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Reliable sources?

If we narrow down the complete biography to only the top APS journals, then here is the breakdown:

I believe "res0" indicates neutral results, while "res-" is certainly negative. Some of these are strictly theoretical, but a few are experimental upper bounds contradicting the claims of cold fusion proponents. So how does the article currently cover this distribution of positive versus negative results?

Proponents estimate that 3,000 cold fusion papers have been published, including over 1,000 journal papers and books, where the latter number includes both pro and con articles.

Right, still some way to go before this article is NPOV wrt reliable sources, but at least the lead seems decently accurate now. Good work! Vesal (talk) 13:51, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

I looked for the "res+" article in Phys. Rev. C and I believe it is the one by Southon et al. It is obvious that it should be labeled as a "res0" or "res-" article, which should raise doubts about all of the labels on that page. Olorinish (talk) 14:31, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Why do you assume that Phys. Rev. is the only reliable source of information? What about J. Electroanal. Chem. or Jap. J. Appl. Physics? In the past there have been many scientific controversies in which some journal editors turned out to be wrong, and others right. There is no reason to think that the editors of Phys. Rev. are better able to judge this issue than the editors of these other journals.

In any case, "reliability" is not a function of the publication, but rather the instruments, techniques and signal to noise ratio, and by the number of independent replications. Cold fusion results are highly reliable by these standards. No other standards apply in science. Even if the results were not published at all, they would still be highly reliable.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.65.88.243 (talk • contribs)

As far as WP:RS goes, reliability is a function of the standards of the publication. Hut 8.5 16:22, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

I repeat the question then: Why is Phys. Rev. more reliable than Jap. J. Appl. Physics? The latter is the most prestigious journal in Japan. It is the journal of the Japanese Physical Society, just as Phys. Rev. is the journal of the APS. Is there a suggestion here that Japan is a second-rate nation, and that only American journals and scientific societies are reliable? Or that electrochemistry is not as scientific as physics? Cold fusion results have been published in the leading journals of plasma physics. Are these less reliable than Phys. Rev.?

The APS has a long history of outrageous prejudice against fusion. Schwinger resigned to protest their attitude. Their journal reflects this attitude. They are not a reliable source of information about this topic.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.65.88.243 (talk • contribs)

Nobody here is saying that Phys. Rev. is the only source of reliable information, and you know that. What is important is that the Physical Review journals are the most important mainstream journals for physics results, at least in the US and arguably in the world. Journals like theirs which routinely report on physics topics and are widely read by physicists are definitely more likely to correctly evaluate physics articles. I find it very significant that Mosier-Boss et al. chose to publish four of their articles in Naturwissenschaften, which is essentially a biology journal, rather that in physics journals. That doesn't mean they should be ignored completely, and in fact two are listed in the current version of this article. But it does suggest that the reports were not quite solid enough to pass the review process for Physical Review.

Regarding the Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, my recollection is that none of those articles show any direct nuclear reaction detection data, but I could be wrong.

Regarding the publication of articles in plasma physics journals, what articles are you talking about?

Regarding your statement that "Even if the results were not published at all, they would still be highly reliable," it is important to remember that publication is extremely important to the modern scientific process.

Regarding your claim that Physical Review is "not reliable on this topic," what evidence supports this, beyond the Schwinger episode?

On another topic, I notice that you still haven't listed your choice of the three most persuasive reports of nuclear reactions related to cold fusion, as I requested. Olorinish (talk) 17:03, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Olorinish wrote:

Nobody here is saying that Phys. Rev. is the only source of reliable information, and you know that.

If that is not what they are saying, then why do they list only Phys. Rev. and not the other journals I mentioned? It seems to me that is exactly what they are saying.

Journals like theirs which routinely report on physics topics and are widely read by physicists are definitely more likely to correctly evaluate physics articles.

The editors at Phys. Rev. have told me and many others that they have not read any papers on cold fusion, and they will not read or review any in the future. All papers are returned to the authors unread. So they know nothing about this subject.

I find it very significant that Mosier-Boss et al. chose to publish four of their articles in Naturwissenschaften, which is essentially a biology journal, rather that in physics journals.

This is because Phys. Rev., Nature and some other well-known journals summarily reject all submissions about cold fusion, without review, as I said. They have told Mosier-Boss and many others that is their policy.

Regarding the publication of articles in plasma physics journals, what articles are you talking about?

Fusion Technology, Nucl. Fusion Plasma Phys., J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys., J. Fusion Energy. (this is a kind of a trade magazine of the plasma fusion researchers, published by their lobby organization in Maryland, so perhaps it is not peer-reviewed . . . Not sure.)

Regarding your statement that "Even if the results were not published at all, they would still be highly reliable," it is important to remember that publication is extremely important to the modern scientific process.

I was kidding. Unlike you, I really do believe in the peer-review process and the importance of publications. That is why I am convinced that cold fusion is real: because of all those hundreds of peer-reviewed papers I have read. I believe in peer-review, but the Phys. Rev. editors do not, as I said, since they do send out cold fusion papers for review.

Regarding your claim that Physical Review is "not reliable on this topic," what evidence supports this, beyond the Schwinger episode?

The letters sent by their editors to me and to researchers.

On another topic, I notice that you still haven't listed your choice of the three most persuasive reports of nuclear reactions related to cold fusion, as I requested.

I did respond, but someone deleted my messages. Sorry about that. There is no point to responding again because I will only be censored again. In general let me suggest you start with the review articles by Storms at LENR-CANR.org because they are well organized and conveniently hyperlinked to the papers they refer to. The book by Storms has much more detail, with hundreds of footnotes.

The principal nuclear reaction, obviously, is deuterium to helium plus heat energy in the same ratio as plasma fusion. Why this occurs without neutrons I have no idea, but the fact that it does occur is clearly shown by the instruments, in both real time (on-line mass spec.) and off line mass spectroscopy.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.65.88.243 (talk • contribs)

• interjecting* A hypothesis has recently been published that could explain the lack of neutrons, in Issue 81 (Sept/Oct 2008) of "Infinite Energy". It has been posted at WikiSource ("Cold Fusion Hypothesis") and a .PDF of the "Infinite Energy" article can be accessed through a link at the top of that page (the body of the article at WikiSource is currently being complained about as a "possible copyright violation" --which it isn't! Are detractors trying to suppress it?). A condensed/modified version of the hypothesis was posted as a Comment to a Google Knol on Cold Fusion (Knol written By Jed Rothwell, Pierre Carbonnelle and Edmund Storms); since the hypothesis is condensed there, it might be less onerous to read. Anyway, the point of this post is that most physicists who denounce Cold Fusion do so because they know of no reasonable mechanism that would allow it. The published hypothesis is basically an attempt to describe a reasonable mechanism. Will any detractors read it? Are they so convinced that there can never be a reasonable mechanism, that they automatically assume any proposed mechanism MUST be flawed? But unlike mathematicians who need not examine a proposal for trisecting an angle with compass and straightedge alone, the Cold Fusion detractors do not have a proof that an explanatory mechanism cannot exist. What sensible excuse can they offer, to avoid possibly learning something?

I see a later comment in this page regarding a request for a hypothesis. The author of that post may be forgetting that often enough in Science, the first thing that happens is an unexpected result to an experiment. ALSO, it is often required that other experiments be done to gather more complete information about that result; it is silly to expect a decent hypothesis to be forged from one data point. Why, therefore, should there be any insistence that experiments be stopped, if a hypothesis has not yet been devised? V (talk) 23:58, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Jed, your description of Vesal's comments is deceptive. You misrepresented him by stating that he viewed Physical Review as being the only reliable source on these topics, while he are clearly stating that it is a top source. That is a big difference because your version implies that he is being unreasonable.

Your comment that "Unlike you, I really do believe in the peer-review process and the importance of publications," is also deceptive. I am a strong believer in the peer review process and everything I have posted on[REDACTED] backs that up.

Regarding your comment that Physical Review and other journals refuse to review papers on cold fusion, is there a way I could see documentation of this?

Your response to my request about articles was not deleted. It can be viewed by clicking "show" in the relevant section. So I ask again, please list the three reports (preferably not review articles) that you believe are most persuasive of cold fusion nuclear reactions. I also ask again for persuasive articles from significant fusion journals. Please give the title and authors, since it is not easy to find things at LENR-CANR.org. Olorinish (talk) 18:16, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Olorinish wrote:

Jed, your description of Vesal's comments is deceptive. You misrepresented him by stating that he viewed Physical Review as being the only reliable source on these topics . . .

This list shows only paper from Phys. Rev. Anyone familiar with cold fusion will know that the editors at Phys. Rev. have it in for cold fusion. Listing this journal only, and leaving out the others, is biased. It is preposterous. That's my opinion and I'm sticking with it.

Your comment that "Unlike you, I really do believe in the peer-review process and the importance of publications," is also deceptive.

You and the other so-called skeptics have repeatedly erased peer-reviewed information about cold fusion and substituted your own unfounded opinions. You pay lip service to peer-review, but you have no respect for the system or its results. If you did, you would believe cold fusion is real, because the overwhelming number of actual published scientific results prove that to be the case, and not one credible peer-reviewed paper has ever been published showing an error in a major cold fusion result. The score is roughly 1000 to 0 in favor of cold fusion. Read the skeptical papers at LENR-CANR.org and see for yourself!

I am a strong believer in the peer review process and everything I have posted on[REDACTED] backs that up.

Perhaps you believe this but you do not know yourself. And you certainly do not know the literature on cold fusion!

Regarding your comment that Physical Review and other journals refuse to review papers on cold fusion, is there a way I could see documentation of this?

Sure! Ask the editors or anyone else at the APS. They are not shy about expressing their opinions on this subject. Ask Robert Park, who sets the policy on cold fusion at the APS. Read his columns.

Your response to my request about articles was not deleted. It can be viewed by clicking "show" in the relevant section. So I ask again, please list the three reports (preferably not review articles) . . .

I'll be darned! That works. Click on "show" and look for the author "Gozzi" and you will see what I recommended.

I also ask again for persuasive articles from significant fusion journals. Please give the title and authors, since it is not easy to find things at LENR-CANR.org.

Start with the papers I listed and then do your own homework, please. You may not agree with me about what is "persuasive." For example, I find it very persuasive when a cell with ~20 ml of water and a few grams of palladium produces megajoules of energy with no input power and no chemical changes, and it produces helium. I think that is proof that a nuclear reaction is occurring. However, you may not find that persuasive, so perhaps you should look at some other aspect of cold fusion, such as tritium production or host-metal transmutations.

It is easy to find things at LENR-CANR.org. Use the Google search box on the front page, which limits searches to LENR-CANR.org. Or use our extensive indexing system. Or, if you write a lot of papers about cold fusion, e-mail me and I will send you the EndNote files.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.65.88.243 (talk • contribs)

I wrote: "Use the Google search box on the front page . . ." What I mean is: you stuff the author and keyword text from the "Gozzi" message into the Google search box and presto, the papers pop up.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.65.88.243 (talk • contribs)

All the articles you cite in the table above are from 1989 or 1990. Since then, other papers have been published in reputable sources, or by the 2004 DOE. NPOV requires us to present significant views that have been published in reputable sources. The balance of views should be based on published secondary sources, such as the 2004 DOE or review books published in academic press, not on our original research among a limited set of journals. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:59, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Olorinish asked again for convincing articles about nuclear reactions. I thought I gave him references to such articles on his talk page, but here they are, just to be sure (and I add one from EPJ-AP):

• Iwamura, Yasuhiro; Sakano, Mitsuru; Itoh, Takehiko (2002), "Elemental Analysis of Pd Complexes: Effects of D₂ Gas Permeation", Japanese Journal of Applied Physics '41' (7A): 4642–4650
• ''Mosier-Boss, Pamela A.; Szpak, Stanislaw; Gordon, Frank E.; Forsley, L. P. G. (2008), "Triple tracks in CR-39 as the result of Pd–D Co-deposition: evidence of energetic neutrons", Naturwissenschaften, doi:10.1007/s00114-008-0449-x
• Mosier-Boss, Pamela A.; Szpak, Stanislaw; Gordon, Frank E.; Forsley, L. P. G. (2007), "Use of CR-39 in Pd/D co-deposition experiments", European Physical Journal Applied Physics 40: 293–303, doi:10.1051/epjap:2007152

Pcarbonn (talk) 20:26, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Pcarbonn is correct that he provided me with some links before, visible in the archive of his talk page, and it is useful that he also provided these. I asked Jed Rothwell for his list to see what he thought about the field. Olorinish (talk) 12:38, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Those links did not work, but I found the first article. http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/IwamuraYelementalaa.pdfPaul V. Keller (talk) 21:04, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

I have now fixed the other 2 links. Pcarbonn (talk) 21:15, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, I looked briefly at the paper by Mosier-Boss, but I'm not an expert in this field. I would have to agree that it is "somewhat convincing", although they provide no explanation at all why this all might happen. Theories are under development... Still, I do not mean to say that these papers are insignificant, but when assessing due weight you also have to take into account the fact that the APS journals have only published negative results. That they now dismiss positive experimental results without review is actually sad, but I read somewhere that they are softening their stance... Vesal (talk) 22:02, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

I looked at the paper by Iwamura et al. I found it well written, but it stretches credulity even further than the original cold fusion work. In each case, four seperate deuterium nuclei are brought to combine with single Cs or Sr nuclei. Even without energy barriers that would be a tall order. Nuclei are very small compared to the space around them. There would have to be intermediates. Even molecular reactions with more than two reactants necessarily proceed through intermediates. And the intermediates must be stable enough to survive until the following steps have time to occur. As a follow up, locating the intermediate species would make sense, but there are other things to do as well. Repetition by independent groups. Study of the way conversion rate varies with parameters such as D2 flux. If a new phenomena has been identified, it should be easy to engage in a process of developing a more detailed picture. This paper was published in 2002. What advances has Iwamura's group made in the last seven years?

Iwamura et al. did reference a EINR model that might partially explain his results, but I could not find a report of that mode (that I did not have to pay for). It would be good to know not only what the model is, but what is being done to test it. What I am looking for is a scientific process.Paul V. Keller (talk) 23:11, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

The Mosier-Boss work shows cold fusion research reversing its claim there are no gamma rays. Previous efforts to detect gamma rays failed. One direction taken was to come up with a spectacular theory, the lattice theory, to account for their absence (See 2004 DOE report). Mosier-Boss go in another direction, they get rid of the old detector and start using one operating on a different principle, with a scanty track record for detecting gamma rays and differentiating them from other emissions. The pits Mosier-Boss observed had many causes: the difference with the deuterium-free control was a matter of degree and not kind. If this field were advancing as science, I am sure gamma rays would be demonstrated in more ways than one and that there would be some reconciliation with earlier work failing to show gamma rays. We would be learning more about the types of gamma rays and their density. As it is, going to a new detector when the old one did not show the predicted result is more evidence of pathological science. If we were to amend the article in view of these papers, we could as easily use them to illustrate the pathological science aspect as to show an apparant confirmation of the original theory.Paul V. Keller (talk) 01:32, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Paul V. Keller wrote:

. . . we could as easily use them to illustrate the pathological science aspect as to show an apparant confirmation of the original theory.

Cold fusion is purely experimental. It is not based on theory, or guided by theory, and at present no theory can explain it. The notion that there is an "original theory" to "go back to" is nonsense. Szpak and others are trying to determine the nature of the reaction using different techniques. They are not trying to prove or disprove any particular theory, but rather to find out what nature has to teach us.

Keller is incorrect about gamma rays. They have been detected with other instruments, by Iwamura and others. He wrote: "We would be learning more about the types of gamma rays and their density." We would be indeed, if the field were properly funded. Most cold fusion researchers pay for experiments themselves, and they cannot afford more elaborate or expensive equipment, so they use things like CR39, which is cheap. The field is not funded because there is enormous academic opposition to it, which comes mainly from people like Keller who do not read the literature and thus know nothing about the research, and yet who feel free to fabricate claims about it such as the notion that gamma rays have not been detected by other means! And also to free associate and invent new definitions for "pathological science" such as: "returning to the original theory."

Despite the opposition, a great deal of progress has been made, and the effect is now produced at SRI nearly every time at power levels and input to output ratios 10 to 40 times larger than they were a few years ago. If this field were not "advancing as science" that would not be the case.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.65.88.243 (talk • contribs)

Misplaced Pages's reliability standards require a survey of the peer-reviewed literature, not some subset thereof (e.g. "top APS journals") selected to show a particular result. That the skeptics are reduced to such attempts to cherry pick shows exactly how far the peer-reviewed literature is from the imaginary "mainstream" which only exists as part of the prejudices of people who have invested their emotions in taking the side opposed to the experimental results. A neutral presentation requires summarization in accordance with the totality of peer-reviewed publications on the matter; any attempt to pick a subset which skews the result will be seen as such. I recommend going through the Britz bibliography of peer-reviewed papers and counting only the res+ and res- publications which are not based in theory, but rather in actual empirical experiments. 69.228.231.250 (talk) 10:54, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

It's not the place of Misplaced Pages to do such research. Misplaced Pages doesn't do literature surveys except to establish notability. When providing a position on a field of study, we're limited to summarizing information about the topic from the most reliable second hand sources, such as meta reviews published in leading journals, the positions of authoritative bodies, the results of investigations by reliable NPOV parties, and newspaper articles from good sources. All of these, with no exceptions that I know of, consider cold fusion to be fringe science and largely unworthy of serious investigation or funding. See, for example, the DOE report, this article in the Washington post, which quotes prominent members of the physics community, and so on. See also: Misplaced Pages:Fringe#Notability_versus_acceptance Phil153 (talk) 11:39, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

You say : "All of these, with no exceptions that I know of, consider cold fusion to be fringe science and largely unworthy of serious investigation or funding." You must be mistaken. The 2004 DOE, Hubler 2007, Biberian 2007, Storms 2007, Marwan 2008, are respected meta-reviews that say the contrary and are superior to news articles such as NYT for scientific topics. You'll see their full reference in our article. Again, Misplaced Pages is a NPOV encyclopedia, not a WP:MAINSTREAM encyclopedia. Pcarbonn (talk) 12:39, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

You're claiming 2004 DOE contradicts my statement? The majority of reviewers said that even excess heat had not been established, let alone "fusion" being the most likley explanation. They clearly did not think it worthy of serious investigation or serious funding.

