Talk:Cold fusion

An editor has been banned from editing the Cold fusion article, for a period of one year.
	Pcarbonn has been banned by the Arbitration Committee from editing the Cold fusion article. The user is additionally prohibited from discussing or proposing changes to the article, on this talk page. Upon expiry of this ban, any editor may remove this notice. Please refer to Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Cold fusion, the relevant Arbitration case in which the editor was banned, for further details.
This notice was posted by Tznkai (talk) 22:07, 15 December 2008 (UTC) on behalf of the Arbitration Committee.

Discussion with and about Minhducthandan's edits here

On 18:35, 23 February 2009, Minhducthandan posted this comment here: "I tried the experiment described on [link] and it works I think it worth to test it out." [1]. The comment was later deleted by another user, citing Wikipedia:Talk#Others'_comments (bullet 4). Bullet 4 seems to me to be about personal attacks, and the comment doesn't seem to me to be remotely like a personal attack. Maybe LeadSongDog meant "Deleting material not relevant to improving the article"; however, I think that while at first glance the comment may seem to be discussion of the topic matter rather than discussion of article content, on second thought I believe the comment is intended as an argument in favour of keeping this material in the article, and as a response to Verbal's invitation "please discuss source on talk." Here I'm not expressing agreement or disagreement with the comment, but opposition to the deletion of the comment from this talk page. (see below)^{(20:45, 28 February 2009 (UTC))} ☺Coppertwig (talk) 18:34, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

The stated reason given was wrong, sure, but the removal was obviously for spamming links that had nothing to do with improving the article. It's so obvious I can't believe I'm discussing it. The user has a history of adding external links and promoting companies and website. For example, [2][3][4][5]. It's hard enough fighting this stuff without editors endorsing it by putting it back in.

P.S. Abd's sleuthing has revealed that the user is the owner of the website he posted, which is massively unsurprising given a 2 second glance at the spamming in his contribution history. Can't we use a little bit of clue here and get rid of obvious spamming without a mountain of drama and wasted time? Phil153 (talk) 18:54, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Phil obviously wanted to mean bullet 3 "Deleting material not relevant to improving the article". --Enric Naval (talk) 20:21, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

To Minhducthandan: Wikipedia articles are based on reliable sources. That website seems to me to be just a website. Anybody can put up a website. We use things like books published by universities or by good publishers, articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals, newspaper articles etc. A website of a university or a government etc. might be a reliable source. If you can find a published book or article saying that someone tried that experiment and it worked, that would be a first step. When you say you tried it: you and I are just Wikipedian editors; we don't write Wikipedia articles based on that. If you want to tell people about the website, Wikipedia might not be the best place to do that.

To Enric Naval re bullet 3: as you may have seen, I already replied re that above.

I think the description is sufficient enough for ALL to replicate and observe the heat it's so obvious that my 9 years old child has felted it. Even where you can go to buy the equipment yourselves and come down to the cost at exact dollar and cent. If it's wrong or a hoax prove it!! ... then tell it to the whole world, otherwise it is a valid experiment. In science one should deal with "fact" not speculation. Unlike other experiments and "publications" that "only the author can produce and . . . fails to reproduce", this one works all time, every time. What are you asking for in term of fact?

As a little note: If you can not find the equipment at your local hardware stores then they are widely available on Ebay too. If you are too "poor" for a scientific cause to spend your money on the ultrasonic cleaner then the local jewelry store may let you use for 15, 30 minutes. In this case, it only costs you two pencils, one 9 volt battery and a kitchen glass. And I don't think it is too much if indeed one wants to verify. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Minhducthandan (talk • contribs) 13:16, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Minhducthandan, several editors have pointed out how your edits here were inappropriate. You claim that what you are reporting is "cold fusion," but the only evidence asserted on your web page is heat. How much heat? Unless it were shown that the heat generated is more than the energy put in, your "replicable" experiment shows nothing, and few would bother to try replication. It may only cost a few dollars, but it will cost a lot of time. Further, even if you were absolutely right, supposing fusion of a new kind is being shown in your experiment (it's not the same environment as most of the cold fusion experiments, which were with deuterium and palladium or another catalyst, nor is it the same as sonofusion, which is hot fusion, i.e., fusion taking place at high temperatures inside the bubbles, millions of degrees, and which was also with deuterium), we still could not use your work in the encyclopedia, until and unless it is, as a minimum, published in a reliable source publication. Your web page does not even approach this. If you really think, in spite of the objections I've made here and elsewhere, that you have discovered something, do the work. Find people to verify it (trying that here is not appropriate, though what is done is done), find a publisher, and get it published. However, at this point, I doubt that you could get the work published in even alleged fringe sources, such as newenergytimes.com. They do have standards. --Abd (talk) 14:20, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

To Phil153 Re linkspamming: I don't have an opinion at the moment that there was or wasn't linkspamming; but if there was linkspamming and someone thought it would save time to delete the whole comment along with the link, I don't wish to criticize that.

Re clue: I was in the middle of trying to think of a good reply to that when a family member pointed out that I was absent-mindedly starting to eat my dessert before my main course (LOL!), so I think I'll stop there. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 20:45, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for the confusion, I mistakenly said bullet 4, but intended bullet 3 as Coppertwig correctly inferred. LeadSongDog (talk) 22:32, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, LeadSongDog! LeadSongDog and Phil153, I apologize for having originally posted the words I've struck out above. That was a mistake: I'm not saying that there was or was not linkspamming. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 09:26, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Minhducthandan: Wikipedia is not the place to tell people about new things you've discovered. See Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not#Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought. Arguments that the method works are not valid arguments for including material in the article. Material to be cited must be published in reliable sources. This talk page is not to be used for discussion of things like your experiments, but only for discussion about developing this article. When you post on a talk page like this, please end your post with four tildes, like this ~~~~, which will automatically sign your username. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 23:54, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

separating condensed matter nuclear science from cold fusion

Whatever is going on within the palladium lattice (and in similar experiments with other materials), it certainly isn't brute-force smashing of deuterons together. That would beg the question: where would the energy come from that would accomplish this? If there is real excess heat, if there is real nuclear radiation and products of nuclear transformations, including effective fusion, it's not by any known mechanism. The field is now called "condensed matter nuclear science." The basis for that is an understanding that it's possible that some conditions in condensed matter may allow reactions to take place that don't happen "naked." There are hypotheses that have been advanced, speculations on what it might be, but nothing, to my knowledge, has been validated by experiment, beyond some clues. It does appear that low-energy neutrons are being produced; probably missed because everyone expected high-energy ones if it was fusion. (Tracks appear on the reverse side of the CR-39 detectors, away from the cathode, but still showing proximity to the cathode -- not in areas of the film away from the cathode. What's that? The hypothesis on that is neutrons, which don't create tracks until they interact with the material, not being ionizing radiation. Then they create, the SPAWAR researchers have published, little triple tracks. So the tracks themselves seem to be fairly well understood, but not the source of the neutrons. We cannot report these things as scientific fact, but, because they are in peer-reviewed publications, we could report the existence of the reports. We have stuffed two separate topics into this one page: the history of a scientific fiasco, "cold fusion," and a new branch of physics: condensed matter nuclear science. Obviously, they are related, but they only overlap, they are not the same topic. The scientific fiasco we can probably document fairly easily and we should be able to agree on it, once we can get beyond the knee-jerk reactions. The new science needs a different kind of treatment. But there are reliable sources on it. --Abd (talk) 23:44, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

(note: the comments above were split off into a new section by another editor, it was originally posted as a response in the section "incompatabilities in established physics) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Phil153 (talk • contribs) 05:02, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

This is at least the third time you've mentioned some supposed differences between "cold fusion" and "condensed matter nuclear science", as well as pushing for (and creating redirected articles in preparation for) forks. The bottom line is that cold fusion is the accepted name for the whole range of palladium-deuterium type experiments, and the set of reported effects and anomalies, and per our naming conventions, nothing like you suggest is ever going to fly. It's not even close, and I'm confused why you're pushing this.

The recent attempts by advocates to rename the field are smart PR, but nothing more. There is no distinction between the set of experiments, detections, and anomalies reported in 1989 and today. It's the same phenomenon. It's the same people. Even the latest Internal Conference on CMNS, the most prominent conference in the "field" of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science, has the acronym ICCF [6]. Guess what the CF stands for?

As for alternative formulations and the uncertainly of fusion, it has no basis. If there is actual excess heat of the larger magnitudes reported, it has to be fusion. I think all parties agree, except those trying to obfuscate (I don't mean you). Can you find good sources that suggest otherwise? The reason it has to be fusion is that energy does not come from a cold fusion researcher's butt; it has to come from somewhere, and the only source within a cold fusion cell is matter. And the only way to get energy out of matter is to modify existing matter such that a higher energy state is transformed into lower energy state, leaving products which are in a readily detectable lower energy state. And the only part of matter in a cold fusion cell that has sufficient potential energy for the size of the effects claimed is the nucleus. You can't wave away the requirement that fusion is going on here; within the bounds of reason there is no other alternative. Every physicist with their sanity intact agrees with that.

Anyway,Can we take this to one of our talk pages? I've avoided responding to you because it's off topic and most of your last 20 or so comments (plus mine here) fit 100% under WP:NOTFORUM and simply do not belong on the article talk page. But not responding doesn't seem to help; long off topic commentary gets posted anyway. Lately they've been inserted in every single section (that attempts to improve the article) with long diatribes about one thing or another unrelated to improving the article. No blame here, just a request because there's no end in sight to this stuff. Phil153 (talk) 00:31, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

No. This belongs here. My discussion here was (1) background and (2) very clearly about improving the article. Phil153 doesn't like my specific suggestions. Fine. I can do little by myself, given how ready some editors are to bald revert. Absolutely, I created some redirects, and one of these might turn into its own article. Maybe. I'd say, Phil, you are part of the failed old guard here. You are welcome to disagree. We have a deficient article, almost everyone agrees, they just disagree on the direction of the failure. That's a sign that we have not been seeking consensus; instead, we've been making poor compromises, editing by force of numbers and the accidents of who shows up, and all the other dysfunctions that afflict controversial articles where the guidelines about civility and consensus aren't followed. And this is very, very much about improving this article. Don't like long posts, think they are "diatribes," don't read them! You lose no rights by not reading, though you might lose some knowledge, or not. Depends, doesn't it?

The naming can be discussed specifically. The 14th International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science did indeed have an alternate name: also known as the 14th International Conference on Cold Fusion (ICCF-14). That's because it descended from the earlier ICCFs. The 2008 Conference web site has a page on terminology. It should be read: [7] Phil, I don't think it is that you are confused, exactly, I think that it is that you don't understand the situation, including me and my approach to Wikipedia process, because you are holding to fixed opinions. It's not obligatory to understand me. But I do know that many times during these discussions you have said things that just weren't true, both about the topic of the article and about Wikipedia guidelines and processes. Stop saying all this nonsense here and then objecting when there is response! --Abd (talk) 02:47, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I added a section title, this was straying away from the "fourth miracle" topic. --Enric Naval (talk) 03:13, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to object to that description. I clearly called the fourth thing a "problem", not a "miracle". And, actually, in order of events, if fusion is to occur, it should be considered the FIRST problem, not the fourth. Unless, of course, some method exists for nuclei inside atoms to interact with each other, without first escaping their electron shells. In which case it can continue to be ignored as irrelevant. But also which remains to be proved. IF cold fusion happens, of course. V (talk) 08:17, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Errr, whatever it's named, just discuss the name on the above section and not here, so topics won't get mixed again. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:55, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

"We have a deficient article, almost everyone agrees, they just disagree on the direction of the failure." Actually, I don't agree. The current version is the best I have ever seen in the two years I have been monitoring the article. Olorinish (talk) 04:29, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you, when I first read the article in October I was amazed at how bad it was. The current version is the best I've read. I think a bit more work need to be to document the cold fusionist voice, if only to give a sense of the social movement and the depth of belief held by proponents. A section on some of the evidence and why it's not taken seriously would be very informative too. Storms has been reviewed by P.V. Keller who's spent a good deal of time marking stuff for the article, so hopefully that will address most of those remaining concerns in the near future. Phil153 (talk) 04:52, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd say that this is probably because of systematic exclusion of a POV. Note that Shanahan, a published critic of cold fusion, just opined that the article was bad. Yes, we need more material from Storms. But, hey, no tendentious argument from me. Believe what you like, but, please, just follow Wikipedia process, no edit warring (not even tag teaming, but there is a kind of legitimate tag-teaming which simply establishes a kind of default consensus as a starting point. Problematic tag-teaming uses bald reverts and simply sits on an article, preventing change toward broader consensus), discuss contentious edits, follow WP:DR, seek consensus, assume good faith regardless of POV, remain civil, etc. If we do this, we'll get there, and nearly everyone will agree on it. --Abd (talk) 16:45, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Both Shanahan and Jed are COI editors who refuse to back away from claims that are far too strong for the available evidence, and I haven't seen any evidence of ability to find consensus and a fair middle ground. Such is the nature of COI SPA editors all over Wikipedia. As a result, I'm not swayed when Shanahan thinks the article is bad, because based on his edits, the only article that would satisfy him would be horribly POV.

Hmmm..I thought Wikipedia disapproved of ad hominem attacks... Phil, a) the evidence for the CCS explanation of apparent excess heat is published in my 2002 paper, with expansions of it in the 2006 paper. My claims are based on that and by typical scientific standards, I have not 'stretched' anything. b) I was asked to edit the article in an attempt to remove proCF POV, and I did that by adding the counterarguments to the stuff PCarbon had written in. He immediately began block deleteing what I added in a clear POV-pusher fashion. I never edited antyhting he wrote (as far as I can remember now several months later, certainly nothing as substantial as his edits of my additions). My objective was to remove POV. The problem with the current article is that it has been so changed in anture that my comments are not relevent anymore, i.e. there is no technical meat in the article. And, as I suggested several times, I was content with a 3 section article; historical, pro, and anti, as long as editors were allowed to express their opinion but not suppress others. Your claim I would never be satisfied is not true, and is a personal attack. I guess you thought I was gone so it was OK. Nope, still watching. Kirk shanahan (talk) 12:34, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Come on, you have to admit that the "evidence" you've presented is far from convincing and lacks hards experimental data. It's a theory, and probably quite a good one, but that's all it is, and it's claimed to have failed some tests of its veracity in experiments by CF researchers. While I'm not swayed by that at all, objectively, it weakens your position. Anyway, my comments on your POV take on the article are based on reading your numerous discussions on talk, not your article editing. I apologize if they are inappropriate, and they probably are. For what it's worth, your article edits seem fairly NPOV to me. Phil153 (talk) 17:13, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for retracting your claim I am unable to write to NPOV standards. With regards to the evideence I have presented, my papers analyze data and come to a different and reasonable conclusion from the data's originator. But there is nothing unusual, strange, or anomalous in what I did. It is straight-up sensitivity analysis. Ergo, it is compelling evidence for the case analyzed. The point of the papers was to demonstrate, with real data, a new 'noise' term, one that was apparently unrecognized previously. Since it was previously unrecognized, it is impossible to evaluate in any published apparent excess heat claim up to that point, as the data necessary to do so (variability in calibration constants) is not publically available. However, since that is so, all prior claims to have observed excess heat must be reconsidered in light of the CCS. Also note that Storms' calorimeter was one of the best, and in less good calorimeters, the errors are expected to be larger and of other types as well. Thus, one has to be 'generous' in evaluating the possibility if a CCS in other calorimeter types and designs. This is all straight up science. No surprises, just SOP.

Unfortunately, the CFers have not responded properly to my publications. They have NOT begun publishing such data along with their cliams, instead they have denigrated the ideas with false accusations, which I have shown to be false in print. Read the papers if you disbelieve me here. So, to date, we still have no assessment of the importance of the CCS to apparent excess heat claims, and rational and reasonable scientists wonder why. By the way, the math of the CCS is not a 'theory', it is a simple mathematical fact, whose presence was directly detected in the one published case where sufficient data to study the problem was presented.

Perhaps you refer to the proposed mechanism of how a CCS could occur in a closed cell? If so, you need to consider the predictive power of my 'theory'. It is consistent with the observations that CF occurs infrequently, and 'explains' the exception of when very high surface to volume ratio material is used. It is consistent with the CR-39 observations. It is consistent with the Szpak IR video evidence. But of course there are other observations as well. Most of those are explained by other known phenomena, not related to producing apparent excess heat, so those weren't included in the 'theory' I proposed to explain that apparent signal. This does not negate the value of the theory.

P.S. I would love to see the reference to where "it's claimed to have failed some tests of its veracity", as I know of none. Please cite your references or retract your statement. Kirk shanahan (talk) 19:12, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Look, it's really simple. You claim that your method is an explanation for the excess heat, and your editing implies that it is in fact THE explanation in most cases. Yet this is a positive claim; you have to show that the calibration constant actually does shift to the degree required in a range of experiments to cover that amount of excess heat. You have not done that (to my knowledge) except by reanalyzing the data from one set of experiments. You have not done it for different calorimeter types, nor is your theory adequate to cover them, especially the theory of heat shifts as a cause. Because of this, it doesn't "refute" cold fusion results, but merely introduces a type of error to check for when certain types of apparatus are used. This is what I mean by claiming too much. Szpak and Storms have offered refutations which question the veracity of your theory as an explanation for CF heat.

