “preponderance of evidence,” as some people argue tirelessly for. Once LENR claims are stripped of the more tentative findings (ones that are obviously more tentative, despite advocates’ best efforts to argue otherwise), your objections about the lack of alternative reaction pathways and about the Coulomb barrier become premature, and, in that regard, no longer objections. I personally think the mixing of tentative, specific conclusions, with general, and more solid conclusions, has been to the field’s great detriment, as it seems to have locked in a whole generation of researchers into a certain set of assumptions that have been hard to step out of.

What is left when one excludes the more specific conclusions drawn on the basis of incomplete and contradictory evidence? A set of experimental findings that are more general, easier to defend, and, in my opinion, more interesting. It is no doubt in the spirit of the more general findings that Robert Duncan coined the phrase “anomalous heat effect.” It is with these experimental results that the likelihood of Kirk’s constant calibration shift hypothesis must be compared.

JedRothwell
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Jun 25th 2017

#95

Quote from THHuxleynew
Jed. I ignore the personal comment about Shanahan - except to note that it does not in my book constitute any argument for disbelief.
This is not a personal comment. Shanahan made various claims. Scientists responded to his claims in the paper I pointed to, and in various other papers. They showed that his arguments violate theory and there is no experimental evidence for them. That, to me, constitutes a crackpot view. This is not about him; it is about his theories and claims.

That’s all there is to it. The authors of that paper and I have said nothing about his personality or any other aspect of his person. I know nothing about him.

JedRothwell
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Jun 25th 2017

#96

Quote from THHuxleynew
What data from real experinents distinguishes between LENR and CCS?

There is excess heat. It is a calorimetric result. It can either be explained as LENR or as the CCS effect. The data set of evidence is exactly the same for both. * The question is, which explanation fits conventional textbook calorimetry better. The answer is LENR. It fulfills every expectation for calorimetry, albeit NOT for nuclear physics. In the 1990s, hundreds of leading experts on calorimetry — including many people from outside the field and outside of electrochemistry and nuclear physics — reviewed the calorimetry. They found no errors in the major experiments. In contrast, if the CCS theory were true, calorimetry would not work. It would be meaningless. All discoveries based on it going back to around 1840 would have to be thrown out, including the laws of thermodynamics. The CCS is equivalent to discovering that Ohm’s law does not work.

* That is to say, the data sets pointed to by Shanahan are exactly the same. However, there are many cold fusion experiments that flat out prove he is wrong. He will not discuss these or acknowledge that they exist. The CCS theory would only apply to a narrow range of experiments with one particular type of calorimeter. It cannot apply to Miles’ calorimeter with the copper sheath, or a Seebeck calorimeter because even if you could move the source of heat within the cell that would not affect the result. Shanahan may claim that it would, but that goes beyond his other claims.

In other words, in a closed cell where heat is measured in the cell, the CCS is at least plausible. The source of heat might move, affecting the calorimetry. Actual experiments prove that never happens, but it is conceivable that it might. However, when you measure the heat with a copper sheath, or in a location far outside the cell, the hypothesis is no longer plausible.
Edited 3 times, last by JedRothwell (Jun 26th 2017).

Eric Walker
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Jun 26th 2017

#102

Quote from kirkshanahan
I repeat. I have no obligation to do anything at this point. If I wanted to follow up, I could of course. If I don’t, there is no rule, written or unwritten, that I am violating.

Do you acknowledge that your CCS is something new, not documented before as such in electrochemistry or calorimetry? If so, it must be shown to be real, and not simply an intellectual exercise. Someone has to do that empirical investigation. You are the one who claims the CCS is a thing. That puts you on the hook for doing the legwork; or, at least, no one needs to stop what they’re doing and worry about it too much until someone takes the initiative of doing the necessary legwork. LENR researchers are in the same boat when it comes to their own claims about LENR.

kirkshanahan
Member

543
Jun 26th 2017

#103

Quote from Eric Walker
Do you acknowledge that your CCS is something new, not documented before as such in electrochemistry or calorimetry?

No. In fact it is not new. Unless you’re talking about the abbreviation itself, which I don’t think you are. Every scientist or engineer should know that a system is only calibratable if it is stable. If it is not, then a new calibration is required every single time you use it. The ‘CCS’ is just an abbreviation used to talk about the fact that this is apparently what happens with ‘active’ electrodes in an F&P cell.

Quote from Eric Walker
If so, it must be shown to be real, and not simply an intellectual exercise. Someone has to do that empirical investigation. You are the one who claims the CCS is a thing. That puts you on the hook for doing the legwork; or, at least, no one needs to stop what they’re doing and worry about it too much until someone takes the initiative of doing the necessary legwork. LENR researchers are in the same boat when it comes to their own claims about LENR.

I pointed out that the interpretation methodology of the F&P-type CF experiments was susceptible to a particular kind of error. It is incumbent upon those doing the susceptible interpretation to prove that is not what is happening.

I offered a possible mundane chemical mechanism that would seem to conform to the experimental observations and that would produce a CCS as a help to those trying to understand the phenomenon experimentally. They are free to use it or not, or to come up with other alternatives.

{added} What they are NOT free to do is misrepresent what I have done for the purpose of misleading people, which is what Storms did in his 2007 book, what the “group of 10” did in the paper Rothwell keeps referencing, or what Hagelstein did in his 2015 “MIT” course of CF.
Edited once, last by kirkshanahan (Jun 26th 2017).

Eric Walker
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Jun 26th 2017

#104

Quote from kirkshanahan
No. In fact it is not new. Unless you’re talking about the abbreviation itself, which I don’t think you are. Every scientist or engineer should know that a system is only calibratable if it is stable. If it is not, then a new calibration is required every single time you use it. The ‘CCS’ is just an abbreviation used to talk about the fact that this is apparently what happens with ‘active’ electrodes in an F&P cell.

Your CCS goes beyond simple instability and needing to have a system in a steady state in order to be able to calibrate it. You further suggest that it is possible to have a situation where the (mis-) calibrated system systematically overestimates the output, in contrast to what would be expected from random error, along the lines of the misreading of your position by the 10 authors for which you take them to task. I do not know of a documented suggestion about this systematic overestimation of output in calorimetry prior to your papers; do you?\\\\

JedRothwell
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• Jun 26th 2017
• #106
Quote from maryyugo
Are these prone to the same calibration errors?
No.
Quote from maryyugo
If not, have any credible results been obtained supporting LENR with these?
Yes. Many times.

Rather than ask questions like this, why don’t you read the literature? Oh, wait, I forgot. You and Axil don’t read anything or know anything. Your job is to pontificate in perfect ignorance. He believes every claim — including stuff he makes up — and you believe nothing.

``
JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Jun 26th 2017

#109

Quote from maryyugo
Reading most LENR papers is not informative for me.
Sure. As you say, you get information from Washington Post reporters. (Who get information from me, and then garble it.)

Quote from maryyugo
If this is a real phenomenon, after all these years, we should expect much more in the way of proof and workable demonstrations.
Absolutely. Just because Nature and the Washington Post and the rest of the mass media accuse scientists of being lunatics, criminals and frauds; and just because scientists have been harassed and fired for even talking about cold fusion; and there is no funding, we should expect much more in proof. Peer reviewed replications at high sigma from 180 labs is not enough. We should have 1,800 labs. Maybe if we had that many, you would read a paper? Naa! Just kidding. Of course you wouldn’t. It is too confusing.

Eric Walker
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Jun 26th 2017

#110

Quote from kirkshanahan
Not specifically no. That was why it was worthy of publication. It showed a new aspect of calorimetry, and theoretically pointed out that baseline noise is not the dominant error term in these systems.

Your suggestion is new, as I have been saying. What you did was to propose a new aspect of calorimetry that has yet to be given a solid empirical foundation. In applying your suggestion to the calorimetry seen in LENR experiments, at the electrode recombination and various other proposals of yours could clearly be things in your imagination rather than something for electrochemists to worry about. You cannot take a shortcut and bypass the empirical method on something like this.

Eric Walker
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Jun 26th 2017

#113
Kirk, I have no issue with what little I know of your analysis of errors. It’s a very interesting line of inquiry, one that I hope people with relevant expertise can discuss further here. I will readily agree with you that any work that is genuinely in the noise is inherently unsatisfying and unpersuasive.

What we are discussing is not that part of your work, which seems uncontroversial. We’re talking about the elements of your papers in which you introduce novel suggestions for what is going on in LENR electrochemical systems. How do I know for sure you’ve introduced new notions that have yet to be given an empirical basis? Because 10 people with expertise in electrochemistry or related fields believe that to be the case, even allowing that they have misunderstood and misrepresented important parts of your critique. It is these novel suggestions that must be established before they will provide an effective criticism. Until that is done, LENR researchers can heed or ignore these parts of your critique without being remiss in their duty to respond to criticisms.

I’m not at all a scientist. I don’t even know how to calculate AC input power or read a circuit diagram. I would spill dangerous chemicals everywhere if I ever stepped foot in a lab. I’m just making a small but subtle point about who has an obligation to do what, given what we know.

THHuxleynew
Verified User

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Jun 26th 2017

#114

Quote from Eric Walker
Your CCS goes beyond simple instability and needing to have a system in a steady state in order to be able to calibrate it. You further suggest that it is possible to have a situation where the (mis-) calibrated system systematically overestimates the output, in contrast to what would be expected from random error, along the lines of the misreading of your position by the 10 authors for which you take them to task. I do not know of a documented suggestion about this systematic overestimation of output in calorimetry prior to your papers; do you?
Eric, let me answer this.

Kirk’s proposed ATER mechanism redistributes heat in a way that would (for all cell layouts with wires coming out the top) mean that ATER heat, because in liquid, is dissipated less than recombiner heat (since the recombiner is at the top of the cell). This is a consequence of a specific cell topology which is nevertheless used a lot (maybe universally - I don’t know) in F&P-type closed cell experiments. It results therefore in CCS being positive.
CCS in general could be positive or negative, and as Kirk says it is not new, just a restatement of how changes in cell heat distribution can affect calorimetry.
\

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Jun 26th 2017

#116

Quote from kirkshanahan
ROFL. My detection of the CCS problem was from one experimental sequence involving 10 current sweeps. From that I inductively pointed out the the CCS observed there can occur in any type of calibrated experiment (not just calorimetry).
If your theory is derived inductively then by the rules of induction there is a strong possibility your theory is flat wrong. Like I said, most scientists don’t know how to reason inductively.

Eric Walker
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Jun 26th 2017

#117

Quote from THHuxleynew
Kirk says it is not new, just a restatement of how changes in cell heat distribution can affect calorimetry.

Ok, THH. If it is mere restatements of existing electrochemical knowledge that have gotten all of the LENR electrochemists rolling their eyes, I encourage you to double-check your conclusion with an academic electrochemist you know or one at a university near where you live and report back what you learn.

One important detail not to lose sight of: there is more to what Kirk is proposing than ATER.

THHuxleynew
Verified User

4,707
Jun 27th 2017

#118

Quote from Eric Walker
Ok, THH. If it is mere restatements of existing electrochemical knowledge that have gotten all of the LENR electrochemists rolling their eyes, I encourage you to double-check your conclusion with an academic electrochemist you know or one at a university near where you live and report back what you learn.

One important detail not to lose sight of: there is more to what Kirk is proposing than ATER.

Eric,
you need to be more [precise. CCS is just obvious. I’m sorry. you need merely decent knowledge of heat flow to see it.

ATER is indeed surprising. The idea that some unusual surface condition in electrodes could make a reaction happen that normally does not.... Sounds very strange does it not? A bit like LENR. But of course it is less strange than LENR because there are fewer unusual characteristics to explain away.

Whether CCS/ATER explains all the good quality excess heat findings I don’t know. It would need careful attention. But, without that attention, it is correct to assert that it could explain all of them. (Not all of the excess heat findings - for example Parkhomov - but all the ones from careful very well controlled calorimetry).

What i’m saying is not very strong, nor contentious. It is merely keeping open a possibility that has not been closed and has many characteristics (including the element of surprise to electrochemists) shared with LENR.

For as long as this careful attention is not given to the matter the closed cell F&P style experiments have a significant question-mark. It is specific, and closable in principle if those motivated to support these experiments cared to pay attention and try to close it. As long as they dismiss the idea without looking at it that will not happen.

Eric Walker
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Jun 27th 2017

#119

Quote from THHuxleynew
ATER is indeed surprising. The idea that some unusual surface condition in electrodes could make a reaction happen that normally does not.... Sounds very strange does it not? A bit like LENR. But of course it is less strange than LENR because there are fewer unusual characteristics to explain away.

Not only is ATER surprising, it has yet to be empirically tested to see what would actually happen to the measurements. If you could intentionally get recombination to occur at the cathode, e.g., maybe with a bubbler or something, would you get something that looks like excess heat as seen in LENR electrochemical results? If yes, that is indeed interesting. If no, then our ATER is not a very promising example of a surprising result. In that case it would be both surprising and not relevant.

But back to the (inescapably) general point: a number of LENR electrochemists are of the impression that X that Kirk is proposing, where X is some combination of suggestions, has not been seen before. Are they wrong? If they are not wrong, then it seems to me that there needs to be some empirical vetting of X. There has to be some bar for suggestions to cross over before you start worrying about them.

THHuxleynew
Verified User

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Jun 27th 2017

#120

Quote from Eric Walker
Not only is ATER surprising, it has yet to be empirically tested to see what would actually happen to the measurements. If you could intentionally get recombination to occur at the cathode, e.g., maybe with a bubbler or something, would you get something that looks like excess heat as seen in LENR electrochemical results? If yes, that is indeed interesting. If no, then our ATER is not a very promising example of a surprising result. In that case it would be both surprising and not relevant.

But back to the (inescapably) general point: a number of LENR electrochemists believe that X that Kirk is proposing, where X is some combination of suggestions, has not been seen before. Are they wrong? If they are not wrong, then there needs to be some empirical vetting of X.

Well, let us put it this way. The many excess heat experiments are empirical evidence of something anomalous. They support ATER, or LENR. They are specific to neither, and neither ATER nor LENR has highly specific empirical evidence. I don’t see that “ATER has not been seen before” is any more or less true than “LENR has not been seen before”. What is sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander. As you sort of hint, ATER has the merit (as a theory) that it could be reasonable easily disproved. I don’t think LENR could ever be so disproved.

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Alan Smith
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12,941
Jun 27th 2017

#121

I think that this is commonly referred to as ‘catalysis’.

Zephir_AWT
Member

1,089
Jun 27th 2017

#122
From geometric perspective there exists interesting analogy in catalytic behavior of palladium for chemical and for nuclear reactions. The palladium often catalyses hydrogenations because it strongly absorbs hydrogen, thus transferring the reaction running in volume phase (3D) into a reaction running at surface (2D). It’s evident, if we would convert the same reaction to 1D, it would run even faster - and this is just what the palladium does for nuclear reactions.

If we look at the metal lattice, their long lines of atoms could behave like the pistons - especially these ones along boundaries of crystal grains and similar defects. In addition, the energy of collisions along lines of colliding balls has a tendency to multiply - it’s nicely demonstrated for example here. Therefore locally the energy of these attenuated low-dimensional collisions can reach the levels required for fusion.

This catalytic effect is visible in composition of products of cold fusion, which strongly favors the most stable helium, whereas during plasma fusion many neutrons and tritium is usually formed. These products also waste the energy of reaction, not to say they’re doing everything radioactive. But the cold fusion doesn’t release any neutrons which indicates, it favors the formation of harmless products in similar way, like the chemical catalysts. In similar way, the palladium in cars is used for promote complete burning of fuel into carbon dioxide.

Edit: we discussed it extensively here 1, 2 - just because this forum lacks efficient full-text search and it behaves like the pile of manure covering the former insights with laeyers of another discussion, so we are pre-destined to reinvent the wheel again and again.
Edited once, last by Zephir_AWT (Jun 27th 2017).

Eric Walker
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Jun 27th 2017

#126

Quote from kirkshanahan
In the end reproducibility will answer the question. But it will be very difficult to attain reproducibility (which implies control of all relevant variables) when the experimentation is driven by the idea that the FPHE arises from a nuclear process if that is not true. In fact, the failure to reach a reproducible condition after many years of effort is a weak-to-moderate argument against the supposed nuclear nature.

Assuming there’s no E-Cat or IH-Cat on the horizon, I think LENR research will flourish or founder on whether someone is able to come up with a reproducible experiment that can be examined under different conditions and controls, which will allow identification of the mechanism (whatever it is). So I agree with your sentiment about reproducibility. Whether the current difficult-to-reproduce situation is a contraindication of a nuclear mechanism is more debatable.

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Alan Smith
Administrator

12,941
Jun 27th 2017

#127
kirkshanahan

I think you might find this paper of interest. One (at least) of the authors is a member of this forum - and occasional visitor.

Oscillatory Behaviour and Anomalous Heat Evolution in Recombination of H2 and O2 on Pd-based Catalysts

Gas flow-through microcalorimetry has been applied to study the Pd/Al2O3 type catalysts in the exothermic hydrogen recombination process: H2 + O2 → H2O, in view of the potential application in the passive autocatalytic recombination (PAR) technology. The flow mode experiments revealed thermokinetic oscillations, i.e., the oscillatory rate of heat evolution accompanying the process and the corresponding oscillations in the differential heat of process, in sync with oscillatory conversion of hydrogen. .....

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10…b00686?journalCode=iecred

Ahlfors
Verified User

1,402
Jun 27th 2017

#128
Alan Smith

MICROSCAL FMC gas flow-through microcalorimeter

Groszek Aleksander Jerzy

https://www.google.com/patents/US3467501

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Jun 27th 2017

#129

Quote from Zephir_AWT
...transferring the reaction running in volume phase (3D) into a reaction running at surface (2D). It’s evident, if we would convert the same reaction to 1D, it would run even faster - and this is just what the palladium does for nuclear reactions.

Yes, that demonstration of how one particle in a simple momentum transfer generates 800% more energy than “ordinary chemical energy of collisions” is a good demonstration of 1D effects. I also like how she brought it around to Supernovas, which in recent discussions there is a push for the existence of Bosenovas in LENR.

In 1D, atoms become liquid at much higher temperature, as demonstrated in Luttinger Liquids. And one dimensional BECs could be forming at these much higher temperatures.

All of this I have discussed in my hypothesis of the V1DLLBEC — Vibrating 1 Dimensional Luttinger Liquid Bose Einstein Condensate.

https://www.google.com/search?…0i20k1j0i10k1._r8h9sC94Xs

Ahlfors
Verified User

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Jun 27th 2017

#130
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s…icle/pii/0021951780900032

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

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Jun 27th 2017

#131

Quote from kirkshanahan
Let’s go through this once more,
Some of the best scientists looked at your hypothesis and determined it is wrong. Eric Walker said that you should generate some empirical data to back up your claim. The hypothetical case you bring up is that instead of multiplying by 3 and adding 0.7 it appears the empirical case is more like multiplying by 3.1 and adding 0.66. Would you be shouting so loudly if that were the case? (I know, no one ever addresses a hypothetical. Just consider it to be one of the many unanswered questions you leave on the table, right alongside the other researchers’ unanswered questions.)

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Jun 27th 2017

#132

Quote from THHuxleynew
The many excess heat experiments are empirical evidence of something anomalous.
How many? This thread was started with 153 peer reviewed excess heat replications. Jed said later on that there were 180 labs with results. Where does an ordinary scientist begin his inquiry, with those “first 100 or so replications done by a who’s who of electrochemistry”? Or is it with essentially zero replications as proposed by the hyperskeptics?

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Alan Smith
Administrator

12,941
Jun 28th 2017

#134
I have no argument with your definition of catalysis, Mary. Depending in its ‘rate constant’ a catalyst can increase the rate of a reaction from almost zero to ‘considerable’. Under certain circumstances this can mean making a reaction ‘not normally considered possible’ in that the rate is so slow that detection reaction products is very difficult or in some systems impossible, into one that is ‘moderate to vigorous’. I agree with you btw, you are no chemist.

THHuxleynew
Verified User

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Jun 28th 2017

#135

Quote from Alan Smith
I have no argument with your definition of catalysis, Mary. Depending in its ‘rate constant’ a catalyst can increase the rate of a reaction from almost zero to ‘considerable’. Under certain circumstances this can mean making a reaction ‘not normally considered possible’ in that the rate is so slow that detection reaction products is very difficult or in some systems impossible, into one that is ‘moderate to vigorous’. I agree with you btw, you are no chemist.

Chemical catalysis is well understood, and the reasons for it - adjacent atoms will skew quantum orbitals and can make electron transitions otherwise unlikely likely.

Nuclear catalysis from some chemical structure) is unexpected because the things specific to a chemical structure - electron orbitals etc - are way different in length scale from what is needed to affect nuclear forces and therefore not likely to have a large affect on nuclear reaction rates (though electric fields do have some affect, for obvious reasons, especially very strong ones). But going from stable, to noticeable fusion reaction, is a good deal more than just some effect.

Eric Walker
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Jun 28th 2017

#136

Quote from THHuxleynew
But going from stable, to noticeable fusion reaction, is a good deal more than just some effect.

I think this is one of several reasons that it is critically important to disentangle claims of fusion from LENR empirical reports. The latter are measurements that are reported, and the former are high-level conclusions derived from those measurements on the basis of often contradictory evidence.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Jul 26th 2017

#138
Over on a different thread, Jed says that the LENR effect has been replicated 17,000 times.

Clearance Items

The Real Roger Barker wrote:
So tell me Jed, why were they not able to validate the Pons Fleichmann effect on a regular basis?
Jed Rothwell: They did validate Fleischmann Pons on a regular basis. Roughly 17,000 times according to a grad student at the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, at 180 labs according to Ed Storms. (Not me. I didn’t count ‘em.)

They are not replicating on a regular basis now because they are dead. Of old age.

The Real Roger Barker wrote:
17,000 times?! That would mean we should all be powering our homes with palladium based fusion reactors in our basements. We know this is not happening so someone got something wrong here.
Jed Rothwell: You misunderstand. That is a tally of positive experimental runs. Those were mainly small devices. In some cases, they were run 100 at a time, in a 10 x 10 array, or 16 at a time. None of those devices is working at the moment as far as I know. Most were consumed in destructive testing.

ADD: Plus, as I recall from the paper, the tally included multiple test runs for the same device (same cathode) in some cases.

The paper is: He, J., Nuclear fusion inside condense matters. Front. Phys. China, 2007. 1: p. 96-102., Table 1. That’s HE Jing-tang, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, but I think a grad student compiled the table. I did not study it carefully but it looks like it is in the ballpark.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Jul 27th 2017

#140

Quote from kevmolenr@gmail.com
How many? This thread was started with 153 peer reviewed excess heat replications. Jed said later on that there were 180 labs with results. Where does an ordinary scientist begin his inquiry, with those “first 100 or so replications done by a who’s who of electrochemistry”? Or is it with essentially zero replications as proposed by the hyperskeptics?
Do not mix up apples and oranges. These are different tallies of different things.

Storms listed 180 labs in Table 2 of his first book. That is the number of labs that replicated excess heat. The number that replicated tritium and other effects are listed in other tables. Some labs replicated both heat and tritium. There were actually more than 180 labs, but Storms did not include them all in his database. 180 is enough to be sure, in any case. Five would be enough, in my opinion.

The number of experimental runs greatly exceeds the number of labs, because some labs run hundreds or thousands of tests, typically in an array.

Not all of these labs published papers in peer-reviewed journals. On the other hand, some published more than one paper. I list most of the peer-reviewed papers that are mainly about heat here:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJtallyofcol.pdf

This is a tally by D. Britz, not me.

Regarding the “essentially zero replications as proposed by the hyperskeptics” that has no basis in realty. Anyone can go to an academic library at a university and find hundreds of papers describing replications of cold fusion. If you want to argue that every single one of these replications was a mistake, you are arguing that the experimental method of science does not work. If that were true, we humans would still be living in caves. Some number of experiments are likely to be wrong, because people make mistakes. But people do not always make mistakes, day after day, year after year. Nothing would work if they did. When you get enough positive replications, done by a large number of people, the likelihood that every one of them is wrong is roughly comparable to the likelihood that today 1,000 electrochemists will simultaneously lose control of their cars and crash into telephone poles.

THHuxleynew
Verified User

4,707
Jul 27th 2017

#142

Quote from JedRothwell
Do not mix up apples and oranges. These are different tallies of different things.

The number of experimental runs greatly exceeds the number of labs, because some labs run hundreds or thousands of tests, typically in an array.

Not all of these labs published papers in peer-reviewed journals. On the other hand, some published more than one paper. I list most of the peer-reviewed papers that are mainly about heat here:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJtallyofcol.pdf

This is a tally by D. Britz, not me.

So for these multiply replicated results the issue is not are they replicable but what do the results tell us?

We have anomalous FPHE, always a small percentage of calibration constants, with CCS/ATER or some other calorimetry-related artifact on the table. For a novel heat source to be more plausible here, the issue is why we never get replicable larger results.

For the film results the issue is various experimental lacunae that can lead to them from other causes. We know they are sensitive to that.

For the tritium results these are all at level comparable with atmospheric He and therefore a complex analysis must be done to determine cause which takes into account all data and experiment selection mechanisms (e.g. how are leaks detected and dealt with in the data analysis).

Each separate set of results has different issues, and in all cases the issues are difficult because the data is marginal. This is unexpected given cold fusion, because the sensitivity of different methods of detection would be expected to be very different. For example, for radiation not to be much more sensitive than heat or tritium detection we need the LENR mechanism to alter reaction pathways from normal to ones that very largely favour stable results and non-gamma-producing reaction paths.

None of that is impossible, because LENR is not understood, nor are hypotheses coherent with other data, and therefore mechanisms can be hypothesised that fit whatever LENR experimental data exists.

But, it means that these replications do not constitute, for the wider scientific community, strong evidence of LENR.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Jul 27th 2017

#146

Quote from maryyugo
The arguments are that the experiments are “noisy” and the signal is not significantly stronger than the noise and that in almost three (1989-2017) decades, this has not significantly improved.
There are two things wrong with that.

First, it isn’t a bit true. Results from 100 W with no input power are much stronger than, say, 50 mW excess with 4 W of input.

Second, even if it were true, it is not a valid metric for judging an experimental result. Many scientific discoveries remained difficult to reproduce or measure for decades, yet no one denied they are real.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Jul 27th 2017

#148

Quote from kirkshanahan
The tally developed by Britz was based on what was claimed in the paper he was summarizing, and does not imply any actual validity to the claim.
Actually it was biased against the claims. As I point out in my analysis, several authors stated clearly that their results were positive, but Britz put them down as negative. Despite that, I reported his totals.

But — as always — you are missing the point. If hundreds of researchers could make thousands of mistakes over 20 years, doing what they were trained to do in their own specialty, then science would not work. No experiment would be meaningful. I am not exaggerating when I say that civilization itself would not exist.

Of course individuals can be wrong. Or they can be crackpots, like you, who imagine they know more about this subject than people like Fleischmann and Bockris, or Faraday, for that matter. You are a legend in your own mind. Alas, your claims cannot be tested or falsified, and you have not addressed any of the reasons given by the experts in the Marwan paper showing that you are wrong. But, such considerations never faze a crackpot!

I suggest you write papers showing errors in Einstein’s theories. That is the usual target of deluded crackpots like you.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Jul 27th 2017

#149

Quote from THHuxleynew
For the tritium results these are all at level comparable with atmospheric He and therefore a complex analysis must be done to determine cause which takes into account all data and experiment selection mechanisms (e.g. how are leaks detected and dealt with in the data analysis).
This must be a mistake. Tritium results have nothing to do with atmospheric helium. In any case:

Tritium typically ranges from 50 times background to 10E14 times background.

Helium is sometimes lower than atmospheric background. So low, in fact, that it cannot be from a leak or it would be random. In other cases it is higher, for two reasons. Either because it was produced at high rates and it climbed above background, or because the cell was initially filled with enough helium to make it higher than atmospheric background.

There is no selection bias in most studies. All of the results, including negative ones, are listed in the reports. Especially F. Will’s tritium studies, where they went to a lot of trouble running many deliberate blanks.

JedRothwell
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10,094
Jul 27th 2017

#153

Quote from kirkshanahan
If you will cite a reference that I can look at, I’ll let you know why this is likely wrong.
Give me a break. You know damn well what I am talking about. I am not going to keep giving you and Yugo the same information time after time, just to have you ignore it.

Hint: see my video and accompanying documentation. Look for it yourself.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Jul 27th 2017

#155

Quote from kirkshanahan
The easiest way to clarify the discussion is to start talking about ‘control’ instead of ‘replication’.
You have your own thread to discuss your own ridiculous theory. The easiest way to clarify the discussion is to keep you on your thread and let real scientific discussions move apace here. That is one of the stated functions of moderators on this panel. I hope to see them doing what they say they do, because you have already derailed this thread once.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Jul 27th 2017

#156

Quote from maryyugo
Want to point me to that link again please?
Why the hell should I tell you the same thing again and again and again? You will never read it.

As I said, see the video.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Jul 27th 2017

#157

Quote from kirkshanahan
I don’t think I’ll buy it.
You sure have a lot to say about a paper you didn’t read.

Notably missing from this 2007 paper is any mention of my work (from 2002, 2005, 2006).
And rightfully so, because your work has been discredited in the field. You have your own thread for pushing your discredited theory, you should stay on that thread.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Jul 27th 2017

#158

Quote from THHuxleynew
None of that is impossible, because LENR is not understood, nor are hypotheses coherent with other data, and therefore mechanisms can be hypothesised that fit whatever LENR experimental data exists.

But, it means that these replications do not constitute, for the wider scientific community, strong evidence of LENR.
This is nonsense. The best example is High Temperature Superconductivity. We still don’t have a valid accepted theory as to why it takes place but the empirical results are accepted.

There was no entrenched self-interested group of scientists in place when HTS results started to be generated, which was right around the time LENR results started to be generated. But there was an entrenched self-interested group of Hot-Fusion scientists in place who knew that LENR would knock them off their pedestal so they rallied against it, often unethically. This POLITICAL activity knocked out the funding for LENR research and it has all but dried up.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Jul 27th 2017

#160

Quote from interested observer
There is a strange usage of the term “replication” around here. ....

Jed’s constant refrain that it would take a boatload of money and two years for even the surviving masters of the field to produce results suggests that people cannot even replicate their own work, much less anyone else’s.
I suppose you don’t even see the irony in your own remarks. Scientists do not replicate their own work, so yeah, there really is a strange usage of the term “replication” around here. So if an effect has been replicated 153 times in peer reviewed journals (many of whom were the top scientists in the field of electrochemistry) , is that not enough for you?

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Jul 27th 2017

#162

Quote from kirkshanahan
Note that this is prior to my CCS publication, so this paper will NOT consider the CCS at all.....
Show me where I’m wrong here folks….
I’ll show you. Your ridiculous discredited theory has its own thread on this forum, so you should be posting your refrains on that thread rather than deliberately derailing this thread.

interested observer
Member

2,435
Jul 27th 2017

#163
@kevetc. So what exactly do you mean when you say that the effect has been replicated 153 times. Try to contain your spittle and answer calmly, if you are capable of such behavior.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Jul 27th 2017

#164

Quote from interested observer
Apparently there are three options regarding LENR literature:

1) If you don’t read it,
You mean, like Shanahan said about JT He’s paper?

2) If you read it and criticize it, you are a crackpot.
You neglect the case, like Shanahan, where he didn’t read it but still criticizes it.
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kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Jul 27th 2017

#165

Quote from interested observer
@kevetc. So what exactly do you mean when you say that the effect has been replicated 153 times. Try to contain your spittle and answer calmly, if you are capable of such behavior.
Read the thread and in particular, the Tally paper that Jed and I both linked to. If someone comments on a thread without reading it, is that worthy of spittle? You tell me.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Jul 27th 2017

#172

Quote from maryyugo
It’s not that the *effect* has to be replicated (by 153 different methods). It’s that an exact experiment has to be replicated including materials and methods and error analysis (thanks, KS). And it helps to pick the very best yielding experiment as your choice of what to duplicate/replicate. That’s why I am after Jed to provide the one or a few BEST tests, not hundreds or thousands which non-enthusiasts have not the time to review.
Seems like standard MY obfuscations that Jed has called you out on. When a bunch of data is presented to you that refutes your position, you say “too much to read”. And when it gets pared down you act as if it’s not surrounded by all the other data.

The PREPONDERANCE of the evidence of >150 replications is strong. You may be familiar with calorimeters but you are nowhere near the top of the elctrochemistry field as these scientists were. I think you hide behind such things.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Jul 27th 2017

#173

Quote from kirkshanahan
That’s not a technical basis, that’s a personal basis. Please define your technical basis.
You have your own “technical basis” thread where such discussions should take place. Have those discussions over there. Your goal here is to once again derail this thread.

interested observer
Member

2,435
Jul 27th 2017

#174
Kev: no, none of this is worthy of spittle, at least among sensible people. If you can’t answer a simple question without ranting about what I have read or not read, then it is a YOU problem, not a ME problem. I thought my question was quite simple.