The 2004 DOE says : "The nearly unanimous opinion of the reviewers in the 2004 review was that funding agencies should entertain individual, well-designed proposals for experiments that address specific scientific issues relevant to the question of whether or not there is anomalous energy production in Pd/D systems, or whether or not D-D fusion reactions occur at energies on the order of a few electron volts (eV).". So, yes, the 2004 DOE contradicts your statement. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:54, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm aware of what 2004 DOE says. But they don't recommend budgeting money for research, as they regularly do in other areas; they don't recommend putting together a task force or partnership with universities to do serious research into cold fusion. Their recommendation is that well designed proposals to investigate the remaining unknowns should be entertained. This is neither serious investigation nor funding, merely an acknowledgement that the area still has enough unknowns that solid proposals for research should be entertained. Contrast this with the Japanese government's direct funding and promotion of cold fusion research in the 90s (which they later abandoned after some years), or the ongoing, active DOE promotion of research into various aspects of fission and waste products. Phil153 (talk) 17:10, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Biberian 2007 offers nothing new. Read his list of references, the large majority come from The Xth International Conference on Cold Fusion. He is presenting a non critical summary of claims published in completely unreliable sources. This is not a meta review of reliable primary sources, but an opinion piece published in a very questionable journal. The Int. J. Nuclear Energy Science and Technology, first published in 2004, could not even charitably be called a reliable source, especially for claims rejected by the mainstream scientific establishment.

I haven't read Hubbler or Storms yet but I think it's clear that DOE 2004 supports my statement above, while Biberian 2007 fails completely as a reliable source.Phil153 (talk) 13:33, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, DOE won't recommend a cold fusion research program until the scientific controversy is favorably resolved. This is an economic decision. If they thought that the controversy was already negatively resolved, they would not have written what they have. So, the scientific controversy is still unresolved, and we should present both sides of it. And please, read Hubler 2007, Storms2007, and Marwan 2008 (ISBN 978-0-8412-6966-8) to have a full view of the reputable sources. Pcarbonn (talk) 17:43, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the DOE review says that there is a scientific case to justify funding some research, and gives advice on resolving "some of the controversies in the field". It doesn't say that the field itself has an unresolved controversy. --Enric Naval (talk) 01:06, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Concerning the replication of iwamura's work, here is what an older version of our article said : "The experiment was replicated by researchers from Osaka University using Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry to analyze the nature of the surface (the Pd complex samples were provided by Iwamura). " The source is : Higashiyama, Taichi; Sakano, Mitsuru; Miyamaru, Hiroyuki; Takahashi, Akito (2003), "Replication of MHI Transmutation Experiment by D2 Gas Permeation Through Pd Complex", Tenth International Conference on Cold Fusion, Cambridge, MA: LENR-CANR.org

The replication was not by an independent group. One of the author's is the same. On the bright side, there is part of a theoretical discussion, and some proposals cosnsitent with what would be science as I asserted below (drafted earlier). On the downside, it looks like pure BS. Touching on one of the more tractable points, they said they needed a vacuum to get deuterium into the reaction zone. The vacuum only takes deuterium away from the reaction zone. Frankly, I am now doubting not just their accuracy, but their honesty.Paul V. Keller (talk) 00:02, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Science without theory is not science. Experiments without hypothesis are not following the scientific method. All experimentalists rely heavily on theory, including the ones whose findings you credit. You need theory to interpret XPS and mass spectronomy data. You need theory to understand your calorimetry data. In fact, the closer you look at any of the experiments described in your literature, the more you will see reliance on hundreds of assumptions about the way things work. Theories get replaced and new hypothesis put forward, but if you throw away everything that's ever been known or thought to be understood, you will have nothing left to interpret your results. Experimentalists could not hypothesize fusion without drawing on theoretical understanding that such phenomena exist and release energy. Come up with a hypothesis to explain Iwamara and you will know what experiment to do next: if you agree it is a multistep process, figure out what intermediates to look for and in what concentration ranges to look for them. If you think the process starts with four deuterium chemically bonded to a Cs atom, predict what happens to the rate if you mix in 50% hydrogen and try to confirm that experimentally. Without that kind of process, it is not science.Paul V. Keller (talk) 23:32, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Iwamura's paper is scientific enough to be published in Japanese Journal of Applied Physics. We are not evaluating content here, only the reliability of sources. Also, you may want to read Thomas_Samuel_Kuhn or Paul_Feyerabend about what Science is and is not. Pcarbonn (talk) 11:47, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the steps you suggest would be beneficial. However, you are assuming that such experiments could produce reliable results. And that requires the phenomena to be highly reproducable. That's why scientists have been so focused on improving reproducibility and control, instead of doing experiments like you suggest. Without these two things, the results of experiments like you suggest would be so swamped by noise (statistical uncertainty) that they would be effectively meaningless. You see, good science requires a high degree of control, and these people, like good scientists, are working towards that goal.

I don't know why you went on that spiel about theory, because obviously - as you, yourself point out - they would not be making any progress without it. But I hope you are not putting the cart before the horse here. Theory comes after experiment. After many, many experiments, actually. It models the results of empirical evidence, not the other way around. And it is far from a perfect model, as models inevitably are. But that's why we have science. Kevin Baas 18:30, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Nobody is saying that the Japanese Journal of Applied Physics or the European Physical Journal are less reliable. The problem is that almost every positive paper is cited, but not a single one of the negative papers from the above APS journals. Every lab that has succeeded in reproducing the results is mentioned, but not those that failed or came up with experimental counter-claims. Why? Vesal (talk) 19:10, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Because editors are engaging in cherry-picking of favorable primary sources, instead of relying on reliable secondary sources that make the analysis for them --Enric Naval (talk) 19:21, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Vasal asks:

The problem is that almost every positive paper is cited, but not a single one of the negative papers from the above APS journals.

There are no negative papers in APS journals, or anywhere else. Only about a dozen negative papers have been published in history of cold fusion. You will find most of them at LENR-CANR.org.

There were several early papers describing experiments that did not work. That's a null, not a negative. The authors did not discover any fault in the positive experiments, or any other reason to doubt them. The reasons these early experiments failed is new well understood and has been described in detail.

Actually, the three most famous negative papers, at Cal Tech, Harwell and MIT were false negatives. (Actually positive.) They all got excess heat at the same rate as others did in 1989, but they did not realize it, or they erased it and published fake results.

As it happens, we just today uploaded a review paper discussing some of early failures, and the reasons for them:

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

The authors examined 174 papers, in detail. They did a lot of analysis not shown in the paper. (I assisted so I know about it.)

Every lab that has succeeded in reproducing the results is mentioned, but not those that failed or came up with experimental counter-claims. Why?

There are no experimental counter-claims. No one has ever done an experiment that calls into question cold fusion, or an experiment with a prosaic explanation that exhibits the same behavior (i.e., one that produces tritium or megajoules of heat per mole of reactant.)

The failures were all for obvious reasons not worth discussing in detail unless you are an expert. Of course you can read about them at LENR-CANR.org to your heart's delight. I have compiled a list of null and false negative experiments; contact me via the front page.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org

Ugh, So much OR. Experiments with no results (failed replications) don't count as negative, and negative papers were actually positive because either the authors didn't notice they were positive or they lied about the results. Peer-reviewed papers published on top journals on the field are countered with proof from a cold fusion conference paper. My eyes, they hurt. --Enric Naval (talk) 07:01, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Enric Naval wrote:

Experiments with no results (failed replications) don't count as negative . . .

Obviously not, since the reasons they failed are well understood. When U.S. Vanguard missiles exploded in 1957 and 1958, that did not call into doubt the existence of the Russian Sputnik satellite. Negative experiments from labs that never succeeded failed for the same reasons some experiments failed at SRI and other successful labs: critical levels of loading, current density, flux or some other control parameter were not achieved.

. . . and negative papers were actually positive because either the authors didn't notice they were positive or they lied about the results.

Would you count them as negative? If you have any doubt that the data is fake, I suggest you review this paper, pages 21 - 24:

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

Or this one:

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

Peer-reviewed papers published on top journals on the field are countered with proof from a cold fusion conference paper.

There are no peer-reviewed papers from top journals that call cold fusion into question. Not one study and not one paper has ever demonstrated an error in a positive cold fusion paper. If anyone ever did find an error, it would not only disprove cold fusion, it would overthrow the laws of thermodynamics and a large part of chemistry and physics going back to 1860. That isn't going to happen.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org

Ummm...yes, there are two, mine and Brian Clarke's. I demonstrated that the interpretation of an apparent excess heat signal by Storms as due to 'cold fusion' was premature because he didn't consider calibration constant shifts. Jumping to an extreme, radical conclusion when a more conventional and understandable conclusion is available is an error. Brian showed that 4 'Case-type' cells submitted to him by McKubre et al for confirming analysis of anomalous He were in fact poorly sealed and had leaked to air, which is where the He came from. That's a big error on Mckubre's part. it makes one wonder how many more of his (and other's) experiments had the same flaw. Fortunately, both of these are in the article as it stands today. I'm glad you agree that they 'disprove' cold fusion (which of course can not ever be done in fact, only probabalistically).Kirk shanahan (talk) 21:41, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

It's you personally and unreliable sources who are saying that reliable sources should not be taken into account or had fake data. It's not a reliable asource saying that. Misplaced Pages uses only reliable sources. Do you understand now what the problem is? --Enric Naval (talk) 16:25, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Enric Naval wrote:

It's you personally . . .

It is NEVER me personally. Every assertion I make is backed by gold-plated, peer-reviewed data, which you can find at a university library.

. . .and unreliable sources who are saying that reliable sources should not be taken into account or had fake data.

You can see at a glance that the data is fake! Part of the graph is replaced with crudely fabricated, hand-drawn data. The rest is regularly-spaced computer generated data. See D. Albagli et al., J. Fusion Energy, 1990, 9, pp. 133-148. That's peer-reviewed and often cited by skeptics, and obviously fake.

You can tell even more clearly because one of the researchers accidentally leaked the original data, which shows excess heat in the part that was replaced with hand-drawn dots. You can also read the official MIT hearing in which the researchers claimed they had no idea how the data was changed and they think it means nothing. It is all on the record in official sources.

All of this is described in the two papers I referenced above. I suggest you read something about this before commenting on it.

As for the "reliable sources" on null experiments, of course they should be "taken into account"! Everyone takes them into account. We know why the null experiments produced no heat; we can see that the false negatives are actually positive (just do the arithmetic right and you will see this); and anyone who looks at the fake data in the peer-reviewed paper will see that it is fake. You do not need to take my word for any of this -- the data speaks for itself.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.19.98.26 (talk) 18:24, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Jed, please start signing your talk page entries properly with four tildes (~). You've been nicely asked a few times on your talk page, but because you don't maintain a stable IP address it is unclear that you've seen the messages. By registering a user name you can avoid this IP hopping problem and have rational discussions with other editors.LeadSongDog (talk) 19:18, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

LeadSongDog wrote:

Jed, please start signing your talk page entries properly with four tildes (~).

That doesn't work. It comes out the same as when I don't sign it, with the IP Address, like this:

68.19.98.26 (talk) 19:22, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

You've been nicely asked a few times on your talk page

Not me. I don't have a talk page. Anyway, you can reach me anytime at LENR-CANR.org. Phone number, address and everything is there.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org

If you click on the (talk) above, you'll see that the signature does work and that you in fact do have a talk page.LeadSongDog (talk) 19:38, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

I tried the tilde signature above and all it does is generate the IP Address, the same as the robot does. I just clicked on the Talk link it does not have any info other than IP Address. So what's the point?

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.19.98.26 (talk) 20:38, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Formal warning

Then again, Jed, after my my comment about how you were trying to falsify reliable sources throught unreliable sources you are still insisting that editors should study primary sources and raw data and engage into original research in order to reach the WP:TRUTH , as opposed to following WP:RS guideline by using reliable secondary sources (and that's just the first two comments you made after my post).

Jed, either you stop filling the page with WP:OR or I'll start asking admins to bring the arbitration stick of WP:PSEUDOSCIENCE down on you. (I'm giving you this formal warning here instead of your talk page because you use a dynamic IP). --Enric Naval (talk) 23:20, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Enric Naval wrote:

you are still insisting that editors should study primary sources . . .

Well, you could study the books published about cold fusion, I suppose. Or review papers. But what have you got against peer-reviewed papers in mainstream journals? That is normally considered the gold standard of information.

Anyway this article already has dozens of links to LENR-CANR.org, only for some reason they point to an archived version of the site instead of the present one. I suppose this is some crazy scheme by the skeptics to stop people from reading LENR-CANR, but it will not work for anyone who has half a brain.

Also the "information" you skeptics add to the article is not reliable, or secondary, or primary. It is imaginary. You make things up and stuff them into the article. At least I have sources other than my own imagination!

Jed, either you stop filling the page with WP:OR or I'll start asking admins to bring the arbitration stick of WP:PSEUDOSCIENCE down on you.

Go ahead! Do your worst. You skeptics have done that to me before. I couldn't care less. I am not planning to edit this or any other article. I wouldn't touch a Misplaced Pages article with the fag end of a barge poll, nor would any scientist I know.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.89.102.43 (talk • contribs) 13:04, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Putting Wiki policy to one side, it is not so much citing sources of dubious probity that seems a problem to me. It is more a combination of tactics:

1) Insisting that anyone who has not read all your source must accept that your sources demonstrate whatever you say they do;

2) Claiming your sources say or prove more than they do. On several occassion I have spent hours investigating your citations only to find they proved far less than you claimed;

3) Dismissing all sources that do not support your POV, and attacking those who cite those sources;

4) Arguing that every instance of treating your sources seriously is an avowal of those source or an agreement with their conclusions, even if the instance does not result in publication or funding; and

5) Arguing that every instance of not treating your sources seriously is a display of unfair bias.

I would like to see you try harder to be pursuasive without browbeating.Paul V. Keller (talk) 18:08, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Paul V. Keller wrote:

1) Insisting that anyone who has not read all your source must accept that your sources demonstrate whatever you say they do;

No one has read all of my sources except for Edmund Storms. I have 3,500 papers. I have never insisted that people read all of them, but only some of them -- say 10 or 20 papers. I recommended a few papers, but I never insisted that you (or anyone else) read these particular ones. What I object to is people who have obviously read nothing, and who make statements that are odds with the facts.

In any case, there are no other sources of information on cold fusion. These papers and books constitute 99% of everything published on the subject, in English. They include both positive and negative materials. Probably every negative book and paper published is in the bibliography.

2) Claiming your sources say or prove more than they do. On several occassion I have spent hours investigating your citations only to find they proved far less than you claimed;

Please be more specific. Which authors did you read? I suggest you write a critique and e-mail it to me directly to JedRothwell@gmail.com. There are lots of papers in the library that I think have no merit, so I may well agree with you. Or perhaps misinterpreted the papers, or I disagree with your interpretation.

3) Dismissing all sources that do not support your POV, and attacking those who cite those sources;

"POV" means point of view, or opinion. Science is based on facts and laws, not points of view. People who claim that calorimetry does not work are mistaken. They do not understand the laws of thermodynamics. Their "point of view" is nonsense.

4) Arguing that every instance of treating your sources seriously is an avowal of those source or an agreement with their conclusions . . .

There are no other sources.

5) Arguing that every instance of not treating your sources seriously is a display of unfair bias.

It is mainly a display of ignorance, not bias.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.89.102.43 (talk) 20:07, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

The purpose of the Misplaced Pages "Cold fusion" article

I keep reading here about various experiments published hither and yon and arguments about them. No! The purpose of the talk page is not to debate the subject but to improve the article. "Peer review" is not a talisman preventing error, since working scientists agree that most published results are just wrong and weigh them accordingly. But cold fusion advocates and skeptics do agree on one thing: "Cold fusion" is viewed as bunk by mainstream science. The Misplaced Pages article should not leave its readers with any other impression. --72.74.17.230 (talk) 12:06, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

I think some advocates would disagree with that statement. Regardless, the intro is muddled and unclear on this point, I'd propose changing it to something like this:

Cold fusion, also known as low energy nuclear reactions (LENR) or condensed matter nuclear science, is a name given to supposed nuclear fusion reactions hypothesized to occur at normal temperatures and pressures. Most physicists reject cold fusion as both an effect and a viable source of energy. However, low level research continues with some notable proponents.