Also, I don't retract the claim that you are unable to write to NPOV standards, since I never claimed that. I claimed that COI regarding your own work has led you to claim far too much, just like Jed and nearly every other COI SPA does. There is no reasoned commentary on the limitations of your own work. Instead, you make claims that you refuted everything thrown at you by CFers, which IMO is clearly false. Also, see edits like this

If you reply here I'll reply on your talk page after that since this is getting off topic. Phil153 (talk) 02:57, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Anyway, I think we should aim to have Storms material added by the end of this month, since PV Keller is understandably a busy man and I don't want to wait much longer. I'd also like to mention a few other skeptical references, like the Italian court case (which is one of the few times a true outsider has examined the field), and skeptical commentary in Nature and elsewhere. Phil153 (talk) 17:44, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

By the way, I should say that I also agree with much of what Phil153 wrote above, and I share the hope. --Abd (talk) 16:48, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Abd, I'm not objecting to a response. I'm not the one starting these discussions, and I've repeated asked for specific suggestions to improve the article instead of general commentary on all things cold fusion, but you don't seem interested at all. You want to get the calorimetry article undeleted first, against consensus. That didn't work. You want to split this article off into another name that can diassociate itself from the criticism. You seem to be on a crusade instead of wanting to improve the article that's the subject of this talk page. And that's your choice. But what I'm objecting to constant littering of sections with off topic comments about Jed's block, JzG's inappropriate actions, a proposed splitting that never gets quite proposed, the blacklisting of l-c.org at meta, the original thought "case" for cold fusion, and so on. It makes it really hard to stay on topic within that section. Most of the worst have been archived by other editors recently because they were so OT. If you have specific suggestions, like moving this article to Condensed Matter Nuclear Science or building a Fleischmann effects article, bring them up in a separate section so we can discuss them! I'd welcome an open discussion so we can either move forward with the new ideas or work on improving what we've got. Wouldn't you? For your peace of mind, I'm done commenting on this here, you're a very experienced and quality contributor and if that's the path you want to take, ok. I just wanted to point out how problematic I think it is for improving the article via this talk page (as opposed to raising the profile of cold fusion on Wikipedia). Phil153 (talk) 04:52, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Boy, for someone who claims to want to stick on the topic of improving the article, Phil, you are all over the map. Don't be distracted by discussions that don't interest you. I've been working with on-line discussion and projects since the mid-1980s, and there is this strange phenomenon: even though nobody is required to read anything, nobody has to sit through a boring speech, people still protest about others writing what they aren't interested in and think useless. I agree that there can be a problem with too much talk, but that can be handled by respectful refactoring, if anyone really cares. (In fact, usually nobody bothers to refactor the archives, it's a problem.) I really wish editors would stop assuming what I "want." I discovered that JzG had nominated Calorimetry in cold fusion experiments, and that it had been deleted. I asked for a copy so I could see if there was any valuable material there. However, then I noticed that the AfD had closed within 24 hours, and there was totally inadequate notice of the AfD. Please don't wikilawyer "adequate notice!" So I simply requested that the AfD be reopened, and I did argue for Keep, that's true, but I generally favor breaking down articles into subarticles, and I'm hardly attached to Keep; in fact, though, what I'd like to see is Merge, because this preserves the rights of editors to change their minds, AfD is much clumsier, and I've seen editors really regret deletions that they voted for -- when it became obvious that the article they were protecting, they thought, now had to bear the weight of whatever was reliably sourced in the deleted article. I do intend to do a lot of things with the CF article, and, yes, to unmerge the CMNS article, probably, but one step at a time, I'm still doing a lot of research, and, besides, I'm a tad distracted by this little issue of administrative abuse -- which is very clear, by the way, and a very serious issue, apparently impacting, I've been told, "dozens or hundreds of editors." And I have kids to raise, a business to run, etc., etc. And I need to decide whether or not to put half my life savings into palladium. What do you think?--Abd (talk) 05:58, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Whatever, just provide secondary reliable sources stating that "condensed matter nuclear science" and "cold fusion" are not the same thing --Enric Naval (talk) 16:55, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I'll try to do it if you will find secondary reliable sources saying that "fruit" and "mango" are not the same thing. "Nuclear science" in the condensed matter environment isn't only about fusion. Condensed matter nuclear science is essentially the study of nuclear physics in the condensed matter environment, which used to be considered irrelevant. (I.e., the realms were entirely different, and it was assumed, for the most part, that nuclei were simply unaffected by chemistry and the condensed environment. Now, in favor of your argument, "condensed matter" is by definition "cold." What nuclear behavior occurs in cold environments? We have some examples: muon-catalyzed fusion is one. It's true, the most interesting nuclear phenomena would be fusion, but there is also evidence for fission in that environment, apparently. Does the close environment affect nuclear stability under some conditions? Nevertheless, most material being published under the rubric of CMNS is indeed about evidence for nuclear reactions taking place at low temperatures, and fusion is the obvious hypothesis, beyond some sort of experimental error. Now, as to secondary source, here is one: Institute of Science in Society. But I'm not sure of the nature of the article. Reliable? I'm pretty sure that there are those here who will argue that whatever seems to confirm "cold fusion" is, ipso facto, fringe and not reliable.... There are some pretty remarkable assertions in that article. However, we'll see. I'm in no hurry. --Abd (talk) 04:33, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, no, "fruit" and "mango" are not the same thing. "mango" describes many things, a few of which are the "fruit" of mango tree cultivars. See here for details. Here is an assertion that "Mango is also a valuable ornamental and shade tree and contributes to the protection of soil against erosion." If you think that www.i-sis.org.uk is a wp:RS, I'd suggest testing that belief at WP:Reliable sources/Noticeboard to see what reaction it gets. Frankly, I'd much rather see a peer-reviewed journal, but

Also I'd like to hint that splurging long, dense paragraphs is not a sensible way to discuss any matter on Wikipedia. By doing so you limit the number of people who might agree with you to those who have the patience to wade through your words. At this point the provision of reliable secondary sources in support of the words already uttered would be worth far more than a bushel more words. --TS 05:30, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Treatment of muon-catalyzed fusion in this article.

You know, we are treating muon-catalyzed fusion rather ambiguously in this article. If you read the article, you can tell that muon-catalyzed fusion is a form of cold fusion, in particular, that's what Jones called it in his Scientific American article. Now, if muon-catalyzed fusion is a form of cold fusion, it should have a section in this article with a brief summary, with reference to the "main article," Muon-catalyzed fusion. It shouldn't be a disambiguation link at the top, which implies that muon-catalyzed fusion isn't cold fusion, there is merely a confusion of names. It's cold fusion, all right.

The Fleischman-Pons effect, and the other effects that have been found in relation to "cold fusion," are, indeed, unexplained, though there are many theories. Some of the theories involve catalysis by various exotic mechanisms, such as magnetic monopoles or hydrinos, etc. The only thing really different about muon-catalyzed fusion is that it's a reasonably understood phenomenon, involving known particles and mechanisms. Clearly Pons and Fleischman and Jones though that the topics were related, the history shows that. And I'd agree. If there is one obscure mechanism that overcomes the apparent obstacles to fusion at low temperatures, there may be others. The claim that low-temperature fusion is impossible has a clear counterexample in muon-catalyzed fusion.

Some editors have become confused about Bubble fusion or Pyroelectric fusion, and I just came across Fractofusion, see Takeda, 1989. All of these are hot fusion; the idea that they are "cold" results from mistaking the temperature of most of the apparatus with the actual temperature of the reactants. Bubble fusion is alleged to produce temperatures comparable to the interior of the sun, for example. Pyroelectric fusion is being harnessed as a neutron generator, there is RS for this, which apparently it does cheaply. Fracture fusion is, interestingly, proposed as an explanation for the Fleischmann-Pons effect, through fracture of the palladium electrodes. In other words, "cold fusion" may not be. It would just be that things got hot in a very small volume, much hotter than we would have thought. --Abd (talk) 23:18, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

(In one discussion, the idea that deuterons accelerated by an electric field aren't "hot" was raised. That's a misunderstanding of what heat is, in this case. What "hot" means is that the atomic motion in the fuel is fast, high velocity, that's all, and whether this is produced with individual ions or by general gaseous conditions doesn't matter. What allows overcoming the Coulomb barrier by brute force ("hot fusion") is the approach velocity of the deuterons or other fusion fuels.) --Abd (talk) 23:28, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Honestly, the best thing is probably not to discuss it much at all, maybe give a few sentences just saying that it exists, it's real, here's the article on it, but it has nothing to do with the Flieschmann-Pons proposal. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 23:35, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Shoemaker's Holiday. The whole point of having easy links to other articles is so that duplication of data, within articles, can be avoided. Absolutely muon-catalyzed fusion should be mentioned as a variety of CF and linked, but not much more than that need be in this article. V (talk) 02:12, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, I agree with Objectivist. There are some semantic difficulties here. Muon-catalyzed fusion almost certainly isn't what is happening in the Fleischmann-Pons effect, so that's correct. Muon-catalyzed fusion is true cold fusion, we can say that because it was, first of all, theoretically predicted, then verified by experiment. It happens at low energies, but it requires the presence of muons, which aren't easy to come by, it takes a lot of energy to make them in quantities sufficient to be able to observe the fusion. The F-P effect is an experimentally observed effect of unknown origin. As I point out above, it's entirely possible that it is fusion, but not cold fusion; rather, hot fusion from fractofusion in the palladium electrodes, or there might be some other effect that, on a very small scale, creates high-energy deuterons. F-P made the mistake of proposing that it was D-D fusion of the traditional kind, but at the same time not of the traditional kind. I.e., no gammas, few neutrons. The fact was that they didn't know. They had suspected that something might happen in the palladium lattice, because of the density of deuterium or hydrogen absorbed by it, but the only basis for calling it "fusion" was a paucity of other explanations, plus, of course, this is what they were looking for. Fleischmann claims, and it's reasonable, that they were not ready to publish, but the university, for legal reasons, forced them to go ahead. I've been reading some pretty convincing stuff, by Storms for example, that the F-P effect is real, that there is more excess heat than can be explained by ordinary chemical processes or systematic experimental error, but there are the other anomalous results; however, until there is more serious mainstream research I'd say that we won't know.

Practically speaking, for the article, I think we need to agree on what kinds of sources can be used. It seems crazy to me that a whole class of sources are being excluded, when, with other controversial subjects, "partisan" sources are allowed, if they are notable. ArbComm has been dealing with this, to a degree, in the Fringe science arbitration. We should not exclude sources just because they are claimed to be fringe. Rather, we need to pay attention to undue weight. If there is an article on a fringe topic, though, it would be silly to fill it with mainstream views, provided that the framing places the article content in perspective. I.e., an article on Flat earth is not going to spend 99.9% of its space explaining that the earth is not flat! Rather, it is going to detail the various flat earth theories and their history. "The shape of the earth was known to the ancients, but flat earth theories persisted into the twentieth century (or even today)," etc. and then the whole article will be about these theories. (To my mind, the flat earth article spends too much space on, for example, how it came to be known that the earth was spherical. That has its own article (Spherical earth}! --Abd (talk) 03:31, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Abd, perhaps I'm misremembering some things, but I don't recall that some of the things you wrote about actually happened that way. For example, it is my understanding that muon catalyzed fusion was discovered by accident in liquid-hydrogen Bubble chambers of the 1950s, and then theoretically analyzed. Also, I think I read something somewhere (good old hear-say!) that P&F were trying to duplicate an earlier claim of CF in a palladium/electrolysis system, but with more rigor. Fusion is invoked to explain the heat that appears, only because nothing else seems adequate. P&F could have incorrect notions of HOW fusion could explain their experimental results, but such a situation is far from unique in Science. In one sense, all that really matters is, "DOES the evidence really require nuclear reactions to explain the observed heat production?" In another sense, if helium-4 and other fusion products can be detected in greater quantities than the background level, then while that can be just as important, it also can be considered the icing on the cake. Personally, I find it kind of ironic that if the D+D->He4 reaction is happening, with lots of energy released as heat, then it doesn't take a lot of such reactions to produce the observed heat, while it also doesn't produce much helium above the background level! Almost a Catch-22, with respect to trying to convince skeptics. V (talk) 04:37, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

I would never insist on anything based on my bad memory. No conflict with your report re the discovery of muon-catalyzed fusion. As to P&F, yes, they were aware of old research that had been discredited, but probably considered that maybe the discrediting had been merely a lack of confirmation, coupled with some historical factors. The question of a nuclear explanation for the heat hinges on a rather difficult question: how much heat is being generated, compared to how much energy is being added, or how much energy could be released from what's in the cell? The criticisms of cold fusion seem to claim that the excess heat is very small, so that, even if it is large in absolute magnitude, and because so much energy was pumped into the cell during "loading," the percentage of excess heat is small, within experimental error. While a set of independent experiments, showing even small excess heat, could be significant, publication bias and other factors complicate this. The consensus of those working in the field seems to be that the excess heat is far above what could be experimental error; some of the experiments show substantial excess heat practically immediately, and some show "heat after death," i.e., heat that continues to be generated after the electrolysis has been stopped, no more energy is being pumped in. We really need some objective and reliably sourced reports on this. Storms may have something, I'm thinking of buying the book or at least getting it from a library. But I'm balancing this with other tasks, as well.

Because of all the controversy about the calorimetry, the issue of nuclear ash and other transmutations, and the detection of radiation, then loom large. If, for example, the SPAWAR group and others are actually finding alpha or neutron radiation, spatially associated with the cathode and associated with excess heat or deuterium in place of hydrogen, it would be every bit as conclusive or even more conclusive as to some kind of nuclear reaction as would be excess heat alone. And this is exactly what the SPAWAR group is claiming, and some of it has been published in peer-reviewed journals. --Abd (talk) 16:50, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

(ec)Yeah, you can't cite memories. Not until the mediawiki extension for virtual telepathy is implemented, anyhow. Abd, which publications are you referring to? We've been down the road before on conference proceedings (not refereed), off-topic journals such as Die Naturwissenschaften (the editorial boards and reviewers can't always competently assess the material's merits)LeadSongDog (talk) 17:18, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) Unfortunately, it seems that this argument leads to Catch-22. There are specialized journals, in particular, Condensed Matter Nuclear Science. But, of course, they are "fringe." Get published in a journal that covers general physics, it's "off-topic." The editorial board of Die Naturwissenschaften isn't competent to deal with (what topic? physics? condensed matter nuclear science? electrochemistry?) Have you actually looked at who they are and what they publish? Naturwissenschaften is published by the Max Planck Society. The name should be a clue, if you know physics! For a description of what the publication covers, see [8]: Naturwissenschaften - The Science of Nature - is Springer’s flagship multidisciplinary science journal covering all aspect [sic] of the natural sciences. Now, do you imagine that they don't take advantage of the resources of the Max Plank Society? That their papers in any field wouldn't be reviewed by experts in the field and probably related fields? Yes, I had Naturwissenschaften in mind. --Abd (talk) 21:54, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Kowalski and Mosier-Boss et al (2008)

I'm replacing this section from the talk archives because the discussion surrounding Olorinish's suggestion that the table be summarized was never concluded. (See below.) In particular, is it possible even, to summarize the table in a single sentence? GetLinkPrimitiveParams (talk) 14:42, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Summary of U.S. Navy SPAWAR's CR-39 nuclear track
detector Pd/D co-deposition control experiments:

Experiment	Pits?	Conclusions
PdCl2–LiCl co-deposition in D2O	Yes	Pits are observed where Pd deposit was in contact with CR-39. The Pd deposit is the source of the pits.
Cathodes, plating solution, PdCl2 in contact with CR-39 – No electrolysis	No	Pits are not due to radioactive contamination of the cell components
LiCl electrolysis in D2O	No	D2 gas impinging on the surface is not responsible for the pits
CuCl2–LiCl electroplating in D2O	No	Electrochemically generated D2, O2, and Cl2 gases do not cause pits. Metal dendrites piercing into CR-39 not responsible for the pits.
PdCl2–LiCl co-deposition in H2O	Yes	More than four orders of magnitude fewer pits are observed than for D2O. Observed pits could be due to Pd/D interactions.
Table 1 from Mosier-Boss et al (2008) "Reply to comment on 'The use of CR-39 in Pd/D co-deposition experiments': a response to Kowalski" Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. 44: 291–5, p. 292.

The article's photograph of the CR-39 pits gives practically no information, it's poorly cited, and the text next to it doesn't talk about it at all. I recommend that it be replaced or supplemented with this table.

I further recommend that the 2004 DOE Report's conclusion stating that, "reviewers identified a number of basic science research areas that could be helpful in resolving some of the controversies in the field, [including] the study of particles reportedly emitted from deuterated foils using state-of-the-art apparatus and methods,"[9] be summarized along with a description of the CR-39 detector and SPAWAR experiments using it. 69.228.220.30 (talk) 19:46, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I for one appreciate your efforts. However, I don't understand what the case is for including primary, non repeated, challenged research. The image makes sense as a curiosity but that's very different to what you're proposing.

