experimental electrochemistry, like other specialties, has practices and techniques that are known mainly to the better students of the art.Thanks. Having working in research in chemistry for nearly 30 years, I always appreciate a nice lecture on the subject. I already have the opinion of my colleague in the lab next door, who's been researching in electrochemistry for maybe 20 years. Now I have the contrary opinion of some guy on the net. Oddly enough, my colleague thinks its a science, not an art, and I see no evidence his work cannot easily be reproduced.
Thomas Claytor, among his other fields of research at Los Alamos, has done a series of CF experiments spanning many years that show very high rates of reproducibility.
These are not electrochemical experiments; he's working with plasmas. If you read Claytor's paper, in fact, he says his experimental results contrast with electrochemical systems, which do not reproducibly generate tritium.
'Art' as I have used it in my string of posts had the meaning as in 'prior art,' mastery, finesse, creativity, etc. It does not have the same exact meaning as science, but lots of other words also do not have the same exact meaning as science, that can be used to accurately describe the subject of electrochemistry. Do those other words therefore indicate that electrochemistry is not a science? Of course not, you argument is absurd. It's purpose has nothing to do with establishing or denying scientific claims.
I have never recommended that anyone take my word for anything in this discussion. Quite the contrary, early on, and repeatedly, I have stated that this is not a forum for deciding on the validity of the claims. I have stated that what is called for is experts honestly debating the validity of the experimental results. Only a fool would believe someone on the web at face value, and I most certainly do not expect, as you insinuate, you to take my words as received wisdom.
What would happen, if the scientific process had not broken down, would be open discussion in major peer viewed journals. What has happened is marginalization of anyone who even shows an interest in the subject, and plenty of fallacious debating tactics in false arguments to attack a proponent for things like his weakness in knowledge concerning unrelated subjects. Where is the open debate on the issues, on the data, on the experiments? Ridicule has taken its place, for the most part. Is that the role you choose?
Perhaps you would like to call it something else, but Thomas Claytor calls his work, which I did initially correctly identify as a glow-discharge, (opposed to electrochemical system) cold fusion. See
http://nde.lanl.gov/staff/claytor/claytor.htm
Claytor's work is remarkable in several respects, but particularly in its high rates of reproducibility, in contrast to most of the early electrolytic cold fusion experiments. Of course, this is a question of what one calls high rates of reproducibility. Storms and Talcott's electrolytic cells were producing tritium quite reliably early on. Your statement is irrelevant to the existence of CF. It only points out, as was pointed out on many occasions by many observers, that the work is not easy.
So, do you find Claytor's results credible? Is it not odd that nuclear fusion is occuring in a low-energy system?
Claytor's work can be seen at:
http://www.nde.lanl.gov/cf/tritweb.htm
Perhaps you could provide a reference to a Claytor paper you reference in which he contrasts his high reproducibility rate with that of electrolytic experiments. My guess is that it is an older paper.
With due respect, it looks to me as though you have a mindset that not only looks the gift horse in the mouth, but then proceeds to try and pull out whatever teeth are there. I am not trying to tell anyone to believe anything, except as they reasonably think they should. I am trying to persuade individuals to examine the evidence and see that there is a very good case for not just further investigation, but much more intensive investigation of CF. And it is up concerned individuals to demand a fair hearing. Government officials, left to their own devices, always choose political expedience.
Write CSPAN and demand that the DoE re-evaluation of CF be taped and aired, please. That does not make you a true believer. That makes you a responsible citizen, concerned that the government do the right thing. Capitalism cannot do its work unless the government allows it.