I have repeatedly stated that I am pretty open-minded about LENR in general, but every single one of you guys who champion it act like lawyers who drown their opponents in useless paper in an effort to avoid getting to the meat of the matter. I kind of wonder why you guys argue with skeptics at all. Clearly, you aren’t actually trying to convince us of anything. Your purpose seems to be just to vent about other people not seeing the world the way you do. Well, it’s a (relatively) free blog. So knock yourself out.

THHuxleynew
Verified User

4,707
Jul 27th 2017

#176

Quote from JedRothwell
This must be a mistake. Tritium results have nothing to do with atmospheric helium. In any case:

Yes, I’m sorry, I meant the He results.

I have not looked much at the tritium results.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Jul 27th 2017

#177

Quote from interested observer
Kev: no, none of this is worthy of spittle, at least among sensible people.
So, commenting on a thread when you haven’t read the thread isn’t worthy of spittle. Sensible people READ THE THREAD. I see you don’t count yourself among sensible people.

If you can’t answer a simple question without ranting about what I have read or not read, then it is a YOU problem, not a ME problem. I thought my question was quite simple.
Read the posts right near your posts, and all around it. Understand the context. You are commenting on a thread without reading it, right in between a crackpot and a notorious skeptopath.

I have repeatedly stated that I am pretty open-minded about LENR in general, but every single one of you guys who champion it act like lawyers who drown their opponents in useless paper in an effort to avoid getting to the meat of the matter.
153 replications IS VERY MUCH the meat of the matter. And so is 14,700 experiments which means that these replications were done multiple times. But to your point, there is a greek word that we get the word “apologetics” from. It comes from “apo” which means “away” and “logos” which is “word”. It is “a word away from” which in greek times meant a word away from critics, who would drown out what people had to say in the public square. When it was determined that the person had something worth hearing, they would conduct a trial so the guy could give his “apology”, his “word away from” the critics. So what you have just done is to criticize the structure and format of this forum, trying to blame us for not having a “word away from”.

I kind of wonder why you guys argue with skeptics at all. Clearly, you aren’t actually trying to convince us of anything.
There is a certain healthy skepticism and then there is hyperskpeticism. I don’t try to convince hyperskeptics of anything. But 153 replications by the leading electrochemists of the day is something that a regular skeptic kinda acknowledges as compelling, while the skeptopaths engage in the behavior that you are obliquely criticizing.

Your purpose seems to be just to vent about other people not seeing the world the way you do. Well, it’s a (relatively) free blog. So knock yourself out.
That is not my purpose. In starting this thread my purpose is to get to the starting point for a healthy skeptic (not for a skeptopath or a crackpot, though). That starting point is >150 replications, >14,000 experiments, >180 labs, and perhaps some other compelling evidence. But LENR is a very difficult field, just ask the MFMP guys.
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kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Jul 27th 2017

#178

Quote from kirkshanahan
So post your response over there if it’s so important to you. What is your technical basis for claiming my ‘theory’ is discredited?
Post your responses over there if they’re important to you. That is your “technical basis” thread, set up by the moderators, just for you.

Zeus46
Member

1,271
Jul 28th 2017

#184

Quote from maryyugo
“Please give him the link Jed! Everyone deserves a chance to redeem themselves...”

That is a pompous, inane and asinine remark

So... have you read those slides that you politely asked Dr Celani for yet?

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Jul 28th 2017

#185

Quote from interested observer
1) If you don’t read it, you are worthless scum (unless you embrace it sight unseen.)

2) If you read it and criticize it, you are a crackpot.

3) If you accept it as the gospel according to Jed, you are golden.
1. If you do not read it, you have no business critiquing or discussing it. It is extremely unscientific to blather about experiments you know nothing about, and if you do not read, you do not know. That is clear from the confusion and the errors in messages here from people who have not read the literature.

2. If you read it and criticize it, join the club. There are thousands of papers and many of them are duds, as I have pointed out countless time.

3. No one could “accept” all of the literature because it is so contradictory. Much of it is wrong, as I said. This is normal for science at this stage in its development. See:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJlessonsfro.pdf

The Real Roger Barker
Member

17
Jul 28th 2017

#186

Quote from maryyugo
That is a pompous, inane and asinine remark (note to admins: I am addressing the remark, not the person)

Mary, kindly leave such talk for other places.

axil
Verified User

1,717
Jul 28th 2017

#187

Quote from interested observer
Boy are LENR supporters adverse to defending their positions or even elucidating them. Ask any question and you are told to go read a bunch of papers. How about if you guys explain to us woefully ignorant people what you find so compelling in a paper and why it should be taken seriously. If you can’t do that, then your own belief is based on blind faith. And skip the BS about spoon feeding. That is just a bogus way to say “I can’t produce a cogent argument.”

However, if that is outside of the bounds of what should be going on here, then what is this website for? We have ECW where you can spend your time declaring the great victory that has already occurred for LENR and how it is going to be used in lawnmowers, helicopters and dishwashers starting next week. I thought this was a place for serious discussion, not cheerleading.

http://journals.plos.org/ploso…69895#pone.0169895.ref007

This is Holmlid’s newest peer reviewed paper on chemically induced nuclear reactions.

You can go through the paper and develop questions and If I can answer them then I will, but if I can’t then once we have formulated the question meticulously then we can ask Holmlid directly for clarification. I am excited to interact in the exploration of such an exciting subject.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 10th 2017

#188
Louis Reed writes:

Rossi vs. Darden aftermath discussions

JedRothwell wrote: That was a tally by Britz, not me. It was made in the mid to late 1980s.

What on earth are you talking about? You can’t tally replications before the experiment being replicated has been performed.

I was referring to a paper dated 2009, entitled “Tally of Cold Fusion Papers”, for which you (Jed Rothwell) are listed as the only author. Britz’s database is one of the sources, but so is your lenr-canr database. In that paper, there is a topic “Positive, peer-reviewed excess heat papers culled from both databases”, which is presumably a superset of refereed replications of P&F. The description says “The titles are culled from both [databases]”, so it was you doing the tallying, not Britz, even if you used his database. And the complete list of 153 papers is given in an appendix, and it includes a paper by Arata in 2008, so it clearly post-dates Storms’ table 2, published in 2004, which you claimed represents 180 “highly reputable university and government labs” that replicated P&F.

Furthermore, according to your own paper, the list of 153 refereed papers represents only 51 different affiliations, and not all of those are universities or government labs, since they include e.g. BlackLight Power, Toyota’s IMRA, and Swartz’s JET Energy.

Quote Not all of the 180 institutions published papers in the peer-reviewed literature.

Yes, that’s what I argued, and that’s what doesn’t make sense. A highly reputable university or government lab that claims replication of cold fusion would not be reputable if it didn’t publish.

Quote There were 180 institutions in Table 2. I counted them long ago.

You may have counted them, but I don’t believe you got to 180:

1. There are only about 180 entries, and Miles accounts for 9 of them, Zhang and Arata another 9, Eagleton and Bush for 7. There are at least 7 other authors (or author groups) with 5 or more entries, and 28 others with 2 to 5. Now some entries may represent more than one affiliation, but there is no way to make up for the multiple entries from many institutions. This is obvious when you consider the following...

2. All but about 45 of the authors listed in Storms table are accounted for in your list of principal authors responsible for the excess heat papers you tallied. The overlap is probably even stronger since Storms lists first author (and 2nd if there are only 2), and not necessarily principal author. And your list corresponds to 51 affiliations. So, that means the remaining 45 authors would have to account for 129 additional affiliations.

So, it’s clear from your own writing that 180 affiliations is not justifiable, let alone 180 highly reputable university and government institutions.

Such a cavalier misrepresentation of the contents of your own paper kind of destroys your credibility with respect to the rest of the cold fusion literature. Of course, in the Trump era, dishonesty seems to win a loyal following.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 10th 2017

#189

Quote from Louis Reed
Instead, the number of groups actively investigating cold fusion now is a small fraction of 180, which means most of those labs have abandoned the field, many without publishing, and for a phenomenon with the importance of cold fusion, that is inconceivable unless the scientists came to realize the effect was not real.

Kevmo: No, the funding dried up and scientists moved on to other projects where they could get paid.

Funding from respectable sources (like DOE) dried up because the claims did not withstand scrutiny. The claims did not fail to persuade the world because funding dried up.
No, even the 2004 DOE review suggested further funding but everyone knew that wouldn’t happen due to the politics surrounding cold fusion.

Indeed, funding did not dry up. Storms estimates $500M has been spent on the field.

I favor funding something like $1 for every megajoule produced.
P&F got something like $50M from Toyota, about 500 times what they claimed was needed to make the claim in the first place. EPRI funded McKubre, and governments in India, Italy, and Japan continued to fund cold fusion for a long time.
Cold Fusion is 25 ORDERS of MAGNITUDE better bang for the buck. -—————————————————————————— I need to update these figures. I realized I have been comparing OverUnity Apples to UnderUnity Oranges. Up until this week, Controlled Hot Fusion (CHF) experiments haven’t even broken overunity, let alone ignition. Nuclear fusion hits energy milestone http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/nuclear-fusion-hits-energy-milestone-1.2534140 “The final reaction took place in a tiny “hot spot” about half the width of a human hair over about a ten thousandth of a millionth of a second. It released 17.3 kilojoules – almost double the amount absorbed by the fuel.” look again at the two side by side: cold fusion 2 * 3600 seconds average * 1/2* 300 Mjoules (Max) * 14,700 replications / $300k average = 105840 sec*MjouleSamples/$ Hot fusion 0.5 seconds*10^-9 average * 1/2* 17.3KK joules (max) * 20 replications / $2 Billion average = 0.0000000000000000003 sec*MjouleSamples/$ That is now 25 ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more bang for the buck. On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 4:35 PM, Kevin O’Malley wrote: It does not make sense to compare AVErage to MAXimum, anyways, because it depends upon having access to so much data that one can take the average of it. So I’m going to revise this aspect of the Bang4TheBuck calculation into 1/2 the maximum. One half of 300MJ is 150MJ. One half of 6MJ is 3MJ. Until we hear otherwise and need to revise it, shaving off an order of magnitude here or there. That doesn’t change the fact that LENR is 12 orders of magnitude more bang for the buck than hot fusion. look at the two side by side: cold fusion 2 * 3600 seconds average * 300 Mjoules (Max) * 14,700 replications / $300k average = 105840 sec*MjouleSamples/$ Hot fusion 0.5 seconds average * 6 Mjoules (max) * 20 replications / $2 Billion average = 0.00000003 sec*MjouleSamples/$ That is now 14 ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more bang for the buck. On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 8:04 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote: Kevin O’Malley wrote: Controlled Hot-Fusion has generated more energy for longer sustained periods. Until a few years ago the PPPL held the world record. 10 MW for about 0.6 s. (6 MJ). I think some other Tokamak topped that by a wide margin, but I am not sure. ***The average cold fusion experiment generates several hundred megajoules for several hours and costs maybe $300k. No, the average experiment generates a megajoule or two at most. Only a few have generated 10 to 300 MJ. - Jed

Moreover, the incredible potential of cold fusion, were it real, has attracted private funding from the likes of Sidney Kimmel, and lately Bill Gates (allegedly), Larry Page, and Darden and co. The truth is, it is far easier to attract funds in cold fusion (or hydrinos) than in most fields considered legitimate in mainstream science. The likes of Godes, Dardik, and Rossi would have no chance with peer reviewed funding agencies, and all have attracted millions from private investment.
It is simply not the case. Almost all the cold fusion research has been privately funded, all the while the hot fusion guys have been fraudulently taking the lion’s share of research funds.

No, the statement stands: It is inconceivable that reputable institutes would abandon a field like cold fusion unless the scientists believed the likelihood that the phenomenon was real was vanishingly small.
It is utterly conceivable and it has happened. IF you look into cold fusion, your career will suffer.

I wrote: Surely, if this claim of 180 (or 90) reputable university labs having replicated cold fusion held water, there would have been no need for the formation of the MFMP whose first aim is to identify an experiment that can be replicated by university labs.
Most of the replications involved excess heat. It’s unfortunate that hot fusion guys had so little experience in calorimetry and electrochemistry but were so incredibly arrogant, but they managed to squash the research efforts, even when they had positive results that they unethically covered up.

So, I repeat, if 180 reputable institutes had replicated in a credible way, MFMP would be superfluous.
I have had my own frustrations with MFMP. They had Gamma rays 4 years ago and just blithely went off and did other things.

I don’t even know who the top 100 electrochemists are, but if you provide a list, and they all claim cold fusion is real, I’ll consider it.
That is Jed’s claim. I’m sure he’ll look at those 153 peer reviewed papers and point out that most of the top electrochemists are represented.

But you’re probably right. I base my evaluation of the field on the quality of the published claims, and they fail to persuade.
Sometimes I think maybe 20 of those 153 peer reviewed replications were wrong. That’s still more than a hundred replications. You wanna be persuaded? Call up MIT and ask why they fraudulently chose to hide their positive results.

But if I were to base my view of the field on authority, I would put more weight on the thousands of top nuclear physicists who are all but certain it’s bunk, than on 100 unnamed electrochemists.
As I posted above, cold fusion is 25 orders of magnitude more bang for the buck than hot fusion. Hot fusion guys don’t regularly do electrolysis, but electrochemists do.
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kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 10th 2017

#191

Quote from kirkshanahan
Kev wrote: “Call up MIT and ask why they fraudulently chose to hide their positive results.”

They didn’t. (Please don’t bring up the 1999 Infinite Energy - Gene Mallove report on this. ....

That was a case of fraud, which some of the people around here as so acutely attuned to. Naturally when the fraud comes from the skeptopaths, suddenly the requirements for proving fraud are sky high.

Yes, in LENR, the only time we’ve seen a verified fraud was from MIT when they fraudulently changed their results that were actually positive. A report by Dr. Eugene Mallove explains how MIT falsified tests of Pons and Fleishmann back in 1989 in order to squash cold fusion. They wanted to maintain their lucrative hot fusion research grants. This fraud by MIT is partly responsible for setting back cold fusion research over the past 25 years.

http://www.infinite-energy.com/images/pdfs/mitcfreport.pdf

1
kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 10th 2017

#193

Quote from kirkshanahan

You really can’t read can you Kev. I ask you to not bring up the Mallove report because ...
You can’t read either, can you? It was proven that MIT lied about their positive results but you keep coming back for more and more, crackpot that you are. There’s a difference between not being able to read and choosing not to answer a crackpot on his own terms.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 10th 2017

#194

Quote from kevmolenr@gmail.com
That was a tally by Britz, not me. It was made in the mid to late 1980s.

What on earth are you talking about? You can’t tally replications before the experiment being replicated has been performed.
Obviously, I meant to write “late 1990s.” Please do pretend you have found a significant error when anyone can see it was typo. Surely you do not think I believe in time travel.

Quote from kevmolenr@gmail.com
In that paper, there is a topic “Positive, peer-reviewed excess heat papers culled from both databases”, which is presumably a superset of refereed replications of P&F. The description says “The titles are culled from both [databases]”, so it was you doing the tallying, not Britz,
Good catch. It was from both.

I counted 180 institutions somewhere. Probably my own database, since it is easier to count things with an EndNote file than by hand.

2
kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 10th 2017

#197

Quote from kirkshanahan
, I prepared a detailed response based on the referenced document (http://www.infinite-energy.com/images/pdfs/mitcfreport.pdf ).
....
Reading the document, it is clear Mallove has an axe to grind, and he tries to use the data manipulation to put a sharp edge on his beliefs. Unfortunately, it really just dulls it.

So what we have in this forum is Kevin spouting standard CF propaganda without the ability to defend his position, and then immediately descending into ad hominem attack. Typical true believer behavior.
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Uhh, what we have here is that you posted your rebuttal and Mallove is dead

On April 20, 2012, the Norwich Bulletin stated that: “An ongoingmurder trial came to an abrupt halt Friday when Chad Schaffer, of Norwich, decided to accept an offer of 16 years in prison, pleading guilty to the lesser charge of first-degree manslaughter in the 2004 beating death of Eugene Mallove.”
Eugene Mallove - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Mallove

so he can no longer answer your nonsense. But it’s good to know where you posted your stuff so that anyone interested in what you have to say can go over there and be fascinated by it.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 10th 2017

#198

Quote from maryyugo
That’a way to avoid answering the question... so once more... no verified fraud hey? So again, what did you think of Defkalion?

https://matslew.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/defkalion-demo-proven-not-to-be-reliable/
No, it’s a way of expressing that I suspect your post is probably going to be moved to the junkyard thread. If you want me to answer and have confidence it will stay up, you can post it on the Cold Fusion DISQUS site.

https://disqus.com/home/channel/coldfusion/

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 10th 2017

#199

Quote from JedRothwell
I counted 180 institutions somewhere. Probably my own database, since it is easier to count things with an EndNote file than by hand.
Actually, it was Louis Reed who wrote that. He seems to be whittling down your 180 institutions number, and I’d like to know what that gets whittled down to. He did a similar thing to the 153 peer reviewed replications number. I just want to know what an ordinary scientest would accept as the number of peer reviewed replications and how many labs...

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 11th 2017

#200

Quote from kevmolenr@gmail.com
I just want to know what an ordinary scientest would accept as the number of peer reviewed replications and how many labs...
What does it matter? If this were treated rationally, like any other experiment, five replications at places like Los Alamos, China Lake and BARC would convince everyone. There would be no argument. Debating whether it has been replicated at 180 labs or only 90 is absurd. Either number is far greater than any rational scientist would demand for proof. It is like arguing whether you should spend $100 million repairing your Toyota Corolla transmission, or only $52 million.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 11th 2017

#201

Quote from JedRothwell
What does it matter? If this were treated rationally, like any other experiment, five replications at places like Los Alamos, China Lake and BARC would convince everyone. There would be no argument. Debating whether it has been replicated at 180 labs or only 90 is absurd. Either number is far greater than any rational scientist would demand for proof. It is like arguing whether you should spend $100 million repairing your Toyota Corolla transmission, or only $52 million.
I agree, but when I go on elsewhere and quote 53 peer reviewed replications, 180 labs, 14,700 replication experiments I want it to be a relatively hardened figure. Yes I know it means repairing the Toyota for $52M but if you settle on $52M and reasonable skeptics settle on $52M then I don’t have to go through this again and again. This is my third time trying to get at a secure number.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 11th 2017

#204

Quote from THHuxleynew
keV @mods

As one example of behavior that is troll-like I note this argument. It is a rhetorical device with no information content (other than the death of Mallove) and no relevance to the issue. To see its absurdity pick any dead physicist holding ideas now considered wrong - or equally a dead devil-worshipper holding objectionable ideas now thought to be wrong. Holding to this argument, all these people would equally deserve to be believed because they have no ability to reply, and ones belief system must therefore be hopelessly overloaded.
That’s troll like, but arguing against the “who’s who of electrochemistry” in their replications is not considered troll like? Alice has truly stepped through the looking glass.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 11th 2017

#209

Quote from maryyugo
Are we at the “appeal to authority” fallacy yet, Jed?
Nope. Not as long as the people we are talking about really are experts in a discipline relevant to the problem. If you cite experts in plasma physics and say that their cold fusion experiments prove the effect does not exist, that would be a fallacious appeal to authority, because they do not know how to do electrochemistry, as you see from their papers. Or, if you were to cite the opinions of electrochemists regarding the ITER project, that would be a fallacious appeal to authority.

It is not complicated. Is the person you cite a recognized authority in a field relevant to the discussion? In cold fusion that would be an expert in electrochemistry, calorimetry, tritium or helium detection, for example. If so, you have not made a logical fallacy.

Arguing against the who’s who of electrochemistry is as troll-like as a troll can be. To take some similar hot-button examples, it is like claiming that climatologists have no business expressing opinions on global warming, or doctors know nothing about obesity and we should defer to the latest fad diet advocate instead.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 11th 2017

#210

Quote from JedRothwell
Or, if you were to cite the opinions of electrochemists regarding the ITER project, that would be a fallacious appeal to authority.
That is not to suggest electrochemists should express no opinions about ITER. It just means their opinions are not privileged. Electrochemists do not deserve extra respect or deference when it comes to ITER. They may deserve somewhat more respect than, say, people who have no scientific or engineering background. But I don’t suppose they know more about ITER than biologists, civil engineers, or semiconductor experts.

Of course all arguments must be considered on their own merits. But, if you are not an expert, and you have difficulty understanding a technical subject, I think you should defer to experts until you have a good reason to think they are mistaken. For example, it it is clear that Mary Yugo does not understand the boil-off calorimetry in this paper by Fleischmann:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetra.pdf

Fleischmann did understand this, in great detail, and he was an expert in calorimetry. So, it would not be a fallacious appeal for Yugo to say, “even though I personally don’t understand this, I am going to assume it is correct because Fleischmann was an expert in this field, and there are no published papers by other experts citing errors in this work.”

Of course, Yugo would never say that. On the contrary, the gist of her argument is often: “anything I do not understand or I have not bothered to read must be wrong.” That is kind of a reverse appeal to authority. It is an appeal to ignorance. It is saying that people who know nothing and who cannot be bothered to learn anything are inherently more believable than world-class experts and Fellows of the Royal Society.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 12th 2017

#211

Quote from kirkshanahan
Listing a “who’s who” *without* judging the quality and relevance of their relevant work is the logical tactic known as ‘call to authority’.
When it’s the top hundred or so experts in some particular field, it is not a logical fallacy to rely on their authority, because they have some authority in their field.

Now, if it were the top 100 experts in a field saying that it’s bogus IN THEIR FIELD, that’s different. The situation we had was a few experts in nuclear hot fusion who were dependent upon guvmint grants for their living, they were saying that those top hundred experts in the OTHER FIELD had got it wrong. It is not a stretch to suggest that people who regularly use electrochemistry and calorimetry in their line of work have more authority than people who rarely if EVER use calorimetry in their line of work.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 12th 2017

#212

Quote from maryyugo
It was essentially rhetorical, Kev. In point of fact, based on your unpleasant style and your previous writing, I don’t give a _ _ _ _ what you think.

Of course not. Arguing points of view and supporting one’s views is what forums should be about. Are we at the “appeal to authority” fallacy yet, Jed?
In point of fact, you are one of the most unpleasant trolls on the internet, you’ve been banned from Vortex and probably other sites so I don’t care what you think for the most part. But you serve as a good pasquinade. And sure enough, you jump right over the line of rationality in your next sentence where your own supposed authority is lined up against the top hundred experts in electrochemistry. You are not among those top hundred experts in electrochemistry, even if you know a thing or two about calorimetry, but your stuff doesn’t even come remotely close. Go on and keep arguing that irrational point of view, it works for me.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 12th 2017

#213

Quote from JedRothwell
Gee, golly, gosh. Again and again, is it? Well, you could try doing it yourself. What’s stopping you? Most of the data is at LENR-CANR.org and in Ed’s book. You should read the book if you are seriously interested in this subject. If you are so anxious to pin down the number, do your own homework.

It is almost as if you expect me to spoon feed you the information.

I myself find this whole discussion silly, and inconsequential. Once the number of replications exceeds 5 or 10, it makes no difference how many there are. 90, 180, or 20,000 would be the same. I wrote the Tally paper at the request of a researcher. I do not know why he wanted the information, but it wasn’t hard for me to assemble the report using my EndNote relational database, so I did it. It is not important.
I have read Ed’s book, etc. So calm down. I don’t expect you to spoonfeed me. You wrote the tally and it got untied by a skeptopath so I would like to know your response. Where does the rational line get drawn? You say it makes no difference, but it does... to a skeptopath. If we ever get a skeptopath to accept that there are dozens of replications, that is a rational line drawn. I have seen it done before, and the skeptopath went back into hiding as a result.

You fed us the information, so now that skeptopaths are refusing to eat I would like to know where that line gets drawn for true and rational skeptics. For me personally, I have read enough papers to know that this effect has been replicated far more than 153 times. But I’m no authority on this subject. Your tally of peer reviewed replications is the closest thing we have to an authority on the subject. Asking you for your response when someone questions your tally isn’t even remotely asking to be spoonfed. Maybe you should add some more bran to your diet.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 12th 2017

#214

Quote from JedRothwell
Arguing against the who’s who of electrochemistry is as troll-like as a troll can be.
I suppose now it’s time for the supposed experts on this particular forum to weigh in on whether or not this is as troll-like as a troll can be — those supposed experts would be the moderators on this forum. My prediction is the sound of crickets or maybe a post about me saying they’re not at my beck and call, something like that, but not directly addressing the issue at hand.

interested observer
Member

2,435
Aug 12th 2017

#216
The real problem with appeal to authority arguments is that people only listen to authorities that hold the position they are arguing for. Conveniently, equally qualified authorities who hold opposing views are either ignored or disqualified as being biased or tools of some evil conspiracy. So are “100 top electrochemists” the list from Forbes Hottest Electrochemists of the Year or are they a cherry-picked set out of the 8,000 members of the Electrochemical Society?

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 12th 2017

#217

Quote from interested observer
So are “100 top electrochemists” the list from Forbes Hottest Electrochemists of the Year or are they a cherry-picked set out of the 8,000 members of the Electrochemical Society?
You can read some of their bios and decide for yourself. They were people such as Bockris who wrote the most widely used textbook; Fleischmann, FRS and president of the Electrochem. Society; Yeager, who they named the institute for (http://chemistry.case.edu/research/yces/); Arata, who has an international prize and a building on the campus at a National U. named after him; the Chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission; a Fellow of China Lake; the main designer of India’s atomic bomb; a top commissioner on the French AEC; the person who designed the tritium labs at Los Alamos and the PPPL; etc.

Looking at it the other way, the number of leading electrochemists who were not able to replicate is: one (1). Lewis. However, in my opinion, and in the opinion of Fleischmann and others, he did replicate, but his analysis was flawed. See:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJhownaturer.pdf

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 12th 2017

#218

Quote from interested observer
The real problem with appeal to authority arguments is that people only listen to authorities that hold the position they are arguing for. Conveniently, equally qualified authorities who hold opposing views are either ignored or disqualified as being biased or tools of some evil conspiracy.
Do you have any examples of this taking place in some other area? I’m thinking of economics, but the models are so flawed that the inexactitude lends itself to warring “experts”. A similar thing is taking place with Anthropomorphic Global Warming. So is there an example of a bunch of appealing to authority in some area where the data is nailed down? We saw some of it in tobacco, where there were paid tobacco scientists holding to the party line.

interested observer
Member

2,435
Aug 12th 2017

#219
There is the old saying that an expert is someone with credentials who says what you want to hear. This sort of thing is pretty ubiquitous.

The examples of AGW denial and tobacco industry doubt spreaders are classic cases where the science is settled but a fringe group is trying to assert that the science is not settled on the basis that the majority is corrupt, is using faulty data, or is part of some agenda-driven conspiracy. So they trot out some experts who hold the view they want to hear and work hard to marginalize everyone else.

The LENR world has some interesting parallels. The way I see it, the science is not settled, but a fringe group is trying to assert that it is on the basis that the majority is corrupt, part of some agenda-driven conspiracy, or simply has no opinion at all. By limiting the sample to only those they deem qualified to hold an opinion, they declare victory.

THHuxleynew
Verified User

4,707
Aug 12th 2017

#220

It is almost as if you expect me to spoon feed you the information.

The issue is not the number of replications. 2 or 3 would be enough if they has strong data and methodology, and were true replications.

It is what do these broadly similar experiments with broadly similar results represent.

Some sophistication is needed, because of the issues of experiment selection, experiment type selection, and possible systematic errors duplicated by those getting positive results (many attempted replications showed negative results, so this is very possible).

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 12th 2017

#221

Quote from THHuxleynew
The issue is not the number of replications. 2 or 3 would be enough if they has strong data and methodology, and were true replications.
There are dozens that fit that description, all of them with the original technique of electrochemistry and Pd-D. Cathodes in different labs showed the same ratio of loading to heat (McKubre and Kunimatsu). When cathodes have been shared from one lab to another, in some cases they have produced exactly the same level of heat. The same loading level versus heat, and current density versus heat, has been observed in many labs. See Figs. 1 through 3:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHcoldfusionb.pdf

Tritium has been observed in over 100 labs.

In short, the data shows what you demand, but you refuse to look.

Quote from THHuxleynew
many attempted replications showed negative results
Not only do you refuse to look, but you make up stuff like that. I’ll bet you cannot list more than 10 replications done by electrochemists which showed negative results. There is a long list of “replications” by non-electrochemists which failed for well understood reasons, such as confusing the anode and cathode.

When you refuse to look at the data and you wave your hands and invent “facts” like this, you can prove anything.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 12th 2017

#222

Quote from interested observer
There is the old saying that an expert is someone with credentials who says what you want to hear. This sort of thing is pretty ubiquitous.

I don’t know if CF/LENR is a real thing or not. I do know that it is not settled science. Settled science is when the preponderance of experts in a field accept a common view. This has not happened with LENR. Sure, you can try to declare that the opinions of anyone except researchers who have gotten positive results do not count, but that is bogus.
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When did the Wright brothers become “settled science”? When they were making their practice runs and the vast majority of the world considered them crackpots or scam artists? Or when they demo’d their capabilities in 1908? Was it when the journal “Scientific American” refused to publish their results because it was impossible or the journal “Gleenings in Beekeeping” that accurately recorded their flight? Or perhaps the 1903 newspaper account that said their plane had 6 wings and carried 4 people & had 2 engines? The simple fact is that they were flying for 5 years before it was considered “settled science” and LENR will have been considered replicated in 1990 once it breaks out.

THHuxleynew
Verified User

4,707
Aug 12th 2017

#223

Quote from JedRothwell
There are dozens that fit that description, all of them with the original technique of electrochemistry and Pd-D. Cathodes in different labs showed the same ratio of loading to heat (McKubre and Kunimatsu). When cathodes have been shared from one lab to another, in some cases they have produced exactly the same level of heat. The same loading level versus heat, and current density versus heat, has been observed in many labs. See Figs. 1 through 3:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHcoldfusionb.pdf

Tritium has been observed in over 100 labs.

In short, the data shows what you demand, but you refuse to look.

Not only do you refuse to look, but you make up stuff like that. I’ll bet you cannot list more than 10 replications done by electrochemists which showed negative results. There is a long list of “replications” by non-electrochemists which failed for well understood reasons, such as confusing the anode and cathode.

When you refuse to look at the data and you wave your hands and invent “facts” like this, you can prove anything.
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The trouble for me is that looking at even one paper takes me quite a long time. I’ve been looking at McKubre’s low loss mass flow experiments - many of which were negative. These seem (to me) to be some of the more high quality replications.

When you make breezy comments as above it is important to realise that with so many replications almost any correlation you like can be found by cherry-picking. If you could take all replications and look systematically at success versus anything it would be interesting. For example: Figure 1 in http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHcoldfusionb.pdf.

You might suppose that proves your point. It does nothing of the kind because it would need to be plotting number of successes versus number of distinct attempts for each of these loading ratios for the results to be meaningful.

Which is why it takes me a long time to read stuff, and why summaries like Mckubre’s are not helpful unless you read them carefully and with an eye to the underlying science.

Eric Walker
Verified User

3,426
Aug 12th 2017

#224
Just to reiterate a point that was made above — the number of replications is perhaps not of more than sociological interest. A handful of solid replications are all that is needed to establish that there’s something of interest (whatever it is). From the standpoint of science I’m going to guess that it’s sociology or perhaps boosterism rather than electrochemistry and related fields that dictates the need to have a lot of replications, or a certain ratio of successful replications to replication attempts.

Norman Ramsey wrote in the preamble to a 1998 draft report of the DoD Cold Fusion Panel:

Quote from Norman Ramsey
Ordinarily, new scientific discoveries are claimed to be consistent and reproducible; as a result, if the experiments are not complicated, the discovery can usually be confirmed or disproved in a few months. The claims of cold fusion, however, are unusual In that even the strongest proponents of cold fusion assert that the experiments, for unknown reasons, are not consistent and reproducible at the present time. However, even a single short but valid cold fusion period would be revolutionary. As a result, it is difficult convincingly to resolve all cold fusion claims since, for example, any good experiment that fails to find cold fusion can be discounted as merely not working for unknown reasons. Likewise the failure of a theory to account for cold fusion can be discounted on the grounds that the correct explanation and theory has not been provided. Consequently, with the many contradictory existing claims it is not possible at this time to state categorically that all the claims for cold fusion have been convincingly either proved or disproved. Nonetheless, on balance, the Panel has reached the following conclusions and recommendations. [Emphasis mine.]

I believe something like this also ended up in the final report. As I recall, Ramsey threatened to resign from the panel if this preamble was not added.