I mean, when Kowalski first debunked the research some months ago, should the article have reported that "Claims of CR-39 pits have been shown to be unconvincing"? Is it really the job of Wikipedia to follow the comments and counter comments in a single journal for an unreplicated experiment? Sounds like a mess to me, and far too much weight on unverified primary research. Phil153 (talk) 20:13, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

The chronology and authorship of the many challenges to the nuclear interpretation of the CR-39 pits may be different than what you seem to think it was. All of the challenges to CR-39 pit interpretation including Kowalski's more recent have been addressed by the Navy, and the original challengers have made no attempt to claim that the Navy's response was insufficient (unlike Shanahan, who still relies on his "calibration constant shift" method of designing an argument around the conclusion he wishes to reach, according to his own words in the most recent archive.) In both of the most recent back-to-back academic journal publications, the editors have given the pro side the last word, but only Shanahan claims the response was insufficient. Could it be any more conclusive than that? 69.228.220.30 (talk) 20:20, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Re: "method of designing an argument around the conclusion he wishes to reach" -

I'm sorry "69" but you don't seem to have a clue here. I did NOT design an argument around the conclusion I wished to reach, I tested the impact of variability in the experiment on the conclusions drawn from it. That's known as 'error analysis', which consists of two parts, numerically defining the error (in this case the variation in the calibration constant) and computing whether the claimed observation falls within the 3 sigma error bounds. That is scientific SOP, except for CFers. The upshot is that the observed peaks in the excess heat curves are explainable by 'error', thus no one has to conclude a nuclear reaction is ongoing based on such claims.

Also, in my case, the 'anti' claims got the 'last word', as if that was important. What is important is that I answered all charges against me in my last rebuttal. No outstanding issues, and none of Storms' comments were found substantive. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:55, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

That table is very large. Maybe someone could add a sentence summarizing it instead. Combined with the blue-green image, that would probably give the Cr-39 work the proper weight. Olorinish (talk) 20:28, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Is it possible to summarize that table in a single sentence? GetLinkPrimitiveParams (talk) 19:31, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

ONE way to shrink the table is to simply shrink the table, using smaller fonts and so on. Why not? Is there a problem with the number of bytes it takes to represent the table? V (talk) 19:11, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

ANOTHER way to shrink the table is to make two images of it. Post the large image at the "commons" site, and post a highly shrunk version of the image in the article, with a "click to enlarge" thing associated with it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Objectivist (talk • contribs) 17:35, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Has any other group performed CR-39 experiments and confirmed their conclusion that the CR-39 detectors are detecting fusion products? If not, I don't think the CR-39 results deserve additional emphasis in the article. Olorinish (talk) 21:16, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Steven Krivit, whose web cite is (was?) blacklisted from Wikipedia for no other reason than that it was being used for courtesy links, sponsored a series of replications. 69.228.211.251 (talk) 10:51, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

What I vaguely understand is that the original paper was presented, there were challenge(s), and the original authors followed up a couple of months ago. I don't work in this particular field but academic journals generally have significant times between comment and reply. The person who has the last word has little bearing on who's right, either, and frankly I'm bemused that you would call something conclusive without replication or sufficient time for reply. In short, the current state of this particular debate has little bearing on most of my objections to the inclusion of this comment, which are: single result (not independently replicated), primary research (which is discouraged, for a host of obvious reasons), and the work has not stood without challenge for long enough (doubly so given the extraordinary burden of proof). Exactly the kind of stuff that doesn't belong in an encyclopedia with such weight as you're giving it. It probably deserves mention, similar to how Shanahan's work is mentioned in passing (note that I argued against the inclusion of Shanahan's work on the same grounds, so it's not a pro or anti cold fusion thing). Phil153 (talk) 20:41, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Not including my work is an omission of fact that leaves the reader presuming CF has been significantly substantiated by experimental evidence. It has not. Thus, your edits have skewed this article back to a proCF POV.

I also note in passing that the secondary page PCarbonn set up to isolate the impact of my work has now diasppeared as I predicted, it was just someone else besides P who did it. Wiki is far too transient for me. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:59, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Journals don't usually publish replies to critiques along with the submitted critiques unless they think they are merited. The various challenges date back as far as April, 2007 as far as CR-39 goes. If you read that, you will see that there is already a series of independent replications since the original publication. 69.228.220.30 (talk) 21:17, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the challenges go much further back than that. I was negatively commenting on the Oriani and Fisher report of CR39 pits in 2002. See:

Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion

From: kirk.shana...@srs.gov (Kirk L. Shanahan)

Date: 13 Nov 2002 09:15:34 -0800

Local: Wed, Nov 13 2002 12:15 pm

Subject: Re: Oriani & Fisher in JJAP

where I begin the discussion of the claims by pointing out some errors in the paper (later found to be due to typesetting problems) and by showing how my challenged chemical mechanism for CF can also explain CR39 pits. I added another possibility in a later post. I suggest you read the whole thread. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:08, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

And, at least in the journals I publish in, when an author critiques some prior paper, the authors of the prior paper are informed and given the opportunity to respond. This is what happened with the 2006 rebuttal to Storms' comments. The SMMF publication of 2005 apparently didn't have enough of a comment to warrent that however, as I was not informed such a paper had been published by the Editor. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:08, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Noone can "isolate the impact of [your] work", nor does anybody need to. Your work - that i have seen you present here - is very specific in scope. For instance, it deals specifically w/conventional electrolysis cells. Aspects of electrolysis cells that by their very nature do not apply to gas-loading experiments. They also do not speak at all to claimed transmutations, pits on cr-39 present in significant quantity only when heavy water is used, or things like structural anomalies on the cathode in co-deposition experiments (craters, etc). But this specificity is all very natural for science (and reason), and i don't see you disputing any of it so i don't see the problem.

Actually you're wrong Kevin. When I added my first contributions to the article back in the May/June timeframe, I added several comments to the existing article. PCarbon was about the only editor there contributing regularly at the time. He deleted almost everything I wrote. What he couldn't delete were the comments regarding He detection and the Clarke work on that, and my work on the CCS. He did however, spin off a subpage to 'isolate' the comments on my work, a page by the way that is not lost somewhere in the Great Wiki Void (pretty well isolated I'd say). I commented negatively on all positive claims in the article at the time, thinking Wiki would be reasonable about this, but they weren't. Today, the article has a brief mention of my work, mixed in with other stuff, which misrepresents its significance greatly, and the Clarke work is no longer discussed. There is no mention of the problems with the transmutation claims or the CR39 pits, even though I have tried valiantly to explain them to the editors in this Talk page (go check the archives). Your claim as to 'structural anomalies' is not correct, conventional explanations exist for those too. So, do you see me disputing it Kevin? Let me be clear: For any body of related results that is large enough to be considered to have some level of reproduction in it, conventional explanations are available and preferred. How's that? But, as noted by others, since the mainstream all think CF died somewhere in 1990-1994, no one is publishing anything negative, because they aren't even aware 'research' continued! So you are not going to find specific articles now or anytime soon. So how do you fairly represent this to the Wiki reader? You get an expert to explain the problems to you and include them in the article. But this Wiki article has gone exactly the opposite, with a reduction and removal of all negative criticism of the supposed evidence for CF. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:06, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Kirk, a couple of points. First, you are one person who sought flaws in the experiments. You found many. However, to the extent you think a group of people seeking flaws can do better, then you need to be reminded that the 1989 DOE panel consisted of 23 people who at least partly had the job of finding flaws in experiments, because they knew just as we do, about the theoretical difficulties for CF. Neverthless, in the "Executive Summary" of the conclusions of that panel, http://www.ncas.org/erab/execsumm.htm , the group stated: "The Panel also concludes that some observations attributed to cold fusion are not yet invalidated." YOU are talking as if every single experiment in this field can always be invalidated, yet the evidence is, and you even agreed with this, that a small percentage of experiments has defied and continues to defy the flaw-finders. In my opinion this leaves everyone with three paths to take (some of which you yourself wrote about on this page, and so the rest of this is not directed mostly at you, Kirk). (1) We focus on replicating those experiments so they no longer are a small percentage of the total. (2) We assume they are all flawed, regardless, and strive to explain them that way. (3) We accept that CF is real, if rarer than originally thought, and strive to explain it. I'm fully aware that Path 1 can eventually indicate which of the other paths would be the better choice to pursue. However, not everyone is a good-enough experimentalist for Path 1 (as evidenced by so many flawed experiments!!!), which would leave a lot of interested parties with nothing but Path 2 or Path 3 to take, blindly. It would not hurt this Article if people taking those paths exhibit some simple respect for each other's work. This means that hypothesized explanations for flaws deserve the the same treatment as hypothesized explanations for CF. The Article would be richer if it had both instead of neither, and "standards" for the technical parts of the Article don't necessarily have to be the same as the standards for hypotheses. Finally, that richness may be historically valuable even after Path 1 eventually/finally leads to a "winner". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Objectivist (talk • contribs) 14:59, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Speculations and unpublished material do not belong in wikipedia articles, quite irrespective of who writes it. If your description is accurate, Pcarbonn was correct in removing the material in question. My claims as to "structural anomalies" are correct: there are "structural anomalies" that have been found in co-deposition and they have been published. And -- on a side note -- i'm not aware of any conventional explanations for those craters, other than a concentrated and high-heat reaction, and this is corroborated by the thermal output. i.e. The conventional explanation is pretty simple and straightforward. So back to the subject - no, i don't see you disputing the existence of these structures, nor the fact that your published work (that i'm aware of) doesn't even mention them, nonetheless speak to them. In fact, the only thing I've heard from you is speculation and unsupported claims - both of which are worthless to me, and neither of which is very scientific.

It seems to me like you are twisting my argument to make it sound like you have a rebuttle. This to me is all straw man and non-sequitor. It's specious. It may sound persuasive but it's really deceptive. It's not an ethical way to argue. Once should try to avoid logical fallacies like those and respond to the strongest interpretation of your opponents argument (by strongest i don't mean boldest, I mean most difficult to attack), not the weakest. etc. etc. FWIW, I develop a strong distaste for people very quickly when I see them discuss things in an unfair manner. Kevin Baas^talk 19:48, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

As to the Arbcom ruling - it appears I am not the only who found it to be a complete farce (double standard in comparision to ScienceApologist). Though you seem to be the only one taking joy in another's suffering and using what many see as an injustice as a premise for a (fallacious) argument, thus adding insult to injury. Kevin Baas^talk 16:47, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Your insult is noted. I challenge you to support that by citing where I have 'taken joy' in the ban. Make sure you realize that PCarbon was a hindrance to the Wiki article development once there was someone other than CF afficianados editing it. He opposed everything negative regarding CF, and that led to an unbalanced article. His persistance in this was recognized as POV-pushing and he was banned for it. If you check the pages on this, I suggested there that PCarbon not be banned but be restricted from editing the 'anti' section of the article (which is now gone as well). Your comments betray your position, and I'm not going to be responding to you further on this. I had a great time while away, and I think I shall probably just leave you all to it. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:06, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

My insult?!? -- Opps, I looked back for reference and found that I had just misread something you read -- sorry about that. You are correct, there is nothing you said that would support that notion. I will say, however, that your most recent reply certainly "betray"s a sense of relief and a very low opinion of his work. "Make sure you realize" that PCarbonn is almost solely responsible for getting this article up to good article status (which if i'm not mistaken it has since lost on a request for reevaluation). He has contributed a lot of material on both sides. That's right, he has written for "the enemy". If we're making neutrality comparisons here, that puts him a step above you.

My comments betray what position? I said I thought the arbitration ruling was unjust because it punished Pcarbonn for violations less severe and numerous than that of ScienceApologist, as elucidated by the evidence presented to arbcom, yet SA didn't get any sanction for his actions. That is my position. I state it plainly and intend it to be known so there is nothing "betrayed"; in speaking plainly on the matter i have been perfectly loyal to my intentions. And I am glad you're not responding further because if you did I wouldn't expect it to be very productive. Kevin Baas^talk 19:48, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I have my own question here; I thought the codeposition/particle-track experiments were done after the 2004 DOE review, so that data was not available to them? On the other hand, I've also heard (yes! hearsay!) that those experiments were highly repeatable. Have any of the doubters (a group that doesn't include rabid detractors) tried it yet? If any of them get positive results, then I have another Question for the detractors: "With evidence of more-ordinary fusions occurring in very thin deuterium-saturated palladium (because of the particle tracks), what could be the CAUSE of those fusions?" Note this is essentially the same question that has to be asked regarding deuterium-saturated bulk palladium; if fusion is the culprit for the claimed/observed heat, then how could have been Caused? We can ignore for the moment the mechanism that carries away the energy in the latter case (no ordinary high-energy fusion-byproduct particles), because the KEY is the first Question. If deuterium is fusing in a thin layer of metal, why couldn't the same mechanism cause it to happen in bulk metal? AFTER the common Cause has been figured out, THEN the differences can be examined, regarding how the fusion energy is released. V (talk) 21:46, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Could you please stop saying "high energy fusion byproducts"? It's a red herring and we discussed it above. Both low and high energy fusion byproducts are observed to be the same, which is one thing that make CF so unlikely. And you can see why "high energy" is irrelevant if you look at the energies - between 0.01 and 0.1 MeV are required to overcome repulsive forces (depending on the nuclei), compared to 24 MeV coming out. It's like flying a toy aeroplane into a tornado - it doesn't really matter how fast the plane is going, the tornado takes over and decides how everything turns out. Anyway, sorry for the aside, that bit of nonsense spread by CF advocates (not you) annoys me. Phil153 (talk) 21:54, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

It is my understanding that ordinarily the 50/50 split of protons and neutrons released as a result of D+D fusions are indeed "high energy" particles (although nowhere near 24MeV due to the particular reactions involved). I could agree that "byproducts" may be inaccurate word-choice, since that word typically is associated with unwanted stuff like pollutants. Nevertheless, my prior paragraph was more about "If we have repeatable evidence for CF in thin-film metal, then detecting vs not detecting [them, the "semi-products"] in bulk metal is irrelevant, until after we understand how CF can happen at all". Do you have a disagreement with that logic, Phil? V (talk) 22:05, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

You know, I think I misread what you were saying. Shouldn't edit from work when distracted. Sorry. As for your logic, it seems premature to me. I think most scientists would like to see something unequivocally demonstrated first before they go chasing theory fairies. Surely that's not too much to ask after monstrosities like polywater and N-rays. And make no mistake, the CR39 stuff is full of holes. Read the critiques or even the attempted replications that IP editor posted above. Phil153 (talk) 22:18, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Phil, I used the initial word "if" for a good reason. You do not have to accept-as-fact anything preceded with "if" in order to analyze the logic of a statement. I could write, "If God exists in accordance with certain claims, then it must be possible to build a perpetual-motion machine." The statement is either logical or illogical, and whether or not its premise is factual is irrelevant. Therefore I ask that you not avoid answering the question I asked in my prior paragraph. "IS it logical to ignore where the energy goes in bulk metal, if fusions are happening in thin-film metal, until after the initiation mechanism has been understood?" Thank you! V (talk) 22:37, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

i'd just like to comment because i find this discussion interesting. I have to say when i read the "logic ... seems premature" phrase I was a bit confused - logic is not temporal so it can't be mature or premature. But from the next sentence I see that Phil wasn't actually talking about the logic. I actually still don't know what he was talking about there so I still don't know what that phrase was supposed to mean. As to "most scientists...chasing theory fairies", the scientific process is essentially that you do a lot of experiments and then from the results you try to form theories that tie the results together in a simple way and allows you to predict, then you try to find ways to test those theories. But ofcourse you can't really develop a tenable theory until you've done enough experiments to have a fair idea of what's going on. Which is exactly what I believe Objectivist is saying. And in that, I perfectly agree with him. I would say that, yes, if you have consistent empirical results that contradict your working model, then clearly your working model needs to be refined somehow, but it would be premature to refine it before you have a fair idea of what's causing those results. I'm not sure if, technically speaking, that's a logical conclusion, but it certainly is consistent with the canons of science. The working model is a logical system and the physical world is - for purposes of evaluation - a logical system. The goal is to make the working model approximate the physical world, and one does that by bayesian updates, Bayesian model comparison and all that jazz. And bayesian inference works best (is most robust) with a lot of orthogonal information, hence one gathers various types of data from various sources. And hence a "good" theory is supported by many strands of evidence. Gathering data means doing experiments to figure out what's going on. So I suppose from all that that one comes to a pretty solid logical-mathematical proof that if your goal is a good predictive model, then when you encounter a consistent discrepancy between your model and that which it models, the thing to do is to do experiments on that which is modeled to try to figure out what's going on. (But I imagine that to most scientifically-minded people this just comes as common sense.) In any case, i think Objectivist is simply trying to ask if this seems unreasonable to you, or more precisely if this "math" is wrong, and if so, how. Kevin Baas^talk 16:29, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I actually do need to add a little more, cause the question is a bit more complex than that - he is also asking if it's really prudent to rely on certain parts of a working model that apparently contradict the empirical results in order to refine that very same model. Or to put it another way, if it's more productive to use a descriptive model to predict the outcome of a process that, when it comes down to it, doesn't fit the description, or whether it's better to try to construct , by way of hypothesis, experiment, etc., a (revised) model that _does_ fit the description. Though I will say that knowing HOW the results differ from what's predicted by the current working model may certainly be helpful in revising it. I.e. particle emmisions, radiation, products, etc. is useful data for figuring out what's going on. It's simply that if after considering them you still don't know what's going on, then obviously you still have some more investigating to do. Kevin Baas^talk 17:03, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, I don't think I was being quite that complicated, in asking what I asked. There are several intertwined problems. (1) Excess heat in electrolysis experiments, sometimes replicated and sometimes not. (2) Well-accepted theories regarding fusion, which do not offer much in the way of allowing either (A) fusion to happen in that environment or (B) fusion to produce heat without lots of radiation. (3) People who act as if the theories of Item 2 encompasses all possibilities, so therefore the excess heat must always be an erroneous measurement. (4) New co-deposition experiments indicating fusions could have happened, after all, in the electrolysis experiments --and these experiments don't need to pay any attention to the excess-heat question. (5) The continuing lack of a widely accepted plausible explanation for how fusions could happen (what is the hole in Item 2A?). (6) People who have committed themselves to a particular scientific position, and in order to not look like fools, need to grasp Item 5 to claim that Item 4 cannot be valid, either, except that if they are wrong they will look even more foolish! This could explain the lack of a reply to my question --simple "ignore it and maybe it will go away" philosophy-- which was about "Why not save Item 2B for later, and focus the theorizing on Item 2A for now?" See, to the extent that the co-deposition experiments produce more and more valid data (it is claimed this is highly reproducible, remember), the people of Items 3 and 6 will find their position less and less tenable. Which sort-of means those who lack the courage to recant can be ignored, and we need an answer to Item 2A more than ever! V (talk) 18:54, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Mosier-Boss et al (2009) "Triple tracks in CR-39 as the result of Pd–D Co-deposition: evidence of energetic neutrons" Naturwissenschaften 96: 135–142 is particularly helpful in resolving the question of the particles detected. I would point out that Naturwissenschaften, Thermochimica Acta, and Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys., are the highest impact factor journals in which the subject has been covered since the 1989-90 articles in Nature and Science, and they are all recent, since 2002. There is absolutely no reason to ignore the recent publications in Naturwissenschaften, Thermochimica Acta, and Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys., because Wikipedia's reliable source criteria requires that they be given a higher priority than work in journals with a lower impact factor. 69.228.220.30 (talk) 22:21, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