Cold fusion gained prominence in 1989 when Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons reported anomalous heat production in an electrolytic cell during electrolysis of heavy water using palladium electrodes, which they proposed was due to nuclear fusion. Significant scientific and media attention followed. In the months after their report, a lack of reliable replication of the initial experiment and the lack of a viable theoretical basis caused the field to fall into disrepute. Today it is considered a kind of pathological science and most scientists remain skeptical of the field.

Phil153 (talk) 14:50, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Oppose, obviously. Sources say that "most scientists" are skeptical, not that they reject cold fusion. Also, this intro is full of WP:weasel words, and gives too much weight to the view of "most scientists" as opposed to the one from reliable secondary sources. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:36, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Reliable secondary sources catalog this rejection, and note that many journals will not even publish cold fusion research. I think reject is a very reasonable term to use. "Skeptical" isn't a strong enough word to describe how most scientists feel about cold fusion.

Also, weight *should* be given to the opinion of most scientists and the mainstream. If 95% of scientists think cold fusion is nonsense, it is far more important to stress this point in the introduction than anything cold fusion advocates say or publish.

Anyway, I don't propose the above text as the new intro, merely an example of how strongly the mainstream view (and its reasons for rejecting CF) should be presented in the intro, in order to have a balanced and accurate article for a layman. Phil153 (talk) 16:45, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

You are wrong about rejection. The American Chemical Society has published a review book on cold fusion in 2008, distributed by Oxford University Press, cited above as Marwan 2008. They wouldn't if cold fusion was rejected, and there was no market for it; on the contrary, it is a proof that it is not rejected. World Scientific Publishing has published a book in 2007. This is a reliable secondary source. "Rejection" is not a "reasonable" term to use according to reliable secondary sources (and "most scientists" is not a reliable source for wikipedia). Pcarbonn (talk) 17:04, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

And yet, the author of LENR-CANR.org, one of the most pro cold fusion sites around, states: the editors at Nature and Sci. Am. denounced cold fusion as fraud. Since then, the journals I listed (and most others) automatically reject any manuscript about cold fusion, usually with a polite form letter. Several researchers have shown me these form letters. If that isn't rejection by mainstream science, I don't know what would possibly satisfy you. In addition, the US patent office rejects cold fusion applications, just as it rejects perpetual motion machines. Here is a reliable source that explicitly states the rejection by mainstream scientists:

Erratic results such as those, coupled with the theoretical unlikelihood of the whole idea, long ago drove most mainstream scientists to dismiss cold fusion; they say that any indication of heat or nuclear byproducts is the result of an error in the experiment. Research money has dried up. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has refused to grant a patent on any invention claiming cold fusion. According to Esther Kepplinger, the deputy commissioner of patents, this is for the same reason it wouldn't give one for a perpetual motion machine: It doesn't work.

Given the above, would you accept "dismiss" instead of "reject"? "Skeptical" gives a poor description of most physicists' rejection of cold fusion.

Anyway, the scientist interest you are claiming does not exist except at the fringes. Also, one book - a book of evidence presented at a Chemistry symposium, or even several books - does not refute the fact that most physicists and physics journals reject cold fusion as stated above. Phil153 (talk) 18:39, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I would accept "dismiss" instead of "reject" : "dismiss" means that they choose to ignore cold fusion; it does not mean that they say it is wrong on scientific ground. That also explains why some journals choose to not publish papers, while others have: it depends on editorial policy, not on the scientific status of the field. Also, you have changed from "most scientists" to "most physicists" : that may also be more accurate, as chemists seem more open to the idea of anomalous effects that cannot be explained by chemical theory, whatever the explanation. Pcarbonn (talk) 11:52, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

I like coupled with the theoretical unlikelihood of the whole idea. The theoretical side is very important to understanding main stream science's view of cold fusion research. The erratic nature of the results would not be given the same interpretation if there were a plausible nuclear theory to explain appreciable cold fusion or if the interpretation of results proposed by cold fusion enthusiasts did not require a radical yet unspecified revision of our current understanding of nuclear reactions. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=what-is-the-current-scien. (A 1999 article apropos today).

A study showing rain dances produce rain would not be, and should not be, interpreted without considering what we know about weather. Likewise, a study showing time dilation in an atomic clock moved around at high speeds would be of little significance absent that it tested and showed results consistent with relativity theory. In this case, I am concerned that the plausibility of cold fusion is greater the less one knows about the science that came before it.

A fundamental disagreement we have here is that one group thinks finding certain things implausible is bias, whereas another group understands finding certain things implausible is progress. Understanding what does and does not make sense is an important goal of science education. I have in mind here an anecdote at a commencement address about the response of legendary chemical engineering professor Neal R. Amundson to an inquiry about rumors of a chemical that could dissolve a tornado. Here, I think we would do a disservice if we left readers with a more optimistic view of cold fusion research than an understanding of science would warrant. The degree of contradiction with current theory and the significance of that contradiction need to be conveyed with clarity to do justice to this subject.Paul V. Keller (talk) 14:42, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

I think that's an important point. One of the main reasons that true believers and skeptics talk past each other is the theoretical expectations. I like to think about it in terms of Bayesian priors. A similar case that springs to mind is the Fifth force. That field was also plagued with a few years of mixed results, but it was taken seriously (although eventually abandoned) because it was possible to think about the problem within the constraints of known physics. Anyway, we do not need to come to a consensus on the a priori likelihood of cold fusion and how that should affect our interpretation of the experimental reports. But we should make it clear in the article that the lack of theoretical underpinnings is considered by the skeptics to be a serious problem, regardless of the number of sigmas reported. Very similar to homeopathy as well. --Art Carlson (talk) 15:24, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

That 1999 SciAm article has a now-broken link to the article archived here on the Wayback Machine. It describes an attempt to replicate the 1995 CETI "Patterson power cell" results that may be worth reading.LeadSongDog (talk) 16:49, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

A second set of reports on an attempted replication of the Patterson Power Cell can be found on Scott Little's Web page (http://www.earthtech.org/experiments/index.html) under the 'CETI' subsection. There was a third attempt made as I recall, by a guy named Shaffer or Schafer or such at the time. It was reported in sci.physics.fusion, but is probably long gone by now. None of the three replications succeeded.Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:16, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

BTW, I should note that the Little papers contain that subsection of work that comments on the use of SIMS to support nuclear heavy metal transmutation that I tried to include in the 'Criticisms' section of the CF Wiki article, and which Pcarbonn block deleted.

I have to plead guilty about putting technical discussions on these pages, but that was brought about because Pcarbonn wanted to argue every detail I tried to add. Some discussion was necessary anyway because I assumed the article should be written for an 'average' user not familiar with the field, and some of the quoted comments needed some explaining for those readers.

In agreement with the comments above, the article always was too biased towards the 'reality' of cold fusion, and I tried to make it less so, with the result that I was opposed at every step by Pcarbonn. The general state of affairs regarding cold fusion today, as observed by myself as a worker in the field of the materials claimed to show CF, is that the average scientist thinks the issue was setled c. 1994, with CF being declared 'bad science' (or pathological or pseudoscience, they don't tend to distinguish between these various terms). Almost universally (including me), these scientists when presented with current CF papers or statements say "What? I thought that was over." A very few are aware it is not, most of them are somewhat incensed that CF is NOT dead, and, at this point, only one (me) has actually studied the field and published conventional explanations (the other, W. B. Clarke, passed away). This situation has allowed the CF die-hards to experience a resurgence of their view in the popular press, since not enough informed scientists are available to stop them (which is not a nefarious plot, they just do lousy science and rarely make it through a good peer review) and they actively suppress mention of the outstanding criticisms of their work. Thus we have the recent book published via the ACS.Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:49, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Please undelete mediation pages

Someone wanted a tabulation of the Britz peer-reviewed paper database with 'res+' and 'res-' but not 'theory' above. I remember seeing something like that in the mediation pages but those have been deleted because of arbitration, for some reason I sure don't understand.

Please undelete the mediation pages. 208.54.83.58 (talk) 01:24, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Could an admin check the deleted history and copy/paste that part of the pages on a sandbox? --Enric Naval (talk) 03:09, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

http://www.chem.au.dk/~db/fusion/Papers presently has 313 papers with "res+" (case insensitive) on lines beginning "**" that do not contain "theor", and 234 similarly but with "res-" instead. 69.228.199.255 (talk) 03:15, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Article on Reproducibility

Reproducibility contains some comments on cold fusion. Here is the relevant section (added by our neighborhood editor PCarbonn :))

At the end of May the US Energy Research Advisory Board found the evidence to be unconvincing, and cold fusion was dismissed as pseudoscience. Later on, successful replications by independent teams were reported in peer reviewed scientific journals, and, although the effect is not considered fully repeatable, the field eventually gained some scientific recognition.

My concerns are:

• Was it initially dismissed as pseudoscience?
• Has it "eventually gained some scientific recognition"?

(The 2004 DOE report, which did not differ substantially from 1989 report, is used as evidence of scientific recognition).

I'm concerned that perhaps this doesn't leave a balanced impression of cold fusion for the casual reader. Phil153 (talk) 00:29, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

The 2004 DOE report does not constitute scientific recognition. The DOE simply agreed to be open minded and here a renewed application for funding. The state of acceptance, or lack thereof, has remained unchanged for at least ten years. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=what-is-the-current-scien. A little research will show that these claims of breakthroughs and improved reproducibility are perennial.Paul V. Keller (talk) 01:54, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Phil asked if CF was initially dismissed as pseudoscience. Initially, the scientific community went to great lengths to reproduce the effect, and most could not, while a few did. The attitudes of F and P (driven most likely by intellectual property concerns) alienated a lot of scientists. Subsequently there was the 1989 DOE review, and the later book by its chairman, Huizenga, calling CF a 'fiasco'. At that point most scientists believed the issue to be settled and went on their way. A die-hard band of people however continued on. You can tell this by comparing lists of authors from the various ICCFs, they tend to be all the same people, with no significant influx of new blood. The field has not gained any scientific recognition to speak of. The large majority of cscientists think it is dead, and are shocked to find out it isn't. There was the 2004 DOE review, but that occurred due to political pressure from CF supporters, not because DOE thought there was any merit to the claims. Paul Keller correctly notes that the CFers contiunously claim breakthroughs. The recent claims of heavy metal trransmutations and radiation detection by CR-39 plates are just the most recent mutations of these claims. Note that this demostrates Langmuir's pseudoscience characteristic of always coming up with more ad hoc explanations when faced with solid criticisms. I should note however, that my own work assumes there is a real effect at work in the production of apparent excess heat signals, and the CFers ARE observing unexpected elements on their cathodes, but the point is one does NOT need nuclear reactions to explain these observations.Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:11, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Dr. Shanahan, do your concerns about calorometry apply to reports of experiments which do not involve electrolosys? 69.228.195.158 (talk) 18:20, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Potentially. The Calibration Constant Shift (as I call it) is a universal problem. It is nothing but a very simple concept that says if you need to convert a measurement via a calibration equation, you get the wrong answer if you use the wrong equation or constants. This applies to any and all calibrated measurements, in any and all scientific experiments. All I did was reverse engineer the constants required to force Storms' data to produce 0 excess power. That's called 'sensitivity analysis'. Then I noted that the spread in the computed calibration constants was trivial (1-3%), entirely consistent with 'good' analytical chemistry techniques. In other words, the 'noise' of the experiment can explain the apparent excess heat. Any other technique, such as a non-F&P type experiment, should be similarly analyzed to see if the normal variation in the technique can explain the results. Kirk shanahan (talk) 21:11, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Is it fair to say that "reverse engineer the constants required to force Storms' data to produce 0 excess power" means starting with the assumption that there is no excess power, and designing a general theoretical argument in support of that assumption? 69.228.195.158 (talk) 23:29, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but it also includes evaluating that argument and reanalysis for credibility. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:18, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

How do you select among a set of arguments in support of a selected hypothesis for credibility? What measure of credibility do you use? 69.228.201.246 (talk) 07:36, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I haven't heard any claims of "breakthroughs" but I've read a number of articles about improved reproducability. Didn't a famous scientist recently reproduce the phenomena in front of a live audience? It seems, as Paul suggests above, that reproducability has been slowly improving over time, as new methods are tried. Though I dispute the notion that "The state of acceptance, or lack thereof, has remained unchanged for at least ten years." I would say, rather, that it hasn't changed a lot. It's still not mainstream and many universities in the U.S. will refuse to publish research quite irrespective of its relative scientific merit. However, as the field has matured, recognition has increased over the years, the recently reinvigorated interest in India being a prime example. Kevin Baas 18:01, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Dr Shanahan's work validates an edit to the definition of cold fusion that I recently made in the main article. Cold fusion is a phenomena hypothesized to explain a group of experimental results, it is not the results themselves.Paul V. Keller (talk) 19:38, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Excellent progress has been made in reproducibility, control and the power of the reaction. See:

http://en.citizendium.org/Cold_Fusion

(Scroll down to "Some examples of progress made since 1989.")

I attended the demonstration by Arata, and I was not impressed. See:

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

Shanahan's hypotheses, if true, would disprove most electrochemistry and calorimetry going back to Lavoisier's 1781 ice calorimeter (which is used in some cold fusion experiments), and J. P. Joules's calorimeter circa 1845 (which is used in many others). There is no chance Shanahan is correct. The fact that skeptics such Paul V. Keller are so quick to believe him, and add his theories to this article, shows that they are grasping at straws, and they will believe anything that comes along without a critical examination, even if it means they must throw away the whole basis of chemistry and physics. It is often said that cold fusion appears to violate some laws of plasma physics. Many experts disagree, but in any case, the arguments made against cold fusion violate far more textbook laws than this.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org—Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.19.98.26 (talk • contribs) 16:54, 4 December 2008

Jed, there's a possibility someone vandalized your citizendium page. It says you graduated from Cornell University in 1976 with a BA majoring in Japanese. Phil153 (talk) 22:31, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Not a problem! I wrote that myself. There is practically no vandalism at citizendium because all authors have to register their real names.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.19.98.26 (talk • contribs) 19:23, 4 December 2008

Wow. I did not express any opinion about Dr. Shanahan's work except that he appears to be studying anomalous heating in electrochemical systems without at the same time pursuing a cold fusion theory.Paul V. Keller (talk) 22:00, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

For those who are unaware who Jed Rothwell is, beware. He has been a flaming cold fusion advocate since the beginning. I have had years worth of 'debates' with him on spf. You can't win with him as he never admits he's wrong to himself. Sometimes you can get him to say it, but the next week or day he's back saying the thing you just got him to say was wrong. As an example, I have explained to him many times what I explain above in answer to "69.228.195.158", but he still insists on spouting the 'Shanahan"s thesis will kill calorimetry' mantra. All my work does is show that baseline noise isn't the only noise in these exeperiments. The CFers know this, that's why they moved from isoperibolic calorimetry to integrating types like mass flow or Seebeck. All I did was put algebraic teeth into the problem, instead of just gut feel. Yet you see what Jed writes. My advice - ignore him. Kirk shanahan (talk) 21:11, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

For those who are unaware of who Kirk shanahan is, I advise you to read his papers, carefully. Then read Storms' rebuttal. Then think for yourself.

Excellent advice. Just make sure you read the response to the rebuttal too, the one that Storms didn't bother to mention in his 2007 book. It rebuts every point made by Storms, in a point-by-point fashion. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:16, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

That's the difference between me and anti-cold fusion people. I want people to read original sources from both sides. Do you own homework. Take no one's word for anything. I have put years of effort into making both pro- and anti-cold papers available to the public at LENR-CANR.org. My opponents, on the other hand, want you to ignore me -- just as they want you to ignore the scientific literature, and the laws of physics and chemistry.

The difference if telling. I want everyone to know as much as possible. I have made hundreds of papers available, and people have downloaded 1.1 million copies of them. They want to squelch the debate and keep everyone ignorant, and Beware! Beware! of actual data and peer-reviewed papers! Oh my, better not to look -- which is why Robert Park brags that he has never read a single paper, even though he wrote a book attacking cold fusion. (It is obvious from his book that he knows nothing about the subject.)

And by the way, if you want to know who I am, I suggest you read some of my papers at LENR-CANR.org.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.19.98.26 (talk) 21:29, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Intro edit

I am not sure why there is a disagreement. Cold fusion is nuclear fusion occurring at near-ordinary temperatures and pressures. What is there to argue? Whether cold fusion is hypothetical, experimentally demonstrable, or apocryphal, it is still "nuclear fusion occurring at near-ordinary temperatures and pressures." I thought we should all restrain ourselves from trying to put our POV into the first sentence. I don't think there needs to be a word about what the experimental results are, not any weasels like "postulated" or "hypothetical". There is no reason to tip toe around what the subject is.