What constitutes a short but valid cold fusion period? That is where the trouble starts. Many outside observers don’t necessarily find existing reports credible. Jed would argue that the bar has been more than passed by well-qualified scientists using normal, tried-and-true methods. Even Kirk agrees that something unusual is going on, while disagreeing on the interpretation. Here a related but not identical scientific need to having a lot of replications is to have a recipe that will allow professionals to replicate for themselves whatever effect is being reported within their own labs, so that they can rule out competing hypotheses for themselves. Having such a recipe would probably lead to a lot of replications. There have been claims of such a recipe, although I’m doubtful that one that is straightforward to use has been fully disclosed yet.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 12th 2017

#226

Quote from interested observer
Drawing parallels between the Wright brothers and LENR is rather absurd. Challenges to LENR results tend to be based on analysis methodology, instrumentation, accuracy of measurements, and various other elements of the data. Merely looking at an LENR reactor tells you nothing except that some sort of apparatus exists regardless of its function. Does anyone seriously contend that an eyewitness of a Wright brothers flight did not have all the information needed to confidently state “those guys were flying?” At the start of the 20th century, people denied the facts about flight because they only had hearsay to go on. There was no live TV. On the other hand, Rossi fans only have hearsay to go on to think e-cats work, and the worst sort of hearsay at that.

So go find a better way to make your case for the Italian charlatan. False analogies are lame.
No, the challenges to LENR started from a deep need to protect the funding of Hot Fusion projects and then reinforced by skeptopathic emotional needs. That’s pretty lame to criticize the results of LENR by saying you can’t determine anything by “merely looking” at it. Heat is heat, you can feel it. If you can’t tell us where the heat comes from chemically, it is a scientific feat worth pursuing. When you develop the capability to feel the heat through the TV then you yourself will get a Nobel prize.

Online
AlainCo
Tech-watcher, admin

3,155
Aug 12th 2017

#228
about denial consensus the best example if about Germs.
The denial of the work of Oliver de Aberdeen, then brilliant statistics by Semmelweiss, and the huge attacks finally vanquished by “commercial methods” (demo thak kids can understand, demo on innocents kids) by Pasteur, is a century wide denial of evident facts.

moreover it seems that at that time people were less dogmatic than today.
I see that by the theory fallacy (if it does not agree with theory, the experiment must be wrong).

it is hard to imagine today how openmind were the scientists of 19th and early 20th century.
“Only puny secrets need keeping. The biggest secrets are kept by public incredulity.” (Marshall McLuhan)
See my raw tech-watch on http://www.scoop.it/u/alain-coetmeur & twitter @alain_co

Zeus46
Member

1,271
Aug 13th 2017

#229
Perhaps the longer that science exists, the more that people assume it explains everything?

interested observer
Member

2,435
Aug 13th 2017

#230
keV: heat is heat alright, and nobody denies that LENR reactors get hot when you put current through them. The question is how much heat? The whole business is predicated on “excess heat”, not just any heat at all. And the disputes are all about whether there is indeed more heat than can be accounted for conventionally. That is as far from being able to tell “just by looking at it” as anything can be. Why must you LENR fans use such utterly specious arguments? And spare me the crap about skeptopathic emotional needs. Just more empty ad hominen blather from somebody arguing from false premises.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 13th 2017

#231

Quote from THHuxleynew
The trouble for me is that looking at even one paper takes me quite a long time.
Why is that a problem? Or why is it my problem? If you don’t want to do your homework you should believe what I say or drop the subject.

Quote from THHuxleynew
I’ve been looking at McKubre’s low loss mass flow experiments - many of which were negative.
The success ratio is irrelevant. In the mid-1950s, for some types of transistors, 80% or 90% of the devices in a production run failed. That is a worse success rate than any cold fusion experiment, but no one claimed that transistors did not exist. The success rate for early cloning experiments was 1 in 1000 but no one claimed the resulting sheep were not clones. The Vanguard series of rockets in the late 1950s had more explosions than successful launches, but no one claimed that rockets do not exist.

Quote from THHuxleynew
You might suppose that proves your point. It does nothing of the kind because it would need to be plotting number of successes versus number of distinct attempts for each of these loading ratios for the results to be meaningful.
Nope. It doesn’t work that way. In any case, all of the data from McKubre and others is shown in the loading ratio graphs, including experiments that did not produce heat. There is no cherry-picking.

When experiments do not produce heat, the problem is usually clear. That does not mean you can fix the problem, but you see what it is. It is usually fractured palladium, with cracks. It does not hold up to high loading.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 13th 2017

#232

Quote from kirkshanahan
keV

At this point in history, any list of who’s who in an field you choose to define is composed of human beings (with the minor possibility of defining a field only populated by current and former AI programs - which is not relevant here because I doubt we would call them ‘experts’ of AI, their human creators are the experts). Human beings make mistakes. Irregardless of their level of expertise. Thus, what they communicate must be considered to potentially contain errors. Thus, what they communicate must be analyzed. Calling upon what ‘authorities’ of a field say without analyzing them is guaranteed to lead one to error, since the authorities’ errors will never be noted.

Your list of who’s who in electrochemistry is worthless unless you are trying to assign prizes or awards. Science requires them to be questioned just like anyone else, and if found in error, to be corrected.

You might want to read https://www.amazon.com/dp/1439192375/ref=rdr_ext_tmb
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Those hundred electrochemists are experts in electrochemistry. They were challenged by physicists who were NOT experts in electrochemistry. The chances of error from nonexperts engaging in a field are FAR higher than for experts engaging in that field where they are experts. There’s a huge duhh factor here.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 13th 2017

#233

Quote from AlainCo
about denial consensus the best example if about Germs.
The denial of the work of Oliver de Aberdeen, then brilliant statistics by Semmelweiss, and the huge attacks finally vanquished by “commercial methods” (demo thak kids can understand, demo on innocents kids) by Pasteur, is a century wide denial of evident facts.

moreover it seems that at that time people were less dogmatic than today.
I see that by the theory fallacy (if it does not agree with theory, the experiment must be wrong).

it is hard to imagine today how openmind were the scientists of 19th and early 20th century.
Display More
That’s a good example. Plate Tectonic theory was another... the world simply had to wait for that generation of scientists to die off. As Planck noted, science progresses one funeral at a time.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 13th 2017

#234

Quote from interested observer
keV: heat is heat alright, and nobody denies that LENR reactors get hot when you put current through them. The question is how much heat? The whole business is predicated on “excess heat”, not just any heat at all. And the disputes are all about whether there is indeed more heat than can be accounted for conventionally. That is as far from being able to tell “just by looking at it” as anything can be. Why must you LENR fans use such utterly specious arguments? And spare me the crap about skeptopathic emotional needs. Just more empty ad hominen blather from somebody arguing from false premises.
Why must you skeptopaths always resort to calling everything an ad hominem attack? I didn’t attack the person, I attacked the whole group engaging in skeptopathy. We all agree if there is “more heat than can be accounted for conventionally” then it is worth pursuing. What we don’t agree on is that physicists don’t know much about calorimetry because they almost never use it in conventional physics, whereas electrochemists use it all the time so they are far more competent in that aspect of the field. So why is it the skeptopaths use such utterly specious arguments? Because it is obvious that the conclusion leads a normal skeptical person to realize that excess heat has been replicated, dozens and dozens of times. Just like what happened with the Wright brothers, germ theory, plate tectonics, the skeptopaths slithered back into their holes. Eventually that’s what will happen with LENR and it will seem utterly obvious to people reading this a hundred years from now. But what is the utterly obvious thing that can be said to make a skeptopath realize his error? No doubt future historians will say something like “well, duhh, if you’d only have mentioned such & such...” But LENR advocates have already tried everything. Nothing works to bring skeptopaths back into reality.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 13th 2017

#235

Quote from JedRothwell
The success rate for early cloning experiments was 1 in 1000 but no one claimed the resulting sheep were not clones.
I thought Dolly the Sheep was a result of 100,000 attempts.

Another example was Thomas Edison with his 10,000 attempts before he landed the right recipe for the electric lightbulb.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 13th 2017

#236

Quote from kevmolenr@gmail.com
Another example was Thomas Edison with his 10,000 attempts before he landed the right recipe for the electric lightbulb.
I am pretty sure he was exaggerating! But he was doing what is now called “Edisonian” trial and error. He later hired scientifically trained young people who were somewhat appalled at his techniques. Tesla also criticized him for not applying enough theory. See the book: “A Streak of Luck.”

Edison knew way more chemistry and applied physics than he let on.

interested observer
Member

2,435
Aug 13th 2017

#237
So is anyone who does not think LENR is proven science a pathological skeptic? If your answer to this question is yes, then you are a pathological believer. Them’s the facts folks.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 13th 2017

#238

Quote from interested observer
Does anyone seriously contend that an eyewitness of a Wright brothers flight did not have all the information needed to confidently state “those guys were flying?”

After late summer of 1904 witnesses had all the information they needed. Before that, the Wrights made about 80 attempts to fly, but they barely got off the ground in most cases, and often crashed immediately. They called members of the press one day, but the motor failed to operate. In September 1904, they added a launch derrick and improved the airplane design. The weather cooled down, making air density higher. At that point they managed to go high enough and stay in the air long enough to show observers they could actually fly. As I recall, it was 1905 when they gathered dozens of affidavits from leading citizens testifying that these citizens had seen them fly. They took numerous photos of airplanes in flight. So, if the Scientific American had bothered to send a reporter, they would have seen abundant proof that the claim was true. But they didn’t bother. They denounced the Wrights instead, and they kept denouncing them, most recently in 1993 and 2003.

Before September 1904, it would have taken an expert to know they were flying and not just being lobbed through the air in an uncontrolled hop. I say that because Wilbur Wright said that, and he described that in detail in his diary, in lectures and engineering papers starting in 1901. Many people before the Wrights got into the air with propeller driven airplanes with fixed wings. But none of them flew in the exact technical sense that the Wrights described. So it was not quite as clear as you describe.

In all of 1904 they made 104 “flights or flight attempts.” Most of them failed, as I said. By the standards of THH and others skeptics here, we should conclude from this that airplanes did not exist in 1904 and the Wrights did not know how to fly. Failures far outnumbered successes, and they were only cherry picking a few successful flights. That makes no sense. As I said, that is like saying that because it took thousands of attempts to clone one sheep, Dolly the clone did not exist.

http://www.thewrightbrothers.org/1904.html

Here is Wilbur’s 1901 lecture to the Western Society of Engineers. This is the first rigorous engineering description of flight, as distinguished from an uncontrolled hop through the air.

http://invention.psychology.ms…library/Aeronautical.html

See:

http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJthewrightb.pdf

Regarding having all the information you need, anyone who understands calorimetry and experiments who looks at the graphs from McKubre or the videos from Fleischmann will see all of the proof you need to be sure that cold fusion is real, and that it cannot be a chemical effect. It is no less convincing than the photos of airplanes flying over Huffman Prairie in 1905.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 13th 2017

#239

Quote from interested observer
So is anyone who does not think LENR is proven science a pathological skeptic?
No, there are many other reasons why a person would not think LENR is proven science. For example:

People with no general knowledge of science, such as most reporters or politicians, will have no way of judging the issue. You can’t blame them, any more than you can blame me for not appreciating Italian Opera, given than I am practically tone deaf.

A person who has not read the experimental literature carefully, or not read enough of it.

A person such as Mary Yugo who does not understand the literature well enough to evaluate it. Many scientists in other fields make stupid mistakes when trying to evaluate cold fusion, as you see in the 2004 DoE review panel’s remarks. I suppose that if you were to ask electrochemists to review a Tokamak experiment, they would also make stupid mistakes.

People who have no idea there is experimental literature. We know this is the problem because when it is resolved, the problem often goes away. Many skilled scientists who have no knowledge of the subject find out about it, read the literature, and are quickly convinced. So they tell me. That is why 4 million papers have been downloaded from LENR-CANR.org. Scientists would not download that many papers if they did not believe it. Only scientists can make head or tail of most of those papers, as I showed here on p. 6:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJthefuturem.pdf

People who try to learn about cold fusion by reading Wikipedia or the Scientific American instead of reading the literature will fail. I wouldn’t call that being a pathological skeptic, but there is no valid information about cold fusion in these sources, so you cannot learn anything from them. You will get the impression it is wrong.

I would not classify the authors at Wikipedia or the Scientific American as pathological scientists. I have had extensive exchanges with them. I am quite familiar with their views and their knowledge. They know nothing about cold fusion. They have read nothing. They do not know what instruments have been used, what has been observed, or what conclusions drawn from this. Their views come from an echo chamber of overblown imagination, fantasy and nonsense. If I believed this nonsense, I too would be convinced that cold fusion does not exist. I am sure there are many subjects about which I am severely misinformed, but I don’t know this because I have never bothered to learn much about them. I took for granted what I read in the newspapers or Scientific American, which in these cases is bosh. (The world is awash in bosh. Centuries from now, people will look back on us and say we were only a little more educated than people were in 1600.) But here is the thing: I would never write an article in the Sci. Am. or on Wikipedia about a subject I have not carefully studied. I would not plunge into Wikipedia and delete statements by people I violently disagree with about a subject I know practically nothing about. That is pathological. Being ignorant is not.

There are a small number people who actually know about the subject, and who realize it is real, but who make statements as if they were pathological skeptics. I mean, for example, the scientists who attacked it in public while sending detailed applications for funding to EPRI and other organizations to perform cold fusion experiments. Their applications revealed that they understood the topic. They were lying in public. I guess they did that to undercut the competition and grab funding.

Finally, there are some pathological skeptics. This is true of any field of science.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 13th 2017

#240

Quote from interested observer
So is anyone who does not think LENR is proven science a pathological skeptic? If your answer to this question is yes, then you are a pathological believer. Them’s the facts folks.
The trick is to resolve the impasse with scientific reasoning, like say with the replication results of the top hundred electrochemists of their day and to discount those who don’t regularly use calorimetry in their day to day scientific pursuits, like say the hot fusion physicists. One group is a fish in water and the other group is a fish out of water.
kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 13th 2017

#241

Quote from JedRothwell
Regarding having all the information you need, anyone who understands calorimetry and experiments who looks at the graphs from McKubre or the videos from Fleischmann will see all of the proof you need to be sure that cold fusion is real, and that it cannot be a chemical effect. It is no less convincing than the photos of airplanes flying over Huffman Prairie in 1905.
One of the datapoints is the “NO’s”.
The hot fusion skeptopaths said that Pons-Fleischmann could have failed to mix the water properly in their cells. So P-F showed a cell giving off excess heat, put in some dye and it rapidly colored the water throughout the cell, proving that they had been mixing the water properly. Did the skeptopaths withdraw their criticism? NO.

McKubre published a paper showing that most of the negative result findings occurred with a loading less than 0.80... Did the skeptopaths go back and run their experiments with loadings of 0.95 or above? NO.
Edited once, last by kevmolenr@gmail.com: typos (Aug 13th 2017).
1

interested observer
Member

2,435
Aug 13th 2017

#242
Ok, Jed is the closest thing to a rational respndant to my questions regarding the status of LENR science. Condensing his response, he says that cold fusion is settled science because anyone with sufficient scientific knowledge who studies the literature must conclude that it is real. Therefore, anyone who does not conclude it is real either is unqualified to make that judgement, hasn’t read enough papers, or is a liar. Of course, what is particularly ironic about this is that the majority of LENR fans have little or no scientific knowledge and are most certainly unqualified to assess the literature regardless of how well it is written. But their opinions are golden.

Anyway, if one applies Jed’s filters to the world, one can conclude that cold fusion is settled science. With a little care, one can make sure to disqualify any and all dissenting opinion and declare unanimity. I believe this is how elections work in North Korea, by the way.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 13th 2017

#243

Quote from interested observer
Condensing his response, he says that cold fusion is settled science because anyone with sufficient scientific knowledge who studies the literature must conclude that it is real.
There are no published papers that support your views. There are no papers in the peer-reviewed literature or proceedings showing significant errors in any mainstream cold fusion experiments. (Other than Shanahan’s and Morrison’s I mean — and I already listed them, several times.).

You are talking in generalities only. In experimental science, you have to point to specifics. If the experiments by McKubre, Miles or Fleischmann are wrong, you have to say why they are wrong. Waving your hands and saying “there might be an error” is not valid, because that cannot be tested or falsified. A negative evaluation has to be supported with as much rigor and as many facts as a positive one. You have no facts. You cannot cite any specific errors. No skeptic has published an evaluation of any experiment showing errors. They lose by default.

Quote from interested observer
Of course, what is particularly ironic about this is that the majority of LENR fans have little or no scientific knowledge and are most certainly unqualified to assess the literature regardless of how well it is written. But their opinions are golden.
Science is not a popularity contest. The views of the “majority of LENR fans” has no bearing on this discussion. No one should evaluate the science by counting how many people line up on either side, or by asking how much the people in each group know. You have to look at the actual papers. Not imaginary descriptions of them in Wikipedia — the actual papers. You have to examine the instruments and methodology and determine what they show with reference to textbook laws such as thermodynamics. That is the only basis for you to judge what these experiments indicate, and what conclusions to draw. As I said, there is not a single paper out there showing errors or reasons to doubt the conclusions except Shanahan and Morrison. I suggest you read those two and reach your own conclusions. Ask Shahanhan for his best evidence. Morrison is here:

http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanreplytothe.pdf

Eric Walker
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3,426
Aug 13th 2017

#244
Note as well that Kirk is in agreement with the CF researchers that there is an experimental anomaly, rather than there being none at all and only methodological error. In his specific case it is the interpretation of the data on which he disagrees. But that sets him apart from anyone claiming that CF researchers are simply picking up false signals through inadequate controls, as one example, or cherry-picking false positives. Kirk assumes a genuine CF-like signal is there. If more people took even his view, they would look more closely at the CF literature.

THHuxleynew
Verified User

4,707
Aug 13th 2017

#245

Quote from Eric Walker
What constitutes a short but valid cold fusion period? That is where the trouble starts. Many outside observers don’t necessarily find existing reports credible. Jed would argue that the bar has been more than passed by well-qualified scientists using normal, tried-and-true methods. Even Kirk agrees that something unusual is going on, while disagreeing on the interpretation. Here a related but not identical scientific need to having a lot of replications is to have a recipe that will allow professionals to replicate for themselves whatever effect is being reported within their own labs, so that they can rule out competing hypotheses for themselves. Having such a recipe would probably lead to a lot of replications. There have been claims of such a recipe, although I’m doubtful that one that is straightforward to use has been fully disclosed yet.

So my view as a skeptic (and not a skeptopath - any such label would be wide of the mark).

The very many high quality and slightly above unity COP values, especially from McKubre whose documentation of his experiments is superb, points to something likely real. The effect appears to be proportional to input power (with some threshold before activation, and also not always active). That fits Kirk’s suggestion of some unexpected phenomenon that changes calibration better than an extremely power and energy dense nuclear effect. Why? Because any such would be expected often to give much larger excess power values, and indeed to have power related to temperature rather than power in. Although the fact that any temperature relationship appears to be proportional to difference from ambient, rather than Kelvin value, again pushed an observer in the direction of a calorimetry anomaly. Should there be a reaction anomaly, the timescales here make chemistry impossible so it would have to be nuclear, or some reaction totally unexpected. That is again negative, because the nuclear proposition is also (quite strongly) unexpected due to departure from normal branching ratios.

On top of that - probably real, and certainly mysterious - anomaly, we have a collection of other phenomena:

Reports of much higher power generation. These however do not seem to survive replication in well-controlled environments. Jed would point to the HAD inferred by MF after his boil-off experiments. I remain very unconvinced by that since the assumptions that lead to HAD inference are based on normal cell calibration and operation - there is no direct control to ensure that these inferences are safe, and no guarantee, in this case, that some chemical mechanism is not involved. Other high power reports seem just to be bad experimental design not properly validated, or explained by short-term chemical changes. Rossi being a classic but very atypical example of bad experimental practice in that his level of obvious badness is much higher than typical. I’d not mention him with the rest except that the LENR community considers him as possibly working on their stuff.

Sporadic reports. In some cases there are single experiments, not replicated by the same team with the same apparatus. In any field other than LENR these would be considered “unknown experimental error” and not considered.

Reports of nuclear reaction products. Again the problem here is that these things are looked for, and the results all one way or another marginal and in nearly all cases much lower than expected from any plausible nuclear mechanism. Should the UoAustin attempts to get high quality replicated correlation between He and excess heat show positive results that would be a big deal, and also indicate strongly a possible mechanism. But, that experiment needs to be done carefully to eliminate the various obvious false positives that could exist, and could explain earlier results.

So none of this collection looks to me like justifying LENR as likely mechanism, although there are elements in it that remain mysterious and thus justify further targeted research.

THH

Eric Walker
Verified User

3,426
Aug 13th 2017

#246

Quote from THHuxleynew
That is again negative, because the nuclear proposition is also (quite strongly) unexpected due to departure from normal branching ratios.

I think it is very important to separate the question of whether a specific LENR experiment exhibits a nuclear phenomenon from whether it exhibits the preferred nuclear explanation of the paper’s authors. I personally am highly doubtful there is any kind of fusion of deuterium going on, although I am willing to go along with the experimental finding of evolution of helium at this point. The author’s suggested mechanism is often quite specific, identifying a candidate reaction or two. Evolution of helium is itself quite astonishing if not erroneous, but it’s a more general finding, not tied to any specific mechanism. In such a context, the question of branching ratios appears premature. Better to start with a general finding and either nail it down or conduct experiments that show clearly that it is something else.

Are there any other possible explanations for the evolution of helium? There are several, each of which will pose a challenge for physicists for different reasons, but none of which imports the whole branching ratio problem. There’s even a mundane explanation involving entrapped helium whose credibility I am not in a position to assess, but which others claim lacks credibility because of things like the finding of a correlation between excess heat and helium.

interested observer
Member

2,435
Aug 13th 2017

#247
Jed, you have consistently missed my point throughout this entire discussion. I am not disputing or challenging any particular LENR results, or the entirety of them for that matter. I am not, in fact, weighing in on whether the phenomenon exists at all. What I am saying - and all that I am saying - is that the overall status of the field is that the pheonomeon is controversial and is not considered to be settled science. You can point to whatever abuses or conspiracies you would like, you can make your own rules about whose opinions count, but you are simply delusional if you think that the matter is settled in the scientific community except in the minds of a small fringe group of individuals. But if It makes you feel good to say that nobody else matters, so be it.

Adrian Ashfield

† Deceased Member

473
Aug 13th 2017

#248
interested observer,
Why is it still controversial science when there have been half a dozen good replications by well known laboratories? That here have been 80 or 180 (depending on whose count you believe) other replications is icing on the cake and irrelevant.

That is quite enough to prove the point in normal science. To not believe it is pathological.

1
interested observer
Member

2,435
Aug 13th 2017

#250
@AA: fine. Everyone except cult members is pathological. LENR is not controversial at all. It must be nice to be part of the tiny slice of humanity that has seen the light.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 13th 2017

#251

Quote from THHuxleynew
The very many high quality and slightly above unity COP values, especially from McKubre whose documentation of his experiments is superb, points to something likely real.
This statement is a distortion. McKubre and others have published many COP values that are far above unity, including ones with no input power (an infinite COP).

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 13th 2017

#252

Quote from interested observer
Jed, you have consistently missed my point throughout this entire discussion. I am not disputing or challenging any particular LENR results, or the entirety of them for that matter. I am not, in fact, weighing in on whether the phenomenon exists at all.
It does exist, so your assertions have no point. Your observations are easily explained. People reject cold fusion because of ignorance and politics.

Quote from interested observer
What I am saying - and all that I am saying - is that the overall status of the field is that the pheonomeon is controversial and is not considered to be settled science.
It is not considered “settled science” because people are misinformed, ignorant or irrational. Not because of the content of the science. The problem is political. If this were any other experimental finding, no one would question it.

Quote from interested observer
You can point to whatever abuses or conspiracies you would like, you can make your own rules about whose opinions count,
First, I do not point to conspiracies. There are none as far as I know. Second, let me repeat that it makes no difference whose opinion we are talking about. If, as is likely, 50 years from now no one believes cold fusion exists, it will still exist. It has existed since the beginning of the universe. It is a physical fact of nature, and the number of people or the quality of the people who believe in it has no impact on that.

It is not a logical error to point out that relevant exerts in electrochemistry and calorimetry confirmed cold fusion. This is evidence that it exists. But it is not the kind of strong, direct, physical evidence you see in experimental results. It is secondary evidence. People such as Mary Yugo, who cannot understand the experimental literature, should fall back on this secondary evidence. She should trust the experts because she is incapable of evaluating the facts herself.

Quote from interested observer
but you are simply delusional if you think that the matter is settled in the scientific community
I never said anything remotely like that. That would be like asserting that Wegner’s theory of continental drift was settled as true in the scientific community in 1950. Everyone knows it was not. However, the theory was correct, and the facts showed it was, so the opposition was ignorant or political, without a scientific basis. That goes for cold fusion today.

Science is not a popularity contest. It makes no difference at all what the “scientific community” thinks is settled. The issue can only be judged with reference to experimental data and the laws of nature. By those standards, cold fusion is real. If you could show that every member of the scientific community disagreed with that conclusion, you would only prove that scientists are often wrong. Anyone who has read history knows that. If you were then to ask several of these scientists about cold fusion, you would find they know nothing about it and their conclusions are based on ignorant rumors and nonsense. Programmers, businessmen, army generals and bankers are also often wrong, and they often base their opinions on empty nonsense. That’s the human condition.
JedRothwell
Verified User

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Aug 13th 2017

#254

Quote from Eric Walker
I personally am highly doubtful there is any kind of fusion of deuterium going on, although I am willing to go along with the experimental finding of evolution of helium at this point.
That statement seems contradictory to me. If there is helium evolution (as opposed to helium leaking in) then it has to be deuterium fusion. Where else could the helium be coming from? What else in the system and what other reactions can produce alpha particles (helium)?

Eric Walker
Verified User

3,426
Aug 13th 2017

#255
There are several theories for how helium could be produced. Many prominent LENR researchers assume it is the result of some combination of deuterium. A possibility I like is induced alpha decay of an alpha emitter such as platinum. As you have pointed out in the past, such a possibility is contraindicated by the studies seeking to show a per-4He energy release of ~ 23 MeV, which is what one could expect for fusion of deuterium. But the work I’ve reviewed in this area feels much more tentative, and I don’t take the conclusion of ~ 23MeV/4He as a sure thing at this point.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 13th 2017

#256

Quote from maryyugo
Sounds a lot like religion and not science. Prime principles... physical facts of nature...
As far as I know, experiments are the only standard of truth in science. Not public opinion and not the views of the majority of the scientific community. Whether a claim is true or false in science can only be decided with reference to experimental results and the known laws of physics, such as the laws of thermodynamics in the case of cold fusion.

What other standards are there? How do you think scientific questions are settled?

Quote from maryyugo
People reject cold fusion because the evidence has always been of insufficient quality and consistency.
If that were true, there would be scientific papers pointing out why and how the evidence is insufficient and inconsistent. There are no such papers. You cannot point to one, except Shanahan and Morrison, as I said. I invite you to read them and judge whether they make a valid case or not.

You cannot just wave your hand and declare that evidence is this, that, insufficient, or inconsistent. You have to back up those claims. If you have not written a paper showing insufficiency, you have to point to a paper by some other author. Since there are no such papers, your argument fails. Vague generalizations without any supporting evidence or specifics are not science.

There are, of course, countless statements on the internet claiming insufficiency and whatnot, and that is what Wikipedia and the Scientific American claim. However, if you compare what these sources say to the actual content of the experiments and scientific papers, you will see that Wikipedia authors know nothing and they are describing a fantasy. They are not critiquing the actual experiments. Also, the reasons they give make no scientific sense. They resemble statements by Morrison about recombination, which are physically impossible and 5 orders of magnitude wrong, or statements by Shanahan, which violate Faraday’s laws, thermodynamics, and which are easily disproved by the actual data from experiments.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 13th 2017

#257

Quote from Eric Walker
There are several theories for how helium could be produced. Many prominent LENR researchers assume it is the result of some combination of deuterium.
That would be fusion. Are you saying you do not think that is happening?

Quote from Eric Walker
A possibility I like is induced alpha decay of an alpha emitter such as platinum.
This cannot explain the high levels of heat in the cell, because there is no doubt the palladium cathode is the source of the heat. This is readily apparent by many methods. The simplest and perhaps best method is what you see in a boiling cell with no input power. Close-up videos of this show that the boiling water all originates at the cathode, not the anode. The cathode is hot, and it remains hot for hours or days. The anode is the same temperature as the other wires in the cell such as the thermocouples and lead wires. There is no boiling around them, either. Also, the palladium is the source of x-rays, not the platinum. So, there must be some other nuclear reaction occurring in the palladium.

Would these reactions produce measurable transmutations in the platinum? I am not aware of any such transmutations, but people may not have looked for them.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 13th 2017

#258

Quote from maryyugo
I am reminded of listening to lectures on nuclear physics by Edward Teller towards the end of his life. He was always direct and clear, regardless of how complex the subject was.
You may want to learn what Teller had to say about cold fusion towards the end of his life.

Eric Walker
Verified User

3,426
Aug 13th 2017

#259

Quote from JedRothwell
That would be fusion. Are you saying you do not think that is happening?

I’m saying I reserve judgment. To my own mind, fusion of deuterium has not been given more than a circumstantial basis, and one that remains open to questions. I’m not trained in any relevant field, so it’s just my own opinion. One that I hold nonetheless as someone watching the field.

You can still have the palladium cathode be the location of the heat in a scenario where the platinum is gradually electroplated onto the palladium cathode. Deuterium, somehow important to the PdD electrolytic system, migrates towards the cathode and not the anode. Perhaps it is at the cathode, then, that the deuterium and electroplated platinum interact. As for transmutations in the platinum, I believe that would be an implication.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 13th 2017

#260

Quote from Eric Walker
You can still have the palladium cathode be the location of the heat in a scenario where the platinum is gradually electroplated onto the palladium cathode.
That is a possibility. However, there is other evidence against your hypothesis. Such as:

Pt-D and Pt-H cathodes do not produce heat.

Several cold fusion systems have no platinum in them, such as Arata’s, yet they produce heat. Granted, they have not been widely replicated.

If there were transmutations in electroplated Pt, I think people would have detected them, but perhaps those transmutations would be indistinguishable from transmutations in the Pd. I do not know enough to judge this issue.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 13th 2017

#261

Quote from maryyugo
Why is that a problem? Or why is it my problem? If you don’t want to do your homework you should believe what I say or drop the subject.

Exactly the kind of arrogance which gives LENR a bad name and reputation. Nobody should believe what you say simply because you say it. And if you are trying to make a case, you need to point the reader to specific evidence which has been made as easy to understand as is possible yet retains information and objectivity.
You, of all people, should not say that! I pointed you to specific information regarding the boil-off calorimetry. I explained it you not once, not twice, but three times. Yet as you yourself readily admit — and as everyone here can see — you do not understand it. You are a hopeless case. I cannot educate you about this matter. I cannot be held responsible for your inability to understand 18th century elementary physics.

Along the same lines, since the person making this comment does not believe me, he must do his own homework. He must count papers or count experiments or review evidence himself. He does not believe me, so this is his problem to work through, not mine. What do you expect me to do for him? I have made the original source information available to everyone. If people don’t believe me, they can find out for themselves. If they won’t believe me and they won’t check for themselves, nothing else can be done.
Eric Walker
Verified User

3,426
Aug 13th 2017

#263

Quote from JedRothwell
Pt-D and Pt-H cathodes do not produce heat.

The important observable in this case is helium production. But according to Ed Storms’s “Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction” (p. 55), a Pd-Pt system of his own produced excess heat. And Pd is not the only substrate in which excess heat is reported; others (again from Ed’s book) include Au, Ti, W, Ce, U, Ni, etc. So although palladium is a good material, it’s not the only material. With regard to platinum, I suppose it has not been systematically explored yet. Another possibility is that platinum on its own doesn’t provide the kind of electrochemical environment needed for its own alpha decay to be induced.

The possibility of excess heat coming from alpha decay of platinum does not preclude excess heat coming from other, related processes in other contexts such as Arata’s. With regard to the transmutations, what you find is probably heavily dependent upon what you set out to look for. But there’s anecdotal evidence of transmutations all over the map.

I’m open to excess heat and helium coming from fusion of deuterium. I consider it an interesting question and one that should be further characterized.

interested observer
Member

2,435
Aug 13th 2017

#264
Thank you Jed for straightening me out.

All scientists in the world who have looked into LENR are convinced it is real with the following exceptions: scientists who are idiots and can’t understand the data, scientists who reject the facts based on bias, and scientists who are just flat-out lying. There is no such thing as a coming up with different conclusions from the data than your conclusions. It is impossible to do so. You have checked. Although this might be the only example of this single-possibility analysis in all of human history, it must be the case because you say so and you have all the papers and even speak Japanese.

I don’t know why you even bother trying to argue. Why not just say “I am omniscient and know better than anyone else. End of story.” It would save time.

As Mary says, it is no wonder that cold fusionistas have such a bad reputation. And you are one if the most reasonable ones!