It's still primary research which has to be weighed up against what the more reliable secondary sources say, regardless of where or when it's published. This is something I intend to bring up in the latest arbcom because it's a source of dispute in fringe science - mainstream science ignores something (such as N-Rays or polywater or homeopathy or cold fusion) and (rightly) requires a higher burden of proof to un-ignore it, so the only sources available become advocate material. I think careful editorial judgment in this case requires acknowledging the burden of proof placed on the field, although that's open to opinion of course. Phil153 (talk) 22:27, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Please correct me if there are any reasons that I'm wrong, but a primary source which has been peer-reviewed, challenged by critique, and a reply published back-to-back after the critique by editors who have had the opportunity to see the reviewers' comments on both the critique and the reply rises to the level of a secondary, juried source. 69.228.220.30 (talk) 22:39, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

You are wrong. Published in a seconday source means published in a secondary source. Additionally, can you confirm that you are not logging out to avoid scrutiny? This page has been the subject of arbitration and one editor was banned from participating here. Jehochman ^Talk 22:51, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

According to WP:SECONDARY, what is and what is not a secondary source is currently the subject of discussion. I am not logging out to avoid scrutiny. I saw the arbitration case and I think it is a shame that a respectable editor was banned here for no other reason than that he was resisting the deletion of all non-mainstream points of view, even though those points of view are held by the overwhelming number of experimenters who have published in the academic literature over the past decade. It seems that sort of thing has happened here before. I know that all of the incumbents on the arbitration committee who ran for re-election were soundly defeated, and I hope the banned users appeal to the new committee at their earliest possibility. 69.228.220.30 (talk) 23:05, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

{unindenting} Quoting from earlier in this section, " there is already a series of independent replications since the original publication" --if that is true, then are not those replications secondary sources? (I suppose it depends on whether or not any made it into print yet.) V (talk) 23:05, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

This is little better than raw data. No way. ~Paul V. Keller 01:37, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

How about Mosier-Boss et al (2009)? 69.228.207.247 (talk) 01:39, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I think what makes this technique attractive is its rife possibilities for misinterpretation. ~Paul V. Keller 02:54, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Does Szpak & Mosier-Boss (2007) "Further evidence of nuclear reactions in the Pd/D lattice: emission of charged particles" Naturwissenschaften 94: 511–4 leave any room for misinterpretation? 69.228.201.125 (talk) 13:50, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Please be more specific. If someone other than the original experimenters do a codeposition experiment and replicate the apparent particle tracks in the plastic, AND publishes it in a reasonably reputable place (which is the part I "supposed" about above), then why is that "little better than raw data"? Isn't "replication" and "reputable publication" the things the detractors here have been insisting on??? I agree that there might still be an "interpretation" issue, regarding whether or not the particle tracks were caused by fusion products, but I would hope you are not planning on insisting that the replicated tracks don't exist at all, or are not similar enough to tracks that appeared in the original codeposition experiment! V (talk) 04:55, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

What it means is saying you have seen tracks in CR-39 does not confirm that you have seen neutrons, or alpha particles, or energetic ions, or whatever else they are claiming. It is not something that even the most knowledgeable people who make it to this web site can look at and draw a conclusion about. All it shows is a disconnected observation. Saying that the tracks are "not inconsistent with . . ." or "look like tracks from . . ." does not give a conclusion reportable here. ~Paul V. Keller 05:32, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Ah, but it is the job of Wikipedia to say what the researchers said, who got their data peer-reviewed and published. There is also the other published data tabulated at the start of this Section of the Discussion, indicating the tracks appear in a manner that is distinct from background noise and other sources than deuterium-saturated palladium. To the extent this data can-be/has-been replicated, then (A) a description of it belongs in the main article, and (B) the tracks require an explanation. I'd like to know if anyone has put a piece of CR-39 into a Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor (briefly!) to get some data on tracks made by known-fusion events, for comparison with the co-deposition data-pits. I recognize some compensation-analysis may be necessary, since a Fusor operates in a vacuum and electrolysis doesn't. But if CR-39 is such potentially important stuff, then I'm all for including a decent description of it and its usual place in particle-detection physics --and I'm also for including a published picture of CR-39 that has been through a Fusor, just so the readers can see how similar (or different) the pits are, to the other picture, and they could maybe also see why the CF researchers claim their pits are caused by fusions (or why they shouldn't make those claims!). (Yes, I know about the OR rules. But I bet a CR-39 picture could be added to the Farnsworth fusor article, and then this article would only need to mention that the other picture exists... or both pictures could be added to the CR-39 article!) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Objectivist (talk • contribs) 06:37, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Apparently, the professionals editing the article have decided that skeptical sources need not be peer reviewed or meet any of the other reliable source criteria for physical science articles, but opposing sources from recent high-impact peer reviewed journals must not be included even when they are supported by back-to-back replies to peer reviewed critiques. Because, they are not WP:SECONDARY sources, meaning that even though they include their own background literature surveys approved by the reviewers, they were originally authored by experimenters who have actually made the measurements in question instead of theoreticians who only measure things with their word processor as they contribute to perpetuation of the "mainstream." Welcome to the wonderful world of controversial Wikipedia articles! 69.228.207.247 (talk) 02:36, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

[additional comments from another archived talk section on the same topic follow. GetLinkPrimitiveParams (talk) 14:48, 13 February 2009 (UTC)]

The funny thing is that I had the exact opposite reaction. I started off thinking there might be something to it (lots of smoke for no fire), and every bit of research I read from CF researchers caused me to become more and more skeptical due to the quality and nature of the "evidence". It has all the hallmarks of error and pathological science. As for SPAWAR, http://www.earthtech.org/CR39/index.html is very telling. Phil153 (talk) 00:35, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Exactly how telling is that personal web page when in fact every single one of the issues it raises is addressed by the peer-reviewed Mosier-Boss et al (2008) "Reply to comment on 'The use of CR-39 in Pd/D co-deposition experiments': a response to Kowalski" Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. 44: 291–5, p. 292? Where is the intellectual honesty? 69.228.206.231 (talk) 07:19, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Now, kids, be nice! The web page is interesting, and not conclusive in itself. I don't see that Mosier-Boss et al responded to the issues raised there. They addressed the issues raised by Kowalski. Look, this is the point. If it's fusion, it's extraordinary. Because of the magnitude of the claim, extraordinary evidence is required. CR-39 gets close, so too does reliable extra heat, if it really is that reliable and fast. But with the CR-39, there are obvious possible errors, and chemical damage is one of them. Mosier-Boss claims that chemical damage was ruled out, but nothing can be ruled out in this field, unless it's totally conclusive. Too many variables. It's going to take experiments with tiny changes in variables; my guess is that this work is going on now. How about varying the distance of the material from the electrode and seeing the effect on track density and depth? How about doing the same in the same solution with an americium source? How about a lot of things that I'm sure clever experimenters would think of. Editors and others are right to be skeptical. *Very* skeptical. My only point here is that we shouldn't pretend that skepticism is knowledge, nor that someone coming up with a hypothesis as to how the experimental results could be deceptive means that it has been debunked. One of the results from the web page is quite telling. They were finding SPAWAR-like pits; when they substituted normal water for heavy water, they also got the pits. "In several cases, we also substituted light water for heavy water in the electrolyte. These tests showed no discernible difference in the quantity of SPAWAR pits produced. This seems quite significant as the nuclear behavior of deuterium, at least in high energy experiments, is significantly different than that of protium." Indeed. Anyone know of a secondary source that reliably reviews the work? --Abd (talk) 19:17, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

[undent] Kowalski incorporated the complaints in that 2007 web page into his critique. The editors of Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. sent his paper to their reviewers. The reviewers contacted SPAWAR with questions. SPAWAR submitted their reply to the editors, who forwarded it to the reviewers, who agreed that it should be published back-to-back as a response to Kowalski's critique. SPAWAR got pits from light water, too -- in the same proportion that deuterium exists in natural light water. The 2007 earthtech.org web page authors repeatedly assume that the pits are alpha particles and compare the pits to those from known alpha particle sources, but Mosier-Boss et al (2009) "Triple tracks in CR-39 as the result of Pd–D Co-deposition: evidence of energetic neutrons" Naturwissenschaften 96: 135–142 suggests pretty convincingly that alpha particles are not the source of the pits. 69.228.206.231 (talk) 15:33, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

If there is going to be so much fuss raised about CR-39 pits, then perhaps an alternate way to detect fusion products should be attempted. I'm thinking about the Super-Kamiokande detector as an example to imitate, heh. V (talk) 18:42, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Szpak & Mosier-Boss (2007) "Further evidence of nuclear reactions in the Pd/D lattice: emission of charged particles" Naturwissenschaften 94: 511–4 shows one of the methods of detecting protons. 69.228.197.195 (talk) 08:57, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, here's where we can start. The reliably-sourced information, from peer-reviewed articles, belongs on Wikipedia, it's sufficiently notable and reliable and verifiable. Where does it belong? It belongs here, but if placing it here would create undue weight, then it belongs in a subarticle. Not a POV fork, simply a subarticle that considers a detail. And we need consensus on this, or, if we don't have consensus, then we need clear statements of each differing position so that further process has something to decide upon, clearly stated, and supported by evidence. Otherwise what we get are shouting matches and endless discussions that go nowhere. I intend to facilitate this process, if it doesn't happen by itself. I'm slow and very busy. Anyone else is welcome to try. I would, myself, create a page in my user space to consider the issues; other approaches would be to create Talk space subpages, but that's not flexible enough, sometimes, unless more than one page is created. Like a "consensus" page and another page that discusses what goes on the consensus page. What goes on the consensus page is what all or nearly all editors agree upon, *plus* attributed opinions where consensus couldn't be found. The consensus page should be NPOV, documenting both agreement and unresolved dispute. --Abd (talk) 15:28, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Accusing people of intellectual dishonesty is no more useful than accusing editors of POV-pushing; in fact, it's less useful. Both just make editorial disputes into personal ones. Everyone, please, stop trying to put out the fires here by tossing volatile fuel on them. It doesn't work. We very much need the participation of editors with knowledge, including experts, and experts often have a COI, that's connected with what makes them experts, and people with knowledge quite often have strong opinions, which they assert, and some assert it arrogantly. It's a problem, but we address it by being welcoming at the same time as we stand firmly for civility and consensus. We need people who understand the subject -- from all notable POVs -- in order to ensure that our consensus is rooted in knowledge and not just in knee-jerk opinions. --Abd (talk) 15:33, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I have to echo this comment made by LeadSongDog above: "Abd, which publications are you referring to? We've been down the road before on conference proceedings (not refereed), off-topic journals such as Die Naturwissenschaften (the editorial boards and reviewers can't always competently assess the material's merits)"[10] --Enric Naval (talk) 17:28, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I responded to this above. It was a preposterous argument. Die Naturwissenschaften is published by the Max Planck Society, which would be as capable of any organization in the world, if not more capable, of assessing an article on, say, physics or electrochemistry or, for that matter, any topic in the natural sciences. As to "down the road before," the road we have been down is long tendentious debates with no resolution, such as this thread, with one side imagining that it "won." No, we will go down this road again, but next time we will make every stop along the way, and we will stop arguing from conclusions. Watch. --Abd (talk) 22:04, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Not to mention, there is more than one kind of intellectual dishonesty. For example, every Religion that ever tried to suppress competition was being intellectually dishonest, acting as if only its own POV was the only one anyone needed to know, without providing any supporting evidence for such actions. A chessplayer who overturns the board is doing even worse, not having the courage to admit, in the normal way, to losing. V (talk) 17:25, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

The religion thing might be ignorance - i suppose - according to the article on intellectual dishonesty - that technically would depend on whether the antagonist was aware of the existence contrary evidence. However it states that someone who has not "performed rigorous due diligence to ensure the truthfulness of the position" can be considered "intellectually dishonest". This would seem to contradict the part of the article which calls this ignorance. Perhaps the article on intellectual dishonesty is being a little intellectually dishonest. Personally, I think the middle bullet on that should go. i would call that rather "intellectual complacency" or something of the sort. i'll bring this up on that article's talk page. Kevin Baas^talk 16:18, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

re CR-39 evidence and blacklisting

[unindent] For those of you who continue to consider CR-39 evidence compelling, you may want to look at the Oriani and Fisher paper from ICCF10 (2003). It can be found at
www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/OrianiRAenergeticc.pdf
That paper shows that CR-39 plates suspended _over_ the electrolyte, in the gas phase, develop pits as well, even with a Ni baffle present to stop any charged particles from making it to the plates from the liquid. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:45, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

What does that tell you beyond that the "evidence for energetic neutrons" is supported? (And that the black-list censorship prevents people on both sides of the debate from being able to cite support for their points; why do the admins think our sensibilities are so fragile that we must be shielded from these sources?) GetLinkPrimitiveParams (talk) 04:17, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm working on the blacklisting. Because it was requested and confirmed at meta, it's quite difficult to approach, and, in the meantime, if anyone wishes to propose a specific whitelisting for a need page for en.wikipedia, ask me and I may be able to assist. The blacklist issue is complex and is not going to be resolved overnight. One step at a time. We have one whitelisted link now to lenr-canr.org. If no more can be whitelisted, chances of removing the blacklisting approach zero, no matter how flawed the process may have been. (But that also is possible, there is process underway which might result in a delisting.) --Abd (talk) 17:38, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

One more point. The blacklisting doesn't prevent citing a reliable source, it only prevents linking to a convenience copy of the reliable source. In Talk, if you need to point to a proposed source convenience copy URL, just put it in as text without the http://. The blacklist will then ignore it, but anyone can paste this link into a browser and get the page. In other words, cats may lose their skin through more than one method. --Abd (talk) 17:41, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

On the substance here, note that the paper is a Conference proceeding and doesn't reach to WP:RS (unless possibly as an attributed report or opinion of the authors). However, for our discussion here, this is eminently on-point. Yeah. Neutrons, perhaps, though the source here may be charged particle radiation, as they authors hypothesize, coming from radioactive isotopes in the gas. Shanahan doesn't mention the other reports which show pits on the back of the detectors; the detectors are too thick to allow charged particles to pass through; what is seen is that pit density is drastically reduced, leaving pits that appear to be characteristic of neutrons. That is, folks, we are seeing reports of a smoking gun. Until there is some secondary review, this could only be reported in the article with caution. Charged particle radiation, quite significant by itself, but neutrons? Released products of nuclear transmutation?

What's happening in this experiment is consistent with other reports finding nuclear transformations under proposed cold fusion conditions. That is, low levels of unstable nucleotides, we can hypothesize, are being created and released from the electrode in the emitted gas, these then decay and generate the tracks found on the CR-39 suspended in the emitted gases. --Abd (talk) 17:56, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Proposal: The Title is Cold Fusion

The article is titled "Cold Fusion" not "Origins and Debates Over CF".

However, the lead of this article (today) is dedicated to the debate over the original claims (SP and MF), and the conflict.

Note these words in the initial three initial paragraphs:

1) ... SP and MF 2) ... made headlines 3) ... enthusiasm turned to skepticism

I propose instead that the scientific processes, in simple terms, should dominate the article, dominate the introduction.

What does the term refer to?

It seems safe now to suggest he term "cold fusion" has an identifiable meaning, and that is in relation to certain 'experimental processes', ones that have varied results: some positive, some not. This is primary.

