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?
1
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
3
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.
1
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.
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.
1
THHuxleynew
Verified User
4,707
Aug 12th 2017
#220
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.
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.
4
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.
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.
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.
1
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.
1
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.
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?
1
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.
1
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.
2
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.
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.
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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.
1
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.
1
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.
1
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.
3
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.
1
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
2
Eric Walker
Verified User
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.
2
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.
1
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.
1
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.
1
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
10,094
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.
1
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.
4
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.
1
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.
1
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.
3
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.
1
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.
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.)
1
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.
1
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”?
1
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.
2
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.
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.
1
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.
1
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.
2
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.
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.
1
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.
1
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.
3
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.
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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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Member
846
Aug 14th 2017
#289
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.
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.
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.
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.)
1
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.
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.)
1
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).