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 13th 2017

#265

Quote from Eric Walker
But according to Ed Storms’s “Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction” (p. 55), a Pd-Pt system of his own produced excess heat.
Yup. That is an exception. However, until it is replicated I am going to treat it as a possible error, and not put much stock in it.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 13th 2017

#266

Quote from interested observer
All scientists in the world who have looked into LENR are convinced it is real with the following exceptions: scientists who are idiots and can’t understand the data, scientists who reject the facts based on bias, and scientists who are just flat-out lying.
Surely not all of them. I did not say that. Most of the ones I have heard from who read papers at LENR-CANR.org who looked carefully reached that conclusion. BUT, here is the important part:

There are no scientists who concluded that cold fusion is not real and who then wrote a paper showing why and how it is not real. There are no such papers in the peer-reviewed literature or proceedings. (Except for Morrison and Shanahan.)

I mean there are no papers showing experimental errors. There are many papers saying cold fusion conflicts with theory. But you cannot disprove experimental results by pointing to theory. That violates the scientific method.

You say that many scientists reject the claims. Of course that is true. Everyone knows that. However, until you find a scientist who gives specific technical reasons for rejecting the claims, we have no way to evaluate the rejection. We cannot tell why the scientists rejected, or whether they have good reasons or bad reasons. We cannot draw conclusions from mere opinion unsupported by facts and arguments.

Quote from interested observer
There is no such thing as a coming up with different conclusions from the data than your conclusions. It is impossible to do so.
It may well be possible to come up with different conclusions. However, no one has done it up until now as far as I know. If you know of someone who has, please list the paper they wrote.

Quote from interested observer
Why not just say “I am omniscient and know better than anyone else. End of story.” It would save time.
I am saying the exact opposite! I said it many times. I said, quite clearly, AS FAR AS I KNOW there are no papers describing experimental errors in any major experiment. I asked you to point to such papers. If you cannot find an example, and I cannot find one, then we are not omniscient, but it seems unlikely there is one out there.

Do you or do you not know of such a paper? You keep saying scientists reject the findings. I keep asking you to point out specifically which scientists and in specific technical terms why they reject it. It seem you are demanding that I be omniscient, and that I should know what these people are thinking without their telling me. I do not have ESP. I cannot judge evaluations I have not read, by people I have never heard of.

I have read hundreds of cold fusion papers. I have a database of them. If there were papers describing errors, I would probably know about them. Since I do not, the ball is in your court. You should tell me WHERE ARE THESE PAPERS??? If you cannot, let us agree they either don’t exist or it is not possible for you and I to take them into account or judge them.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 13th 2017

#267

Quote from Eric Walker
. I personally am highly doubtful there is any kind of fusion of deuterium going on, although I am willing to go along with the experimental finding of evolution of helium at this point....Evolution of helium is itself quite astonishing if not erroneous, but it’s a more general finding, not tied to any specific mechanism. In such a context, the question of branching ratios appears premature....Are there any other possible explanations for the evolution of helium?
Like you said, going into branching ratios is premature, especially as a way to dismiss the explanation of nuclear events. That’s because there’s no evidence to suggest that branching ratios for fusion within a gaseous state would be the same deeply inside a condensed solid.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 13th 2017

#268

Quote from JedRothwell
However, until you find a scientist who gives specific technical reasons for rejecting the claims, we have no way to evaluate the rejection. We cannot tell why the scientists rejected, or whether they have good reasons or bad reasons. We cannot draw conclusions from mere opinion unsupported by facts and arguments...... I said, quite clearly, AS FAR AS I KNOW there are no papers describing experimental errors in any major experiment.
There was one suggestion that Pons and Fleischmann did not mix their cells properly. It was shown rather quickly to be in error by P&F adding dye to their cells, showing how rapidly it diffused. The hot fusion physicists did have trouble replicating P&F, mainly because they didn’t know what they were doing with calorimetry and didn’t have high enough loading. However, failure to replicate is NOT proving the phenomenon doesn’t exist, and the hot fusion scientists proceeded directly to say that their failure to replicate was proof that the phenomena does not exist.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 13th 2017

#269

Quote from JedRothwell
That statement seems contradictory to me. If there is helium evolution (as opposed to helium leaking in) then it has to be deuterium fusion. Where else could the helium be coming from? What else in the system and what other reactions can produce alpha particles (helium)?
Sounds a lot like the Widom-Larson theory. You start with 2 Hydrogen atoms and end up with a Helium atom, and a bunch of fascinating roundabout stuff in the middle. Then they loudly proclaim “It’s NOT FUSION!” Maybe they should call it an “induced combination of 2 atoms into one virtual atom”.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 13th 2017

#270

Quote from kevmolenr@gmail.com
There was one suggestion that Pons and Fleischmann did not mix their cells properly. It was shown rather quickly to be in error by P&F adding dye to their cells, showing how rapidly it diffused.
Yes. There have been a variety of suggestions such as this. This is a valid objection. It is possible the cell was not stirred correctly. However, we know that it was.

Another example of a valid objection is the suggestion that during the boil-off phase of F&P’s experiment, some water left the cell entrained in droplets, rather than as vapor. That would mean they overestimated the enthalpy. However, that was not the case, as Fleischmann showed in his response to Morrison, and as I discussed in somewhat more detail here:

http://coldfusioncommunity.net…-blew-up-it-must-be-lenr/

Some of the skeptical suggestions that have circulated on the internet are valid. Some may have been helpful to researchers over the years. I doubt that, because as far as I know, the researchers already knew about these potential problems, and addressed them, even before the skeptic came up with the idea.

But here is my larger point. Somewhere out there, someone may have a coherent set of arguments and facts that call into question the results from Flieschmann, Miles, McKubre, Srinivasan, Lonchampt, Storms, Will, Bockris and the other major results. Say, the top 50 studies. Someone may know good reasons to reject all of these claims. Or they may have reasons to reject one of them, leaving the others intact. HOWEVER, I have not heard from this person. He or she has not published a paper. So I have no way of knowing what this person thinks, or why he rejects the claims. I cannot guess, and I have never read a critique from anyone address any of these claims. (Except Morrison and Shanahan!)

Interested Observer keeps saying the scientific community as a whole rejects the claims. Yes, that is obvious. There is a consensus of opinion. Okay. But he cannot tell us: WHAT IS THE TECHNICAL BASIS for this consensus? Why do all these people think the experiments are invalid? What are their technical reasons for reaching these conclusions? Without knowing that, we have no way to judge whether these people are right or wrong. We have nothing to go on.

Knowing only that a million scientists, or programmers, or economists, or military officers believe in assertion X does not tell us anything about the content of X. It does not give us any reason to agree with these people. Or to disagree with them. We have to look at the content of X and their reasons for believing it. Needless to say, if we are talking about a military strategy, then I would have no way to judge X since I have no military background or training. I would be helpless. I would be as incapable of judging this as Mary Yugo is incapable of judging a boil-off experiment. I could only say, “well, the consensus of experts seems to be X, so I guess that’s right.”

In the case of cold fusion, I could judge a skeptical evaluation. But there aren’t any as far as I know. I cannot judge an evaluation I have not seen and I have no knowledge of.

There is one other important issue here. Suppose our hypothetical skeptical expert has a paper hidden away showing a serious error in McKubre’s work. Okay, he reveals it, and I say: “Ah, ha, you are right. There is a problem here.” That leaves ~49 other robust studies proving the existence of cold fusion. Unless our expert reveals 49 other papers showing errors in these other studies, he has not disproved cold fusion. The calorimeters and diagnostics are sufficiently different that there can be no single systematic error in all of them. The systems are too different for that.

If a single good study survives, then the effect is real, and those 49 disproved studies have no significance. It is similar to the situation with aviation in September 1904. There were dozens of failed attempts to fly by people other than the Wright brothers. Not one of them succeeded. The Wrights themselves flew in December 1903 in the cold air at Kitty Hawk, but back in Dayton in summer they tried about 80 times to fly, but they usually failed or barely managed to get off the ground. They often crashed. However, despite this long track record of failure, it would make no sense to say that airplanes did not exist, or that the Wrights did not know how to fly. One flight at Kitty Hawk proved the issue. The failures before that, and the ones that followed did not — and could not — disprove it. Ever. One good set of cold fusion experiments proves the effect is real. It should give us great confidence that there are hundreds of good sets of experiments, but actually, one is enough.

(After September 1904, the Wrights improved their airplane and launch technique, and the weather cooled, air density increased, so they soon began flying more successfully on a regular basis.)

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 13th 2017

#271

Quote from JedRothwell
....So I have no way of knowing what this person thinks, or why he rejects the claims. I cannot guess, and I have never read a critique from anyone address any of these claims. (Except Morrison and Shanahan!)
God help you if Morrison and Shanahan are the only 2 who have published critiques. It strikes me that you could be uniquely qualified to publish all these unfinished critiques of LENR yourself. You could call it a “Rational Critique of LENR” and show all the examples of objections, who objected at what time and what happened with those objections. It could be a unique paper because most of the people reading it would expect to see that there’s all kinds of rational objections to Cold Fusion but in the end, all those objections have been asked & answered and everyone (except Morrison and Shanahan!) have withdrawn their criticisms.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 13th 2017

#272

Quote from interested observer
Anyway, if one applies Jed’s filters to the world, one can conclude that cold fusion is settled science.
When the Wright brothers were flying their airplanes in 1903, and the “settled science” claimed that it was impossible, does that mean the Wright brothers were scam artists at that time?

And when “settled science” was against the plate tectonic theory for so long, can one conclude there was not enough evidence at the time for the theory or was there some sort of magical bean sauce introduced to the theory years later that made it more palatable for scientists to consider it “settled science”?

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 13th 2017

#273

Quote from kevmolenr@gmail.com
God help you if Morrison and Shanahan are the only 2 who have published critiques.
Let me define that more carefully.

They are the only two that I recall who have published critiques of the experiments with specific technical reasons doubt the results. They are the only two who addressed the experimental claims. Many people have published other kinds of critiques:

* Theorists who said the experimental results conflict with theory so they must be wrong. I suppose there are dozens of papers like this. Hundreds, maybe. I have not counted them. Many of the 2004 DoE reviews fell in this category. There are also books mainly devoted to this hypothesis, such as Huizenga’s. His key conclusion is the best expression of this idea I know of:

“Furthermore, if the claimed excess heat exceeds that possible by other conventional processes (chemical, mechanical, etc.), one must conclude that an error has been made in measuring the excess heat.”

In my opinion, this violates the scientific method. When replicated, high sigma experiments conflict with theory, the experiments always win, and theory always loses.

* Critiques of imaginary versions of the experiments, such as Wikipedia.

* Vague hand waving critiques that do not address any specific technical issues, or ones that make statements that cannot be tested or falsified, such as “there may be an undiscovered error.” Or reviews parroting meaningless popular science tropes, such as “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Many of the other 2004 DoE negative reviews were in this category.

Quote from kevmolenr@gmail.com
It strikes me that you could be uniquely qualified to publish all these unfinished critiques of LENR yourself.
I could do that! Mike McKubre often says, “I could write a far better critique of cold fusion than any skeptic.” I know far less than he does, but I expect I too could skewer many claims more effectively than a typical skeptic. However, I don’t see much point to doing that. The bad papers in a field do not detract from the good ones. They don’t hurt the credibility of the good papers. There are a zillion bad novels, but that does not make good literature less worthwhile. Badly written, buggy, and useless programs do not detract from good ones.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 14th 2017

#274

Quote from JedRothwell
kevmolenr@gmail.com wrote:
It strikes me that you could be uniquely qualified to publish all these unfinished critiques of LENR yourself.

I could do that! Mike McKubre often says, “I could write a far better critique of cold fusion than any skeptic.”
The point is that you would be doing the scientific community a favor. Relatively young scientists who are not aware of the history behind this LENR travesty will wander over to your LENR-CANR.org website and start reading up. No doubt such a critique would be among the papers they read. And it could spur them to write a particularly good followup critique that is so missing from the literature today. I doubt that most scientists understand the true state of LENR criticism today, that the only real objections are because it violates theory in some way.

interested observer
Member

2,435
Aug 14th 2017

#275

Quote from Jed Rothweil
Interested Observer keeps saying the scientific community as a whole rejects the claims. Yes, that is obvious. There is a consensus of opinion. Okay. But he cannot tell us: WHAT IS THE TECHNICAL BASIS for this consensus? Why do all these people think the experiments are invalid? What are their technical reasons for reaching these conclusions? Without knowing that, we have no way to judge whether these people are right or wrong. We have nothing to go on.
Absolutely correct. I cannot speak for the scientists who reject the claims of LENR. I don’t know if they are right or they are wrong. Once again, I am not arguing for their side. I am arguing that they have a side. According to Jed, this is a done deal and any opposition is simply wrong. Jed says that he has no information to evaluate their position. Nevertheless, he dismisses it out of hand because the opponents haven’t written papers. That is what I call a very weak argument.

I don’t know how to make my point in yet another way. My objection is the hubris and arrogant superiority in which LENR fans proclaim that they are the keepers of the ultimate truth and anyone who disagrees is an idiot. Sorry, you don’t get to hold that sort of view without sounding like a religious fanatic. Even if you end up being right, you haven’t earned the right to declare your position the unassailable truth. You ain’t even close to holding the cards for that.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 14th 2017

#276

Quote from interested observer
My objection is the hubris and arrogant superiority in which LENR fans proclaim that they are the keepers of the ultimate truth and anyone who disagrees is an idiot. Sorry, you don’t get to hold that sort of view without sounding like a religious fanatic. Even if you end up being right, you haven’t earned the right to declare your position the unassailable truth. You ain’t even close to holding the cards for that.

My objection is the hubris and arrogant superiority in which anti-LENR advocates proclaim that they are the keepers of the ultimate truth and anyone who disagrees is an idiot. And Jed has pointed to the information about how simply wrong these Luddites are, there are NO scientific papers that dismantle or disprove LENR. But these guys act like there are, and they hold LENR to a standard that no other science is held to and they go out of their way to ignore good evidence.

interested observer
Member

2,435
Aug 14th 2017

#277
I can’t speak for anti-LENR people because I rather doubt there are any, but I can state with high confidence that nobody will ever disprove the existence of LENR, as anyone with even a shred of intelligence would realize to be the case a priori.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 14th 2017

#278

Quote from interested observer
I cannot speak for the scientists who reject the claims of LENR. I don’t know if they are right or they are wrong.
You could try reading what they say. I suggest you do that before discussing this issue. You cannot know if they are right or wrong if you don’t even read what they say.

Quote from interested observer
Jed says that he has no information to evaluate their position. Nevertheless, he dismisses it out of hand because the opponents haven’t written papers. That is what I call a very weak argument.
There is no information on their positions! They don’t even have positions! They have published no technical justification for what they say. Other than Morrison, they have never discussed the experiments or given any reason to doubt the results. The weakness is on their end, not mine.

I say they have not published any papers with technical content to justify their claim that the experiments are wrong. All they do is assert the experiments are wrong, without offering a shred of evidence to back up their assertion.

After all this time I think we can safely conclude these people do not have a leg to stand on. They have no reason to doubt that cold fusion is real. If they had reason, they would have stated it by now.

Quote from interested observer
Even if you end up being right, you haven’t earned the right to declare your position the unassailable truth.

What a ridiculous thing to say! Of course my position is assailable. Assail it! Go ahead. Feel free. Show us a mistake in one of the major experiments, or point to a paper describing errors. That’s how science works. I am not saying it is unassailable. I am saying that NO SKEPTIC HAS TRIED TO ASSAIL IT. Do you see the difference?

If you know of a problem, or a paper listing problems, tell us what it is. If you do not know of any paper, then what are you talking about? What is your point? Are you saying that hypothetically if someone did publish a problem, by golly, there would be a published problem. So based on what might hypothetically might happen, I have no business pointing this event hasn’t actually happened, here in the real world.

I should meekly admit I am wrong because in your imaginary world someone might publish an error. I should admit that if things were not the way they are, they might be very different.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 14th 2017

#279

Quote from JedRothwell
They have published no technical justification for what they say. Other than Morrison, they have never discussed the experiments or given any reason to doubt the results. The weakness is on their end, not mine...I say they have not published any papers with technical content to justify their claim that the experiments are wrong. All they do is assert the experiments are wrong, without offering a shred of evidence to back up their assertion.... That’s how science works. I am not saying it is unassailable. I am saying that NO SKEPTIC HAS TRIED TO ASSAIL IT.
Even Polywater had a paper or 2 written that disproved it. These anti-LENR skeptopaths have shown themselves to be anti-Science by remaining mum and hiding behind political activity.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 14th 2017

#280

Quote from interested observer
as anyone with even a shred of intelligence would realize to be the case a priori.

Experiments can never be evaluated a priori. The skeptics often act as if this were possible, when they pontificate about research they have not studied. Right now, you are pontificating a priori about what the skeptics think and what their positions are without bothering to read them. This is a mistake that I do not make. I never discuss scientific topics I have not read about.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 14th 2017

#282

Quote from interested observer
A priori I can state that the existence of LENR cannot be disproven and that has utterly nothing to do with experiments. If you don’t understand that, I can’t help you.
Well it is certainly never going to be disproven if the experts never publish papers disproving it. But methinks you use the term “a priori” without knowing what it means.

maryyugo

Member

731
Aug 14th 2017

#283

Quote
I can’t speak for anti-LENR people because I rather doubt there are any, but I can state with high confidence that nobody will ever disprove the existence of LENR, as anyone with even a shred of intelligence would realize to be the case a priori.

And by similar reasoning, nobody is going to disprove my invisible unicorns either. You can show experiments to be bad and devices like Rossi’s trashy kludges not to work but you can’t prove that something can’t exist. All you can say is that it is very improbable. Or that the proof offered for the phenomenon is unconvincing. And it doesn’t help if, as in the case of Rossi, the proponent is a proven criminal with no history of success in technology or like Dardik, his history of accomplishments in his own field (he may have done valid research a long time ago in vascular surgery) is unrelated to the current claims and there is evidence that the guy is a quack and a crook.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 14th 2017

#284

Quote from maryyugo
And by similar reasoning, nobody is going to disprove my invisible unicorns either.
Well, when a hundred top experts in electrochemistry replicate your scientific findings and NO scientists in the field generate papers disproving your invisibile unicorn theory, then I will be encouraging others to take it seriously.

Online
AlainCo
Tech-watcher, admin

3,155
Aug 14th 2017

#285
moreover when there is replicated experiments done by even competent experts, and no serious alternative explanation (beside theory), even if you are not sure rational behavior is to work more search more, not ignore or deny.

I am much more confident the skeptics are wrong, by the way they are sure of their point, which is irrational.
I am confident on Jed’s position, given his arguments, but who knows? This is just a reason to search more, not less.

Never forget that point: someone facing ambiguous evidence that may be convincing, and say he is sure to be right against the experiments(normal), and ask for not searching (abnormal) is not a scientist.

And someone who see something that may be good for practical usage, and don’t look/ask to confirm and harness it, is not an engineer.
“Only puny secrets need keeping. The biggest secrets are kept by public incredulity.” (Marshall McLuhan)
See my raw tech-watch on http://www.scoop.it/u/alain-coetmeur & twitter @alain_co
1

THHuxleynew
Verified User

4,707
Aug 14th 2017

#287

Quote from interested observer
I am flabbergasted that LENR-heads are so besotted and defensive about their sacred cow that they fight back agrressively against an obvious point that MY explained. You can’t prove that something doesn’t exist unless it is logically impossible. That is an a priori fact Kev and I know what the term means.

But the faithful somehow see this trivial assertion as yet another attack on their religion. It isn’t. It is, however, a condemnation of the idiotic assertion used to validate LENR that nobody has disproven its existence. Of course not, and nobody ever will. The most anyone could possibly do is disprove a particular experiment and even that is unlikely. They might cast great doubt on a specific result, but they can’t definitely show it is false. But none of this shows that LENR is not real any more than the lack of a proof of its unreality shows that it is. But you guys are so obsessed with your precious that you can’t fathom one of the simplest facts in the world: you can’t prove something does not exist unless it is logically or mathematically impossible.

And Jed, nobody suggested that you should admit that you are wrong in the absence of persuasive evidence against your position. You should merely admit that you have yet to achieve god-like status and that it is still possible that you might be wrong.

Leaving the intemperate and personalised language to one side, the point IO makes here is one I fully agree with. In fact I’d point out that following Popper until there is a concrete hypothesis for LENR that makes refutable predictions, LENR is not science.

Hold it everyone - I’m not saying that LENR as a real set of anomalies with a plausible solution (nuclear reactions at rates much higher than expected) cannot be thought plausible until a mechanistic theory is discovered and checked. Merely that until then LENR is not a theory (uncontentious) and as not-a theory it requires much better evidence before it is accepted as probably true. That is because without a predictive known underlying mechanism it is easy to match heterogeneous results to a hand-waving idea, and therefore such results (by Bayes) are less strong evidence for it.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 14th 2017

#288

Quote from THHuxleynew
Leaving the intemperate and personalised language to one side, the point IO makes here is one I fully agree with. In fact I’d point out that following Popper until there is a concrete hypothesis for LENR that makes refutable predictions, LENR is not science.

This is a crucial point in epistomology that is often just not considered. It is the one that differentiates modern science from the set of vague knowledge that preceded it. And, even if you dislike Popper, Bayesian methods provide another way to understand intuitively and analytically the same concept.
Just apply your approach to High Temperature Superconductors, where there is also no underlying theory and tell those guys that what they’re doing is not science. Just friggen’ incredible.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 14th 2017

#289

I guess after all these years that I still don’t get LENR people. They seem to want to be taken seriously and want to see their field properly acknowledged, developed, and rise to its full potential, whatever that might be. However, they almost all behave like intolerant religious fanatics jousting at windmills and flailing at anyone who dares to impugn any aspect of the gospel. Of course, almost every single one of you behaved exactly the same way with regard to Rossi (and some of you still do.) LENR may well not be pseudoscience, but you take all your instructions from its playbook.
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Maybe if you just stop using such loaded language in trying to describe the positions of LENRphiles, you’d find that they’re easy to understand. No other finding in science has been replicated so many times and yet is criticized for not being replicated. But you call that ‘daring to impugn some religious aspect’ of this field.

THHuxleynew
Verified User

4,707
Aug 14th 2017

#290

Quote from kevmolenr@gmail.com
Just apply your approach to High Temperature Superconductors, where there is also no underlying theory and tell those guys that what they’re doing is not science. Just friggen’ incredible.

That is mostly not true, there is a very good and intuitive underlying theory for HTS based on Cooper pairs (or other mechanisms) coupling electrons into bosonic objects.

I think what you misunderstand is that the details of this remain unclear. Exactly what gets coupled so that an ensemble can have bosonic properties and therefore superconduct is still in some cases active research - it looks as though there are multiple candidates.

The underlying theory (coupling of fermions into bosonic objects) makes quantitative experimental predictions (about how properties change with temperature) which are validated by many many different experiments, and requires nothing not already known, and is predicted from QM that itself is validated in many other ways.

Eric Walker
Verified User

3,426
Aug 14th 2017

#295

Quote from kirkshanahan
Further, the electrolytes always dissolve a little of that Pt and some of that deposits on the Pd.

There is also “anodic stripping,” where the current is reversed for a period of time, which will presumably result in a little electroplating of platinum onto the cathode. And, I vaguely recall, “cycling” of some sort that is sometimes reported during the setup. (I might have misunderstood what was being done here.)

Zeus46
Member

1,271
Aug 14th 2017

#296

Quote from kirkshanahan
Their objections were many, but mainly based on two complaints. First what was suggested was radical, and had never been seen anywhere. That is a definite cause for caution.

Quote from kirkshanahan
Then I pop up with the CCS/ATER effect/mechanism, which is pretty solid. No new physics, a little [never been seen anywhere] chemistry.

You lump yourself in the same box IMO, by seeming to display little ‘cause for caution’. Why not refer to ATER as the hypothesis that it is? The word ‘mechanism’ is generally reserved for a tangible, understood process.
Edited once, last by Zeus46 (Aug 14th 2017).

Eric Walker
Verified User

3,426
Aug 14th 2017

#295

Quote from kirkshanahan
Further, the electrolytes always dissolve a little of that Pt and some of that deposits on the Pd.

Zeus46
Member

1,271
Aug 14th 2017

#296

Quote from kirkshanahan
Their objections were many, but mainly based on two complaints. First what was suggested was radical, and had never been seen anywhere. That is a definite cause for caution.

Quote from kirkshanahan
Then I pop up with the CCS/ATER effect/mechanism, which is pretty solid. No new physics, a little [never been seen anywhere] chemistry.

Zeus46
Member

1,271
Aug 14th 2017

#305
If the true calibration equation in the lab is P = 17 X + 5, and I sit at my writing desk and say the magic HATER* elf has possibly altered it to P = 187 X - 5436. That’s a hypothesis. Fact.

THHuxleynew
Verified User

4,707
Aug 14th 2017

#306

Quote from Zeus46
I should probably have written ‘sense of caution’, I got a little caught up in rearranging your parlance.

That in turn leads to a theoretical, or hypothesised, CCS... Possibly better referred to as a/the CCSH. A label you seem to reject?

That is true, but we are comparing CCSH with LENRH, and CCSH is a better fit to the known calorimetric facts in these experiments (excess proportional to heat in when effect is present). Sure, both are unproven - which is why those interested should be trying to find out what are the limits of CCS and whether ATER exists - instead of assuming that observations which could be ATER or LENR must be LENR. Unlike LENRH, CCS/ATERH is disprovable which means it offers more traction to move things forward.

Zeus46
Member

1,271
Aug 14th 2017

#307

Quote from THHuxleynew
That is true, but we are comparing CCSH with LENRH

...For sure.

Quote from THHuxleynew
CCSH is a better fit to the known calorimetric facts in these experiments (excess proportional to heat in when effect is present)

...A conjecture at best.

interested observer
Member

2,435
Aug 14th 2017

#308
AA: yes, I am being snide because you guys are being so belligerent and arrogant. The argument that there have been many things that people denied that turned out to be true is utterly meaningless. It has the same problem as the LENR is true because it hasn’t been disproven approach. Are you arguing that everything most people have ever thought was wrong has turned out to be correct? I hope not. We can all agree that most people denying something doesn’t necessarily make it false. But it doesn’t make it true either.

You can declare that the evidence for LENR is rock solid all day long but that doesn’t make that a true statement. You can take Jed’s approach that anyone who doesn’t draw that conclusion is an ignoramus who just hasn’t read enough papers. Personally, I find that more offensive than a little snideness.

And, by the way, I am not even convinced that LENR doesn’t exist. I suspect there is a real effect in there. I also suspect that, given the amount of time and effort that has gone into this, there is little chance anything will ever come of it. But, unlike the lot of you, I am quite open to the possibility that I am wrong.
Zeus46
Member

1,271
Aug 14th 2017

#305
If the true calibration equation in the lab is P = 17 X + 5, and I sit at my writing desk and say the magic HATER* elf has possibly altered it to P = 187 X - 5436. That’s a hypothesis. Fact.

THHuxleynew
Verified User

4,707
Aug 14th 2017

#306

Quote from Zeus46
I should probably have written ‘sense of caution’, I got a little caught up in rearranging your parlance.

That in turn leads to a theoretical, or hypothesised, CCS... Possibly better referred to as a/the CCSH. A label you seem to reject?

Zeus46
Member

1,271
Aug 14th 2017

#307

Quote from THHuxleynew
That is true, but we are comparing CCSH with LENRH

...For sure.

Quote from THHuxleynew
CCSH is a better fit to the known calorimetric facts in these experiments (excess proportional to heat in when effect is present)

...A conjecture at best.

interested observer
Member

2,435
Aug 14th 2017

Zeus46
Member

1,271
Aug 14th 2017

#312

Quote from kirkshanahan
Now we also know that electrochemical loading is equivalent to very high pressure gas loading, and we have a proposal out there for something called superabundant vacancies, i.e. ordered arrays of holes in the metal, that serve as bubble nucleation sites, as could these contaminant concentration points, formed by high pressure loading. In any case, once the loading gets high, the internal pressure of these bubbles (caused by molecular hydrogen forming in the holes) can exceed the yield stress and ‘pop’.

Interesting. Is a rough upper limit on the size of these SAVs typically noticed? How many planes would a single SAV typically form in?

Quote from kirkshanahan
New elements? Are you sure? They weren’t there to begin with, maybe hiding? I generally assume these are contaminants present in the starting materials, possibly there when the materials were purchased or introduced later accidentally. To assume they come from LENRs is a wild-eyed hope by CF believers.

You see, metallurgists know that contaminants in metals can be well-dispersed or concentrated in local spots.

Of course one has to assume contaminants are present, but having been taught and then studied more than than my fair share of metallurgy, I have still come across a handful of LENR papers/slides that in my opinion show features that are wholly incongruous with any mass transport mechanisms that I know of, or believe could reasonably exist.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 14th 2017

#313

Quote from interested observer
Drawing parallels between HTS and LENR is a dangerous thing to do. Since 1987, any remotely qualified laboratory in the world could whip up a batch of YBCO and demonstrate superconductivity for you with no more than a day’s notice. They could hand you some samples and you can go off and measure whatever you’d like however you want to do it and prove to yourself that it works. No ifs, ands, or buts. Tell me whose lab to go to for a similar experience with LENR even after 28 years.
LENR is more difficult than superconductors. And that boson theory is only a few short years old, so the unscientists had been operating without a precious superconducting theory for more than 20 years. Tell me who amont the top hundred electrochemists failed to replicate Pons/Fleischmann? There was only one, Lewis, and his error was pointed out. So to call one area a science when it operates without a theory while the other area isn’t a science is simply a pile of bullshit.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 14th 2017

#314

Quote from kirkshanahan
Quick fact check. LENR-CANR.ORG database still only lists 3 of my journal articles, and does not list my whitepaper. And you’ve been told where the papers are, with journal references and web links to manuscripts. Liar, liar, pants on fire...
Did you give him explicit permission? Jed posted here that he’s been burned at least once by someone who posted on a discussion board that he had permission but the author was full of shit.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 14th 2017

#315

Quote from THHuxleynew
That is mostly not true, there is a very good and intuitive underlying theory for HTS based on Cooper pairs (or other mechanisms) coupling electrons into bosonic objects.

Where you are correct is that no-one is entirely clear what are all the different coupling mechanisms active in different materials, or how best to optimise them. That space remains open but understanding has been growing monotonically. Still there will be new materials exhibiting unexpected behaviour since the type of solid-state interactions that do this coupling are incredibly complex and variable. And no-one says that HTS is fully understood - therefore you will note that all the papers claiming specific detailed mechanisms - until very well validated - are treated with much skepticism.
Display Less
That is like the most roundabout way of saying that they have no underlying theory but they’re getting closer, so what they do is science but what LENR does aint science. You might as well say what’s sauce for the goose aint sauce for the gander.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 14th 2017

#316

Quote from kirkshanahan
All correct. Which is why science doesn’t seek to ‘disprove the existence of...’. Science seeks to demonstrate such -and-such an effect through reproducible (i.e. controllable) experiments that can be replicated by those skilled in the art, and many times by just regular old scientists. CF doesn’t meet that mark.
The P-F effect has been replicated in at least 153 peer reviewed publications by the top hundred electrochemists of their day. It meets the mark except that skeptopaths are speaking so loudly, such as what happened with germ theory, plate tectonic theory, and the Wright brothers prior to 1908.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 14th 2017

#317

Quote from interested observer
The most anyone could possibly do is disprove a particular experiment and even that is unlikely.
WHAT the hell are you talking about? Many individual experiments have been disproved. I myself disproved several, including one that I did myself. See:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJreportonmi.pdf

Here’s one that I called into question:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJreportonar.pdf

In recent months, I have raised a number of questions about Rossi’s work, to put it in academic-speak.

People disprove experiments all the time. That’s how you do science.

If there were anything wrong with experiments from Fleischmann, McKubre or Storms many skeptics would be eager to find the problem or problems. Morrison and Shanahan thought they found problems, and they were not reticent to publish their findings.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 14th 2017

#318

Quote from kirkshanahan
Then I pop up with the CCS/ATER effect/mechanism, which is pretty solid. ....But with my objections, they didn’t find it so easy to dismiss my points, and instead of acknowledging this and responding by testing my theories in their apparati, they concocted a strawman argument and found a friendly journal to publish it in. The use of fallacies to dismiss my objections actually supports the validity of my work, as anyone who debates ideas realizes.
You have a very high opinion of your theory, which has been rightfully rejected by the top electrochemists. You even have your own thread for your theory right here on this forum, and no one bothers to discuss your theory even here.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 14th 2017

#319

I will only upload your papers or add the titles to your papers with your permission. You have to send me permission by e-mail. You have to send me a copy of the paper you would like me to upload as an attachment.

I will not upload anything or any information based on messages in a discussion group. That’s my policy.

I will copy this message to you via e-mail, if your address has not changed. . . .

Nope. No can do. I do not have a current working e-mail address for you. The old one I have says “BLOCKED Denied by policy.” You will have to contact me at JedRothwell@gmail.com

Alternatively, you can continue to accuse me of lying, while you refuse to send me anything. You are not the first to play that stupid game!

Zeus46
Member

1,271
Aug 14th 2017

#312

Interesting. Is a rough upper limit on the size of these SAVs typically noticed? How many planes would a single SAV typically form in?