Although I want to change some things in the next paragraph, the discussion of Fleischmann and Pons is a great place to introduce the controvery. Both sides of the controversy see those events as seminal. From the main stream side, it flows into the explanation of why cold fusion is thought to be highly improbable. From the LENR side, it flow into the explanation of how their amazing work is being ignored. We can get well into this article, without saying anything prejudicial to either side.Paul V. Keller (talk) 23:01, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Something that has not been proven is by definition hypothetical or a postulate. There is nothing weasel about calling a spade a spade. If it is conclusively demonstrated to be real fusion then we can eliminate the qualifiers. But there is some way to go before we can do that. Until then a qualifier is an absolute necessity IMO. I don't think even the CF proponents would disagree with that. Dr.K. (logos) 23:10, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Tasoskessaris wrote:

If it is conclusively demonstrated to be real fusion then we can eliminate the qualifiers. But there is some way to go before we can do that. Until then a qualifier is an absolute necessity IMO. I don't think even the CF proponents would disagree with that.

We agree that this article needs qualifiers, but all of the cold fusion researchers I know (roughly 1000 professional scientists) feel they have conclusively demonstrated the effect. Read their papers and you will see they express no doubts. This is because they have observed dramatic and incontrovertible proof such as tritium at 60 times background, or a million times background, or 20 W of excess heat continuing thousands of time longer than any chemical source of heat from the same mass of reactants could. Their assertions are unequivocal. For example, H. Gerischer was the leading physical electrochemist in Europe and the Director of the Max Planck Institute for Physical Chemistry in Berlin. He wrote:

"In spite of my earlier conclusion, - and that of the majority of scientists, - that the phenomena reported by Fleischmann and Pons in 1989 depended either on measurement errors or were of chemical origin, there is now undoubtedly overwhelming indications that nuclear processes take place in the metal alloys."

I can give you 50 other quotes as unequivocal as that from the creme de la creme of U.S. and European electrochemistry and nuclear physics. You may think there are doubts and open questions, but the researchers will tell you that all of the questions, doubts and criticisms raised here were rebutted in detail in the peer-reviewed literature by 1992.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.65.89.136 (talk) 02:55, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Perceptions are always a problem. It may take time for CF research to be adopted by the wider scientific community. But science should not and cannot hold grudges or frozen ideas for long. If the reproducibility, yield and sustainability of the reactions improves there is no reason why CF research will not be officially adopted and funded in universities, especially in the presence of such sustained effort by the current CF researchers. The jump to the mainstream will not be a long one after that. Dr.K. (logos) 03:41, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Dr. K. wrote: "But science should not and cannot hold grudges or frozen ideas for long."

Perhaps it should not, but as Max Planck said progress in science occurs "funeral by funeral." He explained: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." Unfortunately, most cold fusion researchers are elderly scientists and they are dying off faster than the opposition. It is a generational role reversal: Most cold fusion researchers were people like Schwinger, from the WWII Los Alamos era. One of them was the guy who pushed the button to trigger the first atomic bomb. They saw scientific revolutions. They were open minded. Above all they believed in the absolute primacy of replicated experimental evidence over theory. Cold fusion opponents are young people who 'shall never see so much, nor live so long,' as Albany put it -- with the sort of "end of history" conservative conceit that only unimaginative young people might feel. They actually believe that you must have a theory before you can believe the data! By that standard no one would have believed in radium when Curie discovered it. No one would have believed there is helium and a nuclear reaction in the sun -- not before 1939! Actually, by today's rules Bethe would not have even bothered to try to explain the anomaly. They would dismiss it as experimental error. Frankly, I have little hope the field will survive.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.65.89.136 (talk) 05:30, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the elegant historical background but I don't think you should be pessimistic. I just saw a posting about new research interest in India, tabletop demonstrations in Japan. If the experimental evidence is strong enough and the scalability of the process is demonstrated, research interest will increase further and it will eventually reach critical mass. I don't think that lack of interest will be one of the factors that will influence the evolution of this process. Dr.K. (logos) 14:49, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

I am pleased to say that I agree completely with Paul V. Keller on this: Whether cold fusion is hypothetical, experimentally demonstrable, or apocryphal, it is still "nuclear fusion occurring at near-ordinary temperatures and pressures." Exactly right.

I disagree mildly on this:

From the LENR side, it flow into the explanation of how their amazing work is being ignored.

From the LENR side I say why bother bringing that up? It is obvious from other sources and this is an article on the science, not the politics. You could mention that in another article about academic politics and the disputes over cold fusion, such as this one:

http://pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/cf/293wikipedia.html

Of course the article must make it clear that many people do not believe cold fusion is real and some consider it pathological science. This is important and it should be close to the beginning. I inserted it in the Citizendium article:

http://en.citizendium.org/Cold_Fusion

But having said that, you should move on to the scientific claims. Including positive and negative claims. Whether you believe them or not, you should simply enumerate them, and give the reader lots of original source material so that he can decide for himself. That is how I write science articles, including ones about subjects that I think are mistaken, or bunk. I never express my own opinions, but only documented opinions given by experts. I have translated, edited and critiqued hundreds of cold fusion papers (and dozens of technical articles and product reviews before that) including many that I think have no merit. I have disagreed with papers by cold fusion researchers and by by skeptics. Those authors never heard a single personal opinion from me. An editor, translator or librarian must be impartial. The skeptics know that I would not think of refusing a paper from them for LENR-CANR.org, or changing one word of it without their permission.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org

Jed, I think we basically agree, although we will have to work through further changes one by one. There is not so much two sets of facts, as two sets of interpretations.

Dr. K, ESP is "extra sensory perception", not "hypothetical extra sensory perception". "Time travel" need not be defined as "hypothetical travel in time". "Hypothetical" and "postulated" are unnecessary words that introduce a view.

We do not give credence to cold fusion theory by talking about it without using words like "hypothetical" or "postulated". To the contrary, I think the careful use of those words says more to the reader about us than about the subject. Our care will just give credence to Jed's claims that everyone who does not believe in cold fusion has prejudged the subject. An expression of prevailing views can wait until we have presented a few facts to explain them.

I do not disagree that cold fusion is a "hypothetical" or "postulated" phenomena, but those are facts about cold fusion rather than a definition of it. The reader will be aware of those facts quickly enough.

And apologies to LENR people for "amazing work". I did not intend to be sarcastic.Paul V. Keller (talk) 00:13, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Dr. Keller, in your example of ESP it is clear that no one calls it a "hypothetical extra sensory perception" but one can define it as the "hypothetical perception which takes place outside the normal sensory avenues etc." Similarly "Time travel" is instantly recognisable, through experience, that it is the "hypothetical travel which occurs through time". But cold fusion does not carry such cognitive value, for most people, which automatically assigns a true or false perception to the idea, as in the case of ESP or time travel. So if we don't use qualifiers the statement will be taken as an endorsement of cold fusion, which IMO is not helpful, especially to the uninitiated. I can see your point, but that is the point of an expert. The average reader does not have your defences. That's why I think we need the qualifiers. Dr.K. (logos) 00:27, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Tasoskessaris wrote:

But cold fusion does not carry such cognitive value, for most people, which automatically assigns a true or false perception to the idea, as in the case of ESP or time travel. So if we don't use qualifiers the statement will be taken as an endorsement of cold fusion, which IMO is not helpful, especially to the uninitiated.

I think you underestimate "most people." I agree that an article about cold fusion must clearly state that many scientists think the effect is not real. But you need only say this once, at the beginning of the article. You need not clutter up the rest of it with qualifiers. That is distracting, and confusing. This goes for purely hypothetical and imaginary subjects as well, such as Flatland.

(By the way, the article should not say that "the vast majority of scientists" disagree because that is not in evidence. There have been only a few opinion surveys of scientists and engineers, but based on this fragmentary evidence it appears that roughly 40% believe cold fusion is real in some ways, and 60% reject it.)

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.65.89.136 (talk) 01:49, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Well Jed, it was about time. I guess there is no way one can avoid meeting you if one stays on this page long enough. How are you? I'm glad to finally talk to you. I may not agree with all yout points but I respect your tenacity and the strength of your convictions. Surprisingly I agree with you on most of your current points, minus the point that I underestimate most people. Even on that point I would concede that I don't know the absolute numbers. Anyway you are right that it is an overkill to put qualifiers and disclaimers on every single occurence of the term "Cold fusion". I never advocated that. In fact it was only on the first two introductory sentences that I suggested any type of qualification. I am not a fan of making the article a semantic goolag, where every word carries its own semantic guard. That would make the article more rigid than a frozen Siberian steppe. So I do agree with you on this point. And of course I don't like weasel terms like majority or even vast majority either. I prefer numerical values such as 2/3 or 1/3 etc and I made similar comments on the Cold fusion Arbcom workshop. So here we are agreeing on virtually everything. A final point. I saw you asked about the reason of signing manually rather than through a robot. I think it is considered simply good etiquette to do so and in any case we wouldn't like to overwork our hardworking robot friends. Anyway thanks for your points; it's been nice meeting you. Take care. Dr.K. (logos) 02:51, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Returning to the subject of the lead paragraphs, we can take lessons in phrasing from other articles on controversial topics in science. See for instance Psychokinesis or Big Bang, both of which are FA status.LeadSongDog (talk) 16:52, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Following those models, I came up with:

The term cold fusion has come to describe widely publicized claims that nuclear fusion can be achieved at temperatures far too low to be consistent with commonly accepted theories of nuclear physics. The reality of cold fusion is not accepted by the scientific community at large.

If we leave it at that and save the definition of LENR and condensed matter nuclear science until the end of the intro, I think we have both sides covered. On the LENR side, there are hints that data exists and that everyone does not accept the mainstream view. The mainstream view is plainly stated. That one more assertion I would expect LENR side to want should be satisfied by concluding the intro with the LENR and condensed matter nuclear science definitions and a clear statement of their perspective.

I like putting the definition in terms of current theory. Strictly speaking theory allow some infinitesimal amount of fusion at low temperatures, and by bombardment too if I am not mistaken. That would literally be "cold fusion" under the temperature definition, but that has nothing to do with "cold fusion" as meant on this page. As the term began to be used, there was definitely a connotation of "too cold". "Near room temperatures and pressures" is pretty meaningless without the theoretical context.Paul V. Keller (talk) 00:14, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

I should also add that the definition I am proposing also makes a need distinction with Muon-catalyzed fusion, which is a low temperature fusion that is not inconsistent with commonly accepted theories of nuclear physics.Paul V. Keller (talk) 00:24, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Suppose it's a start, but really, are you serious about "' the reality of cold fusion'"? Wouldn't theory be exponentially less POV than reality? Kaiwhakahaere (talk) 00:29, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

There is no accepted theory behind cold fusion as of yet. It is mostly experimental. Dr.K. (logos) 06:35, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Non sequitar. Would you prefer "reality" to "theory"? Or reality to hypothesis, premise, suppostion or something similar etc etc etc? Kaiwhakahaere (talk) 08:14, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps "cold fusion hypothesis" would be a more appropriate phrase than "cold fusion theory". Is this dispute because of the difference between the scientific definition of theory versus the layman's definition?--Noren (talk) 07:46, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Whatever. The word reality would always be extreme POV.Kaiwhakahaere (talk) 08:14, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Reply to Noren: Postulate has also been used. The Cold fusion experiments cannot be fully explained using any of the available nuclear reaction theories. Dr.K. (logos) 08:20, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to suggest this phrasing: "In Science, the phrase "Cold Fusion" is typically used to describe the idea that nuclear fusion can occur at ordinary temperatures and pressures." The "In Science" part may be relevant if links to the disambiguation page. The title of this article could be "Cold Nuclear Fusion", and the disambiguation page would also mention the computer software by that name and any other relevant things --for example, just for the craziness of it, there is the fact that the phrase "heat of fusion" is a term in Science that is associated with the melting point of a substance, and of course "to fuse" generically relates to combining things... so "cold fusion" could technically refer to an alloy-formation such as dental mercury-silver amalgam at room temperature. Anyway, joking aside, that first sentence in quotes above assumes the word "idea" is more NPOV than "reality" or "hypothesis". Not to mention that with respect to muon-catalyzed fusion, Cold Fusion is an actual fact, even in liquid hydrogen, far far colder than merely room-temperature! V (talk) 00:30, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Arata and Zhang's demonstration in Bangalore

Based on Kevin's comment above, I propose that Arata and Zhang's demonstration in Bangalore, India is the most notable recent event and should therefore be the last part (e.g., the subject of the last sentence) of the introduction. 69.228.201.246 (talk) 16:39, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

I support that. Please note that the demonstration took place in Osaka, Japan, not Bangalore, India. Here are some more sources : PhysicsWorld.com (+ follow-up), slashdot.com, New Energy Times (+ list of more links). Pcarbonn (talk) 17:18, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Here's "Japanese Scientists Demonstrate Cold Nuclear Fusion" by a materials science news site. 69.228.201.246 (talk) 17:38, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, but I don't see any reliable sources in that list from PCarbonn. BTW, I'd encourage anyone with doubts about cold fusion to should read the physicsworld follow-up PCarbonn posted above. Note the differential involved relative to the heat produced by chemical reaction, and the fact that fusion is postulated to explain this. Kind of says all that needs to be said about the field. Phil153 (talk) 20:27, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Phil153 wrote:

Note the differential involved relative to the heat produced by chemical reaction, and the fact that fusion is postulated to explain this. Kind of says all that needs to be said about the field.

Note that in other cold fusion experiments this same differential technique has demonstrated ~10,000 times more output from cells than any possible chemical reaction, without producing so much as a milligram of chemical ash. That does indeed say all that needs to be said about the field. It is first principal proof that this is a nuclear reaction. What do you say in response? Do you think that could be a chemical reaction? Which one? Or are you one of these people who imagines that hundreds of scientists are incapable of measuring levels of heat that any competent scientist could have measured in 1850?

If you don't believe that heat alone, without chemical change, is proof of a nuclear reaction than I presume you do not believe Madam Curie's observations of radium are of any importance, or that they prove there is an anomaly worth investigating.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.89.102.43 (talk • contribs) 00:45, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

I attended the demonstration in Osaka. I did not think much of it. See:

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

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.89.102.43 (talk) 18:19, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

The links are not even to science publications, just news reports. As far as excess heat, I am going to take a wild guess, and assume the reporters did not calculate these sources of energy and compare the time-integrated input to the time-integrated output. Also, the reporters would be in no position to determine that the internal state of the system was unchanged between the begininning of the experiment and the end. Nor would they be in a position to determine whether helium production was being accurately measured and unaccountable by contamination.

As Jed noted, these experiments were not notable in terms of either reliablity or documentation. These are very similar to the old reports that are not commonly credited. It would be new if they showed quantitative control over the amount of excess heat or helium production. It would be new if they showed a particular functional relationship between rates and different hydrogen isotopes mixtures. A theory of the process that is not demonstrably flawed would also be new. Stagnation at the stage of just trying to show heat or helium without much in the way of a theory to build on is part of the picture of cold fusion research.Paul V. Keller (talk) 22:50, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Paul V. Keller wrote:

The links are not even to science publications, just news reports.

The science publications for this experiment are in Japanese. They are listed in my paper.

As far as excess heat, I am going to take a wild guess, and assume the reporters did not calculate these sources of energy and compare the time-integrated input to the time-integrated output.

The reporters did not calculate anything. Arata and Zhang and their Chinese co-workers calculated the sources of energy and so on, and they certainly know how to integrate energy, although I take issue with their estimates of inputs, as noted. Anyway they have now gotten so much out the issue is becoming moot. Even lousy calorimetry works at this stage.

These are very similar to the old reports that are not commonly credited.

No, they are quite different. If they were the same, no one would question them because Arata has been replicated and carefully, independently checked at SRI and elsewhere, with better equipment than he himself used. There is no question that his basic technique works, but whether the new zirconium material works as well as he claims is an open question.

The old reports may not be "commonly credited" but neither Keller nor anyone else has ever pointed to an experimental error in them, so either the the results are right or calorimetry does not work. Whether people credit them or not is irrelevant.

It would be new if they showed quantitative control over the amount of excess heat or helium production.

They do! Plus it turns on right away. A big improvement. But you have read the Japanese to understand that. My paper probably does not cover it in enough detail. You can learn more from Talbot Chubb's review:

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

I more or less lambasted this latest work in my report, which upset Arata a great deal. However, in his defense, he is battling terrific political opposition, he has virtually no funding. and he never has been a hands-on experimentalist. On the other hand he has dozens of patents and he is one of the most important living Japanese technologists, with an International Medal named after him at the High Temperature Soc., and a building at the National University, and medals from dozens of societies, universities, and the Emperor of Japan. As he says, the Shinkansen wouldn't run if it were not for him. So he is a big gun. He built the first plasma fusion reactor in Japan. If it were not for the political opposition to this field I am sure he would be funded and making a lot more progress than he is. His lab is now staffed by people from Chinese national universities (with whom I can speak in Japanese) so I expect they will make progress on this, although probably not in Japan.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.89.102.43 (talk) 04:22, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

How has he determined the enthalpy of the incoming H2 or D2? Why isn't there a thermocouple on the feed? If the D2 has to be filtered for helium, how has he determined the filter does not become saturated? How do you credit helium data that is not even shown?

I see nothing about quantitative control in your report. What would you do to increase the % excess heat by a factor of ten?Paul V. Keller (talk) 13:21, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Paul V. Keller wrote:

How has he determined the enthalpy of the incoming H2 or D2?