Then, other themes are secondary: 1) theories about how the results are alleged to be possible 2) there are many many theories, apparently not settled

Then, it is tertiary: 1) whether the results are possible 2) the findings were argued by some to be impossible 3) are the rejections of cold fusion supported by peered published evaluations of each experiment claiming positive results?

And 4) some of the debate is the normal tension in science between theory and discovery 5) some of the debate was highly emotionalized involving science politics

I acknowledge that the highly acrimonious political origins of cold fusion is a 'reality' that can be defended as 'relevant'. However, those origins do not *entail (define) what cold fusion *is today.

Thus, I propose that the paragraphs that "lead" the article instead belong to a subsumed section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ihaveabutt (talk • contribs) 00:03, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

"I propose instead that the scientific processes, in simple terms, should dominate the article, dominate the introduction." The present introduction is already dominated by the scientific processes. It describes some details about the proposed reactions, how the researchers presented their experiments and their results, and how other researchers responded. It then describes, briefly, how the government has reacted to the situation. Olorinish (talk) 05:26, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Please double check. I acknowledge my note is not perfectly expressed, and I acknowledge that PART of the introduction is rightly about science, but my note warrants more than just a casual dismissal. Ihaveabutt (talk) 19:47, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Feel free to propose an alternative. I don't see any problem with the current lead (along the lines you suggest) Verbal chat 20:10, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

The second sentence is, "More broadly, but less commonly, it can be used to refer to..." Fine; but is the article about the narrower definition in the first sentence, or does it include the broader definition? Would it make sense to either rename this article to low-energy nuclear reaction or to have a separate page on that topic, since I believe that term is more commonly used than "cold fusion" in current research publications?

Regardless of the answer to the above, I suggest appending "e.g. muon-catalysed fusion" to the end of the 2nd sentence. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 19:13, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

How about:

The phrase "Cold Fusion" is a description. Whether or not it is a correct description has been disputed ever since 1989, when it was coined. In that year the electrochemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons described some experiments involving the electrolysis of heavy water, and claimed they had observed quantities of heat energy being released that could not be explained in terms of ordinary chemical interactions. They therefore proposed that the energy could be explained if nuclear fusion reactions were occurring between deuterium nuclei under relatively ordinary physical conditions, far colder than the conditions inside stars, where fusion typically occurs in Nature. It is known that special events such as muon-catalyzed fusion can occur even at liquid-hydrogen temperatures, but it is also known that muons are not available to explain Fleischmann's and Pons' results. Therefore the label "Cold Fusion" exists to describe whatever other mechanism might be able to do that, and that label has persisted in spite of all the conflicting research carried out afterward, some of which directly contradicts the original claims that something unexplainable in terms of chemistry had happened.

This article will describe the original experiment, attempts to duplicate it, variant experiments on the general theme, theoretical objections, ...

(take it from there, folks!) V (talk) 19:38, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

What is better about this version? It seems more complicated to me. Olorinish (talk) 21:15, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

It has less politics and more science in it. Science can indeed be complicated. So? V (talk) 16:16, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

This version is less formal and less encyclopedia-like. It also has fewer details than the equivalent section of the current article. Keep in mind that a large part of the notability of cold fusion is that there was a great deal of attention just after the FP announcement, which means that this article should include a lot of information about that. The notability of the post-2000 work is much lower, and reported either as being fringe-ish (such as in the Wired and Physics Today articles), or is reported in unusual forums (such as the Mosier-Boss articles). I don't understand what is wrong with the present version. Olorinish (talk) 17:10, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

The introductory paragraph doesn't need to be as formal as the rest of the article, and it could be argued that some of the details in the current introduction could wait for a later paragraph. Also, one thing that bothers me is the need for such words as "postulated". NOW the phrase "cold fusion" is equivalent to a postulate, but what if the phenomenon is proved to indeed be fusion? Then the article has to be edited throughout, to remove such words, because the phrase would, from then on, be describing something real. On the other hand, the fact that the phrase "cold fusion" is a description will remain true, no matter what the future holds. Heh, the second sentence in my proposed paragraph might someday need to be rewritten as "Whether or not it is a correct description was disputed from 1989, when it was coined, until ####, when it was {[(dis)]}proved." But very little else, of text written from the CF-is-a-description viewpoint, would need a rewrite. Sure, extra text would be needed to describe the proof or disproof, but like the word "polywater", the phrase "cold fusion" can always qualify as a description, regardless of being real, fictitious, or uncertain. V (talk) 17:43, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Looks like a good candidate for transwiki to to the Simple English Wikipedia. Not quite encyclopedic enough in tone for this one, IMO. Phil153 (talk) 18:27, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

To simplify the introduction, I have edited the first paragraph. Any comments? Olorinish (talk) 18:47, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm all for simplifying. But it doesn't quite work with the paragraph that follows. You'd need "a claim of cold fusion made worldwide news headlines" or similar. And the simpler version doesn't encapsulate the fact that "cold fusion" most commonly refers to a disputed field of research involving palladium and D. I don't know how to fix it short of a revert...we'll see what someone else comes up with. Phil153 (talk) 18:56, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

A couple of minor points. The word "refers" is possibly overused in that short paragraph. The last part, involving muon catalysis, might be better if "for example," was replaced with "e.g.,", because IMO "for example, see" is superior English, while the well-known abbreviation of the Latin phrase works well without "see". V (talk) 03:28, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Back to mediation?

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science/Proposed decision#Editors encouraged seems to recommend a return to formal mediation. So for starters can the previous mediation pages be undeleted now, please? GetLinkPrimitiveParams (talk) 09:15, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

What it said was "Editors in the disputed area are encouraged to seek to engage in formal mediation to help establish consensus when coverage of fringe science in an article or group of articles is under dispute. While mediation is not binding, editors are further encouraged to abide by the results of mediation (and other dispute resolution)."

So is there still some question under dispute that needs mediation, or have we gotten back to serious editing?LeadSongDog (talk) 20:34, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

There are plenty of issues, but it takes time. The editor we had most knowledgeable from the profusion side has been topic banned, and one of the most active from the other side, likewise. What is the story about these "previous mediation pages"? Can I get the file names? --Abd (talk) 19:05, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Holy Grail Found? -- 2007 Review article

page 1 preview springerlink He Jing-tang, Nuclear fusion inside condense matters, Frontiers of Physics in China, 2007. At first glance, this appears to be a general physics journal. I'll try to get a copy. --Abd (talk) 19:02, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

table of contents of issue in which the article appeared: [11]

[12] gives a summary of the article, Nuclear fusion inside condense matters. "Description: This article describes in detail the nuclear fusion inside condense matters—the Fleischmann-Pons effect, the reproducibility of cold fusions, self-consistentcy of cold fusions and the possible applications."

See, from this author, [13], abstract. This was published in 1993

Abstract A study on anomalous nuclear fusion reaction by using 10kV pulsed high voltage discharge in deuterium was completed. During high voltage (HV) pulses no neutron signal was detected, but two peaks of gamma rays were detected. The energies of two gamma rays are at 425 and 870keV, respectively. It might be explained as 108Pd* and 56Fe* excited by high energy charged particles de-exciting radiations. Neither neutron signal nor gamma signal was detected in the intervals between the pulses.

I recommend reading the original paper linked as PDF above. They mention Pons-Fleischmann, and this paper is a confirmation of anomalous fusion, fusion that seems to have a different radiation signature than expected.

I doubt that Frontiers of Physics in China is a reliable source, so it's not even a clean drinking vessel, let alone the holy grail. It's noted at Wikipedia:Reliable_source_examples (linked from WP:RS) that The vast majority of well-regarded journals are indexed in the ISI Web of Science., which FOPC doesn't appear to be. Biberian's "review" had the same problem. Reliable journals simply don't publish uncritical nonsense. Phil153 (talk) 20:15, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I've tried to find out if it's listed. That content seems to require payment. However, note who owns ISI: Thomson Reuters. So see this, from Thomson Reuters. What does Thomson Reuters have to say about Higher Education Press and its Frontiers series? I'm, here, countering an a priori, categorical rejection of a possible source, apparently based on conclusions. I.e., the topic is fringe, therefore the journal is flaky. Isn't that a tad circular? --Abd (talk) 00:12, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I missed this later insertion. I had no issue accessing the ISI web, I'm not sure why you can't. A search in their list for "Frontiers" in 2007 (the date of publishing) yielded 9 journals, which didn't include the above. A search of the eigenfactor rankings, which indexes all of ISI and most journals that ISI journals cite, shows up no mention of the journal.[14]. However, your press release looks solid for the Frontiers series generally. The journal itself may well be good enough to be used as a source somewhere in the article.

I invite anyone who thinks I'm being biased in calling this "uncritical nonsense" to actually read the first page of the paper that Abd linked above. Read it carefully. It is the least scientific and most imprecise piece of crap I've ever read in a physics journal. Yes, it is "uncritical nonsense". It contains statements of unknown facts without qualifiers (In the process of electrolysis of heavy water using Pd as the cathode and Pt as the anode, if the following two conditions are satisfied spontaneously, excess energy will be produced. Not "has been observed", not "X studies have reported excess heat when...". As a serious or credible review document this is a joke. And that's not even counting the spelling mistakes (self-consistentcy)!! and grammar mistakes. This is despite Springer claiming that the articles are carefully peer reviewed once translated into English. Your use of this as a platform to suggest that I am POV pushing in questioning the reliability of this source is confusing. Surely you can see how unscientific this work is?

Anyway, from your comments below I think we're talking past each other. You posted this section as if some new review had finally been found ("holy grail" - your words) vindicating cold fusion in a reliable source beyond what had existed previously. My response is that despite the reliability issues (which are real), there are major weight issues to consider, since this is emphatically not a reliable enough source for extraordinary claims contradicted by the most reliable journals and the mainstream in general. The journal had been going for 1 year - 1 year! when this study was posted (Vol. 2 No. 1), and as yet appears to be lacking a good impact factor (it's not even indexed!!), which is another thing noted at WP:RS and associated pages as being important for reliability. Journals without high impact factors haven't established reliability. These are the things I check because this is what our RS pages say. The rest is editorial decision which I will expound on in very long post later today.

The trouble with these threads, as I and others have repeatedly said, is that this is all abstract, including the issue of whether this journal is sufficiently reliable. You need to actually propose text or changes to the article that this journal is going to be used for. "A 2007 review of the field by <chinese professor> noted..." in the "experimental results" section might be ok for this source; "Mainstream reviews of the field have been mixed, with one noting..." in the lead is not ok for this source. It all depends on text, weight, position. References are there solely to support article text, and whether they can support that text depends on what the text is and where it is inserted. Without proposed text, we can't discuss any of the relevant issues, and this is all abstract meandering that is at best tangential to improving the article.

Perhaps this was all a misunderstanding and you were merely sharing your preliminary excitement about a new review which looked like it supported cold fusion. In which case, carry on and let us know when there is article improvement to discuss.

Further comments will follow in an extremely long posting. Phil153 (talk) 21:27, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Phil, you are correct. I was sharing with the editors of this article my discovery of this source, which seems to have been entirely missed. Rothwell didn't know about it. You are now conceding that the source might be used "somewhere in the article." Great! What I pointed out was that, before any edit was asserted, before any specific edit was even proposed, the source was being attacked as you repeat above, "uncritical nonsense." I will, below, review what's on the first page, perhaps in response to Enric. The lack of response says to me more about attitudes about China than about reliability. Push has not come to shove until there are edits asserted and contradiction is established. Heads up! If anyone gets a copy of this article, let us know! (I will if I do.) --Abd (talk) 13:12, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

And the basis for your doubt, Phil? This publication is associated with Springer, here is their page on it: http://www.springer.com/physics/journal/11467. The editorial board is at http://www.springer.com/physics/journal/11467?detailsPage=editorialBoard. But forget it. It's RS, it is published by an independent publisher and if you think it's unreliable, you will have to impeach it, specifically, and not with a circular "uncritical nonsense" argument. ArbComm is watching, Phil.

Members of the editorial board who have articles on Wikipedia: Chao Tang, Charles M. Lieber, Daniel C. Tsui. My guess is that many more are notable in China. I now understand why Jed Rothwell had such trouble with incivility here. Phil, you either want to cooperate in this enterprise or you don't. For too long we have had editors who have some fixed conclusion in mind, who have worked steadily to make sure that the article creates this impression. Where do you stand?

Now that you mention it, I should also look at Biberian's review! Was it similarly dismissed? --Abd (talk) 02:42, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm just going off the policy examples linked above, which you didn't address in your reply. Some journals are more reliable than others, and some are barely reliable at all. It's a difficult editorial weight issue, not a binary "IS RS" or "ISN'T RS". When Nature refuses to publish something and a 3 year old journal not listed in the ISI web, called Frontiers of Physics in China, publishes a summary of that same field, yes, we likely have an RS and weight problem. I'm not aware that the inclusion of a journal in Springer makes it reliable. If you want to see the kinds of articles that get published there, do a search for parapsychology.

Since I'm far from an expert on reliable sources, and the burden of proof is on the person who wants to include it, let's get some more opinions. Or maybe take it to the RS noticeboard once you actually propose text to reference from this journal instead of just making threads about "holy grails". We're here to write an article, and the best way to move forward and find consensus is to actually propose text to insert or change with references to support it. We can then discuss the text, the weight, and whether the journal is reliable enough to support that particular text. Everything else is rather academic without specifics.

As for Jed's incivility, he's not 10, and he's responsible for his own behavior. Implying he was uncivil because of some flaw in those who disagree with you and him is uncivil in itself. Arbcom is watching, Abd. Phil153 (talk) 07:43, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

This search for parapsychology is supposed to mean something? First return, sober paper, as far as I could read it. The topic exists, you know. Are you claiming that the journal that paper was published in isn't a reliable source? Phil, what exactly is the basis for that? That they publish a paper with Parapsychology in the title? Have you read Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science? Might be worth the time. Read it carefully. --Abd (talk) 23:56, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Part of the above comment by Abd was deleted in this edit. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 23:45, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

If I didn't hold Jed responsible for his incivility, I'd have appealed his block. However, his incivility took place in a context where many others were uncivil, and incivility breeds incivility, and it is very dangerous to blame just one side. As I wrote, ArbComm is watching, from the future, so if you think I'm being uncivil, do something about it. I found a source that is remarkable, a review article, by a physicist, at what appears to be a major physics institute, writing in a journal that is covered in RS as a premier peer-reviewed journal for China. Instead of just dumping it into the article, and I know what would have happened, I'm discussing it here first. You don't like that? Why? I'm not going to do some major writing just to see it reverted with the usual arguments that are applied, it's beginning to seem like to me, regardless of the actual merits, but based on results. I.e., if it looks like it supports cold fusion, it must be fringe or defective in some way, without actually investigating the sources, just assuming it. Have you actually researched Frontiers of Physics in China more than seeing where it is not listed? Have you looked at the Board? No, I don't see that you did. Instead, you simply make up all the negative arguments you can think of and ignore the positive. That is what has to stop. It's got a name: POV pushing. Show me, Phil, where you have ever found a source that might show something positive about the cold fusion idea, and you brought it here? It might cause me to revise my opinion. --Abd (talk) 22:34, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Yet another primary source from a second-rate journal contradicting the secondary sources in higher quality journals and the statements from government and scientific agencies. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:57, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Enric, too bad. You too. It's not a second-rate journal. Have you actually investigated it? What do you base that conclusion on? It's published by a cooperation between Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag. Higher Education Press is the largest publisher in China, 45th largest in the world, according to Publisher's Weekly. Frontiers of [science name] in China, covering quite a few different sciences, is China's attempt to do its best in the field of scientific publishing, and I've seen what the Chinese do when they go for their best. (But they need someone with better English editing!) The article is not a "primary source," it's a Review. Did you look? This is a secondary source, published in a peer-reviewed journal. Ultimately, peer-review depends on the review Board. I gave a link to the Board above. "Second-rate"? Tell it to their institutions. What, exactly, is contradictory? Please specify. Or stop making unfounded accusations! The journal is a general physics journal, clearly, from perusing it. It's not "fringe."

If we have a contradiction of sources, then we need to weigh and balance. Okay, what source is being contradicted? Remember, from your claim above, it's a "secondary sources in higher quality journals," plus -- though this means much less, "statements from government," and I'm not aware of involved "scientific agencies," but maybe you have something in mind. --Abd (talk) 23:40, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Ah, you are right, it's a review, my bad.

It's probably contradicting the 2004 DOE report and Nature[15][16], the scientific consensus as reported by several New York Times article, the university press books that I added at Martin Fleischmann describing how most scientists don't think that cold fusion has shown any definitive proof, etc., although it's hard to say without seeing the conclusions, and the list of studies to see if it's covering experiments already covered by the other sources, and if it's raising points already criticized at the other sources. --Enric Naval (talk) 04:31, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Ah, sources contradicting each other: good, we can describe the controversy. The bit about claiming that heat "will" be produced may be a translation error: I believe Chinese doesn't have verb tenses as such; perhaps it should have been translated as present or past tense indicating that it's referring to results of experiments, presumably described in more detail later in the article. Scientific articles with many grammatical errors because the author doesn't speak English as a first language are fairly common and do not necessarily indicate that the science in such articles is not excellent. This report adds to the set of reports that talk about measured excess heat while speculating about possible nuclear reactions as explanations. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 14:14, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

How does a review article contradict those sources? How does an article which asserts a reasonable basis for a hypothesis contradict prior conclusions, made earlier, that evidence is "not conclusive" but that also indicates further research is warranted? --Abd (talk) 13:49, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

OK, sorry, I don't know whether there is a contradiction or not. If there is, we can present both sides. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 15:07, 7 March 2009 (UTC) (My comment of 14:14, 7 March 2009 and Abd's of 13:49 seem to have been an edit conflict.) ☺Coppertwig (talk) 15:14, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Abstract and first page text

first page

Abstract: The abstract could be read as POV. The language seems to assume that CF occurs. However, this is a review article and such a conclusion could be warranted, it would depend on the evidence.