You see, metallurgists know that contaminants in metals can be well-dispersed or concentrated in local spots.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 14th 2017

#313

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 14th 2017

#314

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 14th 2017

#315

Quote from THHuxleynew
That is mostly not true, there is a very good and intuitive underlying theory for HTS based on Cooper pairs (or other mechanisms) coupling electrons into bosonic objects.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 14th 2017

#316

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 14th 2017

#317

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJreportonmi.pdf

Here’s one that I called into question:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJreportonar.pdf

In recent months, I have raised a number of questions about Rossi’s work, to put it in academic-speak.

People disprove experiments all the time. That’s how you do science.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 14th 2017

#318

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 14th 2017

#319

I will not upload anything or any information based on messages in a discussion group. That’s my policy.

I will copy this message to you via e-mail, if your address has not changed. . . .

Nope. No can do. I do not have a current working e-mail address for you. The old one I have says “BLOCKED Denied by policy.” You will have to contact me at JedRothwell@gmail.com

Alternatively, you can continue to accuse me of lying, while you refuse to send me anything. You are not the first to play that stupid game!
kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 14th 2017

#325

Quote from THHuxleynew
Unlike LENRH, CCS/ATERH is disprovable which means it offers more traction to move things forward.
LENRH is not disprovable in your book? That’s a ridiciculous stance. From what I can see, CCS/ATERH is disproven.

kirkshanahan
Member

543
Aug 14th 2017

#326

Quote from JedRothwell
Let me remind you once again:

And let me remind YOU once again.

a.) I don’t believe I have permission to allow you to upload actual journal articles. That belongs to the journals and maybe my company/Site.

b.) that does not stop you from referencing my journal articles, and doing so correctly.

c.) the links already posted to the manuscripts are freely available to the public. Again my permission means zip.

Bottom line, you don’t want this info in your database, you are being forced into it by my challenges to you, but you still resist with hogwash.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 14th 2017

#327

Quote from kirkshanahan
Now, what support to you garner from the data that suggests a HATER elf is active?
The fact that a mod posted that you have been PM’d to take your discussion of your theory to your own thread dedicated to that theory, rather than repeatedly hijacking this thread.

kirkshanahan
Member

543
Aug 14th 2017

#328

Quote from kevmolenr@gmail.com
But the effect itself is replicated, as even you yourself acknowledge.

*Partially*, not fully, therefore not adequately.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 14th 2017

#329

Quote from kirkshanahan
Keep saying it Kev, maybe someday, if you say it enough, it will become true.
You yourself said that the effect has been replicated, just a few minutes ago right here on this thread. I can see why scientists ignore you.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 14th 2017

#330

Quote from interested observer
But, unlike the lot of you, I am quite open to the possibility that I am wrong.
If that were true I suppose you would read the literature, or you would at least agree that since no one has published a reason to doubt the leading studies, there is at present no reason to think they are wrong. That seems uncontroversial to me. It seems like the standard way to do science. I do not understand what your method is.

Quote from interested observer
You can take Jed’s approach that anyone who doesn’t draw that conclusion is an ignoramus who just hasn’t read enough papers. Personally, I find that more offensive than a little snideness.
Whether I am snide or not has no bearing on whether cold fusion is real. Whether a large number of people believe cold fusion is real, or only a small number think so, also has no bearing on whether it is real. You keep coming up with irrelevant metrics like this. Then you dismiss the findings based on these metrics. I suggest you concentrate on the experimental scientific method. People do experiments. They reach conclusions. The experiments are replicated. Unless someone finds errors in the experiments or the logic, that means the conclusions are correct. A new discovery has been confirmed.

That is how science is done. Let me emphasize: that is the only way science is done. There are no other methods, such as taking a vote, or looking around to see who is snide, or waiting indefinitely in case someone someday comes up with a reason to doubt the experiments. With the latter method, nothing would ever be resolved, and no progress would be made. We must draw conclusions based published papers. Not hypothetical ones or ones that we suppose people might write if they had a mind to. We cannot take into account the possibility that in the future someone might publish a new paper disproving the work. If, after many years of waiting, there are no published papers showing errors in the replicated Pd-D cold fusion experiments, that makes the findings correct. That’s all there is to it. There is no other way a scientific discovery can be correct. There is no other definition of “correct.”

The two attempts to find errors, by Morrison and Shanahan, failed, in my opinion. I invite you read them and form your own opinion.

A paper attempting to disprove a result by finding an error has to be held to the same standard of rigor as one that tries to prove a result. You cannot allow a weak, unsupported claim such as Morrison’s with many blatant errors, or a crackpot theory that violates fundamental laws such as Shanahan’s, to overrule conventional, high sigma, replicated results by McKubre and others.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 14th 2017

#331

Quote from kirkshanahan
And let me remind YOU once again.

a.) I don’t believe I have permission to allow you to upload actual journal articles. That belongs to the journals and maybe my company/Site.
But you stoop to calling Jed a liar/liar/pantsonfire? Geez, what a despicable game you play.

maryyugo

Member

731
Aug 14th 2017

#332

Quote
LENRH is not disprovable in your book?

Whatever LENRH is, no it’s not. Otherwise, please describe in detail an experiment or other course of action which would disprove it (maybe after you explain what the H stands for, not that it matters). Also describe a test to disprove my assertion that I maintain a small herd of pink invisible flying unicorns in my garage. They are also very skinny and very quiet.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 14th 2017

#333

Quote from kirkshanahan
*Partially*, not fully, therefore not adequately.
I can see that you have been partially but not fully silenced by the qualified critics, therefore not adequately.
kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 14th 2017

#336

Quote from maryyugo
Whatever LENRH is, no it’s not. Otherwise, please describe in detail an experiment or other course of action which would disprove it (maybe after you explain what the H stands for, not that it matters). Also describe a test to disprove my assertion that I maintain a small herd of pink invisible flying unicorns in my garage. They are also very skinny and very quiet.
When you pass the bar of having your pink yet invisible flying unicorns replicated by the top hundred electrochemists of the day and there are NO papers generated to disprove it, then I shall admit that your scientific finding is proven, even though there would be no theory to explain it.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 14th 2017

#337

Quote from kirkshanahan
And let me remind YOU once again.

a.) I don’t believe I have permission to allow you to upload actual journal articles. That belongs to the journals and maybe my company/Site.
Okay, then send me the full titles and bibliographic info, with links to the publisher. Both EndNote and my on-line index require that I fill in several fields. Nowadays, I can often download an EndNote compatible record directly from the publisher site, which reduces errors.

If you have a self-published White Paper you would like me to upload, send me the paper as an attachment in the exact, final form you want to see uploaded. Do not send a link. Also, send me a full bibliographic description with a publisher. If you published it yourself, I will list you as the publisher as well as the author. I do not generally upload self-published papers but I will make an exception for you in this instance.

Quote from kirkshanahan
b.) that does not stop you from referencing my journal articles, and doing so correctly.
Send it to me the information or the links by e-mail. I do not accept information from discussion groups. I must have permission from you by e-mail.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 14th 2017

#338

Quote from JedRothwell
I do not generally upload self-published papers but I will make an exception for you in this instance.
He is not worth making an exception over.
BTW, your library has been around for decades now. Why don’t you open up your own discussion board? I have it on good authority that the owner of “Cold Fusion” on DISQUS would be willing to sign it over to you.

https://disqus.com/home/channel/coldfusion/

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 14th 2017

#339

Quote from kevmolenr@gmail.com
even though there would be no theory to explain it.
Theory is never required to accept an experimental result. If we demanded a theory before accepting an experiment, progress in science would stop, because in most cases, a discovery is first made by experiment, then later explained by theory. There are only a few instances in which a discovery was predicted by theory and later confirmed by experiment.

Most discoveries are not particularly surprising and they are soon explained by theory. Cold fusion is one of the few modern ones that is very surprising, unexpected, and which has still not been explained many years later. However, that is not a valid reason to doubt it. It is fundamental to the scientific method that when replicated, high-sigma experiments conflict with theory, or cannot be explained by theory, theory must give way. Experiments always win; theory always loses. Anything else would be a perverse form of religion, not science. Science must always be based on observations or experiments. The human imagination and our theories must give way to what nature teaches. As Francis Bacon explained in 1620:

“Now the empire of man over things is founded on the arts and sciences alone, for nature is only to be commanded by obeying her.”

That is the very essence of science. No one has understood it or defined it better. Bacon also wrote:

“We may also derive some reason for hope from the circumstances of several actual inventions being of such a nature, that scarcely any one could have formed a conjecture about them previous to their discovery, but would rather have ridiculed them as impossible. For men are wont to guess about new subjects from those they are already acquainted with, and the hasty and vitiated fancies they have thence formed: than which there cannot be a more fallacious mode of reasoning, for streams that are drawn from the springheads of nature do not always run in the old channels.”

Zeus46
Member

1,271
Aug 14th 2017

#340
Thanks Kirk, interesting stuff re. tritium, helium, dendrites etc.

Re. LENR-CANR.org, I’d like to read your final unpublished journal letter rebutting (Marwan et al)? I’ve heard it said (probably by Abd) that this means et al had the last word, and hence must have ‘won’ the argument in the eyes of the editors. Surely no copyright issues too.

JedRothwell Verified User ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10,094 Aug 14th 2017 #342 Quote from kevmolenr@gmail.com He is not worth making an exception over. It is no big deal. My policy is like the pirates' code, "more what you'd call 'guidelines' than actual rules." The part about not accepting submissions from internet gab-groups is to protect me from getting sued by crazy scientists. That ain't going to change. Quote from kevmolenr@gmail.com BTW, your library has been around for decades now. Why don't you open up your own discussion board? Because I want to avoid controversy. If I allowed comments or if I publish anything other than anodyne announcements of upcoming conferences, some scientists will take offense and withdraw their papers. They already threaten to do that from time to time. Prof. A will say: "Prof. B is a charlatan and if you upload Prof. B's work, I will withdraw my papers in high dudgeon." In response, I say "that would be a shame but I cannot play favorites, so let me know if you want me to remove your paper." It is like herding cats. 1 JedRothwell Verified User ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10,094 Aug 14th 2017 #348 Quote from kirkshanahan @Jed - for the last time Go to Google Scholar and type in "KL Shanahan" "cold fusion", then hit . This doesn't list the JEM article, so go to the JEM homepage (Google it) and search for 'shanahan' (no caps needed). I got two hits: No Can Do. Nope, nope, nope. You must contact me by e-mail giving explicit permission. I have been dealing with people like you for a long time. I know your little tricks. You refuse to contact me by e-mail now. You will not take two minutes to do that. Why not? What are you up to? I don't know, but with people like you it is usually some stupid trick. Such as Dr. Herr Dr. Professor who keeps baiting me to upload his papers, after he threatened to file a lawsuit for copyright infringement when I did upload one. He threatened me not once, not twice, but three times! (I pulled it immediately.) I don't mind uploading your papers, but I sure as hell will not buy trouble from you. If you did not have a stupid trick up your sleeve, you would do what all other authors do without a second thought, and you would send me an e-mail. Your refusal tells me all I need to know. 1 kevmolenr@gmail.com Member ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 846 Aug 14th 2017 #349 Quote from JedRothwell Because I want to avoid controversy. Understandable. If you want to have better control over the direction of discourse, I have it on good authority that you would be welcomed as the first moderator over there. kevmolenr@gmail.com Member ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 846 Aug 14th 2017 #350 Quote from THHuxleynew OK. How could LENR be disproved? Let's take a historical example. The skeptics said that P&F weren't mixing their cells enough. That would have proven P&F's findings were in error. P&F put dye in their cell to show that it mixed properly, and did the skeptics withdraw, saying that they were wrong? Nope. The skeptics said that recombination could account for the supposed excess heat. But they've been proven wrong time and again. Perhaps in the most egregious of cases, Heat After Death, they could have proven that every single instance was utterly fraud. Or one of those replications could have shown why & how it was a chemical phenomena. I know that Shanahan likes to claim this is what he's done but he's almost completely full of bullshit. Surely by now all those top electrochemists must have been doing something wrong in their electrochemistry cells? Those kinds of things seem to be what has happened since P&F came out with their results. It's almost as if the folks who regularly use calorimetry in their electrochemistry cells were competent, while those who don't regularly use calorimetry nor electrochemistry were incompetent. Gosh, whoda thunk? 1 interested observer Member ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2,435 Aug 14th 2017 #351 I am beginning to think that LENR supporters have a specific brain anomaly. They must be the only people in the world who don't understand that it is impossible to disprove the existence of something. Incredible! On the other hand, these people are the keepers of amazing detailed information about who the top 100 electrochemists in the world are. How does one get on this list and who compiles it? Like I said, there are 8,000 members of the Electrochemical Society. Did only the card-carrying top 100 replicate LENR? Were the other 7,800 forbidden to try? Or did they fail? Or are they all morons and only the official top-100 count? LENR has a rotten reputation because the people who speak on behalf of it make preposterous statements like this over and over again. Jed is always lecturing us on how science works and he seems to not have a clue. There is no other field in which such ludicrous claims are routinely made in an attempt to argue for results that should stand on their own if they are valid. In any other field, people might say that many renowned researchers have seen similar results, or perhaps that some of the top people in the discipline have replicated an experiment. That would be fine. All this top-100 talk is bullshit. The excuse is that LENR researchers are mistreated, prevented from doing their work, crucified or dead. But somehow there is proof positive from the top 100 electrochemists in the world at major institutions despite the fact that they are mistreated, prevented from doing their work, crucified, or dead. Quite a trick! There are no doubt some top-flight scientists who have done and may still be doing LENR research. Perhaps some of them have observed physical phenomena that cannot be explained by any conventional mechanisms. That might well be. On the other hand, the people who inhabit websites and battle the world on behalf of LENR seem to all be crackpots. 1 kevmolenr@gmail.com Member ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 846 Aug 14th 2017 #352 Quote from maryyugo You missed the point entirely. It's not about being able to prove that the unicorns are real. It's about the inability to prove that they are not real. Absence of proof that they are real is not proof that they are not real. The point, of course, is that it makes no sense to ask skeptics to prove that LENR is not real or give up their skepticism. That's what believers often do. I don't miss the point. What you're doing is almost pure bullshit. So go ahead and have your unicorns generate some real findings in real scientific journals with real replications, and I can spend some time on your bullshit. Hot fusion skeptics who rarely if ever use calorimetry in their physics profession failed to replicate P&F. They proceeded from that to say that it was proof that LENR wasn't real. You seem to miss the point entirely yourself, that you have lumped yourself in with these incompetent souls due to your irrational dislike of LENR. You like to walk around a huge pile of bullshit to point to a small pile of sparrow poop and say that it's somehow the big issue. Now THAT's missing the point entirely, kevmolenr@gmail.com Member ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 846 Aug 14th 2017 #353 Quote from maryyugo Link please. Kirk Shanahan's critique of LENR experiments THHuxleynew Verified User ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4,707 Aug 14th 2017 #355 Quote from THHuxleynew OK. How could LENR be disproved? The skeptics said that recombination could account for the supposed excess heat. But they've been proven wrong time and again. Perhaps in the most egregious of cases, Heat After Death, they could have proven that every single instance was utterly fraud. Or one of those replications could have shown why & how it was a chemical phenomena. I know that Shanahan likes to claim this is what he's done but he's almost completely full of bullshit. Surely by now all those top electrochemists must have been doing something wrong in their electrochemistry cells? Those kinds of things seem to be what has happened since P&F came out with their results. It's almost as if the folks who regularly use calorimetry in their electrochemistry cells were competent, while those who don't regularly use calorimetry nor electrochemistry were incompetent. Gosh, whoda thunk? Jed will note 100s of experiments apparently showing LENR. And we know it is an effect that is not always present. So, if some of F&Ps results prove to be erroneous how does that disprove LENR? I can hear what you would say already... LENR makes no hard predictions that can be refuted - therefore it cannot be disproved. That is (the proper reason) why it requires stronger evidence to be held as plausible than any hypothesis coupled to a quantitative theory that can therefore be disproved. In fact your arguments above are logically incomplete. Consider - there are maybe 5 possible ways that occur to an informed critic why given results may be erroneous. And likely a few more that would surprise the critic - the real world is a bitch and comes up with wierd things. You are holding up as evidence for LENR that some of the possible errors suggested for key experiments prove wrong. Yet we need every single possible error to be proven wrong before we have a genuine LENR-capable anomaly. In any case your proofs here are assertion. Let us take a very simple case. Morrison suggested the high boil-off phase COP from the classic F&P paper from simplicity through complications.... might be due to liquid entrainment. You will have read MF's answer and think that this disproves that possibility. Yet it does not. Do you know why? It is always the things not said in research papers that are most revealing... kevmolenr@gmail.com Member ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 846 Aug 14th 2017 #356 Quote from interested observer LENR has a rotten reputation because the people who speak on behalf of it make preposterous statements like this over and over again. Yeah, it is SO preposterous to say that those 153 peer reviewed replications are evidence of.... replication! kevmolenr@gmail.com Member ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 846 Aug 14th 2017 #357 Quote from kirkshanahan The debate always centers around what you can do. What you can't do only lasts as long as someone doesn't figure out how to do it. Science moves forward when a scientist tries to prove something was wrong and fails. Then another scientist tries something else to prove it wrong and he fails as well. It's important to post those failures as well as successes so that other scientists can build on the work. But anti-LENR activists have simply failed and then hand-waved, saying that "surely there is something wrong with this replicated finding". 1 JedRothwell Verified User ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10,094 Aug 14th 2017 #358 Quote from THHuxleynew OK. How could LENR be disproved? That's obvious! You just show there is a mistake in an experiment, and out it goes. The way I did here, with my own work: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJreportonmi.pdf Do that for every major study and hey-presto, cold fusion is gone. Dead as Polywater. You yourself gave it a shot the other day by trying to prove that the boil-off phase of Fleischmann's experiment here can be explained as entrainment: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetra.pdf In my opinion, you were wrong for a variety of reasons, and even if you had been right that would still not explain the excess heat in the first few weeks before the boil-off, or the heat after death after the boil-off. So it would not kill off this experiment. As I explained in the comments here: http://coldfusioncommunity.net…-blew-up-it-must-be-lenr/ I think you failed (the reader can judge) but anyway, that is how it is done. Finding errors and showing that the author's conclusions are mistaken is the one and only way to disprove an experimental discovery. You have to do that for every single major study. Even if 49 are wrong and 1 is right, the cold fusion effect is still real. That is the only way a widely replicated effect can be proven wrong. Theory cannot touch it. You have to show that every single test in every replication study is a mistake. The likelihood of that is astronomically small. Because it would only happen if hundreds of world-class experts in electrochemistry, tritium detection, mass spectroscopy, and various other disciplines made serious blunders, over many years, doing things they had done for 30 to 50 years. For people such as Bockris, Fritz Will, Yeager, or Mel Miles, they were doing things they were world-famous for doing. By "famous," I mean they were made Fellows of The Royal Society or the AAAS, they wrote the leading textbooks, they had buildings, institutes, international prizes and so on named for them. How likely is it that such people would make elementary blunders such as not measuring recombination, or not looking for entrainment? Or that despite extensive peer-review, not a single one of their colleagues realized these people were making mistakes. How likely? Well, it is roughly as likely as if you picked 200 experienced drivers at random, and on the morning of August 1, 2017, in clear weather for no apparent reason every single one of them accidentally drove off the road into a telephone pole. Actually, you don't have to wonder whether they made these blunders. You can read their papers and see for yourself they did not. Disproving one experiment out of many does nothing to disprove a claim. It is like proving that Hiram Maxim did not technically fly in 1894 even though his airplane left the ground. That is true. But it does not prove that Orville Wright did not fly in December 1903. The fact that Orville was not able to fly for many weeks in the summer of 1904, and the overall success rate for the first year of aviation was something like 20 flights out of 120 attempts, also proves nothing. Low reproducibility does not mean the effect does not exist. It doesn't mean anything like that. It means flying is harder than you might think. Cold fusion is also harder than you might think. 1 kevmolenr@gmail.com Member ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 846 Aug 14th 2017 #359 Quote from interested observer On the other hand, the people who inhabit websites and battle the world on behalf of LENR seem to all be crackpots. The people who inhabit websites and battle the world on behalf of anti-LENR advocates seem to all be missing that gene that tells you what real science is all about. They see 153 peer reviewed replications by the top hundred or so electrochemists and seem to think somehow that they're smarter than those electrochemists. It's like they've developed a huge appetite for the stuff that comes out of the back end of a bull. kevmolenr@gmail.com Member ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 846 Aug 14th 2017 #361 Quote from THHuxleynew Jed will note 100s of experiments apparently showing LENR. And we know it is an effect..... Thank you for verifying that the effect has been replicated. kevmolenr@gmail.com Member ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 846 Aug 14th 2017 #364 Quote from THHuxleynew That comment does not advance the debate. You mean the last sentence? Because the earlier stuff I pulled almost word for word from the previous post. kevmolenr@gmail.com Member ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 846 Aug 14th 2017 #365 Quote from kirkshanahan No. Absolutely not. Failure may teach a scientist something true. But science moves forwards based on positive results. Defining something so well it can be reproduced in detail at will by those skilled in the art. As I said before, if you fail to prove something, you just did it wrong. At last that's what can always be said.... Science moves forward on failures just as well as it does on successes, but someone's career might not move forward if they only generate failures. Notice how you say "No. Absolutely not" but then you practically agree with what was said. This is yet another example of why you have been ignored in this field. JedRothwell Verified User ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10,094 Aug 14th 2017 #366 Quote from THHuxleynew Yet we need every single possible error to be proven wrong before we have a genuine LENR-capable anomaly. Nope. You have that backwards. All you have to do is show one major error in an experiment, and in most cases that cancels out the entire result. For example, you show that the flow rate was measured wrong in a flow-calorimetry experiment. I have done this, in flow calorimetry with both water and air. I shot down results from 5 or 10 experiments by doing this. The other parameters were measured correctly, but the results were wrong. (These experiments were never published, because they were wrong. They were abandoned.) Quote from THHuxleynew In any case your proofs here are assertion. Let us take a very simple case. Morrison suggested the high boil-off phase COP from the classic F&P paper from simplicity through complications.... might be due to liquid entrainment. You will have read MF's answer and think that this disproves that possibility. Yet it does not. I think you are flat out wrong about that. Fleischmann demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that there was no entrainment. I gave the reasons elsewhere. I shall take the trouble to repeat them. I suggest you address them. Fleischmann’s methods of ensuring there was no entrainment included: 1. Close attention to cell geometry. There is a small, narrow orifice well above the highest point the boiling water bubbles reach, as you see in the video. 2. Null runs with Pt-H and electrolysis power driving the boiling. There is no excess heat and only a small deficit from heat losses unaccounted for. If entrained water left the cell there would be an apparent positive balance of excess heat. It is not plausible that the choice of Pd and heavy water turned on entrainment but other metals and ordinary water turned it off. 3. There were null runs even with Pd-D. That is, no heat before or after the boil off, the same as Pt-H. There was no excess heat during the boil-off in these instances. In other words, there was no entrainment error with Pt-H, Pt-D or with Pd-D that did not produce heat in the other phases. Why would the entrainment error correlate with apparent excess heat in the other phases? 4. They looked for droplets of electrolyte around the cells. 5. Most important, after the tests they inventoried the lithium salts remaining in the cell by various methods, including rinsing the cell repeatedly and evaporating the water. The amount of salt recovered was very close to the amount added initially, so no salts left the cell in entrained water. There was a little salt embedded in the glass which they could not wash out. I think they said the glass was discolored by it, which is how they could tell. Those are physical reasons why you are wrong, which you can confirm in the papers. Moving on to methodological reasons -- the hypothesis that there was no excess heat during the boil-off phase makes no sense, because there was abundant proof of excess heat for weeks before the boil-off (phase 1), and for hours after it (phase 3). Why would the excess heat stop for 10 minutes (phase 2) and then start up again? The calorimetry used in phase 1 and phase 3 is quite different. Entrainment could not explain it. To make a reasonable, believable case, you have to show mistakes in all 3 phases, and they have to be different mistakes. JedRothwell Verified User ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10,094 Aug 14th 2017 #368 Quote from kevmolenr@gmail.com Hot fusion skeptics who rarely if ever use calorimetry in their physics profession failed to replicate P&F. They proceeded from that to say that it was proof that LENR wasn't real. Actually, to be a little more historically accurate, they did not try to replicate P&F. They tried to replicate one aspect of P&F, which unfortunately, P&F themselves got wrong. What they did in most cases was: set up an electrochemical cell with a palladium cathode and heavy water, and then look for neutrons. They did not look for excess heat, and they did not measure some critical parameters such as loading. P&F reported neutrons, but most people soon concluded that part of their paper was wrong. Fleischmann himself thought it was a mistake. He told me that in person, at MIT. Excess heat is the most critical parameter. It is the "principal signature of the reaction" as Fleischmann put it. If you don't see excess heat, you don't have cold fusion, so there is no point to looking for anything else. It is like fishing in a dry hole, as Ikegami put it. The other mistake made by many hot fusion and high energy physicists was to do the experiment without consulting with electrochemists. They made many mistakes. Enough to eliminate any chance of success. As I put it, they were trying to tune a piano with sledge hammer. See p. 11: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJlessonsfro.pdf Electrochemists who reviewed other experiments discovered similar errors, such as confusing the anode and the cathode. I suppose that if a group of electrochemists were to try to build a Tokomak plasma fusion reactor without consulting with plasma physicists, they would make similar mistakes. 3 kevmolenr@gmail.com Member ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 846 Aug 14th 2017 #369 Quote from THHuxleynew That comment also does not advance the debate. It is pretty straightforward in pointing out that replication of the effect has been acknowledged. That DOES advance the debate. 1 JedRothwell Verified User ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10,094 Aug 14th 2017 #370 Quote from kirkshanahan A.) reference please. Fleischmann, M. and S. Pons, Calorimetry of the Pd-D2O system: from simplicity via complications to simplicity. Phys. Lett. A, 1993. 176: p. 118 Morrison, D.R.O., Comments on claims of excess enthalpy by Fleischmann and Pons using simple cells made to boil. Phys. Lett. A, 1994. 185: p. 498 Fleischmann, M. and S. Pons, Reply to the critique by Morrison entitled 'Comments on claims of excess enthalpy by Fleischmann and Pons using simple cells made to boil. Phys. Lett. A, 1994. 187: p. 276Y Pons, S. and M. Fleischmann. Heat After Death. in Fourth International Conference on Cold Fusion. 1993. Lahaina, Maui: Electric Power Research Institute 3412 Hillview Ave., Palo Alto, CA 94304 Quote from kirkshanahan But more importantly, where did this excess water come from, if not entrainment? There is no excess water. The amount that leaves the cell is exactly the same as added to it. In null a boil-off test driven only by electrolysis, such as a test with Pt-H, a little water is left in the cell below the anode-cathode. This is because the moment the electrolyte drops below the anode and cathode, the power is cut off, and heat production stops. Boiling stops, and the temperature drops immediately and monotonically according to Newton's law of cooling. A little water usually remains in the bottom of the cell. When there is excess heat, the cell remains hot even after the power is cut off, so the remaining water boils away. There is only hot vapor in the cell. The Kel-F plastic holding the anode and cathode often melt. This never happens in a null test. Also, the cell does not cool down. On the contrary, it usually gets hotter, and sometimes even hotter hours later. This is additional proof of excess heat, rather than only heat from electrolysis. ("Excess" means in addition to the heat from electrolysis. It might be excess heat from chemistry, but there is no chemical fuel, and no chemical changes are observed, so it ain't.) 1 kevmolenr@gmail.com Member ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 846 Aug 14th 2017 #371 Quote from JedRothwell P&F reported neutrons, but most people soon concluded that part of their paper was wrong. Basically, that was where they screwed the pooch. They could have gotten away with science-by-press release, and all the other mistakes. But they trampled onto the hot fusion boys' territory and that was where they were blown out of the water politically. Imagine if they had ignored the neutrons and said something to the effect that they think it's a super-chemical reaction unseen before and they could use the help of their nukular physicist brethren to rule out a couple of things. 1 JedRothwell Verified User ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10,094 Aug 14th 2017 #372 Quote from THHuxleynew LENR makes no hard predictions that can be refuted - therefore it cannot be disproved. What a thing to say! How absurd. Of course it makes hard predictions, and of course they can be refuted. I have refuted dozens of them, and disproved many experiments. (Mainly fifth rate ones, mainly done by me.) Here is the best known prediction: If you manage to load a Pd-D cathode above a certain level, and maintain current density at a certain level according to McKubre's equation, it is likely the cathode will produce excess heat. At a very high level, it is almost certain to produce excess heat. See Fig. 1 here: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHcoldfusionb.pdf The exact set of parameters you must meet are listed in McKubre's equation. Here is another: If a cell is producing excess heat, you can probably boost the power level by quickly raising the cell temperature. You can raise the temperature by various methods such as electrolysis, joule heating or a laser. It usually boosts output. Here is how you disprove these predictions: Show that there was no heat in the experiments by McKubre, the ENEA and the others he cites. As I said, you show an error. One error will usually clobber the whole experiment. Show that that flow rate was wrong, for example. That is the most likely problem with flow calorimetry, in my experience. The temperature measurements are usually right, but that does no good because the results go down the tubes anyway. Good luck trying to prove that McKubre's flow measurements are wrong! They are described in detail, so have at it: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHisothermala.pdf When there is a mistake, you usually find there is both excess heat and "excess cold." That is, the cell will as likely appear to be swallowing up heat as producing it. This is impossible. Look for that: it is a good tell-tale starting point. During a lecture, Fleischmann rather famously showed this was happening in one of the early negative experiments that supposedly disproved cold fusion. In that case, the researchers did measure the heat. He graphed their data and showed the heat appeared to be vanishing, so obviously their calorimetry was wrong. I don't recall the reason, but he described it in detail. You yourself took a crack at showing an entrainment error in the boil off phase of Fleischmann's experiment. You have the right idea. That is the sort of thing that can go wrong. However, in my opinion, you failed to show an error. In fact, I do not see where you gave any reasons at all why there might be such an error, other than "I suppose." But keep trying! That is the only way you -- or any one else -- can disprove cold fusion. It is experimental science, not theory. You will never find one mistake or one overarching factor that cancels out all evidence. You have to wade in and deal with details. Detail after detail after detail. Even if you clobber McKubre's flow measurement technique, that leaves dozens of other flow measurements by Storms (rather similar!) and by many others (completely different), and you have show that every one of them was wrong, or that something else went wrong. 1 Online Shane D. Moderator ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7,501 Aug 15th 2017 #373 Quote from interested observer I am beginning to think that LENR supporters have a specific brain anomaly. They must be the only people in the world who don't understand that it is impossible to disprove the existence of something. Incredible! On the other hand, these people are the keepers of amazing detailed information about who the top 100 electrochemists in the world are. How does one get on this list and who compiles it? Like I said, there are 8,000 members of the Electrochemical Society. Did only the card-carrying top 100 replicate LENR? Were the other 7,800 forbidden to try? Or did they fail? Or are they all morons and only the official top-100 count? LENR has a rotten reputation because the people who speak on behalf of it make preposterous statements like this over and over again. Jed is always lecturing us on how science works and he seems to not have a clue. There is no other field in which such ludicrous claims are routinely made in an attempt to argue for results that should stand on their own if they are valid. In any other field, people might say that many renowned researchers have seen similar results, or perhaps that some of the top people in the discipline have replicated an experiment. That would be fine. All this top-100 talk is bullshit. The excuse is that LENR researchers are mistreated, prevented from doing their work, crucified or dead. But somehow there is proof positive from the top 100 electrochemists in the world at major institutions despite the fact that they are mistreated, prevented from doing their work, crucified, or dead. Quite a trick! There are no doubt some top-flight scientists who have done and may still be doing LENR research. Perhaps some of them have observed physical phenomena that cannot be explained by any conventional mechanisms. That might well be. On the other hand, the people who inhabit websites and battle the world on behalf of LENR seem to all be crackpots. Display Less IO, I'm with the LENR is real crowd, but will break ranks just to say your post was funny. I sometimes wonder, and maybe you can take a wag at it: Say we take 100 of the worlds 8,000 Electrochemists, give them a standard resistance heater. Lie and tell them it is a special heater, that may go nuclear on them. Have them run it for a year or two, measuring every conceivable parameter, then make a report. Would you expect some to report seeing excess heat, or radiation, or Tritium, He, HAD, or even have a few blow up, along with the occasional melt down? 1 kevmolenr@gmail.com Member ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 846 Aug 15th 2017 #374 Quote from Shane D. IO, I'm with the LENR is real crowd, but will break ranks just to say your post was funny. I sometimes wonder, and maybe you can take a wag at it: Say we take 100 of the worlds 8,000 Electrochemists, give them a standard resistance heater. Lie and tell them it is a special heater, that may go nuclear on them. Have them run it for a year or two, measuring every conceivable parameter, then make a report. Would you expect some to report seeing excess heat, or radiation, or Tritium, He, HAD, or even have a few blow up, along with the occasional melt down? I doubt you can make it into becoming one of the top hundred electrochemists by reporting ridiculous results. But we might actually get to the bottom of how much Helium gets trapped in a cell, so it might be a worthwhile experiment. The simple fact is, running an experiment like that for a year or two would be very expensive and you probably couldn't keep up the lie after a while. It's better to just explain that it's a double blind experiment and there's a possibility they could be looking at the control or the actual subject. 1 Online Shane D. Moderator ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7,501 Aug 15th 2017 #375 Quote from kevmolenr@gmail.com I doubt you can make it into becoming one of the top hundred electrochemists by reporting ridiculous results. But we might actually get to the bottom of how much Helium gets trapped in a cell, so it might be a worthwhile experiment. The simple fact is, running an experiment like that for a year or two would be very expensive and you probably couldn't keep up the lie after a while. It's better to just explain that it's a double blind experiment and there's a possibility they could be looking at the control or the actual subject. Price, nor the lie is important, since this is a hypothetical. But your point about "double blind" is good, so let us say that. Take 100 control electrochemists and give them a regular heater, but tell them it is a special heater. Take another 100 and tell them the truth...that it is a regular heater. Let both groups run the tests for 2 years, and see what they report. kevmolenr@gmail.com Member ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 846 Aug 15th 2017 #376 Quote from Shane D. Price, nor the lie is important, since this is a hypothetical. But your point about "double blind" is good, so let us say that. Take 100 control electrochemists and give them a regular heater, but tell them it is a special heater. Take another 100 and tell them the truth...that it is a regular heater. Let both groups run the tests for 2 years, and see what they report. You're sorta exposing 2 separate parameters. In a double blind experiment, neither the electrochemists nor the test administrators would know which cells are which. By telling some and not others, you're introducing an expectation variable, which is what I suspect you actually want to look at. It reminds me of an ancient chinese story about the emperor giving a hundred of the smartest kids in the empire a gift of a bean seed in a pot. Only one kid reported back to the emperor that he couldn't grow a bean or anything. It turned out that all the plants were sterilized, and all the 99 other kids reported results they thought were expected. The 1 true honest kid became the emperor. JedRothwell Verified User ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10,094 Aug 15th 2017 #377 Quote from Shane D. I sometimes wonder, and maybe you can take a wag at it: Say we take 100 of the worlds 8,000 Electrochemists, give them a standard resistance heater. Lie and tell them it is a special heater, that may go nuclear on them. Have them run it for a year or two, measuring every conceivable parameter, then make a report. Something similar has been done, many times. We know the results. Many researchers went for months or years running Pd-D experiments that did not work. Miles and Storms are good examples. Storms tested ~100 cathodes and found 4 that worked. That took a year or two. None of the researchers who went through long dry spells with no heat reported anything else unusual in those failed experiments. There have also been single blind experiments. Not double blind, but single. The best example was the mass spectroscopy portion of Miles' experiments. He knew which cathodes produced excess heat. He sent samples of the gas to three different mass spec. labs, with random numbers encoding the sample. So, he knew but they did not. They measured the helium and reported it back to him. He also sent blanks such as flasks for room air. The results were: All three labs reported the same levels of helium. Samples that produced excess heat had higher levels of helium, proportional to the heat, at a rate of 24 MeV. The helium was not correlated with heat, because some of the blank cells ran hotter with higher electrolysis power than the ones that produced excess heat. The helium was not correlated with anything else, other than excess heat. See: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MilesManomalousea.pdf 1 kevmolenr@gmail.com Member ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 846 Aug 15th 2017 #378 Quote from JedRothwell All three labs reported the same levels of helium. Samples that produced excess heat had higher levels of helium, proportional to the heat, at a rate of 24 MeV. The helium was not correlated with heat, because some of the blank cells ran hotter with higher electrolysis power than the ones that produced excess heat. The helium was not correlated with anything else, other than excess heat. Display Less I don't understand your explanations of the results. I'm having trouble downloading the file, maybe I'll get it later. Online Shane D. Moderator ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7,501 Aug 15th 2017 #379 Thank you Jed. I have actually been on your site a number of times. The Miles account is a good one. He did an interview about 2 years ago on Cold Fusion News I believe, and recounted that story and some others. JedRothwell Verified User ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10,094 Aug 15th 2017 #380 Quote from kevmolenr@gmail.com I don't understand your explanations of the results. I'm having trouble downloading the file, maybe I'll get it later. If you still don't get what I meant, I can try rephrasing later. PLEASE let me know if you continue to have trouble downloading. Try downloading any other paper. Display some pages from LENR-CANR.org. If an error message appears, let me know what it is. My ISP once shut down a whole geographic area for a month by accident. Contact me by e-mail. The address is at LENR-CANR.org

THHuxleynew
Verified User

4,707
Aug 15th 2017

#382

Quote
THH: Yet we need every single possible error to be proven wrong before we have a genuine LENR-capable anomaly.