That would be negligible. The gas is stored at room temperature, at high pressure. The temperature will drop slightly as the gas decompresses coming into the cell, but there is only a tiny flow of gas for 15 minutes in an experiment lasts for 50 to 100 hours. Blank runs with no materials in the cell show no measurable temperature changes.

Actually, hydrogen has a negative Joule-Thompson coefficient, so it will actually heat up as it is released. See Joule-Thompson effect Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:37, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Kirk shanahan wrote:

Actually, hydrogen has a negative Joule-Thompson coefficient, so it will actually heat up as it is released.

If you are talking about when the gas is released from the high pressure tank, then yes. That's what I meant when I said "the temperature will drop slightly as the gas decompresses coming into the cell."

If you mean the temperature will fall during the formation of Pd-H or Pd-D, then no. The formation of a hydride is exothermic. During electrolysis the overall process is endothermic because it takes more energy to decompose the water than you get from Pd-H formation. With gas loading you get heat. Hydrogen release from Pd-H is endothermic; it takes energy to drive the hydrogen out. It only heats up when this is done in the presence of oxygen and it recombines. Otherwise it is endothermic. See Sakamoto et al., ICCF6 and the Storms book, pp. 203, 204 for details.

This is confusing, so I asked Storms to comment. He explained: "Hydrogen does have a negative Joule-Thompson coefficient. This means that when hydrogen gas expands, it cools. However, hydrogen is not present in PdH as a gas. Consequently, when it leaves, it does not obey the J-T rules. It leaves by forming the gas H2 from H+ on the surface which is desorbed at ambient pressure." - Jed Rothwell

You (and Ed) are still confused. See the Wiki page Joule–Thomson effect, 3rd line: "At room temperature, all gases except hydrogen, helium and neon cool upon expansion". That means hydrogen HEATS UP when undergoing free expansion. But if Arata was actually running the D2 through a diffuser to purify it, then you shouldn't see the effect. So was he doing that, or did he pre-purify, or what? (This illustrates the problem with demos, they typically are presented with insufficient info to know what is really going on. That's what the literature is for.)

Furthermore, I note that the vessel pressure was continually rising after the intial loading, up to about 500 psi or so. That will produce some compressive heating, which could explain the observed temp difference. Or a thermocouple failure of some sort might do it too. Kirk shanahan (talk) 15:23, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Kirk shanahan wrote:

Furthermore, I note that the vessel pressure was continually rising after the intial loading, up to about 500 psi or so. That will produce some compressive heating, which could explain the observed temp difference.

No, it could not. As I noted that would have showed up in the blank runs with nothing in the cell but gas. The thermocouples are not sensitive enough to measure it.

Or a thermocouple failure of some sort might do it too.

As I noted already, that is ruled out because the energy also drove a thermoelectric chip, which drove a small motor. This is proof that real energy is produced in the cell. A thermocouple error will not cause a motor to turn.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.19.97.69 (talk) 21:11, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

As noted in the report, there is a measurable temperature rise from the heat of formation of the hydride or deuteride. The hydride quickly cools to ambient temperature but the deuteride remains warmer than the surroundings indefinitely. Thus, it has to be producing heat.

Or else an error has been induced during the hydriding process. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:37, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

What "error" can cause a thermocouple to register a temperature and also drive a thermoelectric chip? If this is not heat, what is it? - Jed Rothwell

See here for a nonexclusive list of some candidates: http://www.omega.com/temperature/Z/pdf/z021-032.pdf As to the chip's behavior, I might be able to comment if I had more than your assertion that something happened. I learned long ago not to trust that. Kirk shanahan (talk) 15:23, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

You seem to be suggesting that something other than energy can make a motor turn. Or perhaps that something other than heat can make a thermoelectric chip produce electricity. Or perhaps that a thermoelectric chip can produce electricity from an error. It is unclear to me what you mean, but please don't try to explain.

I might be able to comment if I had more than your assertion that something happened. I learned long ago not to trust that.

Well, there is the journal paper in Japanese and a video of the motor turning from Osaka U., but given your vigorous imagination I am sure you could find a reason to discount them. Let us agree to disagree on this. I will stick with the laws of thermodynamics, and you stay there in cloud cuckoo land. - Jed Rothwell

As I said in my analysis, I think his calculation of the heat of formation is way off. But it hardly matters, since no heat of chemical formation that normally stops in 20 minutes could persist measurably for 4 days!

Why isn't there a thermocouple on the feed?

Not needed, as I said. That part I do not quibble with.

If the D2 has to be filtered for helium, how has he determined the filter does not become saturated?

The only way to 'filter He from hydrogen is by using a Pd alloy membrane or the equivalent, or presabsorbing the hyrogen on a hydride bed and pumping out the remaining He. One can get hydrogen absorption blocking by accumulating He at the membrane or bed if that is not taken into account in the design.Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:37, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

No idea. As I said in my critique, the description of the mass spectroscopy is unsatisfactory.

How do you credit helium data that is not even shown?

What do you mean? See Fig. 8 my report (which is from Arata's report).

I see nothing about quantitative control in your report.

Bear in mind that my report is not Arata's report. I did not report everything he said. He did do blank runs, as I just noted.

What would you do to increase the % excess heat by a factor of ten?

Let it run 10 times longer. Or 100 times longer. There is no evidence that the cell is cooling down. Similar experiments have released 10,000 times more energy than any conceivable chemical reaction, with no sign of petering out. The only reason they stop this one is because they want to analyze the products or use equipment for another test.

There is also no possibility that the measurements are completely wrong because the temperature difference is roughly 1°C which is dead simple to detect with confidence using these instruments. There is no input power. Plus he sometimes uses the heat to power a thermoelectric chip connected to a small electric motor. (Very small, for something like a camera lens actuator, I think.)

I have little doubt that these results are real and that this heat is from cold fusion. It far exceeds the limits of chemistry. But I think the experiment could have been done in a more convincing fashion. I expect it is being done better back in China. (Note that Arata's co-author and collaborator Yuechang Zhang is Chinese, and a number of researchers from her university were working in the Osaka lab during the demonstration. I spoke and e-mailed them and Zhang in Japanese. They speak it quite fluently.)

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.19.97.69 (talk) 15:45, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

I wrote that Arata has "dozens of patents." 63 to be exact, with 22 others filed for and now in progress. The first one was granted in 1947.

I also wrote in response to this question: "What would you do to increase the % excess heat by a factor of ten?" "Let it run 10 times longer." Actually, the percent of excess heat in this experiment is infinite. There is no input after the first half-hour; it is all output. That simplifies the calorimetry! There are many other cold fusion experiments without input, in what Fleischmann calls "fully ignited reactions" (borrowing the term from the plasma fusion people, who have been trying to achieve this condition for 60 years without success).

I meant you can increase energy just by waiting, instead of deliberately quenching the reaction. To increase power you just increase the amount of zirconium powder. That should work. Arata's previous material scaled up nicely, unlike most other cold fusion reactions. With most cold fusion experiments, if you try to increase power by a factor of 10 you are likely to blow your head off, as you see from the photographs of explosions here:

http://lenr-canr.org/Experiments.htm#PhotosAccidents

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.19.97.69 (talk) 16:04, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

There are many, many problems with this demostration and with others like it over the years, and it isn't in the scope of this article to point them out. The inclusion of demostrations in the Wiki article should be prohibited. They are not reliable. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:12, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Kirk Shanahan wrote:

There are many, many problems with this demostration and with others like it over the years

None that you have found.

The inclusion of demostrations in the Wiki article should be prohibited.

"Prohibited" is too strong a word, but I see no point to adding this to the article.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.19.97.69 (talk • contribs) 15:20, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Are you (Jed) assuming a constant rate of heat loss to the surroundings, is that how you interpret 1°C? Are you unable to think of anything that might cause a sustained 1°C difference in readings? I do not suppose he ran the experiment again with ten times the amount of Pd and got 10°C difference measured and sustained in the same apparatus. The explosion risk is a sorry excuse. People who knew what they were doin made an A-bomb wihtout killing themselves. The D2 can be fed in slowly to reduce the heating rate at the beginning. Better yet, figure out how to increase the ratio between fusion reactions and chemical reactions within a fixed period of time. If running the experiment longer is your only tool for increasing the ratio, you cannot have looked far.

One thing I really do not like about this setup is that it relies on the assumption of a constant heat transfer coefficient between the sample and the environment or simply fails to quantify heat generation throughout the experiment. All you really have is that tiny tail, which must be extrapolated for days or weeks before it looks bigger than the chemical reactions that occur within the first few minutes.

Quantitative does not mean you have one control, yes or no. Quantitative means you show how the heat production varies with parameters. I would like to see a good number of runs, say six or ten, with progressively increasing H2:D2 fraction, showing a smooth variation of all the results with respect to the mole fraction (0.0,0.1, 0.2, ...,0.9,1.0). Another set of runs could show the temperature dependence of the effects. Refrigerate or heat the whole room if you have to. Those results would be a lot more informative than the usual: one run with D2 and one with H2. They are obvious steps for anyone seriously trying to figure out what is going on, as opposed to running the same old dog and pony show.Paul V. Keller (talk) 17:18, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Paul V. Keller wrote:

Are you (Jed) assuming a constant rate of heat loss to the surroundings, is that how you interpret 1°C?

Yes. The ambient temperature is stable. The cell temperature is persistently elevated for hours, days or in some cases months. With some cells it is palpable.

Are you unable to think of anything that might cause a sustained 1°C difference in readings?

Well, a blatant violation of the second law of thermodynamics would do it, but I don't believe that's possible. I cannot think of anything other than persistent heat that can raise the temperature of lab grade thermocouples and also drive a thermoelectric generator that drives a motor. That has to be an energy source, by first principles.

The explosion risk is a sorry excuse.

A friend of mine nearly got his carotid artery cut by an explosion, and Andrew Riley was killed in a conventional chemical explosion of a cold fusion cell, so I would say the risk is real. If you want to try to scale up one of these experiments just be sure I am not in the room. These experiments are dangerous even when they do not work.

People who knew what they were doing made an A-bomb without killing themselves.

Obviously cold fusion researchers do not know what they are doing. If they knew they would scale up. The research is entirely experimental without a working theory. It is similar to the discovery of radium which killed Mme. Curie. She died because she did not understand the nature of radioactivity.

Also, by the way, people were killed developing atomic bombs and fission reactors. The first victim of an experimental accident was in February 1945, caused by using a screw driver to hold two hemispheres apart.

The D2 can be fed in slowly to reduce the heating rate at the beginning.

That would not work. You would get lots of nothing until it reached critical loading levels, and then way too much of something. But Arata devices have not shown any sign of going out of control as far as I know, so perhaps the problem is fixed.

Quantitative means you show how the heat production varies with parameters. I would like to see a good number of runs, say six or ten . . .

How about several hundred runs, with clear correlations to control factors? See McKubre's data, or the ENEA data.

Actually, I first developed my CCS theorem when I looked over McKubre's data from the 1998 EPRI report. Unfortunately, while he published 200+MB of data on a CD with the report, none of it was calibration data. Then Storms posted his data and calibration data was included, which is just what I needed to put the final touches on the conventional explanation for apparent excess heat. And by the way Paul, Storms work was with Pt, not Pd, which doesn't hydride at all, so the claims of a required loading are bogus in the first approximation. It may impact surface structure through dislocation loop punching, but the idea that the bulk loading gives CF is bogus.Kirk shanahan (talk) 21:42, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

with progressively increasing H2:D2 fraction, showing a smooth variation of all the results with respect to the mole fraction

That wouldn't work. Hydrogen occupies the lattice sites preferentially, drives out the deuterium and quashes the reaction.

It is easy for you to say "I would like to see" this or that, but people like Fleischmann and Oriani, who have been working with hydrides for 50 years, will tell you that you can't always get what you want, and you seldom know what you've got. A hydride is an incredibly complex and poorly understood system. And furthermore, you -- Paul V. Keller -- don't know much about it, and you should not be second guessing the likes of Fleischmann and Oriani. You should not assume you know how to do this better than they do, or that they have overlooked something obvious.

You also know way less than Arata, by the way.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org— Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.19.97.69 (talk • contribs) 15:25, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually, very few really appear to have been 'hydride' experts. A quick Google Scholar search on "hydride + author:"R Oriani"" for example turned up 9 hits of which 5 could be considered 'hydride' research. For "M Fleischmann" I fot 8 hits, 4 in SERS and 4 in CF, for myself I get 25, with only 1 citation, but with some double-counting, and for a real expert in hydride chemistry, 'T Flanagan', I got 164 hits (counting the citations). The problem with your 'heros' is that they also thought up excuses why the conventional explantions 'just couldn"t' be the explanation for their observations. But they are usually wrong in that. Kirk shanahan (talk) 21:42, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

To determine whether Oriani is an expert or not, rather than doing a quick Google search, I suggest you read this paper:

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

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.19.97.69 (talk) 22:26, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

I see, so the writing of one paper qualifies one as an expert in the field? Good, I'll tell Pcarbonn so I can count Scott Little as a CF expert. Seriously, expert status is earned by a block of work in a particular field. Oriani is known as a materials science guy, and not a hydride guy. 192.33.240.30 (talk) 15:11, 9 December 2008 (UTC) - Note added Wiki logged me off so it didn't sign this properly - Kirk shanahan (talk) 15:14, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

To determine if he is an expert, I would check the Proceedings of the premier metal hydrides conference, the International Symposium on Metal Hydrogen Systems (usually referred to as MHxxxx where xxxx is the year) which is held biannually, or the attendee list of the Gordon Research Conference on Hydrogen-metal Systems (held in the off years when there isn't an MHxxx conf.). He doesn't show up. (Neitehr do any of the other CFers.) Oriani is a respected corrosion scientist and materials engineer, and while he may have knowledge of the hydride field, he is far from an expert. I have more experience in that than he and I don't claim to be an expert! (And before you jump on that, understand that I AM an expert in what I write.) Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:02, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

I wrote: "That would not work. You would get lots of nothing until it reached critical loading levels, and then way too much of something." Let me add, Dr. Keller, that if you would read an introductory review article or book about cold fusion you would know this. The data from McKubre, Kunimatsu and others makes this obvious, and this data has been available for 17 years. Arata's data also makes it obvious.

Before you make suggestions or critique this research, I strongly recommend you first acquaint yourself with the ABCs of cold fusion and conventional electrochemistry. Frankly, you make yourself look bad otherwise. No electrochemist or cold fusion researcher is likely to take your suggestions seriously (or even bother to read them) when what you are suggesting is physically impossible, or the questions you ask and concerns you raise were addressed by electrochemists decades ago. Experts in nuclear physics and electrochemistry have worked on these experiments for 20 years. They thought of everything you are now thinking up in the first 5 minutes, because most of them had been working with hydrides for decades.

The Storms book covers all of the topics you have raised so far, and many others, in detail.