Introduction: "got more energy output than they had put into the system." That's a conclusion; there is substantial support for it in the literature, it's not uncommon to consider, for example, the alleged excess energy as being anomalous, which means "unexplained." Possible POV here may be simply a translation problem: "got" might have been intended as "found." That was, indeed, their finding, and was published as such in RS. The introduction section goes on to report the 1989 and 2004 DOE reports. We've had edit warring over how to report those; the paper's description is accurate (Huizenga is a tenacious critic of cold fusion, apparently). Again, this kind of reporting may be appropriate as an introduction to a review article. Reviewers get to have and express opinions.

Reproducibility of cold fusion: This seems to be the sticking point. if the following two conditions are satisfied spontaneously, excess energy will be produced. That has a note that I haven't read. The conditions are:

D/Pd ratio larger than 0.88. This kind of conclusion has often been reported, I've seen 0.85 asserted before. It wouldn't be surprising to find that the rate of fusion, if it happens, is sensitive to deuterium density. What's surprising here is that he asserts this as definite. That could be a summary, i.e., it might represent "almost always." Or it might be that he actually found this upon review. There are lots of questions raised: how did he know the loading ratio?

The current density of the electrolysis is larger than 280 mA per cm².

What prior reviews stated was that reproducibility was inconsistent. Reporting reproducibility under specified conditions does not contradict that. However, suppose that the conditions exclude all but one or two experiments. That would be grounds for further research, at most, but if it is much more than that, it would be significant. Note that in the SPAWAR experiments, loading ratio is effectively something like 1.0, and they report very high reproducibility. There may still be additional conditions.

So where is the beef? What I see here is an attempt to define the conclusions as "uncritical nonsense" based on nothing more than a belief that cold fusion is nonsense, which I've pointed out is circular. If the source doesn't actually contradict prior work, it's usable; if there is contradiction, it may still be sufficiently reliable to use with attribution.

Further, I've asserted a number of reasons to consider the journal a reliable source, and all that has appeared are different reasons to consider it other than that, with no agreement -- or contradiction -- with the reasons in one direction, i.e., toward reliability. This, again, is typical of POV pushing, it picks arguments on one side and refuses to accept arguments in the other, often completely neglecting them. Does FPC have an adequate review board? Nobody else has even mentioned the review board; I gave evidence for it right at the beginning of this section. Is the publisher independent and reputable? Nobody has dared to challenge the reputability of Higher Education Press, which is the largest publisher in China, and it's working with Thomson Reuters, which is the largest publisher in the world. Nobody is demanding that any particular conclusion be determined in the absence of a specific edit, but if we can't even agree on background facts, reliably sourced, what chance is there that we can agree on text? In the positive direction, it's been acknowledged above, by Phil, that the source may be usable in the article. That's progress. --Abd (talk) 13:49, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I had the opportunity to look at the offending paper. I won't comment on the content because I don't feel I'm qualified even though I've actively worked in closely related fields. I did think I would be worth including this paper's reference list. For anyone who is unfamiliar with review papers most have between 200 and 500 references. Such a few number of references would never fly for a review in an ACS or RSC journal. I also expect that APS also includes more references in their reviews. The author just doesn't demonstrate a breadth of understanding with fewer citations than this Wikipedia page. Not to mentions more than half the citations are from talks or websites. If you think that is frowned upon on wikipedia in the established peer-reviewed science literature disdain for such sources is taken to the next level. This is very bad academic practice. If it was related to my research I wouldn't waste my time reading the review. (In interest of full disclosure; I think there might have been 10 references, one could have been lost in a copied and pasted accident. In addition I've removed portions of LENR-CANR.org address' to get this through the spam filters.)--OMCV (talk) 04:48, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

References

1. Toni Feder, Physics Today, January 2005: 31

2. Peter L. Hagelstein, Michael C. H. McKubre, David J. Nagel, Talbot A. Chubb, and J. Hekman, New physical effect in metal deuterides, LENR-CANR.org

3. Brian D Josephson, Pathological Disbelief, http://www.tcm.phy. cam.ac.uk

4. Jones S. E., Keerey F. W., Johnson A. C., et al., Neutron Emissions from Metal Deuterides,10th International Conference on Cold Fusion, 2003, Cambridge, MA, USA

5. Jones S. E., Keerey F. W., Johnson A.C., et al., Charged-Particle Emissions from Metal Deuterides, 10th International Conference on Cold Fusion, 2003, Cambridge, MA, USA

6. Kasagi J., Ohtsuki T., Ishi K., et al., J. Phys. Soc. Japan, 1995, 64 (3): 777−783

7. Takahashi A., M.Maruta, Ochiai K., et al., Phys. Lett., 1999, A255 (1): 89−97

8. Arata Y. and Zhang Y. C., Proc. Acad. Ser. B., 1999, 75: 281−290

9. Arata Y. and Zhang Y. C., 10th International Conference on Cold Fu-sion, 2003, Cambridge, MA, USA

Good point about the references. Maybe not a very reliable source. Inclines me to give more credence to the arguments about the language on the first page. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 15:35, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Notice to Abd about battling and tendentious editing

I let this slide the first few times but since you show no signs of stopping, I'm issuing you a warning, and asking other editors to please watch for your incivility. You're again accusing editors of POV pushing, and again raising drama instead of improving the article, with comments like the below and many others:

Quote from Abd
Instead, you simply make up all the negative arguments you can think of and ignore the positive. That is what has to stop. It's got a name: POV pushing. Show me, Phil, where you have ever found a source that might show something positive about the cold fusion idea, and you brought it here? It might cause me to revise my opinion.

If this continues, I'm going to ask an admin to block you for deliberate incivility and bringing WP:BATTLE to an article talk page covered by AE. This isn't an isolated case, you're continuing in the vein all over Wikipedia and it has to stop. We're here to write articles, not raise drama and non existent problems to help get your banned buddy's site (who you are chatting with off wiki) unblacklisted.

As for your question, both I and P.V. Keller have supported and asked for the inclusion of more material from Storms 2007, a book written by a cold fusion advocate that's highly favorable to cold fusion. It's not even peer reviewed, but an intelligent look at it suggests that it's a careful work that's cited frequently in the field, and reliable enough to be used in the article. I am doing the exact opposite of "making up all the negative arguments I can think of" on that book, so your suggestions that I do this generally is a either a deliberate or careless lie. And just like a good look at Storms shows it to be reliable, I believe an intelligent look at this Chinese review reveals it to be an unreliable source that lacks many of the requirements for a well regarded journal at our RS pages, not to mention lacking the careful language used by well regarded scientists in real reviews. It's obvious, and OMCV's observations below further bear this out. It's called editorial judgment, not POV pushing, and you are completely out of line suggesting that I am POV pushing. Did you even stop to consider that my objections to this source might be unrelated to any POV?

To further answer your question, my edit history to the article bears out my impartiality. I was the one who inserted [17][18] and fought to keep text of the DOE showing the full breakdown, which was favorable to cold fusion, against those who wanted only the summary, which was less favorable. Most of the items crossed out on Pcarbonn's list are in the article now because of me. Unlike you, I'm not out to impeach people who have a different point of view, I'm here to write an article. I don't care what your history or POV is, I only care that edits and suggestions are made in good faith attempts to improve the article. Your posts have become very much like banned Rothwell's and Pcarbonn's, especially crap like this (in case that needs context - he's rudely dissing an editor's considerations and claiming that the tide of CF evidence is rising so much on this talk page that the skeptical dam holding back the CF tide from the article is breaking) . Seriously Abd, what's gotten into you?

In that vein, please cut the crap. If you want to improve the article, then go and edit it! We can always revert and discuss changes if other editors disagree. Or propose specific changes you wish to make here on talk. But please, quit raising drama, treating this as a forum, continuously bringing up ideas that have previously been rejected, and accusing multiple editors of POV pushing. It's not only against our policies, it and the rest of your activities in this area are wasting editors' time. I don't have a lot of time on here and I prefer to spend it doing useful things rather than answering your accusations. Phil153 (talk) 14:17, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the warning, Phil. Had you not already done so, I would have considered it as if it had been posted on my Talk page, and I would have place a link to this section there, for the convenience of any administrator considering blocking me. I only noticed your Talk page warning as I was looking for a link to place in this response. Now, as to the points made:

• tendentious editing The topic is a difficult one, as can be seen by the current topic bans of two editors who were active here, Pcarbonn and ScienceApologist. I don't think I've been tendentious, but vigorous debate in Talk may be essential to finding consensus. Better in Talk than reflected in edit warring in the article!
• show me, Phil, Phil showed me, which only took a few words, and it might indeed cause me to revise my opinion. However, what I saw here was serious attempt to impeach a source before it had been asserted in an edit, before sufficient details were known to judge the paper, apparently on the basis of the conclusions in the abstract, and the language used was extreme. So, for me, the jury is out. But I'm not the judge. I see long-term tendencies of some editors to argue preferentially against sources that may appear to support a disliked POV, and I would prefer for Phil to join me in considering this a problem, and in resolving it, instead of defending himself against suspicion not raised to the point of any request for intervention.

• not raise drama and non existent problems to help get your banned buddy's site (who you are chatting with off wiki) unblacklisted. The matter of banning and blacklisting is not related to this discussion, and will be dealt with in an RfC to be filed imminently, with the support of other editors. As to "chatting off-wiki," when I found the subject paper, I wrote to Jed Rothwell, who isn't my "buddy," in order to find out if he had a copy of the paper. He is utterly uninterested in Wikipedia and has no desire to be unblocked or delisted or whitelisted, and you might note that the only attempt I made to get lenr-canr.org links whitelisted was successful, an important link was whitelisted, which, BTW, should be linked here, we do cite the paper. http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmansearchingf.pdf. If and when I actually attempt to get the site whitelisted, I would be highly likely to succeed. I don't tilt at windmills, and I would not attempt such a possibly disruptive move without substantial support. Meanwhile, Phil, do keep WP:AGF in mind. I do. --Abd (talk) 14:55, 8 March 2009 (UTC) (continued below)

Note to Olorinish below. I'd agree that this place isn't the most appropriate one for this discussion, and I have no problem if it is archived or moved. It was placed in the middle of a discussion, I moved it to the end of the section and considered moving it to the end of the Talk page. However, since serious charges were made here, and weren't redacted or deleted, I'm responding here, hopefully briefly. To continue,

• deliberate or careless lie, is uncivil; a "careless lie" would be what I'd call a "reckless disregard for the truth," not quite a "lie," (which is necessarily willful deception) and more serious than a mere error. I have continued to assume good faith on your part, and still do in spite of this, so I urge you to be careful. Editors may push POV even with good faith, based on an assumption that their POV is NPOV. I am unwilling to believe that you are lying, and do not even suspect it, but also noted an appearance, and I haven't seen recent behavior that negated that appearance. That is not a demand that you act in any way, but was a warning, a very mild one, not accompanied with any threat other than the implicit threat of consequences independent of my actions; whereas you have now escalated by threatening me with request for block. Please, again, be careful. I do everything I do with the assumption that ArbComm is looking over my shoulder, because, someday, possibly soon, they will be, even though I do everything I can to resolve matters short of that.

• I was the one who ... Phil's contributions to the article are noted and appreciated. And, indeed, they would be even if they were "POV-pushing," I'm no fan of blocking people for POV-pushing as long as behavior remains within guidelines. We need representation of various POVs in the editorial community in order to find true NPOV. POV is a POV detector, and the most reliable sign of true NPOV is that reasonable editors, in spite of varied POV, will agree on the text.

• rudely dissing an editor's considerations. Actually, I came to the conclusion that it was rude, though quite in line with what I've seen done here routinely by editors about whom Phil does not complain, possibly even Phil himself. Nevertheless, I struck it as gratuitous, unneeded, about a half hour before Phil's warning appeared, and certainly I would have struck it on request -- given that I did so anyway!

• Unlike you, I'm not out to impeach people who have a different point of view Uh, Phil, WP:AGF? I was warning you, gently compared to a Talk page warning, not impeaching you. A warning on Article Talk doesn't establish a basis for sanctions, unless the editor clearly responds to it, showing that it's been read. If I wanted to impeach you, I'd file an RfC, and, quite simply, I don't have the evidence justifying that. Now, if CF goes before ArbComm again, and it became important, I'd research the long-term history of involved editors and would provide evidence as I found. I'll say this much: you are, if you have done anything reprehensible, far from the worst offender, and I believe that it is possible to work with you. However, I should also note that PCarbonn expressed similar sentiments about ScienceApologist and they both got banned.

• please cut the crap Sure. Point it out, specifically. However, if you see "crap," you know what you can do, because I've seen you do it, if I recall correctly. You delete it or archive it, or perhaps you collapse it, as someone might do with this discussion, whether or not it's "crap." It's not clear that Phil's screed beginning this section is helpful to the article, so .... goose/gander sauce, anyone?

• your activities in this area are wasting editors' time. I don't have a lot of time on here and I prefer to spend it doing useful things rather than answering your accusations. Simple suggestion, Phil. You had no obligation to respond, indeed, you have no obligation to read my general comments in Talk. So, if they waste your time, don't read them and don't respond to them. If you think I'm attacking you, let someone else take care of it, or just let it slide. Unless you want to take the time. Don't waste your own time and then blame someone else for it.

• Just, if Phil cares, as I assume he does, he can watch the edits to the article! My general comments here are a heads-up, and they are not essential, they are discussion, and I'm not about to make controversial edits to the article in any serious way without attempting, first, to find consensus here. I'd prefer not to waste my time. I've only been involved here a very short time, so forgive me if I raise, here, arguments which are claimed to have been previously rejected. I'll say, though, that when a consensus appeared previously in an article, helpful editors, being familiar with it, will point to it in Talk archives, instead of just, once again, putting up a wall.

• Yes, 'wall. I'll stick with the metaphor. I didn't write "CF tide," that was Phil's ABF interpretation. The tide is continued scientific examination of the issues, based on the entire record of research, and not just depending on a 20-year old rejection and a history of "pathological science" -- on both sides. Here, it would refer to a recognition that reliable source is reliable source regardless of the POV which it appears to support. undue weight is an argument I've seen used many times to prevent an article from becoming truly balanced; and when I mention this, I can anticipate a chorus of complaints, but I'm not suggesting any violation of guidelines or policies; indeed, as has been noted, I'm suggesting, instead, that we follow them and not make "cold fusion" an exception because it is allegedly a "fringe" topic. --Abd (talk) 17:16, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Let me interject here with my two cents. I would like to see much less discussion that is not directly related to CHANGES IN THE ARTICLE! If you have a text change you want to propose, type it in either here or in the main article. If you do not, please think twice before posting your comments on the talk page. I would appreciate it. Olorinish (talk) 15:15, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Abd, you seem to have lost a lot of good faith toward cold fusion editors since JzG's out of process admin actions here, which clearly bothered you. You're a fair minded person and that's entirely understandable. My warning was an attempt to get through to you in what seemed like an escalating incorrect view toward other editors on this page. It's not like you. I'm happy to move on and assume a lot more good faith toward you, and reply to the topics you raise more precisely. Phil153 (talk) 18:23, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Please, give examples, specifically. I'm claiming that some editors sometimes appear to have lost sight of some basic Wikipedia values, not that they are editing in bad faith. However, moving on isn't a bad idea at all. Below, I return to our regular programming, having received a response from our friend Jed Rothwell, who, in spite of what everyone seems to be assuming about him, provides a somewhat negative review of the paper in FPC. Given that I haven't seen the actual paper yet, and he has, I find it quite interesting. But do remember, he's banned, so reading his contributions may be hazardous to your mental health. Don't follow the link if you are taking MAO inhibitors, or if you will be operating heavy machinery in the next four hours. --Abd (talk) 03:45, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Continued discussion of He Jing-tang paper in Frontiers of Physics in China

As I've mentioned before, I consulted Jed Rothwell of lenr-canr.org about this paper. BTW, I'm not his "crony" or "pal," my contact with him was simply as one inquiring about something where I thought Rothwell might have something to contribute, and I was interested in whether or not he'd heard of the paper, given that Rothwell may be the most informed person on the planet as to literature in this area. (I've called him an expert, and this was derided, but "expert" doesn't mean a person who holds some set of correct opinions, but someone who has a great deal of related knowledge, and that's Rothwell. That he may have a POV is irrelevant to that. Lots of experts have strong POVs, and, indeed, experts can get into trouble on Wikipedia, we are famous for being hard on them. Well, Rothwell answered me, with an IP edit here, signed. There is a description of the sequence of events at [19]. In short, I responded to the edit and my response was reverted because it quoted the comment from Rothwell. Whether that was proper or not, it's moot, because I don't need to copy that material here, anyone can read the history showing Rothwell's edit. Below is my response, reverted by Enric Naval:

This is a criticism of the He paper I introduced above. I did ask Rothwell for his opinion (as I've noted before); he had been unaware of the paper. An editor reverted this contribution because Rothwell is considered banned; the actions behind that have not yet been challenged, and for the moment, I agree that a ban is in effect. However, a useful edit of any banned editor may remain, see current discussion of User:ScienceApologist at [20]; if it is reverted, any other legitimate editor may bring it back in on the editor's own responsibility, which I have done (and, by the way, which I also did with a useful edit to Cold fusion by SA. The comment by Rothwell is not disruptive, it is useful and relevant discussion by an expert in the field. I had already concluded that the paper was not a general review, but rather a narrow one, from the references list provided by another editor with access to the paper, and Rothwell confirms this. I'm still interested in obtaining a copy, and I'll also be looking for a copy of Storms' book.