Jed: Nope. You have that backwards. All you have to do is show one major error in an experiment, and in most cases that cancels out the entire result. For example, you show that the flow rate was measured wrong in a flow-calorimetry experiment. I have done this, in flow calorimetry with both water and air. I shot down results from 5 or 10 experiments by doing this. The other parameters were measured correctly, but the results were wrong.

I think you misread what I said, which is identical to what you say.

Here is the best known prediction: If you manage to load a Pd-D cathode above a certain level, and maintain current density at a certain level according to McKubre’s equation, it is likely the cathode will produce excess heat. At a very high level, it is almost certain to produce excess heat. See Fig. 1 here:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHcoldfusionb.pdf

The exact set of parameters you must meet are listed in McKubre’s equation.

Here is another: If a cell is producing excess heat, you can probably boost the power level by quickly raising the cell temperature. You can raise the temperature by various methods such as electrolysis, joule heating or a laser. It usually boosts output.

That is interesting and would indeed be very helpful providing:
(1) All the conditions necessary are testable - e.g. you can check you have got them right independent of the experimental result
(2) The amount of excess heat is quantifiable at some minimum level: thus you can set up an experiment where the predicted excess is guaranteed to be larger than the errors and any mundane mechanisms.

Note that stochastic predictions are Ok providing that quantified lower bounds can be put on the probability expected for an effect to manifest. this, again, allows the hypothesis to be disproved. But “probably” does not quantify.

I would even go so far as to suggest that such a prescription, precisely written up as a challenge to the science establishment, would have significant PR value. IH might juts possibly be persuaded to fund such a “prove LENR correct at scientific level” experiment.

The paper you have cited does not close these gaps. While it gives necessary conditions, it does not give sufficient ones in the form of (1) (2) above.

THH

THHuxleynew
Verified User

4,707
Aug 15th 2017

#383
Jed said:
Storms tested ~100 cathodes and found 4 that worked. That took a year or two.

None of the researchers who went through long dry spells with no heat reported anything else unusual in those failed experiments.

There have also been single blind experiments. Not double blind, but single. The best example was the mass spectroscopy portion of Miles’ experiments. He knew which cathodes produced excess heat. He sent samples of the gas to three different mass spec. labs, with random numbers encoding the sample. So, he knew but they did not. They measured the helium and reported it back to him. He also sent blanks such as flasks for room air. The results were:

All three labs reported the same levels of helium.

Samples that produced excess heat had higher levels of helium, proportional to the heat, at a rate of 24 MeV.

The helium was not correlated with heat, because some of the blank cells ran hotter with higher electrolysis power than the ones that produced excess heat.

The helium was not correlated with anything else, other than excess heat.

See:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MilesManomalousea.pdf

I, with Shane, find these observations highly interesting. Unlike Shane I’d add the following analysis:

The specific electrodes work, others don’t is compatible with CCS/ATER, as it is with LENR.

The He results are interesting and if confirmed would (for me) push probabilities towards D+D-> He fusion occurring at rates much higher than normal expectations would suggest (and therefore definite proof of what is popularly known as LENR). However the available information is not convincing (to me) yet:

He correlated with heat would be expected from atmospheric contamination where (a) both excess heat and He are correlated with time and (b) excess heat could be related to specific physical conditions in the electrolysis cell that promote ingress of atmospheric air
checking atmosphere for He levels does not help (alone) since the nature of many lab environments is that you get sporadic high levels of He which over time average to a level well above the modal value (which is what would typically be tested). However it would be possible to do this experiment well away from any lab that uses He, removing this issue, or to do the experiment under slightly positive pressure from a known He-free source.
The results are at the marginal level which makes such questions relevant.
At the low levels seen here there is the possibility of He outgassing from the electrodes which could again plausibly be linked to ATER electrode activity. I’d hope this could be bounded well below the results.

These observations seem interesting enough that I applaud Abd’s Austin experiment to recheck this: this experiment does come close, if carefully done, to testing a specific prediction. The team there seem to have gone dark (indeed I know nothing about what they are doing). If Jed is correct however their results will be overwhelmingly positive. I’ll await their considered publication with great interest. But, ATM on balance I think it likely they will have a null/inconclusive result. Jed’s point that only 4 out of 100 electrodes actually work is not encouraging and with that low a success rate, unless the working electrode can be reused over multiple experiments, there must be questions of one-off experimental mistake.

JedRothwell
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Aug 15th 2017

#384

Quote from maryyugo
No problems accessing the site, individual pages, or downloading papers, for example the Nagel paper under recents.
Thanks for checking.

You would be surprised how often the internet malfunctions and cuts off web sites. It is not as reliable as the telephone network used to be.

THHuxleynew
Verified User

4,707
Aug 15th 2017

#382

Quote
THH: Yet we need every single possible error to be proven wrong before we have a genuine LENR-capable anomaly.

I think you misread what I said, which is identical to what you say.

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHcoldfusionb.pdf

The exact set of parameters you must meet are listed in McKubre’s equation.

The paper you have cited does not close these gaps. While it gives necessary conditions, it does not give sufficient ones in the form of (1) (2) above.

THH

THHuxleynew
Verified User

4,707
Aug 15th 2017

#383
Jed said:
Storms tested ~100 cathodes and found 4 that worked. That took a year or two.

None of the researchers who went through long dry spells with no heat reported anything else unusual in those failed experiments.

All three labs reported the same levels of helium.

Samples that produced excess heat had higher levels of helium, proportional to the heat, at a rate of 24 MeV.

The helium was not correlated with heat, because some of the blank cells ran hotter with higher electrolysis power than the ones that produced excess heat.

The helium was not correlated with anything else, other than excess heat.

See:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MilesManomalousea.pdf

I, with Shane, find these observations highly interesting. Unlike Shane I’d add the following analysis:

The specific electrodes work, others don’t is compatible with CCS/ATER, as it is with LENR.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 15th 2017

#384

Quote from maryyugo
No problems accessing the site, individual pages, or downloading papers, for example the Nagel paper under recents.
Thanks for checking.

You would be surprised how often the internet malfunctions and cuts off web sites. It is not as reliable as the telephone network used to be.

interested observer
Member

2,435
Aug 15th 2017

#390

Quote from AA
What I wrote and what you didn’t address was that it is common for new discoveries that are contrary to conventional wisdom to be disbelieved by the majority.

And what I wrote regarding that observation is that it is irrelevant. This is known as the association fallacy. The fact that some - or even many - new discoveries that are contrary to conventional wisdom and are disbelieved by the majority turn out to be valid says absolutely nothing about whether LENR is valid. There is no linkage. Or are YOU saying that whenever an alleged new discovery is disbelieved by the majority, it MUST be valid?

For somebody who claims to be a scientist, you are extraordinarily illogical in argumentation. You are also highly inclined to attribute positions to your opponents that they don’t hold. You said that I have to show that replications were not valid to prove my point. What point exactly did I make that has to be proven? I didn’t say anything about the validity of any replications. Our discussion relates to the completely nonsensical argument of the form:

People claim that Rossi’s gizmo doesn’t work.
People claimed that the Wright Brothers didn’t really fly.
The Wright brothers really did fly.
Therefore: Rossi’s gizmo works.

That appears to be your argument, which if you are tossing out LOLs, deserves a huge one.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 15th 2017

#391

Quote from THHuxleynew
He correlated with heat would be expected from atmospheric contamination where (a) both excess heat and He are correlated with time and (b) excess heat could be related to specific physical conditions in the electrolysis cell that promote ingress of atmospheric air

There are no physical conditions in the cell that promote significant ingress, because the background level of helium is the same in blank tests, including deliberate ones with Pd-H and Pd-D that does not work.

The absolute temperature cannot be a factor because the cell is often warmer during a blank run than a run with excess heat.

Virtually no air enters the cell or collection flask. The effluent gas goes through a bubbler to exclude air. If any air entered the flask, it would swamp the background and the helium from cold fusion. The helium level would be totally random, not correlated to heat or anything else.

Miles once illustrated this during a lecture. He was projecting a graph of background helium and helium after a collection period with a cell producing excess heat. The latter was much higher. Quite significant. He moved the laser pointer to the ceiling and said something like, “if this helium were leaking in from the atmosphere, the level would be up there at the sixth floor.” In other words, there is no mechanism that would allow you leak in such minute quantities of helium. You could not do it with any sort of needle valve, for example. The only method would be to let it permeate through glass for a few years. How minute is the amount? If you touch the inside rim of the metal flask, the helium from your fingerprint will swamp the background helium and the helium from the reaction. Miles always wore gloves when handling the flasks.

I copied the configuration schematic into this paper, p. 5:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJintroducti.pdf

Let me add that various methods are used to check for helium leaks from air, such as looking for argon.

In tritium studies, tritium leaks from laboratory air are ruled out for the opposite reason. In order to leak that much tritium into a cell at a lab like Los Alamos, you would have to increase the atmospheric tritium concentration to such a high level the alarms would go off and the building permanently abandoned, according to Storms.

Quote from THHuxleynew
checking atmosphere for He levels does not help (alone) since the nature of many lab environments is that you get sporadic high levels of He which over time average to a level well above the modal value
No such sporadic changes in background helium were observed in the blank tests. If changes in the lab environment occurred and if they could induce significant variations in the helium collected in the flask, this would have been observed, because these tests were conducted many times over several years.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 16th 2017

#392

Quote from kirkshanahan
Forum members: At this point it is painfully obvious to all that a) I have detailed my CCS/ATER proposal to the nth degree here for all who care to know, b) Jed, Kevin, and others refuse to acknowledge any value to my work,
True. Your work is pretty worthless.

and c) Jed, Kevin, and others support LENR claims unquestioningly,
Horse manure. There’s plenty of real criticism to be applied but when the criticism becomes skeptopathy, it’s more a sign of mental illness than an issue with science.

but normally in an indefensible manner.
Indefensible? I’ve been largely ignoring you, asking you to post on your own thread that the moderators went out of their way to give to you for your pet theory.

So, I am done responding to them.
Oh, thank God.

They don’t want their belief system to be altered,
Same could be said about you or anyone.

and won’t allow the facts to do that.
I’m happy to allow facts to alter my belief systems, but skeptopaths don’t deal in facts.

There is no point is trying to discuss topics or teach them anything. So, I’m done with them.
Good. Best of luck with your theory. Just think, if you’re right, you could have fame and perhaps even fortune.

Well-thought-out questions from others might get a response.
The snarky thing here to say would be that your questions are not well thought out. Oh well, best of luck to you.
Display Less

THHuxleynew
Verified User

4,707
Aug 16th 2017

#393
@kevmo

You show a profound confusion about worth. Kirk’s ideas may be right or wrong or something in between. But, they are important - as the only (that I know) systematic alternative to nuclear reactions that might explain most of the CF classic data. Also, Kirk produces fact-filled and specific arguments for his ideas, and defenses of them against challenge. Those things do not make me convinced by his ideas, but they make them most definitely valuable.

Whereas your contribution to the debate is....

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 16th 2017

#394

Quote from THHuxleynew
@kevmo

Whereas your contribution to the debate is....
I was the one who opened this thread, so there’s that. I have no confusion as to Shanahan’s worth. If you think his ridiculous hypothesis explains away all those 153 peer reviewed replications of the Pons-Fleischmann Anomalous Heat Effect then you’re the one exhibiting tremendous confusion. Even Kirk acknowledges his theory doesn’t account for Helium or Tritium or Gamma Rays.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 16th 2017

#395

Quote from interested observer
People claim that Rossi’s gizmo doesn’t work.
People claimed that the Wright Brothers didn’t really fly.
The Wright brothers really did fly.
Therefore: Rossi’s gizmo works.
Taking it from, say Jed’s perspective (whom I disagree with about some of Rossi’s stuff):
Jed claims Rossi’s gizmo doesn’t work
Jed points out that others claimed the Wright brothers didn’t really fly
The Wright brothers really did fly
Jed still says Rossi’s gizmo doesn’t work.

Basically you just posted one series of incredible straw arguments.

LENR claims are that there’s an anomalous event going on. It’s been replicated.
anti-LENR activists don’t like that it’s been replicated so they’re trying to take down the top hundred electrochemists of their day.
It’s pointed out as an analogy that the Wright brothers DID fly but the scientific consensus of their day was that they DIDN’T fly... until 1908. Similar science-by-consensus arguments about germ theory and plate tectonic theory.
The Wright brothers really did fly; germ theory eventually got accepted and so did plate tectonics. The science-by-consensus folks were wrong and slithered back into their caves.
LENR could work or not work and it would have no bearing on what’s going on with Rossi.

THHuxleynew
Verified User

4,707
Aug 16th 2017

#396

Quote from kevmolenr@gmail.com
I was the one who opened this thread, so there’s that. I have no confusion as to Shanahan’s worth. If you think his ridiculous hypothesis explains away all those 153 peer reviewed replications of the Pons-Fleischmann Anomalous Heat Effect then you’re the one exhibiting tremendous confusion. Even Kirk acknowledges his theory doesn’t account for Helium or Tritium or Gamma Rays.

Continuing the conversation about your IMHO profound confusion about worth: you are here showing that you don’t judge things by content, but instead by whether you think they are relevant. I disagree with your judgement of that for the reasons below.

Suppose I accept your propositions here: and I think I do. Shanahan’s CCS/ATER idea indeed does not cover all of the LENR papers, and by definition does not cover He, tritium, weird transmutation, high energy product claims. Why does that make it uninteresting? There is so much heterogeneous LENR literature identifying as LENR things that look anomalous:

Positive enthalpy (half of all calorimetric anomalies)
Positive radioactive product detection (more than half of such anomalies)
Detection of some unexpected stable element at very low concentration (all contamination and many mislabelling anomalies)

Is it expected that the reasons for all these different things are the same? No - the nature of anomalies is that they have varied explanations. If LENR exists, and explains some subset of these observations, it is still highly unlikely that it explains all. Some will be mundane anomalies.

The job of understanding LENR then is made vastly more difficult by these false positives. In fact if LENR exists you can reasonably argue that the lack of clarity over any theory - even a stable phenomenological theory - is because all these things are being lumped together and many are not LENR. No theory can account for all the observations and the correct set is not known.

Shanahan proposes an idea that promises to contribute to the understanding of LENR by identifying (in a testable way) a non-LENR mechanism for some anomalous excess heat observations.Anyone looking for LENR excess heat might be hit by this if they don’t understand it and therefore Kirk’s work is highly relevant, and valuable. True - his work has not been followed very far: the people needed to do this are those with LENR experiments and as he has pointed out historically they have dismissed his ideas without serious consideration, for reasons that those who look more closely at his work do not accept. Rather like the way LENR is viewed by mainstream science, in a microcosm.

Just as mainstream science refutations of LENR which are dismissive and do not engage with all details don’t seem conclusive to those who see LENR as a plausible hypothesis, so the Marwan dismissal of Shanahan (which I have read in detail) does not seem conclusive to me, nor would to many others who read the chain: Shanahan’s papers -> Marwan et al -> Shanahan’s white paper -> (no reply as far as I know).

So another motivation for LENR advocates (if you are that) to engage fully with Shanahan’s work, whether his ideas apply to any experiments are not, is that it will help to persuade skeptics that you are behaving rationally. A more powerful reason, as above, is that if they do apply to any experiments, they help to simplify the mess of observational anomalies seen currently to support LENR will help those looking for replicability and underlying theories - both of which are sorely needed.

interested observer
Member

2,435
Aug 16th 2017

#397
keV: Sorry but I don’t understand your post at all. My posting of the fallacious syllogism was to point out there is no logical connection with the history of the Wright brothers and Rossi or LENR. Yes, popular opinion can be totally wrong about a new invention and has been on many occasions in the past. That observation is a good counterargument to someone who says that LENR isn’t real because most people think it isn’t. I certainly wouldn’t make that statement. It is true that most people don’t think that LENR is real, but that in itself proves nothing. However, some of you here seem to think that the converse is true: the fact that most people don’t think LENR is real proves that it is because (somehow) that is what happened with the Wright brothers. That bizarre deduction is the essence of my syllogism.

Adrian Ashfield

† Deceased Member

473
Aug 16th 2017

#398

Quote from interested observer
It is true that most people don’t think that LENR is real, but that in itself proves nothing. However, some of you here seem to think that the converse is true: the fact that most people don’t think LENR is real proves that it is because (somehow) that is what happened with the Wright brothers. That bizarre deduction is the essence of my syllogism.
I have yet to see one person make that claim.

Just for the record, do you believe:
1. LENR has ever been proven to produce excess heat?
2. Any of Rossi’s E-Cats (including the QX) have ever worked?

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 16th 2017

#399

Quote from Adrian Ashfield
The fact that most people don’t think LENR is real proves that it is because (somehow) that is what happened with the Wright brothers. That bizarre deduction is the essence of my syllogism.

I have yet to see one person make that claim.
Correct. This is a classic strawman argument. That is to say: Interested Observer is refuting an argument that no one makes.

The only argument made regarding the Wrights in this context is that sometimes the majority of scientists are wrong, so be careful not to point to a majority to support your views. To judge the validity of an experimental claim, look at the experiment. Don’t fret about who believes it or what the majority thinks. Science is not a popularity contest.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 16th 2017

#400

Quote from interested observer
However, some of you here seem to think that the converse is true: the fact that most people don’t think LENR is real proves that it is because (somehow) that is what happened with the Wright brothers.
That’s fascinating. Who here has promoted such a premise? Why go to so much effort over what some SEEM to think? I doubt there is anyone who is posting on this thread that thinks it, so it turns out you’re arguing against what no one thinks, no one has said, and that makes it a straw argument. You propped it up as if someone thought it or promoted it and then tried to shoot it down. That is the essence of a straw argument.
kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 16th 2017

#401

Quote from Adrian Ashfield
I have yet to see one person make that claim.

Just for the record, do you believe:
1. LENR has ever been proven to produce excess heat?
2. Any of Rossi’s E-Cats (including the QX) have ever worked?

For myself, 1: Yes. 2: At one time, yes, then after he posted a few outright lies I followed his “in mercato veritas” approach and there’s nothing in mercato. I first thought that the chances of Rossi hoodwinking the Swedish Skeptics Society in a black box test, Darden in a yearlong test with an independent test reporter, Levi and Focardi and half a dozen other notable scientists, well that was an extremely stretch. But now I just consider it an unlikely stretch.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 16th 2017

#402

Quote from JedRothwell
Correct. This is a classic strawman argument. That is to say: Interested Observer is refuting an argument that no one makes.

If you cannot evaluate a claim yourself, perhaps you should assume the majority is right. That is a weak position. But after all, the majority is usually right, especially about uncontroversial claims, so you will probably be correct.
Dang it, I should have read through the thread before posting because you said almost exactly the same thing I did.

1
interested observer
Member

2,435
Aug 16th 2017

#404
I am happy to hear that nobody actually is making the ridiculous argument that I put forth about the Wright brothers. However, I don’t understand what point you all keep making about them is. Yes, many people were wrong about the Wright brothers and, if it turns out that LENR is the real deal, then many people will have been wrong about that as well. My point with regard to that is: so what?

If I am interpreting Jed and Kev correctly, they are stating that since they and some others are completely convinced that LENR has been adequately proven to exist and since I and others have not studied the literature in great detail and have not found specific objections to each paper, we should consider it proven to exist. Now Jed says that if you can’t evaluate a claim yourself, then perhaps you should assume the majority is right. Of course, the majority considers LENR not to exist. But Jed further asserts that the majority has formed this opinion out of ignorance at best and antipathy at worst. So I guess his advice is to assume that only the people he says to listen to are right.

I guess I might as well answer Adrian’s questions so he can decide whether or not to put me on his shit list. I really don’t know if LENR has been proven to produce excess heat. I find many of the criticisms of the literature to be well-founded but certainly not decisive. I think the existence of LENR - to extent that there is even a well-formed definition of the phenomenon - is still an open question. I realize that this sort of skepticism is not acceptable to anyone here. If you are not a believer, you are a pathological skeptic. There are no maybes allowed for the faithful. But my position is “I don’t know” and if you don’t like that, tough.

As for Rossi, I don’t believe any version of the e-cat is anything more than a fraudulent piece of junk designed to sucker in LENR fans. I thought this within weeks of my first exposure to Rossi’s stuff in 2011 and my convictions have only strengthened over time. My opinions about LENR have nothing to do with that conclusion. I don’t think Rossi’s work ever has had anything to do with LENR and each new version of his gizmo is even less plausibly related to any LENR experiment ever described.

1
JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 16th 2017

#406

Quote from kevmolenr@gmail.com
I should have read through the thread before posting because you said almost exactly the same thing I did.
This is an important point, worth repeating. This is a particularly blatant strawman argument. Sometimes, people misunderstand an argument, distort it a little and then post a rebuttal. That would be an accidental strawman argument. In this case, no one made an argument even remotely close to this, so I suspect Interested Observer may realize this is unreasonable.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 16th 2017

#407

Quote from THHuxleynew
you are here showing that you don’t judge things by content, but instead by whether ...they are relevant.

***Well you’re right about that. When someone like Shanahan continues to seagull over a thread with irrelevant stuff, I find it pretty damned useless.

I disagree with your judgement of that for the reasons below.
Suppose I accept your propositions here: and I think I do. Shanahan’s CCS/ATER idea indeed does not cover all of the LENR papers, and by definition does not cover He, tritium, weird transmutation, high energy product claims. Why does that make it uninteresting?
***Because it is irrelevant. Look at the title of this thread. Does Shanahan’s bullshit apply to the title? Not really. Maybe he shaves off a few replications that were close to the noise, but from what I have seen of the counterarguments to his claims, he doesn’t even do that. Let’s say he did. Then how many of those 153 peer reviewed replications does he shave off? Maybe 13? That makes it 140 remaining peer reviewed replications to knock out, and he doesn’t do that, he doesn’t support his theory very well, he doesn’t take it to his own thread like the moderators have suggested.

There is so much heterogeneous LENR literature identifying as LENR things that look anomalous:
Positive enthalpy (half of all calorimetric anomalies)
Positive radioactive product detection (more than half of such anomalies)
Detection of some unexpected stable element at very low concentration (all contamination and many mislabelling anomalies)
Is it expected that the reasons for all these different things are the same? No
***To hear Ed Storms say it, the answer is YES. But like you say, there’s enough anomalous stuff in the LENR literature to have allowed in a few extra anomalies that won’t be explained by whatever theory emerges to push LENR into the daylight.

- the nature of anomalies is that they have varied explanations. If LENR exists, and explains some subset of these observations, it is still highly unlikely that it explains all. Some will be mundane anomalies.
***So if your theory explains 13 out of 153 replications then maybe you should stay on your own thread with your own 13/153 theory and explain it to all comers.

The job of understanding LENR then is made vastly more difficult by these false positives.
***True. The story about Feynman getting the Nobel Prize fits that issue to a T.

When Dr. Feynman came up with his famous theory, he had to throw out a supposition that others had been relying upon but he felt its proof had come up short. ————————————————————————————— Feynman’s own words. I’ll reprint some of his story here, which I found also posted online at http://www.zag.si/~jank/public/misc/joking_feynman.txt The 7 Percent Solution The problem was to find the right laws of beta decay. There appeared to be two particles, which were called a tau and a theta. They seemed to have almost exactly the same mass, but one disintegrated into two pions, and the other into three pions. Not only did they seem to have the same mass, but they also had the same lifetime, which is a funny coincidence. So everybody was concerned about this. .... At that particular time I was not really quite up to things: I was always a little behind. Everybody seemed to be smart, and I didn’t feel I was keeping up. Anyway, I was sharing a room with a guy named Martin Block, an experimenter. And one evening he said to me, “Why are you guys so insistent on this parity rule? Maybe the tau and theta are the same particle. What would be the consequences if the parity rule were wrong?” .... So I got up and said, “I’m asking this question for Martin Block: What would be the consequences if the parity rule was wrong?” Murray Gell-Mann often teased me about this, saying I didn’t have the nerve to ask the question for myself. But that’s not the reason. I thought it might very well be an important idea. .... Finally they get all this stuff into me, and they say, “The situation is so mixed up that even some of the things they’ve established for years are being questioned — such as the beta decay of the neutron is S and T. It’s so messed up. Murray says it might even be V and A.” I jump up from the stool and say, “Then I understand EVVVVVERYTHING!” They thought I was joking. But the thing that I had trouble with at the Rochester meeting — the neutron and proton disintegration: everything fit but that, and if it was V and A instead of S and T, that would fit too. Therefore I had the whole theory! That night I calculated all kinds of things with this theory. The first thing I calculated was the rate of disintegration of the muon and the neutron. They should be connected together, if this theory was right, by a certain relationship, and it was right to 9 percent. That’s pretty close, 9 percent. It should have been more perfect than that, but it was close enough. .... I was very excited, and kept on calculating, and things that fit kept on tumbling out: they fit automatically, without a strain. I had begun to forget about the 9 percent by now, because everything else was coming out right. .... The next morning when I got to work I went to Wapstra, Boehm, and Jensen, and told them, “I’ve got it all worked out. Everything fits.” Christy, who was there, too, said, “What beta-decay constant did you use?” “The one from So-and-So’s book.” “But that’s been found out to be wrong. Recent measurements have shown it’s off by 7 percent.” Then I remember the 9 percent. .... I went out and found the original article on the experiment that said the neutron-proton coupling is T, and I was shocked by something. I remembered reading that article once before (back in the days when I read every article in the Physical Review — it was small enough). And I remembered, when I saw this article again, looking at that curve and thinking, “That doesn’t prove anything!” You see, it depended on one or two points at the very edge of the range of the data, and there’s a principle that a point on the edge of the range of the data — the last point — isn’t very good, because if it was, they’d have another point further along. And I had realized that the whole idea that neutron-proton coupling is T was based on the last point, which wasn’t very good, and therefore it’s not proved. I remember noticing that! And when I became interested in beta decay, directly, I read all these reports by the “beta-decay experts,” which said it’s T. I never looked at the original data; I only read those reports, like a dope. Had I been a good physicist, when I thought of the original idea back at the Rochester Conference I would have immediately looked up “how strong do we know it’s T?” — that would have been the sensible thing to do. I would have recognized right away that I had already noticed it wasn’t satisfactorily proved. Since then I never pay any attention to anything by “experts.” I calculate everything myself. When people said the quark theory was pretty good, I got two Ph.D.s, Finn Ravndal and Mark Kislinger, to go through the whole works with me, just so I could check that the thing was really giving results that fit fairly well, and that it was a significantly good theory. I’ll never make that mistake again, reading the experts’ opinions. Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do, and that’s the end of you. —————————————————————————————

In fact if LENR exists you can reasonably argue that the lack of clarity over any theory - even a stable phenomenological theory - is because all these things are being lumped together and many are not LENR. No theory can account for all the observations and the correct set is not known.
***Yes I agree, but Shanahan’s continual focus on his explanation of a small sliver of experiments doesn’t remove any of that “lumped together” stuff.

Shanahan proposes an idea that promises to contribute to the understanding of LENR by identifying (in a testable way) a non-LENR mechanism for some anomalous excess heat observations.
***Then let him defend his theory on his own thread rather than seagulling on this thread. I don’t think his theory explains anything, but that has no bearing on it. From what I can see, Shanahan’s theory explains away less than 1% of the anomalies, and none of that shaving away contributes to the end game, i.e. none of the results he would shave off are much different than the other results.

Anyone looking for LENR excess heat might be hit by this if they don’t understand it and therefore Kirk’s work is highly relevant, and valuable.
***I really think you attribute far more value to his theory than is warranted. It amounts to a guy who used calorimeters lecturing the top hundred electrochemists of the day on calorimetry.

True - his work has not been followed very far: the people needed to do this are those with LENR experiments and as he has pointed out historically they have dismissed his ideas without serious consideration,
***I can see why.

for reasons that those who look more closely at his work do not accept. Rather like the way LENR is viewed by mainstream science, in a microcosm.
***No, not really. LENR was knocked out of the big science chair because there was hundreds of $billions worth of hot-fusion at stake. Shanahan is dismissed because his theory barely explains 1% of any anomalous results and doesn’t move the dial any further.

Just as mainstream science refutations of LENR which are dismissive and do not engage with all details don’t seem conclusive to those who see LENR as a plausible hypothesis, so the Marwan dismissal of Shanahan (which I have read in detail) does not seem conclusive to me,
***Then take it up on that very special thread set up for Shanahan to discuss his theory. It becomes irrelevant on this thread.

nor would to many others who read the chain: Shanahan’s papers -> Marwan et al -> Shanahan’s white paper -> (no reply as far as I know).
***Best of luck to you and Shanahan on your dedicated thread.