Except for the serious objections raised by my work and that of W. Brian clarke. Kirk shanahan (talk) 21:42, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

That is incorrect. Your work is described on p. 41 and p. 172, and Clarke appears in several tables and footnotes. - Jed Rothwell —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.19.97.69 (talk) 22:16, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.19.97.69 (talk) 20:23, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

No Jed, you are incorrect. Storms mentions my 2002 publication where I describe the reanalysis of his data, and then proceeds to give his readers the impression he has refuted my position by discussing his 2006 paper. This is clear misrepresentation as he fails to reference or even mention that I rebutted all his 2006 points in a back-to-back paper in 2006. That is intellectually dishonest and completely misleads thereaders of his book. That is why Pcarbonn tried so hard to not let my edits of the Wiki article stand, since they detailed this for the Wiki reader. With respect to Clarke, yes, Storms has some of his older work referenced, but he fails to mention the one when Brian showed that McKubre couldn't keep air out of his systems. I added that reference to the Wiki article, and fortunately Pcarbonn couldn't find a way to delete it. Kirk shanahan (talk) 12:34, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh and BTW, Storms also fails to mention the exchange I had with Szpak and Fleischmann (and co-authors) in 2005 as well. Kirk shanahan (talk) 12:56, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

What fun! For a really wild experiment for someone with a bunch of money to risk, go to the "halfbakery" (preceded by "www." and followed by ".com") and search for this: "CF+SC=DC". The notion there is in regard to a possibility to directly generate electricity from Cold Fusion. That would be a LOT easier to detect than excess heat, wouldn't it? V (talk) 00:46, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

2 new papers on CR-39 in European Physical Journal

EPJ-AP has just published 2 more papers :

• Comment on “The use of CR-39 in Pd/D co-deposition experiments” by P.A. Mosier-Boss, S. Szpak, F.E. Gordon and L.P.G. Forsley Interpreting SPAWAR-type dominant pits
• Reply to comment on “The use of CR-39 in Pd/D co-deposition experiments”: a response to Kowalski

Pcarbonn (talk) 18:27, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Now that should be in the introduction, as the most recent publications in the most reliable class of sources. 69.228.201.246 (talk) 07:34, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it's the first time I recall that there has been a critical paper published by one of the 'in' crowd. Quite notable from that POV. Kirk shanahan (talk) 12:26, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

It's also interesting to note that the journal let the original authors reply to the challenge, and that they have the last word. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:53, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Not at all. That is the common procedure. The original authors have the ability to decline of course. And in some cases a 'reply to reply to comment' cycle may be observed.Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:26, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

In that same issue, there is a paper proposing a theory for "Solid state modified nuclear processes" Pcarbonn (talk) 18:34, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, where does the EPJ-AP stand among physics journals? I don't have access to Web of Science, but I notice that among in the physics journal category of SCImago, EPJ D is 48 of 352 when ranked by SCImago's SJR indicator. II | (t - c) 18:56, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't know. The EPJ AP theory paper cites this paper in Phys Rev C. : Solid state internal conversion. I would think that this journal meets the request of reliability of most skeptics, and the paper confirms that the controversy is still open. Pcarbonn (talk) 19:56, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Eh. That's going more than a bit far. None of the two papers above use the word 'cold' or 'low', although one cites a cold fusion paper. So you have to be pretty involved to even know they're related, which brings an original research problem. II | (t - c) 20:01, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

You've got to be 'fricking kidding me! SO an article on deoxyribonucleic acid that talks about transcription in cells nuclei published in a prestigious biology journal would be disqualified from any article on genetics as "Original Research" if it didn't have the word "genetics" in it anywhere? Does that not sound a little arbitrary to you? 'Cause it does to me. That's just not something I can take seriously. I'm sorry to say, but it made me laugh. Kevin Baas 19:39, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Just for the sake of demonstration, while looking over the proposed theory paper, I noted that the authors were considering PdDx (or PdDu as they call it) concentrations where u approaches 2. As far as I know, the best you can do with electrolytic loading is u=1.0-1.1. The Gw curves Kalman, et al show have a breakpoint near that value where the slopes flatten out quite a bit. I am not qualified to judge theory but I can see where that might be a serious problem with their theory, given that there are larger differences at u=1. This is just another example of what happens when you publish in 'obscure' (relative to the paper's topic) journals. A journal with metal hydride scientists on the review staff probably would have caught this problem and had Kalman et al clarify. In any case, since I know this, I would have trouble accepting the results without getting that clarification from a neutral party. There are also many assumptions built into the theory, and all would have to be tested vs. data, but which data? Kalman et al use F&P's 1989 work, and Szpak et al's recent work, but what about the rest? This is the cherry-picking issue I tried to raise in my additions to the Criticisms (theory) Section of the Wiki article, which Pcarbonn block deleted.Kirk shanahan (talk) 21:19, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages is not the place for breaking news

The most recent sections Arata and Zhang's demonstration in Bangalore and 2 new papers on CR-39 in European Physical Journal don't belong on Misplaced Pages, even a talk page. If has just been published its generally doesn't belong on Misplaced Pages unless the subject matter is very young as well. Further more this talk page is meant for discussing the article rather then pseudo-peer-reviewing current research in an inappropriate place. Stay on topic.--OMCV (talk) 23:27, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, Arata's work has been published for 18 years in the peer reviewed literature, and the first paper on zirconium material and this experiment, Yamaura et al., came out in 2002. So it isn't exactly breaking news. I doubt anyone in the field is unaware of Arata's work or the fact that he and several others are investigating Zr and other substrate materials to overcome the problem of sintering with gas loaded finely divided materials.

But this is one of hundreds of promising approaches and ongoing experiments. Perhaps it is not important enough to include in the article. On the other hand, the article is full of irrelevant and unimportant stuff, not to mention imaginary nonsense cooked up by "skeptics." Replacing some of that garbage with Arata might not be a bad idea. But anyway, Misplaced Pages belongs to the "skeptics" and know-nothings. They should do whatever they please with the article. No legitimate scientist will contribute.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.65.88.212 (talk) 05:30, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Jed, I admit to chuckling at the word 'promising'. It's been nearly 20 years(!!) since the first "promising" experiments.

As for the article, new research in a field might be mentioned if it broke some new ground. But clearly this stuff doesn't - you've got lists of papers on your site with two decades worth of fantastic and compelling results (if looked at by someone who doesn't realize that novel research (in any field) is little better than alchemy until put through all the filters of science). Anyway, none of these new papers break new ground, they merely rehash old experiments while being considerably less compelling than previous ones. Even you would agree with that. Phil153 (talk) 11:17, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Phil153 wrote:

I admit to chuckling at the word 'promising'. It's been nearly 20 years(!!) since the first "promising" experiments.

Yes. And as I pointed out previously, the replication rate has increased from a few per hundred to 90%; power has increased from a fraction of a watt to ~20 watts in typical experiments; and the ratio of input to output (where there is input power) has increased from a maximum of 3 to around around 40. I consider that dramatic progress, and I think it is promising. Perhaps you do not. For a summary of these improvements see:

http://en.citizendium.org/Cold_Fusion

As for the article, new research in a field might be mentioned if it broke some new ground. But clearly this stuff doesn't . .

I do not think anyone in the field would agree with you. Arata's Zr material is a major breakthrough. The experiment was poorly done, in my opinion, but the material is extremely promising and has many important advantages over anything previously tested, including the other nano materials. As I mentioned, it produces stable heat with no input power; it scales up; it turns on almost instantly; and it turns off quickly too (something many conventional systems such as burning coal cannot do).

By the way, no one following the field is surprised by this. There has been steady progress in nano materials and Arata has been the acknowledged leader in this technique from the start.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.19.97.69 (talk) 22:48, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

It may be a major breakthrough to proponents, but to a disinterested observer, there is little new compared to previous claims. You already claim: 90% reproducibility, 20 watt sustained power output, 40:1 input:ouput ratio, unequivocal detection of nuclear products in a variety of media. I don't see how this advances any of these. Phil153 (talk) 01:52, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Phil153 wrote: "You already claim: 90% reproducibility, 20 watt sustained power output . . . I don't see how this advances any of these."

Then you are not looking closely at the data. Look at the 20 W output in the graph I referenced, and compare it Arata's signal. Compare the devices, materials and performance. Arata's Zr material, like other gas loaded nano material has many obvious advantages: it turns on sooner and turns off (as I said), it is controllable, it produces both stable and sustained heat, it scales better, it uses much less Pd, and it requires no input power. These are important improvements toward a practical device. Of course these advantages have been obvious since Arata, Case and others began working with nano materials 17 years ago, so it is not news, but this is the best nano material yet developed. Probably. It was developed at the Institute for Materials Research, Tohoku U., to give credit where it is due.

I would say you are more uninterested than disinterested.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.217.46.38 (talk) 15:06, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

I certainly don't agree. People should feel free to bring up potential sources on talk page. I can't understand why "if it has just been published it generally doesn't belong on Misplaced Pages". Generally we want to put published research on Misplaced Pages, especially if sourced to a reasonably decent journal. Papers in these journals are peer-reviewed before being published. Anyway, this subject matter is relatively young, according to Jed above it is not exactly breaking news. What are your thoughts then? I gather that the CF phycists are waiting for a critical paper from a mainstream physicist -- and they've been waiting for a while. If it takes another ten years, are we supposed to wait for it before discussing their research, especially when that research is published in mainstream physics journals? And a lackluster blog post is evidence enough that it's still nonsense and needs to be presented as such? Why are more professionally worded editorials such the one from Nature India II | (t - c) 05:58, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

No legitimate science should contribute to Misplaced Pages in their own field of expertize. As scientists we work on subjects that are in flux involving a lot of original research. We report this work in the proper place, the peer-reviewed journal. Only once assertions are no longer debated are they suitable for Misplaced Pages in any technical detail. No matter what is argued the field of cold fusion is still in the shadow of P&F as illustrated by the PhysicsWorld.com intro. There isn't consensus that CF is a legitimate line of inquiry. I wish you all the luck in the world bring CF to the mainstream if it has value but it isn't there yet and this is the current context CF should be reported. Again this isn't the place to blog about CF research, especially for individuals with clear conflicts of interest.--OMCV (talk) 06:04, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

No legitimate scientist should contribute to Misplaced Pages in their own field of expertise? I don't agree with that at all either. I would hope that some of the people editing this article are up on physics and especially on the specialization, cold fusion. Similarly for all other articles. Most of the medicine articles are edited quite a bit by MDs and most of the economics articles have economists on them. People should be editing where they have expertise. In any case, I still disagree with your contention. If recent research (as this is presumably not, per Jed) is presented neutrally, it doesn't stand for anything other than it is. New, uncertain research. That's not a reason to keep it out. Misplaced Pages's advantage is that it can move fast, and it thus very up-to-date. If it records breaking news which turns out to be wrong, it's not as if it's a major loss. What are you worried about? People aren't going to be depending upon cold fusion as a medicine. II | (t - c) 06:19, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for demanding that I make my point better. To begin with our standards for science should be no less than our standards for medicine. I'm worried that[REDACTED] will be filled with poorly substantiated assertions.

When I say "expertize" I mean the research that the given scientist actually conducts. I would hope a physics contributes on physics subjects, and a nuclear physicists contribute on nuclear physics subjects. But if the scientist is researching the use of a radio isotope as a therapeutic that has previously not been used as a radio therapeutic they should not spend their time writing this up on[REDACTED] even if they just published a paper. They should submit it to a peer-reviewed journal. On this sort of material the scientist has definitive opinions that are not part of the consensus. By the materials very nature the scientist will be pushing POV. This does not belong on[REDACTED] and this is what worries me about the current set of editors.--OMCV (talk) 06:40, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

If we introduced 'new uncertain research" into the article we might as well introduce a trivia section. It will have the same effect as a trivia section in other articles. Trivia are intrinsically detrimental to any topic, especially science topics. More so if they are controversial topics such as CF. In fact we should be serious and selective and err on the side of caution. This field is littered with many false leads. We shouldn't be falling for every promising new breakthrough otherwise we can convert this article to the miracle of the month club. Dr.K. (logos) 06:55, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Saying that recent peer-reviewed research is equivalent to trivia is so absurd that there probably isn't a logical fallacy which covers it besides the general 'dubious equivalency'. It does seem like a lot of work for little benefit, but it's not trivia, and the harms seem exaggerated. Anyway, I'm hardly going to edit this article because I don't know anything about cold fusion. But I doubt many Wikipedians do. One of the letters linked to above, incidentally, is a critical letter. I only got drawn into this discussion because it bothers me when people advocate censoring prima facie reliable sources not only from the article page, but from the talk page as well. Those letters in particular look a bit too complicated and primary-ish to be cited in this article, but I wouldn't really know. II | (t - c) 08:08, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Imperfectly Informed, my answer covered "new uncertain research". It should not be construed as meaning "peer reviewed research in reputable publications". I understand "uncertain research" to mean the lower grade research published in conference proceedings, obscure journals etc. Incorporating all these highly technical and dubious details and results in the article would clutter it as hopelessly as any trivia section. And in any case, even if any research claims are made in peer reviewed reputable publications, we should wait for the dust to settle as Dr. Shanahan suggests below. Cluttering the article with highly technical information that may or may not survive in the long run, or that may even be refuted by even newer research, does not do any service to the reader. I think we should find a happy medium where we dispense with extreme technicalities and provide the reader with an honest assessment of the state of the art of CF without putting the reader on a roller-coaster ride of high expectations and broken promises on an as-you-go basis, by incorporating the latest and greatest breakthroughs of the day or the week in CF research. Like it or not the CF field has not reached a steady-state yet. We may have to wait out the transients or at least make sure we don't ride every single transient that is offered by the researchers in the field. And this is also for the sake of the average reader. We wouldn't want them to be ejected, during this wild ride, nor should we expect them to be nuclear fusion experts to understand the article. Dr.K. (logos) 16:45, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Let's not get excited about peer review. There's a monstrous leap from peer reviewed published papers to verified phenomenon (or even promising phenomenon). This is especially true when we cite from journals of low repute or lax standards (of which there are many). And even more true when it's contrary to most prestigious journals or the position of the best impartial experts in the field. Phil153 (talk) 11:26, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) OMCV, I agree that the demonstration and recent papers don't need to be in the Wiki article and thus probably should not be on the Talk page either. As i noted above, demonstrations are not reliable sources, as in the field of CF, they never prove much anyway. Typically a demo is set up to show how something works AFTER it has been well researched and published. The CFers use demos to try to drum up support, and they are typically like Arata's, where you're left wondering just what was actually demonstrated. With regards to the papers in the field, since the field has been discredited for some time, readers shouldn't get excited about 'new' claims, since a) they often aren't (as noted above), and b) they often don't hold up (a la the Paterson Power Cell). In a 'normal' field, recent publications may be more trustworthy, but even there they should still be given some time to let the dust settle a bit. Kirk shanahan (talk) 12:53, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Interesting controversy. However to say that[REDACTED] is not a place for newly published data is absurd. On any other page or in any other topic newly published data is quickly added. Why should physics be different?Doc James (talk) 15:53, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

I would think in any field that incorporating newly published info without waiting for some reaction from other scientists in the field would be hazardous to Wiki's reliability. Especially so in pseudoscience fields like cold fusion. As noted elsewhere in these Talk pages by several authors, the CFers routinely put out 'new discoveries', only to have their validity questioned later. If the new data you mention seems consistent with conventional wisdom, then you may be safer, but in a field like CF, where the claim is that they are revolutionizing physics, it's dangerous. Further, the mainstream long ago decided the CF saga was over, so almost no one is watching. That leads to a lot of garbage being published that just shouldn't make it. (And by the way, it's chemistry, not physics  :-) ) Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:46, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Doc James, look at it this way. Jed Rothwell claims above that there are over 3000 reputable, peer reviewed papers on cold fusion published since 1989, proving everything from large amounts of excess heat to all kinds of detections of nuclear products. If the intro contained each of these studies (as it is proposed to contain this one), there'd be a new "breaking research" item in the intro 3 times a week for 20 years.

Misplaced Pages is supposed to take a longer term view, while informing the reader of significant developments in the field. A significant development in a rejected field such as cold fusion would be unequivocal demonstration of fusion by a prestigious laboratory, and reported in high profile journal, or the mainstream media. For example, the breaking research of Fleischmann and Pons would obviously be included when it broke. Phil153 (talk) 21:50, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Phil153 wrote:

A significant development in a rejected field such as cold fusion would be unequivocal demonstration of fusion by a prestigious laboratory, and reported in high profile journal, or the mainstream media.

Storms lists 200 unequivocal demonstrations of fusion in prestigious laboratories reported in high-profile journals. Here is an example:

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

I have never heard of mainstream media covering any of these events.

NOTES: "Prestigious laboratories" include places such as Los Alamos, BARC, China Lake and Mitsubishi. Perhaps you do not consider them prestigious enough. Perhaps you do not consider J. Electroanal. Chem. a high-profile journal. These are judgment calls. Most of the people who performed these experiments are retired or dead. Finally, most of the journal papers describing these experiments are not available at LENR-CANR.org because of copyright restrictions, but you can find them in our bibliography. All are available at the libraries at Georgia Tech and Los Alamos, which is where we got our copies.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.19.97.69 (talk) 23:04, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Los Alamos is prestigious without a doubt, and China Lake and BARC are certainly decent. I don't consider J. Electroanal. Chem. to be high profile when it comes to nuclear physics, which is the proposed mechanism here.

The point I'm making is that the field is already discredited and thought by many to be pathological science, and new research has a large burden of proof to overcome. And there are already hundreds of papers with positive results which the mainstream rejects. New research of this kind doesn't change anything in that regard and doesn't shed new light on the debate or the science. As an example of something that would: if a reputable scientists claims a mechanism to boil water using CF and published it in Nature, or even Physical Review, then it would be worth noting as breaking news. Phil153 (talk) 01:52, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Phil153 wrote: "The point I'm making is that the field is already discredited . . ."

That is your opinion. You should realize that researchers include hundreds of very distinguished scientists and they do not consider it discredited at all. They see no reason why it should be discredited because they have followed the rules and published in peer-reviewed journals. Waving your hands and saying something is discredited does not make it discredited: you have to have a technical reason, and you have none. No significant error has been discovered in any major experiment. The researchers think that people like you have no credibility. (I think so too, but this is not about me -- I am reported what they think.)

You do not agree but you should realize that is how they see things.

Also, there have been plenty of papers in nuclear physics journals, including papers by three of the editors of leading plasma physics and physics journals.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.211.45.202 (talk) 14:54, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

It really isn't my opinion; the fact that many leading journals will not even publish CF research, the fact that CF researchers are marginalized for their involvement, the fact that prestigious secondary and tertiary sources name it as an example of pathological science, the fact that reliable news sources report it as a field in disrepute, even the fact that the patent office will not accept CF applications, mark it clearly as a discredited field. That says nothing about its truth or otherwise, but it's clearly discredited. Just read LENR-CANR.org for an endless cataloguing of these things.

I can list scores of technical reasons why CF is discredited, but none would sway you. The lack of a viable theory, the conflict with known and experimentally well proven nuclear theories, the poor level of replication, the contradictions in results (for example, numerous studies use H2O (light water) as a control vs D2O, while others have published results with H2O anomalies (Patterson comes to mind)), the tiny differential between control and anamalous temperatures which is close to the kind of measurement and apparatus errors that can creep undetected into experiments, the constant adhocing of theory, the known frauds and lunatics (whose work is still quoted rather than shunned), the unreasonable claims of conspiracy, the lack of serious pursuit of falisification, etc. All of these paint a picture of pathological research and taken together they give good reason for rejection.