For our purposes on Wikipedia, the Storms book and this Chinese paper can be considered WP:reliable source; conference papers are more problematic because of lack of peer review; they can still be useful, sometimes, if attributed as the opinion of the author, and if the author is notable in the field. Further, they can sometimes be extremely useful in background discussion. Some editors are wondering why I'm discussing all this in Talk and not just editing the article. To me, discussion is essential for editing in controversial fields, and I know full well what will happen if I start dumping what I'm finding into the article without warning and without discussion. I'm not going there. There will be edits, as certain matters become clear and have been refined through discussion, and there are already edits influenced by my discussion here, for example, this. There was an attempt to slap me with a wikitrout as a result of my initiation of discussion of that usage of "cold fusion," the charge was led by SA,[21] and ... SA is now blocked for 24 hours, not because of that incident but because of many like it, and ArbComm is considering making it three months, one more arb and it looks like a done deal. If any editor doesn't like this discussion, I'd suggest not reading it. In the end, only the article counts, discussion here can usually be ignored until there are edits to look at. Silence is not consent unless there has been notice and clear opportunity to comment. --Abd (talk) 03:38, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I have removed the edit you mentioned. It's an informal usage that's barely used, the explanation given is kind of OR and isn't supported by the source. It doesn't deserve mention in the lead. Not to mention, the non OR stuff is already covered by the previous text. We previously had text that clearly mentioned a variety of alternative users: More broadly, but less commonly, it can be used to refer to any real or proposed routes for nuclear fusion to occur without the extremely high temperatures (millions of degrees Celsius) required for thermonuclear fusion , but it was removed by a cold fusion SPA who also removed "postulated" and "disputed" in the same edit...[22] this edit made by Phil153 04:07, 11 March 2009, note by Abd (talk)]]

The usage isn't informal if it is used in the title of a peer-reviewed paper. I replaced the mention, attempting to address the issues. Please don't bring up OR if there isn't any factual problem, the level of OR here is trivial, and OR prohibitions don't prevent us from stating what's obvious by consensus. The prior mention you describe did not cover this high-temperature usage of "cold fusion." I may have done it better this time, I hope it is acceptable. Otherwise, that this information is missing from Wikipedia may lead to other confusions like my initial puzzlement at the usage. I find it puzzling, still, that "cold" is used to refer to energies adequate to cause significant (usable for practical purposes) reaction rates; I'm not sure of the temperature equivalent to particle energy just barely adequate to overcome the Coulomb barrier, and it's not important enough to look up now, but that fusion is very, very hot, in ordinary language, and there is utterly no controversy over this kind of "cold fusion." It is, as we have been using the term, "hot fusion." I called it "lukewarm" in the edit summary, i.e., just barely warm enough to be not cold. --Abd (talk) 16:17, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

The new version is an improvement, although the lead still needs work. Your previous edit stated that Cold fusion also can refer to fusion at energies just barely sufficient to overcome the Coulomb barrier, but not hot enough to encourage immediate fission. This is wrong/misleading in several ways, and unsupported by the source, hence me calling it OR. There was no bad faith mention of OR. There never is bad faith with me; you'd do well to assume that. Phil153 (talk) 16:48, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Phil153, your comment about "bad faith" seems to assume that it was alleged, or even that it crossed my mind. It did not. Had you simply improved the language, no need for discussion here. That language is more deeply explanatory than what I next put in, but that explanation, to my knowledge, is not at all controversial. That explanation, too, isn't perfect. "Just barely sufficient to overcome the Coulomb barrier," could be misleading. The energy might not actually "overcome" the barrier, but bring the nuclei close enough together that the reaction rate reaches a practical level. My guess is that the ideal energy brings up the reaction rate to maximize net yield, i.e., as many desired nuclei are formed and stick around instead of fissioning. Higher energy equals more fusion, lower energy means less fission. There may indeed be reliable source on all this, but it isn't the topic of the article, and the only purpose of the mention there is to differentiate between this usage and what the rest of the article covers, where the energy is such as to be far, far below the level needed to overcome the Coulomb barrier. If there is reliable source on it, some enterprising editor might get to create an article or a section probably in Nuclear fusion. With reference here that becomes much simpler. --Abd (talk) 17:35, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Goodstein's analysis of the cold fusion history

We currently use Goodstein (1994) as a source for this:

In 1994, David Goodstein described cold fusion as "a pariah field, cast out by the scientific establishment. Between cold fusion and respectable science there is virtually no communication at all. Cold fusion papers are almost never published in refereed scientific journals, with the result that those works don't receive the normal critical scrutiny that science requires. On the other hand, because the Cold-Fusioners see themselves as a community under siege, there is little internal criticism. Experiments and theories tend to be accepted at face value, for fear of providing even more fuel for external critics, if anyone outside the group was bothering to listen. In these circumstances, crackpots flourish, making matters worse for those who believe that there is serious science going on here."[42]

We also refer to this source for the statement that:

The speed of the decay process together with the inter-atomic spacing makes such a transfer inexplicable in terms of conventional understandings of momentum and energy transfer.[93]

So far, so good. But Goodstein actually gives information about both sides of the cold fusion debate. This was 1994, not 2004 or 2009. I recommend reading the whole article if you are interested in the cold fusion issues.[23]. Goldstein is saying that, on the one hand, there are very good theoretical reasons to consider cold fusion, of the "bad kind," i.e., massive heat, impossible. But, on the other hand, there are some very solid experimental results that don't seem to be explicable any other way. And he laments the situation that, because of problems with the initial announcement, the rush to judgment, the mistakes that were made, the physics world isn't taking the later, more cautious, results seriously.

I'm beginning to think we need at least two articles: one of them on the Cold Fusion affair, as an example of "Bad Science," which doesn't mean that Pons-Fleischmann were "Bad Scientists," though hardly anyone (including Fleischmann) thinks that they made no mistakes, but that the process of science by press conference, rushed attempts to confirm, rushed negative conclusions, etc., etc., was seriously defective, and there are enough sources on this to justify an article. What would the other article be? Well, what is "cold fusion" as an alleged phenomenon? What is reported? What theories have been published in reasonably reliable sources to explain the experimental results? (Which would include Shanahan's attempts to explain the alleged heat, etc., Kowalski's theories about non-nuclear damage to CR-39 chips, etc.) We can do all this without review articles, if we attribute opinions and simply allow what appears in reliable sources to determine balance. What must stop is the highly selective application of RS guidelines to exclude some material while including other material just as reliably sourced. It's going to take patient work to find consensus, but I believe we can do it. Goodstein gives very good experimental detail about Scaramuzzi's experiments, how much effort they put into addressing the criticisms of prior work. Did they succeed? Goodstein says that he still "believes" cold fusion is impossible. But he also "believes" that there are these experiments that haven't been explained any other way. That kind of tension is actually what makes for good science. His position was, in fact, reflected in the 2004 DOE review. Something is going on that hasn't been adequately explained. While there are still very good theoretical reasons to think cold fusion impossible, until the contrary experiments are more carefully reviewed and reproduced or rejected, we really don't know bleep. Theory is still theory, and science grew up when it abandoned theory as the basis for truth. Meanwhile, Goodstein reports Scaramuzzi as having figured out why the Fleischmann effect was so hard to duplicate, a loading ratio below 85% (which is hard to obtain), no heat. Above that, he reports Scaramuzzi as claiming 100% reproducibility.

As an example of problems that may still exist in the article, there is a section on non-nuclear explanations for excess heat. However, what's missing is that many experiments considered and ruled out these explanations. Further, experiments where ordinary water was used as a control have been performed. Apparently, Fleischmann and Pons did these experiments and were reluctant to report the results. Why? They indeed found some excess heat in them. However, there are more recent experiments that show the same: some excess heat from ordinary water. I think there are some SPAWAR experiments, and what they note, as I recall, is that the excess heat is explainable by the amount of deuterium present in ordinary water. I.e., much less excess heat. My point is that the article is presenting, in that section, "one side." Is there reliable source for the other side, of similar quality? (By the way, I'm suspicious of the ordinary water results, because, remember, loading factor of 85%? But maybe loading with mixed hydrogen and deuterium does something we don't understand.) --Abd (talk) 21:27, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Executive summary please. Verbal chat 22:11, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Sure: If you want to understand the topic, you'll have to do more than make brief, knee-jerk comments. You might actually have to read some sources, and think about what people write. One is mentioned. Goodstein (1994). It's cited in the article. Come back when you've done your homework. --Abd (talk) 02:45, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Ignoring your patronising attitude, your comment is longer than would be allowed in the article. Now that is fine, but it is not clear in the first few paragraphs what you are proposing. Conciseness is a virtue. So that we are all on the same page you should explain you proposal concisely, and then move on to justification - which should also be concise. If there are questions then this can develop into a discussion. Long comments just invite WP:TL;DR style responses, or will just be ignored. If they are ignored then they are useless. Basically, long comments aren't useful and do not help improve the article. Verbal chat 13:35, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

My attempt at summarizing Abd's comment:

• Abd proposes splitting this article into two or more articles: one about the Cold Fusion affair (history of science), another about cold fusion and excess heat measurements as alleged phenomena and explanations for them.
• This article cherry-picks from Goldstein (which Abd recommends reading [24]) and needs to present the other balancing views that Goldstein expresses.
• Selective application of RS guidelines must stop.
• The article has an incomplete, unbalanced presentation of non-nuclear explanations, and needs to add arguments refuting these explanations, including information on control experiments using ordinary water. This is an example of a problem with the article.

Paraphrasing Abd, ☺Coppertwig (talk) 15:00, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Obviously, Coppertwig has read well. Thanks. As to tl;dr, that's usually five characters too much for a response. There are how many million editors who didn't read a comment? Unless it's on your Talk page, if it's too long to read, don't read it, and tl;dr can be very appropriate on one's own Talk. Nobody has an obligation to read anything on this article Talk page, unless they plan to revert an edit explained here, and even then, it's not really a problem, what's important will come around again. --Abd (talk) 15:11, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I read and enjoyed the Goldstein article. Thanks for recommending it. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 00:10, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Having taken freshman physics from the man years ago, I can assure you that his name is spelled Goodstein. Sorry if that comes across as too picky, but given that "Goodwin" is also being used on this page (though that has been partially self-corrected) I felt the need to clarify. --Noren (talk) 14:28, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Query

Is User:Abd helping at all in the editing of this article? Perhaps he should be referred to WP:AE. He already has taken bizarre joy in personally attacking me. Just a question for those watching this page, is all. ScienceApologist (talk) 00:53, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge, Abd is attempting to get the most frequent editors of this article to more-exactly follow certain WikiPedia guidelines. goodluckwiththat, Abd! As for personal attacks by Abd, that's news to me. V (talk) 21:38, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, V. I thought so too. I was referred to AE, after having been warned by Hipocrite who then took it there before I'd even read the warning, and without any ongoing cause, and it was practically laughed off the page. As to who is contributing to the article, the same question might be asked of SA. Why was this posted here? It's disruptive, and disruptive edits do, in fact, violate his ban. So I expect that this won't be repeated. As to SA's spelling corrections to the article, they are welcome, except for one problem: they complicate Arbitration enforcement. Hence I've suggested that if he sees a spelling error in an article covered by the ban, he fix it with an edit summary like:

(sp, will self-revert per ban)

Then revert it with:

(revert self, undo to fix sp)

Most of the articles covered by his ban are watched often enough that this would quickly result in a spelling correction, if that's his intent. In fact, it's been claimed that I've been stalking him, which is preposterous (I haven't even looked at his contributions and there is no response pattern); suppose I were, though, perhaps helping with AE. I'd then see the proposed spelling corrections and could fix them in seconds. Others have proposed that he propose spelling corrections in Talk, but that's quite a bit more cumbersome, less efficient, and would gunk up the talk page with trivia. If SA is sincere about helping with spelling, or any other non-controversial edits, he has a way to do it without complicating Arbitration enforcement and with minimal fuss; if, on the other hand, his very purpose is pushing the limits and thumbing his nose at ArbComm, well, we'll know soon. Meanwhile, his spelling correction here was reverted by Hipocrite as a ban violation, simultaneously with a report at AE in which Hipocrite explains that he thinks the ban ridiculous. That's a violation of WP:POINT. I reverted the spelling correction back in, which I would do with any easily verifiable or clear improvement to the article proposed by SA and self-reverted as I described.

If it were asserted that non-disruptive edits self-reverted immediately were topic ban violations, I'd vigorously defend SA against such a charge. However, defiant edits, and SA has declared defiant intent at AE, are disruptive, not because of the content but because of the intent, and do violate the topic ban. If it is contended that intent does not matter, we should note that Pcarbonn was topic banned here -- more thoroughly than was SA -- because of evidence regarding intent.

SA's constructive participation on this page is welcome. --Abd (talk) 16:09, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

The probability of reaction.

Cold_fusion#The_probability_of_reaction. Goodwin Goodstein (1994) covers this in some detail. We have this:

Because nuclei are all positively charged, they strongly repel one another.[85] Normally, very high energies are required to overcome this repulsion.[86] Extrapolating from known rates at high energies, the rate at room temperature would be 50 orders of magnitude lower than needed to account for the reported excess heat.[87]

Sounds devastating (assuming that the reader knows what an "order of magnitude" is, many wouldn't). However, Goodwin Goodstein, note 87 at this point, also points out that this figure is based on the normal distance between deuterium nuclei at room temperature.

At the inter-nuclear spacing in the deuterium molecule, the probability is too small by forty or fifty orders of magnitude. Physicists love to throw around phrases like that one. An order of magnitude means a factor of ten. Too small by forty or fifty orders of magnitude really means too small beyond discussion, beyond imagination, almost beyond meaning. On the other hand, that probability is insanely sensitive to how far apart the nuclei are to begin with. To increase the probability by the requisite 40 or 50 orders of magnitude requires getting the nuclei closer together by just one order of magnitude. It is extremely difficult to imagine how -- given the well-known forces involved -- they can be gotten closer together by a factor of ten in an experiment on a table-top. In fact, the whole purpose of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on hot fusion is to produce exactly that result. Nevertheless, once we have been anesthetized by talking about 40 or 50 orders of magnitude, the idea that a one order of magnitude gap might somehow be overcome is not so hard to swallow.