So another motivation for LENR advocates (if you are that) to engage fully with Shanahan’s work, whether his ideas apply to any experiments are not, is that it will help to persuade skeptics that you are behaving rationally.
***Shanahan is not behaving rationally. He has a theory that explains 1% of the anomalous results in those 153 peer reviewed replications and he acts like it explains the entire field away. The rational thing to do is let him explain away on his own thread and let the weight of replications be felt on this thread. By continually bringing his irrelevant hypothesis onto this thread, it pollutes the rational scientific finding that LENR is a well replicated phenomena.

A more powerful reason, as above, is that if they do apply to any experiments, they help to simplify the mess of observational anomalies seen currently to support LENR will help those looking for replicability and underlying theories - both of which are sorely needed.
***Again, it appears you have a highly inflated view of the value of Shanahan’s hypothesis. You neglect the value it generates for skeptopaths, the value of the seagull. When kids try to eat their lunch in the school yard, the seagulls gather, swoop in, make a lot of useless noise, steal tidbits and leave behind their business. That’s the value of a seagull, and Shanahan’s theory has a lot of value to seagulls but the kids in the schoolyard won’t eat after the seagulls have touched the food.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 16th 2017

#408

Quote from maryyugo
Jed says that now. For more than three years, perhaps four, Jed maintained that the experiments by the Swedes and Levi were credible and that Rossi’s claims were real. He even used the word “incontrovertible” regarding some of the evidence advanced for Rossi claims and he used the phrase “on first principles” for explaining why he thought continued boiling after electrical power shut off proved that the “ottoman” sized ecats worked. Of course, it turned out to be only stored heat and the apparent excess power was, most likely, caused by deliberate misplacement of temperature sensors
I do not think that is likely. I do not know what caused the apparent heat. I do not think Mary Yugo knows either. She has given no evidence of this hypothesis. “Most likely” according to what? Who saw that the temperature sensors were misplaced? How could this have caused the device to be so hot it burned someone long after it was turned off? This claim might be real for all I can tell. For that matter, Rossi’s the results published here might be real for all anyone knows:

http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/LeviGindication.pdf

As far as I know, neither Yugo nor anyone else has proposed technical reasons why these results may be wrong.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 16th 2017

#409

Quote from maryyugo
The things that we skeptopaths wouldn’t be convinced by anyway except that we would if it were done correctly by credible people.
It’s good to see you count yourself among the skeptopaths. And when you throw out the top tier of electrochemists, the “who’s who of electrochemistry” in one wave of your hand saying you demand results “correctly by credible people”, it is another sign of your agenda. You really do think the top hundred electrochemists of their day were not credible, but that you are.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 16th 2017

#410

Quote from maryyugo
Jed says that now. For more than three years, perhaps four, Jed maintained that the experiments by the Swedes and Levi were credible and that Rossi’s claims were real. He even used the word “incontrovertible” regarding some of the evidence advanced for Rossi claims and he used the phrase “on first principles” for explaining why he thought continued boiling after electrical power shut off proved that the “ottoman” sized ecats worked. Of course, it turned out to be only stored heat and the apparent excess power was, most likely, caused by deliberate misplacement of temperature sensors, a Rossi trademark move. Jed was quite insistent, arrogant and nasty about it at times. Let’s keep the history straight.
Jed says that the Penon report is what turned his perspective. I keep hoping that he’ll publish his own thread with a paragraph by paragraph dismantling of the report. It would appear he has better things to do.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 16th 2017

#411

Quote from maryyugo
Absolutely not. There is no vestige of a chance that Rossi’s garbage assemblies do anything except to fool the lowest denominator victims and marks. I have presented the evidence for this time and again as have others. It’s conclusive.
I see this a lot. You characterize the evidence as conclusive. Jed calls it proof of fraud. IF it was so conclusive and so much proof of fraud then the criminal authorities would have taken that evidence entered onto the docket and locked Rossi up as a con man. But they didn’t. It does not meet the easier legal standard of “preponderance of the evidence” and sits there limply on the criminal legal standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt”. So it is legal proof that Rossi isn’t a fraud, and your evidence isn’t as conclusive as you portray or otherwise the Rossi vs. Darden case would have been a slam dunk.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 16th 2017

#412

Quote from interested observer
If I am interpreting Jed and Kev correctly, they are stating that since they and some others are completely convinced that LENR has been adequately proven to exist and since I and others have not studied the literature in great detail and have not found specific objections to each paper, we should consider it proven to exist.
Nope. Neither of us said that. This has nothing to do with you. If you, personally, have not read the literature then of course you can have no specific objections, or general objections. You cannot critique cold fusion. You cannot defend it either. Until you read the literature you have no business forming any opinion about it.

The point I was making is not about you, it is about scientific skeptics in general. Other than Morrison and Shanahan, they have not published any papers showing experimental errors in any of the major experiments. Therefore, they have not given any reason to doubt the experiments. They have had nearly 30 years to do this. If they have not found anything by now, I doubt they ever will. There has to a reasonable time limit. We cannot wait decades before declaring that an experiment is right, or we would still not believe something like Faraday’s law or the Second Law.

Quote from interested observer
Now Jed says that if you can’t evaluate a claim yourself, then perhaps you should assume the majority is right.
Yes. That is a weak argument, but better than nothing. It is more a rule of thumb than a scientifically valid argument.

Quote from interested observer
Of course, the majority considers LENR not to exist. But Jed further asserts that the majority has formed this opinion out of ignorance at best and antipathy at worst. So I guess his advice is to assume that only the people he says to listen to are right.
Yes, this is an example where the majority is wrong, so the above rule of thumb fails. As I said, this is a weak argument at best.

There is no doubt the majority opinion is formed out of ignorance. You can easily verify this. Read the literature and then compare it to the majority opinions. You will see that Sci. Am., Wikipedia, the 2004 DoE panel and others are wrong and the authors know nothing about cold fusion. This is not a difficult analysis. It is not debatable. It isn’t as if these people make subtle mistakes in interpretation about things that reasonable people might differ. These people do not have the slightest idea what instruments are used, what is detected, or what is claimed. They resemble Mary Yugo who has no idea what boil-off calorimetry is, or Newton’s Law of Cooling, or the Second Law, or why it is anomalous when a hot body with no chemical or electric energy input remains hot instead of cooling.

Here are two examples of what I mean. A quick look at Sci. Am. by me:

http://lenr-canr.org/wordpress/?p=294

A detailed, blow-by-blow analysis of the DoD report to Congress by Abd:

http://coldfusioncommunity.net…clear-reactions-research/

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 16th 2017

#413

Quote from interested observer
I am happy to hear that nobody actually is making the ridiculous argument that I put forth about the Wright brothers.

I am happy to hear that nobody actually is making the ridiculous argument that I put forth about the Wright brothers.
***Then why did you argue against it? It is a straw argument that YOU put forth.

However, I don’t understand what point you all keep making about them is. Yes, many people were wrong about the Wright brothers and, if it turns out that LENR is the real deal, then many people will have been wrong about that as well. My point with regard to that is: so what?
***Then listen to the scientific evidence, that’s what.

If I am interpreting Jed and Kev correctly,
***No, you are not. The leopard does not change his spots, it would seem.

they are stating that since they and some others are completely convinced that LENR has been adequately proven to exist and since I and others have not studied the literature in great detail and have not found specific objections to each paper, we should consider it proven to exist.
***That is pretty standard scientific protocol, right there. You have to study the literature and you have to find specific objections to each replication if you’re gonna shoot down >150 peer reviewed replications.

Now Jed says that if you can’t evaluate a claim yourself, then perhaps you should assume the majority is right.
***Interesting claim. Are you saying that you can’t evaluate a claim yourself?

Of course, the majority considers LENR not to exist. But Jed further asserts that the majority has formed this opinion out of ignorance at best and antipathy at worst. So I guess his advice is to assume that only the people he says to listen to are right.
*** You “guess” his advice is...? You’re building up yet another straw argument here. Why not just go directly to saying that you are smarter than the top hundred electrochemists of the day and everyone should just listen to you, even though you don’t read the papers and can’t evaluate the claims? See how this straw argument stuff works?

I guess I might as well answer Adrian’s questions so he can decide whether or not to put me on his shit list. I really don’t know if LENR has been proven to produce excess heat.
***You’re the 2nd person to say “I dunno”. If you don’t know, then why don’t you keep reading those replication papers? Basically you folks are proceeding from a fallacy, the argument from silence. You are saying you don’t know... and you proceed as if you do know. You presume that the evidence is silent but it isn’t.

I find many of the criticisms of the literature to be well-founded but certainly not decisive.
***How can you find that? You just said that you don’t know. Rational people would consider 153 peer reviewed replications to be decisive.

I think the existence of LENR - to extent that there is even a well-formed definition of the phenomenon - is still an open question.
***You just said that you don’t know. Now you’re saying that those 153 peer reviewed replications generates an open question? You don’t seem to understand how replication, peer review, and science works. Who the hell are you to say that the “who’s who of electrochemistry” got it wrong when you don’t even read the papers, you proceed from logical fallacies, you don’t know how science works?

I realize that this sort of skepticism is not acceptable to anyone here. If you are not a believer, you are a pathological skeptic.
***False dichotomy, yet another logical fallacy.

There are no maybes allowed for the faithful. But my position is “I don’t know” and if you don’t like that, tough.
***If your position is “I don’t know” then how is it you proceed from that position as if you do know? You are openly using a logical fallacy, the argument from silence.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 16th 2017

#414

Quote from kevmolenr@gmail.com
IF it was so conclusive and so much proof of fraud then the criminal authorities would have taken that evidence entered onto the docket and locked Rossi up as a con man.
Not necessarily. As I pointed out several times, for 3 reasons:

1. Maybe they will, but they have not gotten around to it yet. The newspapers often report on cases of fraud that are prosecuted years after the crime is committed.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article164232522.html

• kevmolenr@gmail.com
Member

846
o Aug 16th 2017
o #415
Quote from JedRothwell
Not necessarily. As I pointed out several times, for 3 reasons:

1. Maybe they will, but they have not gotten around to it yet. The newspapers often report on cases of fraud that are prosecuted years after the crime is committed.
For the time being, Rossi is not in jail. And IH didn’t have enough evidence to slam dunk this case with the lower legal standard of “preponderance of evidence”. So for the time being, the inductive evidence from Rossi vs. Darden is that Rossi is proven not to be a fraud. If he gets arrested for fraud based on this evidence, the inductive case shifts. But every day that goes by strengthens the inductive case (especially since he’s considered a flight risk to Sweden) that he aint a fraud.

2. In Florida alone, there are thousands of fraud cases, many of them for more money than this. Perhaps the police do not have the manpower to pursue this. I wouldn’t know, but billions of dollars have been stolen and thousands of criminals have not been caught.
And as you said, this has been pointed out several times so we’ll go through it again this time. Thousands of fraud cases, averaging about $3M per case which puts Rossi above average with $11m as the nut. But out of those thousands of cases > $10M nut, there is likely to only be 2 or 3 that have the evidence introduced into a court of law under penalty of perjury. If a judge were to see such strong evidence of fraud in her courtroom, she would immediately notify the authorities. So if the evidence was that strong, it would put Rossi at the top of the heap for those poor overworked criminal investigators.

3. I am just speculating, but I suppose the government’s first priority would be to go after people who defraud the government itself. And people who work in the government. Medicare fraud alone comes to billions of dollars. One case in Miami was for a billion dollars, stolen by a government worker!
That sounds like a reasonable speculation to me. But my speculation is that anyone who works so hard at establishing fraud would love to have a bluebird land on his lap with all that juicy evidence already entered into the court docket. So maybe our competing speculations cancel eachother out.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article164232522.html
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• JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
o Aug 16th 2017
o #416
Quote from kevmolenr@gmail.com
I think the existence of LENR - to extent that there is even a well-formed definition of the phenomenon - is still an open question.
***You just said that you don’t know. Now you’re saying that those 153 peer reviewed replications generates an open question?
Yes. As I said, a person who has not read the literature and who says he does not know cannot judge this kind of issue. He cannot say it is an “open question” whether there is “a well-formed definition.” He has no basis for any opinion about this, positive or negative. He has no business asserting that cold fusion does exist.

Except, as I said, on the basis of a rule of thumb such as “the majority is often right.” That rule fails in this case, but it often works. It is better than nothing.

Just about everything that I think I know is based on this kind of weak evidence. I read in the newspaper that scientists say X, Y or Z about cancer, or some other subject about which I know next to nothing. “Experts at the WHO say processed meat is carcinogenic.” I assume the reporter got the story straight, and those scientists are right, so I guess maybe processed meat is carcinogenic. How would I know? Who am I to judge?

I could read a few articles in journals and maybe form an idea of how likely it is that eating moderate amounts of processed meat will increase the chances of getting cancer. I might have some doubts about the seriousness or the statistical significance of the findings. (I have no idea whether I actually would in this case — but I have seen what I suspect is iffy epidemiology in other medical research.) However, I would never go one on one with a WHO expert and challenge his conclusions! I wouldn’t think of doing that. It would be extreme hubris.

I am not an expert in cold fusion. But I have read the literature. I have conducted experiments, been to labs, spent a week with Martin Fleischmann, and copy-edited hundreds of boring papers and four books. So I know at least as much as a well-educated chemistry department secretary would know. Now along comes Interested Observer and he, she, or it says:

1. I have not read the literature.
2. I admit frankly I do not know about this subject. (Good on you!)
3. Despite this, I declare categorically it is an “open question” whether there is “a well-formed definition.”

I can give you a well-formed definition in my sleep! Seriously, if you woke me at 3 am and asked me to define cold fusion technically, I could give a 20-minute impromptu lecture describing the technical definition as put forth by Fleischmann, Storms and others, and where they agree and differ.

This person, entity, cerebration or insect horde from Alpha Centauri, or whatever Interested Observer is — this thing about whom we know nothing, who appears to have no qualifications or knowledge — is here disputing this question with me, and by extension with Fleischmann and others. That’s who I got my info from. The entity gives us no technical reasons to back up any of his assertions. He gives no reason why we should take him seriously. This is not how you conduct a technical discussion, and it sure as hell is not how you win one.
1
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interested observer
Member

2,435
Aug 16th 2017

#418
Gosh Kev, pretty much everything you say to me is in the form of a straw man argument. I make the statement that I can’t really form a conclusion about LENR and you insist that I have formed one. You keep yakking about the holy numbers of 100 top electrochemists and 153 replications. Among other things, how exactly do you define a replication? My understanding of an experimental replication is to use the same setup and same methodology to achieve the same results. Disparate experiments that all show various amounts of “excess heat” under a variety of conditions do not constitute replications.

But all of this is beside the point. I have not concluded that LENR isn’t real despite your insistence that I have. But apparently I am not even entitled to have my doubts. I am evidently not qualified to have doubts. But I am not arguing with your 100 electrochemist heroes. Maybe they are right. But why do I have to sign off on this at all? I am not fighting against LENR or standing in the way of it. I have nothing to do with it one way or another. I hope it is real because anyone with a lick of sense would want it to be real. And I don’t happen to believe that a bunch of plasma physicists rule the world and are preventing powerful corporations and governments around the world from developing the technology. The lack of any progress is the problem.

Perhaps you can somehow comprehend that “I don’t know” means “I don’t know” and not “No”. The quality papers that Jed recommends look to me like very small effects that could well be some sort of artifact. But I am not arguing that they are artifacts. I am saying that I am not convinced. You are saying that I have no right to not be convinced. Once again, it doesn’t matter what I think. I am not trying to dissuade anybody about LENR. Those of you who are convinced that it is proven ought to stop arguing about it and try to figure out how to help the field make progress. If there has been any progress, it must be a secret. I can assure you that stiffling maryyugo will not make a bit of difference. But if you prefer to spend your time prattling about skeptopaths, that is your perogative.

maryyugo

Member

731
Aug 16th 2017

#419
JedRothwell

This is Krivit’s article about the ottoman ecat experiments including comments by Patterson and Ahern. There was also a clear picture somewhere of the misplaced thermocouple but I don’t have a bookmark to it and I can’t take time to find it now.

http://news.newenergytimes.net…uples-appears-deliberate/

Perhaps you missed that discussion when it was current.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 16th 2017

#420

Quote from maryyugo
Many issues were raised about the paper by Levi et. al.
They were raised, and then answered by the authors. The authors were communicating back then. They revised the paper. I do not know why they stopped communicating later on.

Quote from maryyugo
t was a while back and I don’t recall them all. The hot cat was never the “right experiment” — the three phase power input, the use of a fourth power computation to derive the output and the presence of Rossi at various points in the work.
The 4th power computation is not an issue because they confirmed the temperature with a thermocouple.

(Why they did not do that in the next experiment is a mystery to me.)

Quote from maryyugo
all undermine the credibility of ALL hot cat experiments.
I do not see how a mistake in one experiment, which was not made in a second experiment, can magically undermine the credibility of the second experiment. Would that be quantum mechanical spooky action at a distance?

Quote from maryyugo
So you still believe Rossi’s crappola even now? Wow. Metal stores heat, in case you didn’t know.
Ah, but it does not violate Newton’s law or the second law of thermodynamics. Also, the specific heat of metal is about 10 times smaller than water, so it doesn’t store much.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 16th 2017

#422

Quote from interested observer
Perhaps you can somehow comprehend that “I don’t know” means “I don’t know” and not “No”.
If you do not know, you should not pontificate. You have made many assertions here that only a person who knows a lot would be qualified to make.

Quote from interested observer
The quality papers that Jed recommends look to me like very small effects that could well be some sort of artifact.
If they look that way to you, you have not understood them. First, because in many cases the effects are large, not small. Second, you cannot say “they could well be some sort of artifact.” That isn’t science. You have to say what artifact they might be. Show evidence. Make your case. Your assertion has to be backed up with as much rigor and proof as the assertions made by the authors of these papers. You do not get a free pass.

A negative opinion does not get a free pass. When you predicate your opinion by saying “I don’t know” or “I have not read this carefully” or “it looks to me . . .” then your opinion is nowhere near as credible as the authors’, because they are world-class experts who spent years studying these issues. They carefully ruled out every plausible artifact, and they listed the ways they did this. I am 100% confident that you cannot find an artifact they did not already rule out. In fact, I am confident that you have no specific artifact in mind. In experimental science, you must be specific or you have no case.

You remind me of politicians who denounce a scientific finding by saying, “I am not a scientist but . . .” That cancels out the rest of their statement. If you are not a scientist, or you have not read the literature carefully, you have no business expressing an opinion.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 16th 2017

#423

Quote from interested observer
Gosh Kev, pretty much everything you say to me is in the form of a straw man argument.
Gosh Kev, pretty much everything you say to me is in the form of a straw man argument.
***I suspect you don’t even know what a straw man argument is.

I make the statement that I can’t really form a conclusion about LENR and you insist that I have formed one.
***I did not insist. I observe. You sure act like someone who has formed a conclusion. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, acts like a duck, it’s probably a duck. If you REALLY are trying to form a position that you can’t form a conclusion about LENR then say that, whenever you put forth an argument. Because you belie your own position whenever you don’t do that.

You keep yakking about the holy numbers of 100 top electrochemists and 153 replications.
***That’s pretty much what this thread is all about. And the skeptopaths keep trying to derail attention to that detail.

Among other things, how exactly do you define a replication?
***I am willing to proceed forth whatever standard definition there is. Let’s presume there’s some American Association for the Advancement of Science definition.

My understanding of an experimental replication is to use the same setup and same methodology to achieve the same results.
***Have you checked your understanding of that against whatever the standard that might exist? My understanding is that when a paper identifies itself as a replication of a prior experiment and it is accepted by the peer review process, it qualifies as a replication.

Disparate experiments that all show various amounts of “excess heat” under a variety of conditions do not constitute replications.
***That there would be a classic “Humpty Dumpty” interpretation of what a replication is.

But all of this is beside the point. I have not concluded that LENR isn’t real despite your insistence that I have.
***You quack like a duck, you walk like a duck, you sound like a duck.

But apparently I am not even entitled to have my doubts. I am evidently not qualified to have doubts.
***Go ahead and express them as doubts. But when you say things like “I did not read the papers” and “to ME, replication means... such & such” and argue from demonstrable fallacies, perhaps you should not expect your doubts to be entertained.

But I am not arguing with your 100 electrochemist heroes. Maybe they are right. But why do I have to sign off on this at all? I am not fighting against LENR or standing in the way of it. I have nothing to do with it one way or another.
***Look through your arguments. Look at who else is arguing the same thing. When you find yourself in a mob surrounded by NAZIs who are fighting against communists, it’s a bit disingenuous to say that you aren’t a NAZI. I know, I know, using that NAZI connotation really gets under the skin of the average skeptopath, so insert some other uniformed group of fascists or whatever suits your fancy.

I hope it is real because anyone with a lick of sense would want it to be real. And I don’t happen to believe that a bunch of plasma physicists rule the world and are preventing powerful corporations and governments around the world from developing the technology. The lack of any progress is the problem.
***It is the plasma physicists who created this problem. They caused the funding for the research in this area to dry up.

Perhaps you can somehow comprehend that “I don’t know” means “I don’t know” and not “No”.
***I don’t know means you don’t know. You shouldn’t proceed forth as if you do know.

The quality papers that Jed recommends look to me like very small effects that could well be some sort of artifact.
***See here, this is where you go way off into the weeds. You acknowledge you haven’t read the papers. You admit to being ignorant of the facts. But you try to characterize the work of the top electrochemists of the day as some sort of artifact. What you need to do is take some kind of class in how to recognize bullshit.

But I am not arguing that they are artifacts. I am saying that I am not convinced. You are saying that I have no right to not be convinced.
***No, I’m saying that when you move forward from the “I Dunno” state, in lockstep with skeptopaths who are questioning the integrity of the top electrochemists of the day, and you don’t read the papers and you use fallacious arguments, maybe you should step back from your lockstepped crowd and learn a few things by reading the papers, understanding solid reasoning, and using standard scientific principles.

Once again, it doesn’t matter what I think.
***I suppose I might actually agree with that.

I am not trying to dissuade anybody about LENR. Those of you who are convinced that it is proven ought to stop arguing about it and try to figure out how to help the field make progress.
***One of those things involves knocking out the kind of ignorance that you have manifested here.

If there has been any progress, it must be a secret. I can assure you that stiffling maryyugo will not make a bit of difference. But if you prefer to spend your time prattling about skeptopaths, that is your perogative.
***You seem to like spending your time showing off your own ignorance and prattling about that, so in a way our prattling cancels eachother out. What stands afterwards is that LENR is a peer reviewed phenomenon replicated by the top electrochemists of the day.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 16th 2017

#424

Quote from kevmolenr@gmail.com
I make the statement that I can’t really form a conclusion about LENR and you insist that I have formed one.
***I did not insist. I observe. You sure act like someone who has formed a conclusion. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, acts like a duck, it’s probably a duck. If you REALLY are trying to form a position that you can’t form a conclusion about LENR then say that, whenever you put forth an argument.
“I can’t form a conclusion” would automatically nullify whatever he next says.

As I said, that would be like the politician’s get-of-jail-card: “I am not a scientist, but . . .” Hey Senator, if you are not a scientist then please shut up. Also, we see you are not a scientist. No one would mistake you for a scientist.

Interested Observer is saying all kinds of things here which anyone can see are conclusions about LENR, such as:

“The quality papers that Jed recommends look to me like very small effects that could well be some sort of artifact.”

Then, as soon as he says this, he says oh but I am not reaching a conclusion, so ha, ha, you can’t hold me to it! You can’t make me provide evidence for what I just said, because it is not a conclusion.

Those are conclusions! “Small” and “some sort of artifact” are conclusions. What else would they be? Both are wrong, but they are conclusions.

interested observer
Member

2,435
Aug 16th 2017

#425
Ok guys. Apparently your purpose in life is to muster up outrage and vitriol against people who don’t share your viewpoint. What the hell, there is plenty of that going around these days anyway. Since my interest in this whole business is primarily on the human behavior side, it suits me as well as anything. I will try to be stunned by how you really “got me.” I hope hurling insults and arrogant belittling is pleasurable for you. Otherwise, it is sure a waste of whatever talents you may have. Meanwhile, I will continue to “pontificate” when I feel like it. Feel free to ignore me or continue to lecture me on how I am not qualified to say anything. TTFN

Online
Alan Fletcher
Member

718
Aug 16th 2017

#426

Quote from maryyugo
So you still believe Rossi’s crappola even now? Wow. Metal stores heat, in case you didn’t know. So do other substances. Rossi did not allow full inspection of the interior of the massive ottoman ecat.
We actually have quite a lot of information about the contents of the “ottoman” :

1. Mats’ photo showing a) thin walls, 2) fins in most of the top half 3) a likelyhood that there are fins in the bottom half too and that there is a central “wafer”
2. The volume from the time to fill the cavity
3. The volume from the time taken to dump the water

Also, see Bog Higgins’ schematic

It was most certainly not a block of solid metal.

I agree on the thermocouple placement : I disqualified the experiment as “not proven” (subtly different from DIS-proven).
http://lenr.qumbu.com/rossi_ecat_oct11_c.php

ele
Member

381
Aug 16th 2017

#427

Quote from JedRothwell
They were raised, and then answered by the authors. The authors were communicating back then. They revised the paper. I do not know why they stopped communicating later on.
Probably because in the net one is exposed to so many Trolls ....... you can answer Saint Mary of the Unbelievers a hundred times but she from her Holy Grace will keep bashing you so you can repent from your heresy and return to the Church of True Science.

ele
Member

381
Aug 16th 2017

#428

Quote from Alan Fletcher
Also, see Bog Higgins’ schematic
Bob Higgins schematic is quite old and also the photo of Mats Lewan is extremely old !
The photo refers to one early test in Bologna, we can’t know if and how the reactor was changed after,
Note that that test that has given positive results was done using a heat exchanger so to avoid all problems with steam.

Online
Alan Fletcher
Member

718
Aug 16th 2017

#429
This is my main document :
http://lenr.qumbu.com/rossi_ecat_proof_frames_v430.php

Search for “Oct (Self-sustaining) with MAIN unit” and go down to “SPH” (Specific Heat).

The entire cavity would have to be filled with LEAD to prove it Fake. Iron is marginal.

Online
Alan Fletcher
Member

718
Aug 16th 2017

#430

Quote from ele
Bob Higgins schematic is quite old and also the photo of Mats Lewan is extremely old !
OK ... I shall reject all of Einstein’s and Newton’s work because they are “quite old” and “extremely old”.

However, this was the experiment MY was referring to.

Online
Alan Fletcher
Member

718
Aug 16th 2017

#431

Quote from ele
Note that that test that has given positive results was done using a heat exchanger so to avoid all problems with steam.
This is the test that I (and others) disqualified because of the thermocouple placement.

Zeus46
Member

1,271
Aug 16th 2017

#432

Quote from maryyugo
BTW, isobaric volumetric specific heat of aluminum is about half that of water

Meanwhile, on planet earth, it’s only 21% that of water.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 17th 2017

#433

Quote from Alan Fletcher
OK ... I shall reject all of Einstein’s and Newton’s work because they are “quite old” and “extremely old”.
Well, if either of them were to start openly publishing again, I would be extremely wary.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 17th 2017

#434

Quote from interested observer
Ok guys. Apparently your purpose in life is to muster up outrage and vitriol against people who don’t share your viewpoint.
Typical of a skeptopath, you got that wrong as well.

What the hell, there is plenty of that going around these days anyway. Since my interest in this whole business is primarily on the human behavior side, it suits me as well as anything.
Then perhaps you can explain your own behavior on this thread.
kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 17th 2017

#434

I will try to be stunned by how you really “got me.”
Did we REALLY “get you”? Be careful now because I’m going to phrase this the same way you do: I don’t know.

I hope hurling insults and arrogant belittling is pleasurable for you.
Typical of a skeptopath, you consider correcting your logical fallacies to be “hurling insults” and “arrogant belittling”.

Otherwise, it is sure a waste of whatever talents you may have. Meanwhile, I will continue to “pontificate” when I feel like it.
So you learned nothing.

Feel free to ignore me or continue to lecture me on how I am not qualified to say anything. TTFN
Thanks. We probably would have done that even without your permission, but every little bit helps. Now maybe you can run along, now, and try to learn some scientific principles.
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Ascoli65
Member

444
Aug 17th 2017

#435
@ Alan Fletcher,

Quote from Alan Fletcher
The entire cavity would have to be filled with LEAD to prove it Fake. Iron is marginal.
Nearly 40 kg of iron (about 5 dm3, less than the volume of the inner box) added to the mass of container and fins, are sufficient to store all the heat necessary to explain the actual behavior of the Ecat test held on October 6, 2011.

See: https://www.lenr-forum.com/for…t/?postID=22374#post22374

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 17th 2017

#436

Quote from JedRothwell
Second, you cannot say “they could well be some sort of artifact.” That isn’t science.
Maybe you found MaryYugo’s invisible pink flying unicorn, it is hiding behind “some sort of artifact”. Doh! We shoulda known all along.

THHuxleynew
Verified User

4,707
Aug 17th 2017

#438
“I can’t form a conclusion” would automatically nullify whatever he next says.
As I said, that would be like the politician’s get-of-jail-card: “I am not a scientist, but . . .” Hey Senator, if you are not a scientist then please shut up. Also, we see you are not a scientist. No one would mistake you for a scientist.
Interested Observer is saying all kinds of things here which anyone can see are conclusions about LENR, such as:
“The quality papers that Jed recommends look to me like very small effects that could well be some sort of artifact.”
Then, as soon as he says this, he says oh but I am not reaching a conclusion, so ha, ha, you can’t hold me to it! You can’t make me provide evidence for what I just said, because it is not a conclusion.
Those are conclusions! “Small” and “some sort of artifact” are conclusions. What else would they be? Both are wrong, but they are conclusions.

Human language does not well indicate the subtleties of probabilities of probabilities.

We can agree, I hope, that conclusions can be varied. For example, one might conclude that the evidence was too uncertain to conclude anything. Do you call that a conclusion, or not? It is semantics and not worth arguing about.

Such a skeptic position may be right or wrong, and I agree it could be a cop-out, as all sitting on the fence could be a cop-out. In this case the evidence is so difficult to accumulate - with nothing except a whole collection of anomalies and arguments about whether they could or could not have mundane causes - that sitting on the fence seems to me something many rational people would want to do.

Such a person could reasonably listen to arguments from people who had reached definite conclusions, think them not logically compelling, and say why.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 17th 2017

#439

Quote from THHuxleynew
Human language does not well indicate the subtleties of probabilities of probabilities.
We can agree, I hope, that conclusions can be varied. For example, one might conclude that the evidence was too uncertain to conclude anything. Do you call that a conclusion, or not?
You’re just trying to cling to your skepticism in the face of the evidence that the top 100 electrochemists of their day replicated this LENR thing in >150 peer reviewed papers.

It is semantics and not worth arguing about.
Then why are you arguing about it?

Such a skeptic position may be right or wrong, and I agree it could be a cop-out, as all sitting on the fence could be a cop-out.
Yes.

In this case the evidence is so difficult to accumulate - with nothing except a whole collection of anomalies and arguments about whether they could or could not have mundane causes -
Characterizing the top hundred electrochemists of the day replicating a finding as a “whole collection of anomalies” is just throwing around words trying to cling to your skeptical point of view rather than being rational about it. They looked at this issue and found that it could not have mundane causes, unless you consider superchemical events to be mundane. And Jed pointed out upthread that basically NO ONE has generated a paper that disproves these experiments. The rational thing to do is to accept that this is a replicated phenomenon.

that sitting on the fence seems to me something many rational people would want to do.
No it is not the rational thing to want to do. What has happened is that many skeptics have wrapped their identity around being skeptical and when confronted with rational evidence from the top hundred electrochemists of their day with > 150 replications, there is this desperate need to cling to your former ego’s position because it does not want to admit that it was rationally incorrect.

Such a person could reasonably listen to arguments from people who had reached definite conclusions, think them not logically compelling, and say whY
YOu can say why all day and night, but you have stepped off the rational path. The simple scientific finding is that it is a replicated event, and the arguments against that rational position are falling apart. You like to think of yourself as coming up with logically compelling argumentation but it falls flat in the face of experts who have investigated this phenomena and subjected their experiments to peer review. How rational is it to suppose that the top hundred electrochemists of the day have all committed a huge brain fart? If that is the rational position to hold then it is up to the skeptics to prove the brain fart.
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Edited once, last by kevmolenr@gmail.com: improving grammar (Aug 17th 2017).
1

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 17th 2017

#440

Quote from Alan Fletcher
OK ... I shall reject all of Einstein’s and Newton’s work because they are “quite old” and “extremely old”.
I’ll see you and raise you by 100 skeptical units. I reject Newton’s work because he believed in alchemy.

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 17th 2017

#441

Quote from THHuxleynew
We can agree, I hope, that conclusions can be varied. For example, one might conclude that the evidence was too uncertain to conclude anything. Do you call that a conclusion, or not? It is semantics and not worth arguing about.
Of course that is a conclusion! What else would it be? It is not “semantics” at all.