CF evidence, whether it's peer reviewed or not, ultimately comes down to a small group of people (and often the same people over and over again) saying "we did experiment x, saw some anomaly y, and trust us, we reported it faithfully and all the apparatus worked properly and all possible errors and alternative explanations were fully accounted for". That's simply not enough to be taken seriously, especially in a field that strongly flies in the face of 50+ years of observations and the theories that came out of that.

Anyway I really must desist with this since it wastes both our time and isn't the point of the talk page. I admire your tenacity and hope it isn't misplaced. Phil153 (talk) 15:37, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

This message has many disturbing factual and logical errors. There may be some number of crazy people associated with cold fusion but there are also ~4500 authors in my database who are sane professional scientists, as far as I know. They cannot be held responsible for the actions or words of the insane people. For that matter, a scientist in one lab cannot be held responsible for mistakes made by a scientist in another lab, even when both are sane. Along similar lines, there are weak results with a low signal-to-noise ratios, as well as null results. But these do not cast doubt upon the high signal-to-noise ratio results. On the contrary, they contribute to our understanding by showing that the reaction does not occur in some conditions, while it occurs strongly in other conditions. - Jed Rothwell —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.219.54.221 (talk) 19:43, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

The problem with that is Jed is referring to baseline noise only, and not the noise induced by a CCS. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:11, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

I really liked the stats. They clearly demonstrate that the "breaking news method" should be better left to CNN and is not recommended for an encyclopedia. It is also clear that we cannot have 3,000 citations in the article. Selectivity with a long term view is the best approach for a field that is still in flux. Dr.K. (logos) 22:06, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

My thoughts are that if this article is to reflect the 'state of the art' in CF, updates should be brought up here to be analyzed. Of course, it would be much better to see another review ... II | (t - c) 18:56, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

The main article should have a section on current thinking in cold fusion research. One thing I noticed from where I participated in this discussion was there seems to be some agreement that even small amounts of H2 dampen the effect. If an agreement is ever reached about which experiments produce gamma rays, that would be deserving of comment too.

I think Jed and other have carried their point that cold fusion cannot be treated as a pseudoscience topic. The reseach may not be quite trustworthy, but it cannot be dismissed like a few backyard wackos with the latest claims to perpertual motion. The theory may be lacking, but it generally does not delve into the incoherent ramblings littered with science words that you see in pseudoscience literature. I think cold fusion is better presented in terms of the pathological science debate, including all the reasons it might be thought of as pathological science and that it does not warrant funding, but also that sliver of possibility that their might be something to cold fusion research; that there are no absolutes in real science.Paul V. Keller (talk) 22:27, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

I don’t really follow your logic here. The Wiki page on Pseudoscience (make sure you follow through to the scientific method page and carefully read the third paragraph of the intro) clearly indicates that the prime component is failure to follow the scientific method. It also explains that doing that includes full disclosure and participation in scientific debate. Currently most ‘publications’ are in places like the Proceedings of the xth ICCF (International Conference on Cold Fusion) or Proceeding of the Japan Cold Fusion Society. These papers are not critically reviewed, as has been noted in the Wiki CF article already. As I noted above, the two Eur Phy J publications on CR-39 are unique and astounding, because you are actually getting an ‘insider’ (Kowalski) to critique another ‘insider’ (the Szpak group). Further, the failure of Ed Storms to fairly discuss the outstanding negative issues regarding excess heat and He detection in his 2007 book also indicates an unwillingness to participate in the scientific process. No one else has ever responded to my or Clarke’s publications by modifying their approach either, so the CF researchers in whole don’t participate in the refining process of the scientific method. CF seems to me to meet the Wiki definition of pseudoscience, and they are very good at it, fooling many non-experts into believing they actually do real science. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:16, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't have a link but I'm pretty sure some official sounding Misplaced Pages review concluded that CF wasn't pseudoscience. I'd tend to agree - it does have some of the traits but isn't nearly as unscientific as other fields classified as pseudoscience like water memory or creationism. At worst it's bad science, or pathological science. Of course, if you want to re-open the debate as to whether CF is pseudoscience I wouldn't stop you. Phil153 (talk) 13:24, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there was some such vote. I have to question the qualifications of those who 'voted' to distinguish pseudo from real science in this case. As I noted, the CFers are quite good at fooling us. I started out in this in c.1997 thinking that maybe they had a case, but I found out in the end they didn't, at least not for a nuclear effet. There definitely is some chemistry going on though. And I won't be trying to open the debate again, I don't have time for that. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:51, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

There was a Request For Comment here --Enric Naval (talk) 03:31, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. That was helpful. I agree with the past consensus. Dr.K. (logos) 03:36, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

I asserted cold fusion is not pseudoscience after some thought and research, including reading the article on science and some of its references. The main idea of science is to test ideas with theory, but as a practical matter you always have to decide whether there was a source of error in any given experiment: you do not automatically believe what your instruments say. I am not going to pure relativism where all theories have equal value, but I am recognizing there is an intuitive or experiential element in weighing all the evidence. I can cite a bunch of reasons that cold fusion research is probably a waste of time, but a conclusion that cold fusion is not real would still be based on heuristics.

Criticising particular cold fusion researchers is another matter. You can say this one is not using the scientific method, or that one is so sloppy his results are meaningless, but you cannot dismiss the whole field using examples.

The heart of the pseudoscience distinction in my point of view is theory. If you look at zero point energy (power) research, you'll find nothing but fakers using words they do not understand. The same goes for pretty much every perpetual motion machine maker. With cold fusion, it is different. Usually cold fusion workers do not venture to hypothesize a mechanism. I think that is a real weakness, but you do not need to have a theory of everything to be doing science. Cold fusion researchers have a vague, not altogether impossible idea, that there is some sort of particle that lies in the range between a muon and an electron that can form inside a Pd matrix. If such a particle could form, you could have an analogue to muon-catalyzed fusion, which is real "cold" fusion. A little more arm waving might get you past the issue of the nuclear reactions still not being the ones you would predict. Dismiss a few more experiments that fail to detect required byproducts, and maybe except Swinger's theory that the gamma rays do not make it out of the Pd matrix and voila , there it is, cold fusion without having cast away all known science: just added to it. No, I do not buy it, would not pay $10 for rights to the whole thing. But there is a big difference between having the opinion that cold fusion research is misguided or a waste of time, and having the opinion that cold fusion is a false veneer of fake science put up by nut jobs and scammers with no real interest in science.Paul V. Keller (talk) 03:06, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Dr. Keller's analysis. At least some of these researchers cannot be dismissed in a wholesale fashion as pursuing pseudo-science. This process has some degree of residual integrity. The 2004 DOE report, although negative overall, did not indicate that CF research was pseudo-scientific. Dr.K. (logos) 03:19, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Having said that I also find that Dr. Shanahan's CCS postulate is a very interesting alternative. Dr.K. (logos) 03:25, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

The CCS effect cannot generate palpable heat, or boil water with no input power, or cause a thermoelectric chip to generate enough electricity to turn a small motor. Therefore, it cannot explain cold fusion heat. Perhaps if it were true, it might show that some low level cold fusion heat is an artifact, but I do not know any experts in calorimetry who agree that it is true.

Shanahan's hypothesis resembles the claim by Jones that all cold fusion heat can be explained as recombination. This cannot be true for several reasons, mainly: many cells use gas instead of electrolysis; many cells include recombiners, so recombination always occurs and is accounted for; most open cells without recombiners include gas flow meters and other methods of accounting for the gas; many cells have produced excess heat far above the limits of recombination (hundreds of times above it). Jones, if correct, could explain only a tiny fraction of all cold fusion results and yet he claims that he can explain them all. He has repeated this countless times and never acknowledged that his explanation cannot possibly apply to most experiments. This is intellectual dishonesty. Shanahan is also intellectually dishonest, or confused, when he refuses to describe how his proposed artifact could cause a thermoelectric generator to turn a motor, or a cell to remain so hot a person cannot touch it for days on end, with no input power. He hypothesis is not an "alternative" unless it can explain these events.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.219.153.139 (talk) 15:04, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Jed, are you claiming water has boiled through fusion alone? And that a chemical reaction didn't play a part? (as is the case in the studies noted above for the large majority of the heat, or in the chemical explosion which killed a researcher.). If you are claiming this, I'd be very interested to read the paper if you'd be kind enough to give a source. Phil153 (talk) 15:45, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Phil153 wrote:

Jed, are you claiming water has boiled through fusion alone?

Yes. In two modes: with electrolysis input, for up to 3 months; and without input, ranging from an hour or so to 3 days. The latter mode greatly simplifies the calorimetry, because there is no input. This was first done by Fleischmann et al., who used to run an array of 64 cells. It was best replicated by the late G. Lonchampt (who was commissioner on the French AEC). Here is the most comprehensive description of the calorimetry:

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

Here is a description of the continuous boiling experiments:

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

As you see, output is 1.5 to 2.5 times input.

And that a chemical reaction didn't play a part?

No chemical reaction has ever been found in a successful cold fusion experiment. (Other than hydride formation, of course!) When there are chemical transformations, or changes such as dissolving cell contents deposited onto the cathode (galvanized garbage), the cell does not produce cold fusion heat. Chemical changes are readily observable. Usually the color changes. Physical changes such as cracks in the cathode also prevent the reaction, and you can see them with the naked eye.

(as is the case in the studies noted above for the large majority of the heat, or in the chemical explosion which killed a researcher.).

In that explosion all of the enthalpy came from chemistry. See: Smedley, S.I., et al. The January 2, 1992, Explosion in a Deuterium/Palladium Electrolytic System at SRI International. in Third International Conference on Cold Fusion, "Frontiers of Cold Fusion". 1992. Nagoya Japan: Universal Academy Press, Inc., Tokyo, Japan.

In successful electrochemical experiments with low level heat, the majority of heat comes from electrolysis, but in others only a fraction of it does; typically 5% to 30%. In gas loading there is no input power. There is a lot of input power with ion beam loading but the output is measured entirely as nuclear particles, so enthalpy does not enter the equation. Various other techniques have been used successfully, some with very low input. For example, Mizuno, Oriani and a few others have observed heat from proton conductor ceramics. These are a kind of solid-state gas electrolysis: the fluid is D2 gas which goes from a Pt anode into a high temperature superconductor cathode. These devices take only milliwatts or microwatts of input power. On the rare occasions that they work they produce anywhere from a couple of watts to enough heat to melt the ceramic and vaporize the power leads.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.219.153.139 (talk) 16:35, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Dr Keller said above : "Usually cold fusion workers do not venture to hypothesize a mechanism." On the contrary, there are many theories proposed (see Storms 2007), but none has gained acceptance, even among the CF researchers. For an example, see Solid state modified nuclear processes, and Solid state internal conversion. Pcarbonn (talk) 15:40, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

And all of them are some variant of a nuclear reaction. The only non-nuclear proposal to develop the effect is mine, which is what is soundly ignored by the CFers, demonstrating their pseudoscience characteristics. Kirk shanahan (talk) 19:11, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

(Phil153, please see your user talk page for a comment from me. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:01, 12 December 2008 (UTC))

WP:AE's request for a formal warning

Since Jed doesn't have a talk page, I have to notify him here: I have asked here that an uninvolved admin gives him a formal warning about WP:PSEUDOSCIENCE's discretionary sanctions. --Enric Naval (talk) 13:53, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

I have removed the ensuing comments per WP:TALK. If you want to make off topic comments in any language, get an account and use your talk page, email, or a web host. Thanks, Verbal chat 22:02, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Weighing validity of opposition

Please take to Kirk's talk page per WP:TALK, thank you. Verbal chat 22:05, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

This discussion bears directly on the portions of the article citing Dr. Shanahan. 69.228.201.246 (talk) 17:06, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Refocusing

I believe the majority of the editors of the CF article don’t need to see all the detailed discussions about CF that have been posted here to date. I am guilty of contributing to the morass, and I hereby declare that I am refocusing my comments here directly towards improving the CF article, which I still feel is highly biased in favor of CF, because it does not have the current set of criticisms adequately represented. I am tired of talking at Jed Rothwell because he never learns, and I won’t be doing that anymore. The rest of you can rest assured that anytime Jed promotes CF, I have a counterargument. If you want to know what it is, ask on my talk page.

I have held off editing the article until the ArbCom thing about PCarbonn is decided, because he has opposed nearly everything I have tried to add to the article, either by block deletion or by moving it to a secondary page (a tactic used in the prior generation of this article, can anyone fine the ‘Cold Fusion Controversy’ page?) which I oppose. There are many pages on this in the archives of this page. I stand ready to edit that subsection, once you all decide it is time, and what is the best way to work in the criticisms. Until then I will try to answer article-related questions as best as I can. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:22, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Kirk shanahan wrote:

I am tired of talking at Jed Rothwell because he never learns,

Please do not personalize this. This is not about me or my opinions. The people who "never learn" from Kirk Shanahan are a group of 4,000 professional scientists, including most of the world's top electrochemists (Fleischmann, Bockris, Oriani and Gerisher). They disagree with him. For example, they feel strongly that when a thermoelectric chip drives a motor, this must be caused by energy; it cannot be an instrument artifact. I am reporting their views. Of course I agree with them, but I must emphasize that this is NOT a personal argument between Shanahan and me.

Shanahan also wrote:

I believe the majority of the editors of the CF article don’t need to see all the detailed discussions about CF that have been posted here to date.

These discussions are elementary, not detailed. A person who is not fully aware of everything I have described -- in much more detail than I have provided -- is not qualified to edit this article. One of the worst problems with this article is that such uninformed people do edit it.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.219.153.139 (talk • contribs) 14:47, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Translation: If you aren't an initiate, you couldn't possibly understand the Truth. If that's not a "hallmark of pseudoscience", I don't know what is.LeadSongDog (talk) 23:21, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

No, what I mean is that you cannot do science by ESP. If you do not read the literature on a subject, you do not know about it, and you are not qualified to pontificate about it. This is what every elementary textbook says, and in any field other than cold fusion, everyone would agree. But for some reason LeadSongDog and others feel they can understand cold fusion without studying it. If this is not a hallmark of unscientific thinking, I don't know what is.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.217.47.115 (talk) 14:41, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Of course that's the point Jed. We're not doing science here, we're writing an article about the state of affairs in CF today. That means we point out your 4500 scientists is a drop in the bucket of the world's scientists, and that most of the world thinks CF was deemed psuedoscience back in c. 1992. And, it means we point out that there are those 4500 who still claim today CF is real, but that there are real criticisms to their claims. We are not trying to decide what is real and true here, just what the state of the 'field' is today from the mainstream and neutral point of view. Neutraility has been the issue thus far, and you're not helping. Kirk shanahan (talk) 14:59, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Kirk shanahan wrote:

Of course that's the point Jed. We're not doing science here, we're writing an article about the state of affairs in CF today.

In that case, I suggest you change the title of the article from "Cold Fusion" to "The public response to cold fusion" or something like that. I was under the impression that articles in Misplaced Pages about scientific subjects are supposed to be about the technical issues, rather than sociology or popular culture.

That means we point out your 4500 scientists is a drop in the bucket of the world's scientists . . .

I would not point that out. It seems unimportant, and the only source for that information is the endnote database compiled by Britz, Storms and I, which I gather you do not consider reliable or kosher.

. . . and that most of the world thinks CF was deemed psuedoscience back in c. 1992.

That is not in evidence. Public opinion surveys and the like indicate that the "world" -- and specifically professional scientists and engineers -- was divided roughly evenly in 1992, and it remains evenly divided today. in any case, you have no reliable statistical proof of that assertion.

And, it means we point out that there are those 4500 who still claim today CF is real, but that there are real criticisms to their claims.

That is incorrect. There are no "real" criticisms, but only criticism such as yours and Jones' which could only "explain" a tiny fraction of the results. (Actually, you explain nothing, because no other scientist thinks your theory is valid. Supposedly an opinion held only by you alone should not be included in Misplaced Pages, but apparently that rule does not apply to 'skeptics' who oppose cold fusion.)

We are not trying to decide what is real and true here, just what the state of the 'field' is today from the mainstream and neutral point of view.

Who do you define as mainstream? Some choices:

1. Any person anywhere -- journalist, scientist or cop on the corner.

2. Any scientist in any field.

3. Scientists who have read five or more papers on the subject.

4. Scientists who have professional qualifications in relevant areas and to have performed similar experiments.

5. Scientists who have made actual peer-reviewed contributions to the field.

In most areas of science only the last 2 groups is considered qualified to comment on the subject. In any case, based on the comments submitted by readers LENR-CANR.org, I am sure that groups 3 through 5 overwhelmingly believe that cold fusion is real, and that the criticisms made of it have no merit.

Neutrality has been the issue thus far, and you're not helping.

In my opinion, you are incapable of holding a neutral view on this subject. A neutral view must begin by accepting the reality of massively replicated high signal-to-noise experimental data. Anyone who does not agree to that is not a scientist -- by definition -- and cannot be neutral or even knowledgeable about the subject.