A person who thinks that the evidence is too uncertain to reach a technical judgement has reached a definite conclusion. That conclusion being: Not enough information. We cannot judge yet. That is as definite as “surely yes” or “definitely no.”

“Not enough information” is a clear-cut conclusion. It must be supported by evidence just as much as any other conclusion, or it should be ignored. If there is, in fact, enough information, then this conclusion is wrong.

Indeed, it is flat-out wrong. Asserting that we cannot tell whether cold fusion is real or not is like saying no one knew for sure whether nuclear fission was real in 1942, because it was mighty difficult to make sub 1-watt reactor, there was only one reactor in the world, and there were no practical applications such as bombs.

interested observer
Member

2,435
Aug 17th 2017

#442
“If you are not with us, you’re against us!”

“There is only one way to look at this: our way.”

Pretty much the M.O. of every lunatic fringe on the planet. If the shoe fits...

Adrian Ashfield

† Deceased Member

473
Aug 17th 2017

#443

Quote from interested observer
“There is only one way to look at this: our way.”

That does seem to be your position.

I was interested in your position on LENR & Rossi because I hope the matter will be clarified later this year I wanted a handy quote to compare with the facts as they emerged.
My position, as I’ve stated several times. is wait and see. LENR is proven, Rossi’s E-Cats not yet.
From your comments it would seem Rossi was right - it will take commercial operation for you to believe.

Ascoli65
Member

444
Aug 17th 2017

#444
@ maryyugo,

Quote from maryyugo
And to create all new issues with carefully and purposefully misplaced thermocouples. Or one could speculate that it was designed by a moron. I guess you get your choice.
No need to speculate. Announcing the imminent October 6, 2011 test, a privileged source revealed who, since February, thought about the setting, and who subsequently validated it:

Quote
From: http://22passi.blogspot.it/201…l-brian-josephson-il.html

Mi sembra giusto sottolineare che trattasi esattamente del setting sperimentale che Giuseppe Levi, già a febbraio, mi spiegò di avere pensato per i test ufficiali sull’E-Cat programmati all’UniBO, setting in seguito convalidato assieme ai professori dell’Università di Uppsala.

Google translation:
It seems to me right to point out that this is exactly the experimental setting that Giuseppe Levi, already in February, explained to me that he had thought about official E-Cat testings programmed at Unibo, subsequently validated with the professors at Uppsala University.
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So, the intricate setting of this test is the answer of the academicians to all the critics and suggestions arisen after the first Ecat tests. Guess why.

Now, let’s give a “Look at the BIG PICTURE …”:
- Before the test, the academic boost: Levi > Josephson > CMNS > 22passi > blogosphere;
- After the test, opinion makers at work: “… and you will see this is irrefutable proof” (1).

(1) http://www.mail-archive.com/vo…@eskimo.com/msg52546.html

Wyttenbach
Verified User

3,887
Aug 17th 2017

#445

Quote from Eric Walker
I’m saying I reserve judgment. To my own mind, fusion of deuterium has not been given more than a circumstantial basis, and one that remains open to questions@

Eric Walker : Sono fusion of Deuterium (D2O) produces tons of 4He... Totally verified - still supported by DOD...

interested observer
Member

2,435
Aug 17th 2017

#446

Quote from Adrian Ashfield
I wanted a handy quote to compare with the facts as they emerged

Well, if LENR is “clarified” later this year, you can certainly look at my quote about being undecided and say.... um, what?

But I will try to remember your quote about later this year. I’ve been hearing that sort of thing from believers on an ongoing basis for 6 years. “We’ll have the answer in June... in January... next fall.... real soon.... etc.”

If you want to quote me about anything, it is that I can assure you that next year, Rossi believers (albeit somewhat fewer of them, I suspect) will still be defending his nonsense despite nothing tangible in sight and LENR will be in the same state it has been for decades.

As an aside, I’d like to understand how your “LENR is proven” equates to “Wait and see” while my “I don’t know” equates to “I think it doesn’t exist”. You seem to have a unique understanding of the English language.
Eric Walker
Verified User

3,426
Aug 17th 2017

#449

Quote from Wyttenbach
Eric Walker: Sono fusion of Deuterium (D2O) produces tons of 4He... Totally verified - still supported by DOD...

Sonofusion is not necessarily the same as, and is indeed thought to be quite different from, what is happening in the Pons and Fleischmann experiment. So a conclusion drawn about sonofusion cannot be applied to PdD electrolytic cells without a case being made that they are the same.

2
Ascoli65
Member

444
Aug 17th 2017

#451
@ maryyugo,

Quote from maryyugo
I think I followed Rossi and Levi pretty closely in 2011 and 2012 and I have no idea what that post means. Not even what the topic is. HELP!
The topic is in the comment of yours, that I quoted before. You were speculating on who could have designed the October 6, 2011, test. I gave you the answer in accordance to a post published by a Levi’s friend on the blog “22passi”: “… this is exactly the experimental setting that Giuseppe Levi, already in February, explained to me that he had thought about official E-Cat testings programmed at Unibo …” (Google translation).

Quote
I don’t want to “guess why” — EXPLAIN PLEASE.
As you know, since the first demo in January 2011, many people on internet suggested the testers (I mean the academicians who did the measurements and reported the results) how to setting up a much more significant test. The main suggestion was to regulate the coolant flow rate, in such a way to maximize the delta T, but avoiding any phase change. The above excerpt from “22passi” shows that the testers did never had any intention to follow this simple suggestion. I think there is only one reason for this behavior.

Quote
What does this MEAN please? I don’t know— does being extrasupercryptic somehow help?
I don’t find it so cryptic. Did you read the linked email? Did you see its title?

It’s just an example of what I already told you in another thread (1-2). But you keep on saying: “Misplacement of thermocouples seems to be a trademark Rossi move and is probably how he originally fooled Focardi and Levi with the first ecats.”

Hard to say who fooled who. The trademark of the Ecat affair, as well as of other CF/LENR initiatives, is the combination of academic (or equivalent) authoritative declarations, followed by opinion campaigns carried on especially in the blogosphere. Rossi by his own couldn’t fool anyone. He was not credible since the beginning.

(1) Is there evidence for LENR power generation of 100W for days without input power?
(2) Is there evidence for LENR power generation of 100W for days without input power?

Ascoli65
Member

444
Aug 17th 2017

#451
@ maryyugo,

Quote
What does this MEAN please? I don’t know— does being extrasupercryptic somehow help?
I don’t find it so cryptic. Did you read the linked email? Did you see its title?

(1) Is there evidence for LENR power generation of 100W for days without input power?
(2) Is there evidence for LENR power generation of 100W for days without input power?

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 17th 2017

#452

Quote from interested observer
Well, if LENR is “clarified” later this year, you can certainly look at my quote about being undecided and say.... um, what?

I see where you went off into the weeds. You’re following Rossi, not LENR. All those 153 peer reviewed replications by the top hundred electrochemists of the day were done long before Rossi came onto the scene. So that makes you particularly ignorant of the facts on the ground. And when it comes to a unique understanding of the English language, you look more like Humpty Dumpty with each passing post. Keep posting those logical fallacies, they make you a real good pasquinade.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 17th 2017

#453

Quote from interested observer
“If you are not with us, you’re against us!”
“There is only one way to look at this: our way.”
Pretty much the M.O. of every lunatic fringe on the planet. If the shoe fits...
Notice that you put everything in quotes, as if you’re quoting someone. That basically makes you a liar. If the shoe fits...

interested observer
Member

2,435
Aug 17th 2017

#454
Were you mistreated as a child, Kev? It seems like you have lots of anger issues to work out. But keep at it. I’m sure I will be devastated by your comments real soon.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 18th 2017

#455

Quote from interested observer
Were you mistreated as a child, Kev? It seems like you have lots of anger issues to work out. But keep at it. I’m sure I will be devastated by your comments real soon.
Perhaps we will all be devastated by your comments when you dispense with using logical fallacies, actually read the papers you are so skeptical of, and learn a scientific principle or 2. Those top hundred electrochemists of their day had PhD’s in electrochemistry and related fields, they replicated the anomalous heat event more than 150 times in peer reviewed studies, and moved science forward. You’re just moving science backward with your Humpty Dumpty approach.

interested observer
Member

2,435
Aug 18th 2017

#456
I can assure you that my comments on this forum are not moving science in any direction, nor are they intended to, nor could they. As for your comments, they are the usual bizzaro world stuff I have seen for 6 years from people who are so obsessed with LENR that they consider anyone who doesn’t share their beliefs to be bad people. It is no wonder that LENR fandom is often described as a religion and a fanatical one at that. Talk about pathological behavior! I do wonder whether outside the LENR temple folks who act the way you do are normal people. I suppose I will never know.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 18th 2017

#457

Quote from interested observer
I can assure you that my comments on this forum are not moving science in any direction, nor are they intended to, nor could they.
Well, that’s obvious.

As for your comments, they are the usual bizzaro world stuff I have seen for 6 years from people who are so obsessed with LENR that they consider anyone who doesn’t share their beliefs to be bad people.
Fascinating. If your own comments were a mirror pointing back to yourself, they would be a perfect reflection.

It is no wonder that LENR fandom is often described as a religion and a fanatical one at that.
And it is no wonder that skeptopaths such as yourself, people who acknowledge that they bring no value whatsoever to science, are commonly called trolls.

Talk about pathological behavior! I do wonder whether outside the LENR temple folks who act the way you do are normal people. I suppose I will never know.
What makes sense to do is to print out our exchange and hand it to someone you know and trust to give you honest feedback. I have actually done this on another exchange and yes, my friend said I was pretty harsh but that the person I was exchanging with obviously was not going to be persuaded and that, looking at it from the perspective of someone trying to learn the subject matter and take a rational approach, he acknowledged that everything I said was rational. I know your friend won’t tell you that your position was rational, so I suppose condolensces will be in order for you.
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can
Verified User

2,282
Aug 18th 2017

#458
maryyugo
If I’ve understood correctly so far, Ascoli65’s thesis is that Rossi and a small group of people at least initially mostly located around Bologna have been working since 2009, possibly earlier, under the direction of people higher up in various U.S. (and other nations’) governmental departments to promote and disseminate propaganda - ‘fake news’ as it is called nowadays - about cold fusion/LENR (which never existed in the first place), and that other propagandists known in the field took advantage of this propaganda (presumably knowing that it was) to promote and disseminate their own until it served their purposes.

Ascoli65 never seems to write this directly in a single coherent post, though.

THHuxleynew
Verified User

4,707
Aug 18th 2017

#459

Quote from can
maryyugo
If I’ve understood correctly so far, Ascoli65’s thesis is that Rossi and a small group of people at least initially mostly located around Bologna have been working since 2009, possibly earlier, under the direction of people higher up in various U.S. (and other nations’) governmental departments to promote and disseminate propaganda - ‘fake news’ as it is called nowadays - about cold fusion/LENR (which never existed in the first place), and that other propagandists known in the field took advantage of this propaganda (presumably knowing that it was) to promote and disseminate their own until it served their purposes.

Ascoli65 never seems to write this directly in a single coherent post, though.

Yes, something like. I have this problem too. ascoli’s thesis is (1) the early academic helpers of Rossi (specifically Levi) were deliberately making the tests look good and (2) something more complex.

I leave (2) alone, since it is beyond me, and I’m not interested. As for (1) Ascoli brings forward definite evidence of extremely poor experimental practice from Levi and whoever else was endorsing this stuff. Personally I’m unwilling to substitute deliberate malfeasance for incompetence when we are at such a distance, since incompetence is a powerful thing when combined with a charismatic figure leading one in the wrong direction. But it remains possible. those who know Levi seem to think not, but that again I cannot vouch for, and appearances can be deceptive.

interested observer
Member

2,435
Aug 18th 2017

#460

Quote from Kev
What makes sense to do is to print out our exchange and hand it to someone you know and trust to give you honest feedback.

Actually, I have shown such exchanges to friends, particularly scientists. Their universal response is “why do you waste your time talking to these nutcases?”

10,094
Aug 18th 2017

#461

Quote from interested observer
I can assure you that my comments on this forum are not moving science in any direction, nor are they intended to, nor could they.
Then why do you make these comments? What is the point? This is a science-oriented forum. If you comments contribute nothing to science, and if — as you say — you have not read the papers and you know nothing about the subject, why do you muddy the waters with ignorant, baseless assertions?

Suppose you were to visit a forum devoted to Italian Opera. Imagine you express strong opinions about a performance of La Traviata. Following that, you say: “By the way, I have never seen this performance. Actually, I have never seen any Italian opera; I don’t speak a word of Italian; and I have no interest in music.” That would be inappropriate, wouldn’t it? It would be idiotic. The people at the forum would say: “Then what are you doing here?!? Why do you have an opinion about something you know nothing about?”

Why do you think it is okay to do that there?

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 18th 2017

#462

Quote from THHuxleynew
Personally I’m unwilling to substitute deliberate malfeasance for incompetence when we are at such a distance,
It is often difficult to tell them apart. Sometimes both contribute to a fiasco. Or what starts off as incompetence devolves into a cover-up and malfeasance. This happens in science, and in other disasters such as failed business ventures, programming fiascoes such at the introduction of Obamacare, and military tragedies such as the Battle of the Somme.

interested observer
Member

2,435
Aug 18th 2017

#463

Quote from Jed Rothweil
This is a science-oriented forum.

How’s the air up on that high horse? Would you care to estimate what percentage of the comments on this site are about science and what percentage (including your own comments) are personal attacks, speculations about conspiracies, musings about legal trials, personal assessments of various individuals, challenges to members being here at all, complaints about moderators, pissing and moaning about the mistreatment of LENR researchers, attacks on plasma physicists, pointless repetition of publication and replication statistics and so on? If 10% of this site is actually about science, I would be surprised. If even 50% of your posts are about science as opposed to dissing and dismissing anyone who crossed you, I would be amazed. Like many of your fellow acolytes here, you approve of anything as long as it is on “your side” and are offended and dismissive of everything else. So why do you think it is okay to do that here?

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 18th 2017

#464

Quote from interested observer
How’s the air up on that high horse?
I suggest you address the issue. Why are you expressing strong opinions about a technical subject you know nothing about? You agree that you know nothing, and you are contributing nothing. You just said that!

What are you trying to accomplish? Are you hoping to impress people?

You mention “personal attacks, speculations about conspiracies, musings about legal trials” and so on. These subjects do come up here. They are not technical. You can comment on them with as much authority as anyone else. You may know more about legal trials than I do, because I know practically nothing. So, as long as the discussion is about one these other things, you should feel free to contribute.

But, when the discussion turns to a technical issue in a specific experiment described in a particular paper, such as the role of the resistance heater in McKubre’s calorimeter, if you have not read that paper, and you have no idea what that that resistance heater is for, then you should not express an opinion. You should certainly not make bold, general assertions about the entire field. Anyone who has read the literature can see you have no idea what you are talking about. For example, this statement of yours is completely off the wall:

“I think the existence of LENR - to extent that there is even a well-formed definition of the phenomenon - is still an open question.”

As I said, I could give a 20-minute lecture off the top of my head describing the well-formed definition of cold fusion. Anyone who has read the literature can do this. This is not an open question at all. Granted, the experts do not all agree on every aspect of their well-formed definitions, but there is a lot of common ground.

If you were to say: “I do not agree with the well-formed definition” then we would ask: “Why not? What aspects of it do you disagree with? What experimental evidence do you point to?” You are saying there isn’t any definition. That’s chaotic nonsense. Mind-boggling nonsense. It is like saying there is no theory of special relativity, so Einstein was wrong.

Quote from interested observer
If even 50% of your posts are about science as opposed to dissing and dismissing anyone who crossed you, I would be amazed.
Your recent comments dissed & dismissed yourself more effectively than I can. You yourself boldly told us that you know nothing and you contribute nothing. You said that your comments, “are not moving science in any direction, nor are they intended to, nor could they.” Yes! Right. We agree. So, naturally, you should shut up. Right?

Why do you continue to comment about technical issues? Why on earth do you say things about the “well-formed definition of cold fusion” when you have no clue what that definition is, and no interest in learning about it?

JedRothwell
Verified User

10,094
Aug 18th 2017

#465

Quote from kevmolenr@gmail.com
Jed says that the Penon report is what turned his perspective. I keep hoping that he’ll publish his own thread with a paragraph by paragraph dismantling of the report. It would appear he has better things to do.
Murray and Smith did this. They did a far better job than I could. So I suggest you read what they wrote.

Penon, Murray and Smith are here:

http://coldfusioncommunity.net…/01/0197.03_Exhibit_3.pdf

http://coldfusioncommunity.net…01/0207.65_Exhibit_65.pdf

http://coldfusioncommunity.net…/01/0235.01_Exhibit_1.pdf

interested observer
Member

2,435
Aug 18th 2017

#466
I hardly know where to begin dissecting the off-the-rails rant from you, Jed. I used to think you were a reasonable individual, but obviously that was a smoke-screen.

First, I never stated or implied that I know nothing and contribute nothing. I did say that my comments on this forum are not moving science in any direction because that is clearly not my intent, nor is it the intent of the overwhelming majority of all posts here. Other than responding to direct questions from other posters, I mostly comment on the human elements of the topics here and, in that regard, mostly about Rossi-related matters. I don’t consider anything related to Rossi to be about science at all, apart from futile attempts by anyone who knows any science to convince Rossi believers that his stuff makes no sense. But do you believe that repeatedly telling us how many replications by the top-100 electrochemist there are is moving science in some direction? Is that adding some new content to the world? I never said I know nothing. I admit that I have not read dozens or hundreds of cold fusion papers, but I have certainly read some over the years. I am no expert by any stretch of the imagination, but that is not the equivalent of knowing nothing. But all of that is beside the point.

The whole reason you are ranting at me incessantly is that I stated that I am undecided about LENR. You equate that to expressing strong opinions on a technical subject that you say I know nothing about. What the hell option do I have then? If saying that I don’t have an opinion is itself is a strong opinion, that what else can I do? Apparently your stance is either you accept the gospel of LENR or you must cease to exist. Don’t fire back a smarmy retort about wanting me to not come here any more. This isn’t your exclusive playpen and you don’t get to decide who visits. My only reason for expressing my position about LENR at all is that I was explicitly asked by AA and others. I don’t have any interest in debating LENR here or anywhere else. I don’t have a side to take and I don’t have an agenda. I said that I think the existence of LENR is still an open question, which other than for you and a small group of zealots is a perfectly reasonable position to hold.

But if you genuinely want to discuss science rather than the other crap you seemed obsessed with, let’s go back to your 20-minute lecture on the well-formed definition of cold fusion. How about cutting those 20 minutes down to a single paragraph of whatever length required. I can’t think of a physical phenomenon that can’t be defined in some reasonable way in one paragraph (defined phenomenologically, not theoretically explained.) In the hope of making me less the ignoramus you claim I am, I would love to hear a description of exactly what phenomenon those 153 peer-reviewed replications are replicating. I suppose you will just blow me off with some bullshit about spoon feeding or whatever, but I thought I would give you the chance to say something meaningful other than pointless insults.

Ascoli65
Member

444
Aug 18th 2017

#467
@ THHuxley,

Quote from THHuxleynew
Personally I’m unwilling to substitute deliberate malfeasance for incompetence when we are at such a distance, since incompetence is a powerful thing when combined with a charismatic figure leading one in the wrong direction. But it remains possible. those who know Levi seem to think not, but that again I cannot vouch for, and appearances can be deceptive.
That’s a laudable scruple. I’d like to see it applied also when every possible responsibility in the Ecat affair are imputed to only one and the same charismatic figure.

However, we are now talking about public personae that, under the name of their scientific prestigious institutions, announced to the world that they did measure many kW of excess heat. In doing this, they did put themselves in the position to be scrutinized about their reliability by the same people that have been solicited to believe their claims. The estimation of the possible intentionality of their misrepresentations is preparatory for establishing how much credit should be given to any other thing they wrote or said. Doing some mistakes is human and acceptable even for the greatest scientists, but the scientific ethic requires to recognize them and to correct the wrong conclusions as soon as possible.

Now, let’s first solve your doubt about Levi: deliberate malfeasance or incompetence? Let’s consider the most easily recognizable incongruence in his reported data: the claimed flow rate during the January 2011 demo (17.6 L/h) vs. the capacity of the yellow pump (max. output 12 L/h, but at 60% speed: no more than 7.2 L/h). Can you, please, explain me how this incongruence could depend upon incompetence?

can
Verified User

2,282
Aug 18th 2017

#470
maryyugo
According to other posts he’s made (also elsewhere) the point of this would ultimately be making people believe there is a cheap, limitless, safe and pollution-free energy solution ready to come, distracting them off from the imminent global collapse that will be caused by rising CO2 levels, resource depletion and lack of any real alternative to fossil fuels.

He might have not used these exact words, but I think that’s more or less what he’s often suggested. Did I get it right Ascoli65?

interested observer
Member

2,435
Aug 18th 2017

#471
can: that is certainly one way to make sense of Ascoli65’s long-standing and very insistent postings on multiple websites. If it isn’t exactly right, it is close. He sees Rossi as an (paid?) actor in a broader-based charade designed to fool or distract the public. I am not sure if it is for the exact reason you cite, but it may well be. Ascoli65 is fond of being as oblique as possible, so he may not deny or confirm this interpretation of his theory.

However, if this is truly what he is saying, one would have to say that as a way to distract the world from impending disaster, or from anything for that matter, it has been a colossal failure. There are perhaps a few thousand people globally who have paid any attention at all to the Rossi circus, and those numbers continue to dwindle. Whether the 7+ billion other people on the planet are paying attention to what they should is an entirely different question, but if they are distracted, it ain’t by Rossi.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 18th 2017

#472

Quote from maryyugo
In our latest exchange, as always, I tried to remind Jed that to deserve respect, LENR proponents have to show a number of important factors and meet important criteria IN THE SAME STUDY OR TEST. .... Jed accuses me of shifting the goals when what I am really doing is responding the best I can to the attempted snowjobs by adjusting and clarifying the goals.
Jed is right, you just keep moving the goal posts. The goal posts were set and met more than 20 years ago when the top hundred or so electrochemists of the day replicated the Pons-Fleischmann Anomalous Heat Effect and submitted their findings to >150 peer reviewed reports. No matter what rhetorical tricks you play, it still amounts to moving the goal posts and trying to apply your own Humpty Dumpty ex post facto to the process. Rational people will see this for what it is and acknowledge that this anomalous effect has been replicated.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 18th 2017

#473

Quote from interested observer
First, I never stated or implied that I know nothing and contribute nothing. I did say that my comments on this forum are not moving science in any direction because that is clearly not my intent, nor is it the intent of the overwhelming majority of all posts here.
That’s one of those ridiculous statements that should just sit there for a while and generate its own gravitational field of ... stupidity.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 18th 2017

#474

Quote from interested observer
The whole reason you are ranting at me incessantly is that I stated that I am undecided about LENR. You equate that to expressing strong opinions on a technical subject that you say I know nothing about.
Basically what you’re doing now is some wordy, roundabout bullshit trying to reinforce your thoroughly discredited position.

What the hell option do I have then?
Plenty. Read the pertinent literature. Come up to speed on sound reasoning and avoiding classic logical fallacies. Stop parading your ignorance around as if it were some kind of virtue. Figure out what a replication is and why someone with your extremely limited, ignorant and arrogant perspective needs to come up to speed in order to bring anything to the table.

If saying that I don’t have an opinion is itself is a strong opinion, that what else can I do?
That’s just it. You’re not saying you don’t have an opinion. You’re saying that your opinion is the evidence isn’t scientifically strong. And when we drill down on that opinion, there’s nothing but pure bullshit there.

Apparently your stance is either you accept the gospel of LENR or you must cease to exist.
Yet another logical fallacy generated by you: false dilemma. Geez, take a critical thinking class.

Don’t fire back a smarmy retort about wanting me to not come here any more. This isn’t your exclusive playpen and you don’t get to decide who visits.
...useless irrelevant emotionalisms...

My only reason for expressing my position about LENR at all is that I was explicitly asked by AA and others. I don’t have any interest in debating LENR here or anywhere else.
Then don’t.

I don’t have a side to take and I don’t have an agenda.
You’re HILARIOUS! Because right in the very next sentence you say...

I said that I think the existence of LENR is still an open question,
What a big, giant, steaming pile of bovine excrement. The fascinating thing is, you can’t even see how ridiculous your own position is.

which other than for you and a small group of zealots is a perfectly reasonable position to hold.
No it is not a perfectly reasonable position to hold. The top hundred electrochemists of their day went out of their way to replicate this anomalous event and submitted their experiments to peer review, generating >150 peer reviewed reports. But someone as ignorant as you thinks this is still an open question and when Jed drills down on why, all we get is a bunch of steaming-pile rhetoric. I, for one, consider your responses to be representative of what we’ve been running into with the skeptopath crowd. You’re skeptical but you don’t know why, you can’t elaborate on it, you have no training, you simply want to hold onto your skeptical view until some guy comes out with his LENR box similar to what the Wright brothers had to put up with when they were trying to forward the development of their airplanes — such skeptocism is a tax on science and a waste of time.

How about cutting those 20 minutes down to a single paragraph
standard spoonfeeding request from people who don’t understand science and when they’re presented with overwhelming replicated evidence of their folly, still want to act as if they are being rational players.

of whatever length required. I can’t think of a physical phenomenon that can’t be defined in some reasonable way in one paragraph (defined phenomenologically, not theoretically explained.) In the hope of making me less the ignoramus you claim I am, I would love to hear a description of exactly what phenomenon those 153 peer-reviewed replications are replicating.
Shameless spoonfeeding request.

I suppose you will just blow me off with some bullshit about spoon feeding or whatever,
Oh my goodness! At least you got that right. Keep bringing your representative bullshit around because it serves as a good pasquinade.

but I thought I would give you the chance to say something meaningful other than pointless insults.
At some point, the insults just write themselves, like with you saying about your own position that it’s a bullshit spoonfeeding request.
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interested observer
Member

2,435
Aug 19th 2017

#475
Of course I wasn’t talking about your posts, Kev. Clearly you are always moving science with them, or at least you are moving something.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 19th 2017

#476

Quote from JedRothwell
Murray and Smith did this. They did a far better job than I could. So I suggest you read what they wrote.

Penon, Murray and Smith are here:

http://coldfusioncommunity.net…/01/0197.03_Exhibit_3.pdf

http://coldfusioncommunity.net…01/0207.65_Exhibit_65.pdf

http://coldfusioncommunity.net…/01/0235.01_Exhibit_1.pdf
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Where can I find the back & forth discussion on those documents? For instance, Rossi pointed out that there was a lot of back & forth on flow rate and that it was a minimum at a certain pressure, but that at lower pressures that he was using the flow rate fit the facts.

Ascoli65
Member

444
Aug 19th 2017

#477
@ maryyugo,

Quote from maryyugo
Ok... thanks to explanation by others I sort of understand Aescoli’s theme a bit better. This is all a conspiracy. To do what, exactly, I don’t get. Discredit cold fusion? Promote hot fusion? What?
Please, let’s leave apart this kind of speculation. I’m talking about facts only, experimental and mediatic facts.

Quote
Anyway, I do think Levi could be so incompetent as to claim a flow rate beyond a pump’s capability.
Come on, you are talking about the Ecat, without knowing the basic facts of the test that triggered all the interest for this incredible story. There is no incompetence that can explain the misrepresentation of the flow rate in the calorimetric report of the January 2011 test. The max output rate is written on the label placed on the front panel of the pump (1), and Levi declared (2) that he, and others (he said “we”), calibrated the pump for 2 weeks before the demo.

Quote
It could have been a typographical error that worked its way into his calculations unnoticed or just plain negligence and incompetence.
Could you explain which type of “typographical error” could have lead to attribute to a dosimetric pump a flow rate much larger than its capacity? Flow calorimetry is indeed very simple: just multiply the flow rate by the specific enthalpy increase. Those experimental data have been revised by many physicist in Italy, and US. Do you really think that none of them did care to verify the soundness of a couple of parameters, on which the astounding announcement of a tabletop device capable of producing 12 kW of excess heat was based?

Quote
But IIRC, Levi’s experiment written up in NY Teknik in early 2011 where he got 135kW …
Please, let’s give the priority to the January 2011 demo. This early test is much better documented that any other Ecat test. Later, if you want, we could reexamine the February 2011 test, which is also very interesting. But it is successive, and in order to understand a test you need first to better figure out the role played by the protagonists in the previous ones.

Quote
I don’t think we’ll ever know unless we get a confession from Rossi or Levi.
For the January 2011 demo, no confession is required. There is a plenty of documentation provided by the testers themselves, and by those who contributed to write and revise the reports. This test can be considered a test on the reliability of the Ecat people, rather than on the performances of the Ecat device.

(1) Prominent Gamma/L 0232 Flow Rate Test (see detail C on the jpegs)
(2) Prominent Gamma/L 0232 Flow Rate Test

Ascoli65
Member

444
Aug 19th 2017

#478
@ can,

Quote from can
He might have not used these exact words, but I think that’s more or less what he’s often suggested. Did I get it right Ascoli65?
Not exactly. That’s only one of the many possible and concurrent explanations, and not directly suggested by me, but insistently attributed to me by some readers on ecatnews.com on the basis of the facts that I put at their attention in order to confute the “Rossi’s scam” theory. Now that blog is no more available on internet, but, for what it’s worth, an echo of that debate is present in some comments (1-3) posted last year on L-F, and which still reflect my position. Nothing to add about. Let’s stick now to the plain facts.

(1) Jed Rothwell on an Unpublished E-Cat Test Report that “Looks Like it Worked”
(2) Jed Rothwell on an Unpublished E-Cat Test Report that “Looks Like it Worked”
(3) Jed Rothwell on an Unpublished E-Cat Test Report that “Looks Like it Worked”

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 19th 2017

#479

Quote from interested observer
Actually, I have shown such exchanges to friends, particularly scientists. Their universal response is “why do you waste your time talking to these nutcases?”

In your desperation to hurl insults my way, perhaps you hadn’t noticed that I am not trying to persuade you of anything. All this whole exchange has been about is your insistence that I am not entitled to be undecided about LENR.
If you think it is rational for a person to rant and rave at someone for being undecided about something when that indecision has absolutely zero effect on them or anyone else for that matter, then you are many tacos short of a combination plate. But you are beyond understanding that, so feel free to respond with another set of bon mots about skeptopaths and the rest of your litany.
It looks like Jed already shredded your position, yet again. You’re obviously the one with a few tacos short of a combination plate here, and it’s kinda scary that scientists would consider the top hundred electrochemists of their day to represent nutcases when their findings have passed peer review >150 times. Something about that suggests that your friends are .... social scientists.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 19th 2017

#480

Quote from interested observer
Of course I wasn’t talking about your posts, Kev. Clearly you are always moving science with them,
And clearly you are not, by your own admission.

or at least you are moving something.
Engaging with you has certainly been moving the bizarrometer.
can
Verified User

2,282
Aug 18th 2017

He might have not used these exact words, but I think that’s more or less what he’s often suggested. Did I get it right Ascoli65?

interested observer
Member

2,435
Aug 18th 2017

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 18th 2017

#472

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 18th 2017

#473

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 18th 2017

#474

Apparently your stance is either you accept the gospel of LENR or you must cease to exist.
Yet another logical fallacy generated by you: false dilemma. Geez, take a critical thinking class.

Don’t fire back a smarmy retort about wanting me to not come here any more. This isn’t your exclusive playpen and you don’t get to decide who visits.
...useless irrelevant emotionalisms...

My only reason for expressing my position about LENR at all is that I was explicitly asked by AA and others. I don’t have any interest in debating LENR here or anywhere else.
Then don’t.

I don’t have a side to take and I don’t have an agenda.
You’re HILARIOUS! Because right in the very next sentence you say...

interested observer
Member

2,435
Aug 19th 2017

#475
Of course I wasn’t talking about your posts, Kev. Clearly you are always moving science with them, or at least you are moving something.

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 19th 2017

#476

Quote from JedRothwell
Murray and Smith did this. They did a far better job than I could. So I suggest you read what they wrote.

Penon, Murray and Smith are here:

http://coldfusioncommunity.net…/01/0197.03_Exhibit_3.pdf

http://coldfusioncommunity.net…01/0207.65_Exhibit_65.pdf

Ascoli65
Member

444
Aug 19th 2017

#477
@ maryyugo,

(1) Prominent Gamma/L 0232 Flow Rate Test (see detail C on the jpegs)
(2) Prominent Gamma/L 0232 Flow Rate Test

Ascoli65
Member

444
Aug 19th 2017

#478
@ can,

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 19th 2017

#479

Quote from interested observer
Actually, I have shown such exchanges to friends, particularly scientists. Their universal response is “why do you waste your time talking to these nutcases?”

kevmolenr@gmail.com

Member

846
Aug 19th 2017

#480

Quote from interested observer
Of course I wasn’t talking about your posts, Kev. Clearly you are always moving science with them,
And clearly you are not, by your own admission.

or at least you are moving something.
Engaging with you has certainly been moving the bizarrometer.

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