The scientific method has bedrock rules. It begins with the irrefutable authority of instrument readings and replicated experiments. Anyone who does not play by these rules has no business contributing to an article about science. You are engaged in a form of religion. You cannot pick and choose the data, and ignore the fact that most cold fusion data cannot be explained by your theories. You will never reach a firm conclusion, make progress, or settle any dispute because you have no standards or method of confirming or refuting your ideas.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.217.47.115 (talk) 16:41, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Jed wrote: "It begins with the irrefutable authority of instrument readings and replicated experiments" - Actualy Jed you have it backwards. You replicate to establish the reliability of the equipment, because of a little thing called 'error'. Once you have assessed your noise (error) level (which may be nonrandom, trivial example: Poisson stats) you make sure the effect you are seeing is out of the noise, and then proceed to establish control over it. Then you tranmit this info to others and they replicate you. At that point you can start getting serious about crafting explanations (theories). (This is for those cases where there is no preexisting theory to confirm.)

So, let me ask, do you think my work and comments need to be excised from the article? Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:29, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I think what he's trying to say is that science starts with empirical observation, and only after numerous observations does it move its way up to theory. And that putting all the weight on empirical evidence instead of theory is a founding principle of science. (In fact, it is arguably the one thing, above all, that distinguishes science from religion.) Kevin Baas 18:52, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Kirk shanahan wrote:

You replicate to establish the reliability of the equipment, because of a little thing called 'error'. Once you have assessed your noise (error) level . . .

This has been done in cold fusion. As Hagelstein, McKubre and others have shown, it has been done far more carefully and extensively than in most fields, because the claims are controversial. There is no chance that all of the results are caused by error. (Some of the low s/n results probably are, in my opinion.)

No, it hasn't. No, Hagelstein and McKubre and others have NOT considered the CCS. If they had, they would realize that McK's data (for example) are explainable by a CCS, BUT they never publish the numbers that would allow 'us skeptics' to show that. It's a little problem with something called 'full disclosure'. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:27, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

At that point you can start getting serious about crafting explanations (theories).

That's a good point. Your theory fails to explain the data. You cannot show, for example, how an instrument error might cause a thermoelectric chip to generate electricity and turn a motor.

Cite the reference(s) please, where the full disclosure on this supposed experiment is published. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:27, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

1. Arata, Y. and Y. Zhang, 「固体核融合」実用炉の達成 (The Establishment of Solid Nuclear Fusion Reactor) J. High Temp. Soc., 2008. 34(2): p. 85.

Apparently not out yet. Helpful ref there Jed. At least there is some hope it will come out. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:47, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

2. Arata, Y. and Y. Zhang, Establishment of the "Solid Fusion" Reactor. 2008, distributed during lecture May 22, 2008, Arata Hall, Osaka National University.

A demonstration handout. How are we supposed to get that? real useful again Jed. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:47, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Let me add that this is a rather strange way to prove that the thermocouples are functioning correctly and the heat is not an artifact. The conventional method is to use a joule heater. There are hundreds of examples of this in the literature. I don't recall others using a thermoelectric generator plus motor. Other methods such as confirmation with a mercury thermometer, and boiling water, and of course sense of touch have also been reported. The point is, most researchers take reliable steps to ensure that the heat is not an instrument artifact. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.217.47.115 (talk) 22:35, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

- Jed Rothwell —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.217.47.115 (talk) 21:15, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

It isn't strange at all. Skeptics have been asking for the CFers to 'close the loop' for years, i.e. to take this 'excess energy' and use it to do something. Driving a thermoelectric chip is a first step in that direction, if it holds up to scrutiny. The other methods you cite are certainly susceptible to misinterpretation. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:47, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

So, let me ask, do you think my work and comments need to be excised from the article?

Well, I believe the rules here say that a theory that only one person believes should not be written into an article by that person himself. So I suppose your work should be excised. But I see no harm in leaving it there. It is fine with me, personally.

It is true that one author has published a potential explantion for the FPH effect (i.e. cold fusion), but that does not imply only one person believes it. To date, everyone (but committed CFers) who takes the time to understand what I am saying understands the potential of the explanation. As such, and since it IS published, it should be mentioned in the article. What goes in the article should not be based on personal opinion, but upon the facts as they exist. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:27, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I am emphatically -- enthusiastically! -- in favor uploading your work to LENR-CANR.org. I wish you would grant me permission to upload the other two papers. I would love to have anything that you or any other skeptic have published, because:

I answered this on my talk page. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:27, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

1. I am FANATICALLY in favor of academic freedom and free speech. That means giving everyone a chance to make his or her case. An article at Misplaced Pages has be short, and it has to include only the most important points, but there are no size limits to LENR-CANR.org.

2. I want as much detail as I can get. I would gladly upload the books by Huizenga and Park, if they would let me. I am very grateful to Beaudette and Mizuno for allowing me to upload their books, and to the hundreds of scientists who have given me permission to upload their papers, including you. I sincerely thank you. (I say that without a hint of sarcasm.)

3. I favor an open debate. I disagree with the skeptics, and I am confident that a thoughtful person who reads their papers will also disagree with them. So I want to expose skeptical views to as many people as I can. They make our case for us. You lend credence to Storms, because an intelligent reader who compares your paper to his rebuttal will see that he is right.

Sorry, it will be the other way around, because a) Storms' did not critique the CCS, he critiqued the speculative chemical/physical mechanism that I _think_ leads to the CCS, and if I am wrong on that, who cares?, and b) I fully rebutted his comments on even that. The CCS itself is unchallenged in the literature at this time, and anyone who understands algebra can understand the CCS. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:27, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.217.47.115 (talk) 19:17, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Use of collapse boxes on talk pages

Above, User:Verbal placed my questions to Dr. Shanahan and his answers in a "collapse box", citing WP:TALK, even though the elided discussion directly concerns the treatment of papers by Shanahan, Szpak, Fleishman, and others in the article text. The only mention of collapsing text on WP:TALK is in the context of code samples:

"You may redact (replace with a note, or collapse) large code samples once discussion of the sample has ended"

Furthermore, I note that MOS:SCROLL indicates that such elision has "issues with readability, accessibility, and printing."

I can not say whether Verbal hopes that people will not read the exchange with Dr. Shanahan because it will lead them to understand more about the validity of Dr. Shanahan's arguments, but I have been unable to convince myself of any other possibility.

I ask that the discussion be made plain for all to see, in accordance with WP:TALK. 69.228.201.246 (talk) 05:36, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

To my way of thinking, the talk page guidelines make it very clear that topics unrelated to article improvement aren't welcome. Rather than remove it, it was generously put in a box for continued discussion. If you prefer to stick to the talk page guidelines, then most of this discussion should be archived and/or removed. I can't see how discussing WP:OR regarding CCS, or any of Jed Rothwell's numerous claims about CF being proved beyond a doubt (or mine that it isn't), help to improve the article. Phil153 (talk) 07:04, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

actually Phil, my papers are published, so I don't think its OR for the article, and I am not proposing anything for the article other than to describe what they say to give the technical argument to the reader, and to describe that it was challenged and defended, and then ignored, in the literature. I believe that is within the Wiki intent for the article. it presents some scientific meat but doesn't do OR. Explanations appearing in the talk pages are intended to remove questions editors may have about what I write, and I would hope they would get the papers and read them to confirm I am not miconstruing the issues. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:07, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Dr. Shanahan and the anon. This page, like the talk pages of many scientific topics, has to have a generous exchange of details pertaining to the better understanding of the material used in the article. Just look at the talk page of Centrifugal force to see the endless debates. Why should this article not get the benefit of a full evaluation of all the facts? The anon's exchange with Dr. Shanahan in the reduced section was very informative about the function of CCS as a viable counter-theory to CF. Far from being OR CCS is a published theory. It should be discussed boldly and fully. Not in compressed sections with small font size. Dr.K. (logos) 18:33, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I'd just like to point out that discussions do not need to be about specific content to be pertinent to the accuracy and balance of the article. Kevin Baas 18:36, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree completely. Railroading the discussion to narrow parameters and topics can lead to a distorted article and leave pertinent facts unclear. Dr.K. (logos) 19:17, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

And I'd like to make a factual correction: Jed has asserted on this very talk page that there is no theory to prove or disapprove - that it is a matter of discovering a cause. To say that he has asserted numerous times that the cause has been found and is irrefutable is directly contrary to the record. It's inaccurate statements like this that give me the feeling that some of the editors on here aren't really listening to/understanding what he is saying. Kevin Baas 18:45, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I also agree. Jed has remained factual and clear about the lack of a coherent theory. Dr.K. (logos) 19:17, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Just to clarify: Some theorists believe they can explain cold fusion, and some experimentalists agree with them. But it is my impression, after speaking with hundreds of experimentalists, that most of them do not agree there is a valid theory yet. They are using Edisonian, empirical methods to uncover patterns and data that will allow a theory to be developed. They have developed many rules of thumb. For example, they have shown that bulk-Pd has to be highly loaded before the reaction occurs. Whether this applies to nano-particle gas loaded Pd, or Ti, and how to explain it theoretically are open questions.

Everyone agrees that a theory that makes valid predictions and guides the research would be immensely helpful!

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org

@Dr.K. Eh, you know, if it was on the hands of us editors to examine in detail the raw primary data from experiments and decide themselves their validity independently of what secondary sources say, then that conversation would have been extremely valuable and I would have never thought of collapsing it.

(mind you, I can see some merit on the discussion and it's not totally off-topic, that's why, after copying it to a new location, I collapsed it instead of simply removing it. And, indeed, the discussion continued inside the collaped box without disturbing those who aren't interested on trying to understand how certain primary sources are done and would like to see more secondary sources being used :P )

Also, next time you can hold the discussion at User talk:Kirk shanahan and simply place a link here saying "hey, there is a discussion here on how what specific method Shanahan uses to determine the credibility of calibration data, people interested on exploring the details will find it very useful". In your talk pages you can engage in as much original research as you desire (user talk pages are arguibly the correct place to engage in massive OR between editors), and gain as much knowledge as you seem fit to understand the topic, without filling a page that should be centered more on secondary sources, and use OR only to complement them. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:25, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Hi Enric. I didn't know that it was you who collapsed it, but it doesn't matter anyway because my comments were not directed at the person who collapsed the thread but rather at helping to clarify the process involved in exchanging information on the talk page of an article. I also understand your point fully about editor to editor communication, which you so humourously describe as a free exchange of OR. I grant you that in many cases you may be right. I'm sure even in this instance you make a good case of keeping this segregated from the rest of the debate and I appreciate that you didn't take it out altogether. But the whole thing goes back to the definition of what constitutes a discussion dedicated at improving the article. In scientific matters a case can be made that a wider allowance be made on the article talkpage to encompass discussions that deal with associated matters, even if verging on OR, so that ultimately the editors can clarify a few points relevant to the article. Also the information will not be scattered in various other talkpages so that everyone may enjoy (get frustrated by) it in one location. I know that's a tough call sometimes, but look at the massive amount of OR on the Centrifugal force talkpage. I know WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is no justification but science is sometimes like that. Dr.K. (logos) 22:41, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry about the OR at that page, it has since been "fixed", notice the complaints about having to archive a megabyte worth of "largely pointless drivel mostly two people that are treating the[REDACTED] talk page as a chat page" and not using "good, mainstream sources". --Enric Naval (talk) 02:30, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. One megabyte? That's simply amazing. At least here we are nowhere close to that, yet. Hopefully we'll agree on something without the excesses witnessed there. Although they have been quiet for some time in that talkpage. Dr.K. (logos) 03:48, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

A discussion with strong POVs who wouldn't touch a Misplaced Pages article with the fag end of a barge poll has very little productivity wrt the article. In fact, it detracts from the writing of it, which should proceed mostly as a summary of reliable secondary sources, not from the WP:TRUTH as decided by original thought on the discussion page. I enjoy discussing the topic as much as the next person but all the discussion in the world of barely published CCS or the nth paper from a cold fusion conference isn't helping to improve the article. Phil153 (talk) 23:44, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Kevin Baas said:

To say that he has asserted numerous times that the cause has been found and is irrefutable is directly contrary to the record.

Jed has asserted and implied numerous times that fusion is the only possible explanation. Some other comments he's made:

1: Not one study and not one paper has ever demonstrated an error in a positive cold fusion paper. If anyone ever did find an error, it would not only disprove cold fusion, it would overthrow the laws of thermodynamics and a large part of chemistry and physics going back to 1860. That isn't going to happen.

2: We know why the null experiments produced no heat; we can see that the false negatives are actually positive

3.There are no "real" criticisms, but only criticism such as yours and Jones' which could only "explain" a tiny fraction of the results.

I couldn't be bothered finding others, but these are very clear statements that shows he believes that nuclear fusion has been proven beyond a doubt. Jed's statement say that only the exact mechanism is in question, not the question of whether fusion has been proven beyond a doubt. Phil153 (talk) 23:21, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

That is correct. It is a little more subtle. Quoting a recent document by Melich and me:

"We do not assert that cold fusion is unquestionably a nuclear effect and only a nuclear effect. . . . We assert that a chemical effect or experimental error is ruled out, and that the heat beyond the limits of chemistry, helium commensurate with a plasma fusion reaction, tritium and heavy metal transmutations all point to an unknown nuclear reaction. In short, the nuclear hypothesis best fits the facts, but until a detailed nuclear theory is worked out and broadly accepted, this will remain only a working hypothesis." I think most cold fusion researchers would agree.

Beaudette best explained the role of empirical evidence: "Pierre Curie announced his empirical evidence for anomalous power discharge from radium and was awarded a Nobel Prize. Similarly, the empirical evidence for an astonishingly rapid expansion of the universe is recognized as requiring explanation by the cosmologists. There was no assertion from scientists that these two examples were pathological because of the lack of causal information. The empirical data in these two examples was not hidden from view pending some additional knowledge. Science requires only that there be no procedural error in the measurements."

My assertion that "not one study and not one paper has ever demonstrated an error in a positive cold fusion paper" is a matter of fact, as far as I know. I have read and edited hundreds of papers and books, and as far as I know no skeptic has demonstrated -- or even tried to demonstrate -- a "procedural error" in technique or instruments, except Morrison, and perhaps Shanahan. All of the others try to disprove cold fusion based on theory, or by attempting to show that the effect has a mundane cause. In other words, they say the data is real, the heat is real, the instruments are working, but the results can be explained by something like recombination. (I think it would be fair to say that Shanahan believes the data to be an instrument artifact and not caused by actual heat, but I would not want to put words in his mouth.)

Morrison is here: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanreplytothe.pdf

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.158.255.197 (talk) 23:47, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I forgot to add that if you know of a skeptical paper that cites a procedural error in a cold fusion experiment, please let me know! Send it to me. If you want to write one, please do so. And send it to me.

Another well-known example of citing a mundane cause to explain the results was the assertion made by Hoffman that cold fusion tritium comes from used moderator heavy water from CANDU reactors, which Hoffman believed Ontario Hydro sells to the public. The ANS paid him $100,000 to write a book trying to prove this. He neglected ask Ontario Hydro if this is true. I asked them, and they said it wasn't. I could have saved the ANS 100 grand!

There are, needless to say, several books and maybe a dozen papers that attempt to prove that all cold fusion experiments are wrong because theory predicts the results are impossible. Huizenga's book is the best example. He does not -- anywhere -- attempt to show what mistake or mistakes researchers have made, but he asserts that they must have made unspecified mistakes because they cannot be right. In his words: "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." Needless to say, this turns the scientific method upside down! It is also a logical fallacy: circular reasoning.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.158.255.197 (talk) 00:17, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Does it strike the rest of you as strongly as it does me as to how disconnected from reality Jed is? I sit here practically screaming at him (because he doesn't listen to normal tomes) that the CCS is a systematic error (read 'procedural error') that no CFer has taken into account, and demonstrated that in two cases (published!), and he says, "if you know of a skeptical paper that cites a procedural error in a cold fusion experiment, please let me know!" with exclamation point no less. Further, you have the Clarke work that shows 'procedural errors' must be present (in order to get 'hydrogen' samples contaminated with air) in SRI's attempts to measure He production! And you have Mizuno's ICCF14 paper that says Iwamura misidentified a sulfur contaminant. And you have Krivit's most recent report of Kidwell's comments at ICCF14. How can one argue with such denial of reality? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kirk shanahan (talk • contribs) 13:59, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Cleaning up the Introduction

Olorinish recently made an edit to the intro. I think it's a step in the right direction - we should be sacrificing exactness in order to make the intro concise and easy to read. Brittanica does it all the time.

I'd propose a few more changes:

1. Since the word "hypothetical" was removed, it needs to be stated early in the intro that most scientists reject cold fusion. The single most noteworthy thing about the field, after defining it, is that mainstream science rejects it and looks down on it. This rejection is mentioned prominently in pretty much every media piece on the topic, and we should do the same.

2. It needs to be mentioned early that research continues with some notable proponents

3. The "in 1989, " bit needs a lead in. For example:

"Cold fusion became prominent in 1989, when..."

"It first recieved public attention in 1989 when"

"The first reports of cold fusion appeared in 1989, when "

4. The media storm that followed the announcement should be mentioned

5. There needs to be a better (brief) mention of what followed and how/why it fell into disrepute. The current version shifts from Pons announcement to the DOE review without good reason or even a link.

I would be bold but it's likely to get reverted given the strong POVs around here, so I wanted to get some comments first. Phil153 (talk) 14:03, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

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