I'd like to interject a statement to the effect that in 1994 the Farnsworth–Hirsch Fusor was not as widely known about as it is today. That gadget easily fits on a tabletop and causes fusions. Farnsworth actually beat everyone else in the hot-fusion field, to making a significant-quantity controlled-fusion device; it just wasn't talked about much, for four or five decades. V (talk) 03:22, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually, no. It was known for a very long time how to get fusion, and was done in lab devices since way back. He created a practical application (ultimately a neutron generator), but it's not an energy-generating device. Basically, it's hot fusion, on a very small scale. That's why it's "controlled." There are claims it could be scaled to become a power generating device, but the engineering hasn't been developed. Same with all other hot fusion, really, though I understand the big ones are getting close. This has nothing to do with cold fusion; same with Sonofusion, except that people make the mistake of calling that "cold fusion." --Abd (talk) 22:11, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Abd, I was responding to the statement, "It is extremely difficult to imagine how -- given the well-known forces involved -- they can be gotten closer together by a factor of ten in an experiment on a table-top." Sure, I know the Fusor is a hot-fusion device, but that was not the point; its ability to fit on a table-top was the point. (Even if CF is real, they don't yet get very useful quantities of energy from a table-top device, so the break-even aspect is not a factor.) Also, this article popularized the Fusor in 1998, which is after 1994, lending support to another part of what I had written: http://www.fusor.net/newbie/files/Ligon-QED-IE.pdf High-school students started building working fusion reactors not long after that article was published, and they didn't care about break-even, either. The article mentions Dr. Robert W. Bussard, and hints at a variation of the Fusor that would use magnetic fields for confinement, eliminating one of the key energy-sapping problems with the Fusor. Bussard himself described some of that work to a crowd at Google headquarters: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606 There is also an inside story about that project, available here: http://www.fusor.net/files/EMC2_FusionToPost.pdf (OKAY, gotta stop being off-topic!) V (talk) 23:34, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

He is, here, explaining why some physicists didn't immediately reject the possibility. There is another problem with the claim about physics here. "extrapolating from known rates at high energies." All this is saying is that if the materials behave at low temperatures as they do at high temperatures, then we'd expect this rate. But we already know that materials in a crystal lattice behave differently, and Goodwin cites the Mossbauer effect to show this. Goodwin Goodstein is still convinced that present theory rules out cold fusion. But he's also aware that "present theory" could be wrong or inappropriately applied. What the argument really shows is that if cold fusion works, it isn't the same mechanism as hot fusion. That "extrapolation" depends on an assumption that it is the same mechanism. --Abd (talk) 22:19, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

To sum up both sections, I don't think your summary of Goodstein (I assume that's who Goodwin is?) shows an appreciation of how he weights each of his arguments. Furthermore, you've misunderstood "extrapolating from known rates at high energies". The energies are irrelevant (see muon catalyzed fusion, for example). It takes between 0.01 and 0.1 MeV to overcome the barrier between nuclei, leaving 24MeV of energy that has to go somewhere. As I said before, it's like flying a toy plane into a tornado - the incident energy is irrelevant. And the energy goes somewhere in a very specific way, whether the temperature is at 100 million K, a million K, or 300K. I'm not an expert on nuclear physics (my experience is limited to three years of college, which, incidentally, is three years more than our "expert" Jed), but I'm pretty sure that if unusual reaction pathways were observed in any of numerous isotopes tested in muon catalyzed fusion, it would be a massive event in physics. I'd suggest that you're trusting the cold fusion true believer rhetoric, that "hot fusion reaction products can't apply low temperature cold fusion", a bit too much. Phil153 (talk) 23:21, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Goodstein. The language about "extrapolating from high energies" and my comment about it remain and aren't contradicted by what you stated, Phil. I actually only have two years of physics. With Richard P. Feynman, who greatly influenced how I approach the subject and the world. (I also had Linus Pauling for Chemistry, which probably also explains a lot, and I worked with the Mossbauer effect in sophomore physics lab, hence it was pretty easy to read Goodstein on that and understand what he was saying). Frankly, I don't see that you understand the statement in our article. You are making a different argument, one that Goodstein also raises: where does all the energy go, if we do get fusion. That's the third theoretical incompatibility. What's above is the first. Yes, I'm really getting it, why Jed burned out here. Pay attention, Phil. You don't understand what's right in front of you. Jed is an expert because he has soaked himself in the topic for years, he's probably read about everything that has been written on it. He's also an abrasive personality and probably not suited to being a Wikipedia editor, but he abandoned that idea long ago, and just made occasional comments in Talk. Most of them were quite cogent, if occasionally uncivil, and he was faced with a very hostile environment, I've been reading over the article history in detail, preparing for What Shall Not Be Mentioned. Basically, cold fusion isn't hot fusion. That should have been obvious from the very beginning. If it happens, it isn't happening -- almost certainly -- because some local forces are causing brute-force reduction in nuclear distance. Essentially, it must be some other mechanism, some other pathway, and we really don't know what it is, though there are theories. It's totally correct, if what were happening in the palladium was the same as hot fusion, dead graduate students. Neutron flux has been found (in spite of early failures), but way, way below the level expected from hot fusion. Indeed, the SPAWAR evidence is now for neutrons in addition to ionizing radiation (probably alpha particles, i.e., helium nuclei).

Does it appear that I'm pro-cold fusion? I wouldn't be surprised. However, I'm really pretty solid with Goodstein's position. It seems to violate known physics. Yet there is some solid experimental evidence that doesn't seem to have any other explanation. Goodstein was writing in 1994. Do you have any idea how much work has been done since then? --Abd (talk) 03:06, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

No, you're confusing Goodstein's position. Pay attention Abd (stupid thing to say, isn't it?). The statement "Cold fusion isn't hot fusion" is manufacturing a distinction that doesn't exist. You see, there's a thing called fusion that happens when nuclei get within close enough range of each other. Incident energy, or even muon shielding, is irrelevant to how it works and what products it creates. This is proven beyond doubt. You appear to not understand that. Unless you are suggesting that there is some entirely new, non fusion process going on like Blacklist Power's mechanism, which let's face it, is desperate grasping at straws that even the cold fusion advocates usually reject, this is fusion involving the nuclear force. Most agree on that.

I'd like to interject a remark to the effect that although "fusion ... happens when nuclei get within close enough range of each other", this only happens after at least one of those nuclei has escaped its electron shell. As was specifically pointed out in a reference I found some time ago, for hot fusion. http://books.google.com/books?id=KKW908I8TzIC&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=%22nuclear+fusion%22+%22electron+shells%22&source=bl&ots=FUugDw4T2o&sig=bIs6rJSyuXKt2MoCeLOjf8cwUFw&hl=en&ei=SYyQSfyRG8H7tgf1zKCsCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result But why that fact seems inappropriate in an article about cold fusion has yet to be explained by anyone posting to this discussion page. ESPECIALLY is that fact relevant to the article if there is truth to your statement about "manufacturing a distinction that doesn't exist". V (talk) 06:16, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't recall seeing any document which mentions electron shells as a barrier to cold fusion. Does anyone else know of one? My take is that in cold fusion, supposedly the deuteron does not really have a shell of its own, but instead occupies space in between the Pd atoms and shells, inside pockets that make it likely that deuterons spend a lot of time close to each other. In this scenario, the deuterium shells are not really a barrier at all. Olorinish (talk) 12:34, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Well clearly it would be an electrical force - in addition to the protons in the nuclei - to overcome. probably much easier since the distances are greater at that point and the particle is orders of magnitude lighter. I recall seeing it mentioned on a book i read on cold fusion, in the phrase "electron screening". But the thing is, one could argue that this doesn't really apply so much in a plasma because the electrons are freely floating anyways. That might be why you've never seen it mentioned. Or it could be that the mass and distance ratios in comparison to protons make the effect relatively insignificant. I wouldn't know - i'm not a scientist. just sort of a (semi-) educated guess.

As to your take - that is a common theory. i think p and f proposed that themselves. multiple d2s get packed w/in a single Pd lattice, (while their electrons become part of the Pd crystal, thus not being a barrier between said d2s anymore) thus getting closer to fusionable distance. Now it's rather trivial to show that the packing ratio does, in fact, exceed 1, but that still leaves you pretty far from fusionable distance. One could argue that the relative elctronegativity of the surrounding crystal would push the d2s towards the center of the lattice, cutting the occupied space in, for example, half, but i don't think that would make that much of a difference. All in all, it's a decent start but it's not sufficient. Kevin Baas^talk 13:28, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

If that is a "common theory", then why isn't it in the article? (Oh, all the references to it are published in "unacceptable" sources?) Here are a few known facts: Electrolysis of water can yield hydrogen. Typically the hydrogen appears as a gas, two-atom molecules, each with two nuclei accompanied by electron shells. Hydrogen molecules are significantly larger than helium atoms: http://www.standnes.no/chemix/periodictable/atomic-radius-elements.htm Yet hydrogen can permeate various metals (such as palladium) while helium cannot: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6103028.html (scroll down toward the bottom, at end of second paragraph of Example 4). Therefore it logically follows that hydrogen is doing something special, when it permeates metal. If it is interacting with the conduction band of the metal, per the above theories, each atom of hydrogen giving away its sole electron to that band, then it would be obvious how the hydrogen can permeate; the bare nucleus is about 1/100,000 the size of the atom. On the other side of the metal the nuclei would take some electrons back and emerge as gas once again. INSIDE the metal, of course, is where Cold Fusion is claimed to happen. Why should the article not contain an explanation of why electrons shells are not a factor in the CF enviornment, when we certainly have a reference indicating they are a generic barrier to fusion??? IF they are not a factor, of course! V (talk) 14:10, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't think the electron shells are much of a barrier to fusion. For one thing, it's easy to strip the shell from hydrogen or deuterium; in normal water, neutral pH, one water molecule per 10^7 has been dissocated into a hyrogen ion (H+), no electron, plus a hyroxyl radical (OH-). In a strong acid, dissociation is complete (pH 0). In electrolysis, hydrogen ions, basically free protons (though they keep gaining electrons and losing them, passing them along) are attracted to the cathode, where they gain electrons from the cathode (the electrolyis current) and combine with each other to become H2 gas. With most electrodes, this bubbles out, but with a palladium electrode, if I'm correct, it's absorbed for a time, until the electrode is saturated. No, the barrier to fusion is the positive charge on the nuclei, they repel each other, strongly. The electrons are very weakly bound, and they are "spread out," so the charge isn't heavily concentrated where two atoms might be approaching each other. And that's as far as I'll go now, before I stick my foot in my mouth.

Okay, here goes the foot. Above, the image is of hydrogen molecules (neutral charge overall) being stripped of their electron by the metal. I don't think that's what happens. The hydrogen is not attracted by the charge of the cathode, only dissociated protons are. But there don't have to be very many of them. --Abd (talk) 19:02, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Abd, in one sense I don't care how trivial a barrier the electron shells are, to fusion. Remember the phrase "a little bit pregnant"? If electron shells are in fact even the slightest barrier to fusion, then fact is fact, and an encyclopedia is supposed to be about facts. In another sense, though, Things Are Relative. How much would it cost to give a mass equivalent to your body kinetic energy such that it could orbit the Earth? In terms of pure energy, purchased from the electric power grid, maybe $10. In terms of the way we actually apply energy to accomplish the task, hundreds or thousands of dollars per pound. Electrical systems can be quite efficient at accomplishing tasks, and that ease can cause forgetfulness about various difficulties that might previously have been associated with certain tasks. Remember how messages were sent before the invention of the telegraph? Temperature is a brute-force way to strip electrons from an atom; electricity is an efficient way. I'm saying here that this efficiency should not lead to ignoring the existence of the problem it solves. V (talk) 21:30, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

In the separate comments I've made above, among these indented paragraphs, I'm trying to point out a certain logical thing. (1) If fusion is fusion and cold fusion should be compared on an equal basis with hot fusion, then electron shells are a factor, a problem to solve, worthy of mention in the article, because the temperatures that break electron shells, for hot fusion, are not present in cold-fusion conditions. (2) If cold fusion should be treated differently from hot fusion, such that electron shells are not a factor, then in essence we are saying that the thing known to be a problem in other circumstances is not a problem here --yet no explanation of why it is not a problem is given in the article.

There seems no logical reason why nothing on that topic should exist in the article. V (talk) 15:22, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Find some reliable source on what you are saying, it could be in the article. Otherwise, I'd say, it's a diversion. We don't need to explain why something is not a problem. There are millions of possible things that aren't problems. In a metal like palladium, if I'm correct, the electrons are pretty much smeared out, they don't belong to any atom, and I'd think that the same would be true for the absorbed hydrogen or deuterium. Indeed, in that environment, hydrogen may behave like a metal. Somebody help me to stop! I haven't studied this stuff for more than forty years.... I really am working on the article and want to find sources, not just make up science from my imperfect memory and poor analysis, which may or may not be better than that of some others here. I found a very interesting source yesterday and notified the editors of it here, a 2007 review article in a peer-reviewed journal that somehow escaped the notice of lenr-canr.org, as well as, possibly, Storms and others. (I wrote to Rothwell, who was offended by the bad English in the article. Goes to show. Spelling above substance, I've always said, Right?) I'm sure we'll be looking at it. Once I can get a copy.--Abd (talk) 22:04, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

"I'd say it's a diversion" --that's opinion, not fact. The existence of electron shells is a fact; that two nuclei cannot interact without at least one losing its shell is a fact (even muon catalysis requires getting rid of at least one electron shell). We have a reference regarding generic fusion and shells; we have Phil talking about a distinction that does not exist, with respect to cold and hot fusion (he's talking about the event, not whatever might lead up to it, and I tend to agree that much of the actual event is indeed going to be independent, since the Strong Nuclear Force is known to be overpoweringly stronger than anything else in Physics). At least one of the distinctions that do exist between cold and hot fusion must, logically, somehow be associated with whatever mechanism enables CF to occur (provided it does indeed occur, of course). So long as we don't know which distinction is the key, why should any of them be left out of the article? The article could present a list of those distinctions, and plainly state the Simple Obvious Logic that if CF is real, it somehow depends on at least one of them, and nobody yet knows which, or how --and that lack of knowledge, even after 20 years of theorizing, is exactly why many physicists have assumed and continue to assume that CF cannot be real. V (talk) 15:04, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Back to his other point about experimental evidence, which I did not address. Goodstein's position is clearly that there is no cogent explanation for what's been observed, but that this is not evidence of much weight toward a new process. There's a monstrous difference between "While these are apparently careful scientists, we don't know every possible detail of the experiments and how error and bias could have arose, and a cogent explanation is lacking" and "There are careful scientists, and the lack of cogent explanation for their results gives a good chance that there could be something new and exciting happening here". Goodstein is very clearly in former, even if he doesn't explicitly spell out every step in his reasoning. Especially since he goes to pains to point out how theories have been wrong before, and how experiment is king. For him, P(experimental results on their own->cold fusion) is very low, which is why the theoretical objections are king. As for "having any idea how much work has done since then", I'm not sure if you have any idea how it's basically the same kettle of fish. When Arata produces nonsense like his tiny temperature differential in 2007 as proof of something, and gets excited about it, 13 years after Goodstein, you can see the field isn't producing much new. The CR39 stuff is interesting to layman like me who doesn't know the first thing about CR39, but not enough, by itself, to indicate something given the burden of proof. BTW, Goodstein published this paper in 2000 (can't remember the journal) so presumably he still stood by it then. Phil153 (talk) 03:54, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Let's start with what is clearest. Phil, above, confused the first theoretical reason, given in our article, why "cold fusion" is impossible, with the third reason. That is, in an argument about nuclear distance and the extremely low rate of fusion "extrapolated from known rates at high energies," the first argument in our article, he raised the issue of where the excess energy would go if fusion occurred. That's the third argument, not the first. The third argument would lead us to expect gamma rays from deuterium fusion, and since gammas aren't observed, Q.E.D. The first argument is one that, if correct, would lead us to think that fusion wouldn't happen. Except, of course, fusion does happen at low energies, under the right conditions; that is, there isn't any doubt, Muon-catalyzed fusion.

I did not claim that Goodstein was claiming "weight toward the discovery of a new process." I simply noted that Goodstein points out the problem: theory that indicates one thing, and experiment that appears to indicate something different. If this were just one isolated experiment, it would be one thing. Some things will never be explained. However, it's many experiments, and many of the shortcomings of the early work have been addressed and overcome. For example, stirring the electrolyte! Better neutron detectors. Running the experiment inside a mountain to greatly reduce background radiation. Better calorimetry. Recombination of all the electrolytically generated gases. And on and on. But the more recent SPAWAR work is terrifyingly simple. Kowalski, while appearing to debunk the SPAWAR CR-39 results (not successfully, mind you), actually verified the basic experiment. The biggest problem, cited over and over again, has been the difficulty of reproducing the excess heat and other phenomena. Yet, it appears, reproduction rate has steadily increased, as more and more was understood about the specific conditions that generate the effect. In spite of the early reports, such as the New York Times article that is cited in the lead (and which had a fabricated title! -- I just fixed it), that Fleischmann had supposedly produced fusion "in a jar of water," implying simplicity, it was far from simple and far from easy. The claims of vast, cheap energy might turn out to be just as impossible with the Fleischmann effect as with muon-catalyzed fusion, not because it doesn't happen, necessarily, but because it is so difficult to set up and maintain the reaction. Those electrodes disintegrate, weird stuff happens with them. And palladium is expensive (though it isn't consumed, there would be costs to recycle it). The SPAWAR group uses co-electrolysis to simultaneously plate the electrode with palladium and generate deuterium gas, so the built-up palladium is immediately fully loaded, and, as prior work might lead one to expect, excess heat begins immediately (they claim, and there isn't any particular reason to doubt this observation). Right away, this disposes of the whole idea that power has been stored up in the electrode from all the "dead time." But using this for power generation isn't necessarily simple, and it could prove to be impossible. Abd (talk) 04:29, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I was definitely confused what you were writing about and admit to skimming your long post. Your last paragraph says:

He is, here, explaining why some physicists didn't immediately reject the possibility. There is another problem with the claim about physics here. "extrapolating from known rates at high energies." All this is saying is that if the materials behave at low temperatures as they do at high temperatures, then we'd expect this rate. But we already know that materials in a crystal lattice behave differently, and Goodwin cites the Mossbauer effect to show this. Goodwin Goodstein is still convinced that present theory rules out cold fusion. But he's also aware that "present theory" could be wrong or inappropriately applied. What the argument really shows is that if cold fusion works, it isn't the same mechanism as hot fusion.

There's been a lot of discussion and theory about the probabilities of various reaction product and I thought you were continuing that vein. Goodstein mentions the Mossbauer effect to discuss why physicists suspended judgment about the reaction products (it's directly relevant, since it involves the way nuclear products can behave differently to expected).

Since you're talking about the initial reaction, I have no idea why what you're talking about is relevant to the article. Cold fusion requires a different mechanism to overcome the electric repulsion...we know that. Neither Goodstein nor anyone else thinks this repulsion magically disappears in a crystal, so I don't see how it matters. Could you summarize your point for creating this section in two sentences max? Or maybe summarize text you propose to include? I'm struggling to see how Goodstein affects anything on the repulsion side of things (although it's clearly relevant to the end products). Phil153 (talk) 04:52, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm usually talking about more than one thing at a time. Sorry. Look at the beginning of this section. I quote what's in our article, which sounds like a very strong argument, with this huge number, 10^50, as the ratio between an extrapolated reaction rate and what is necessary for the reported heat generation. When I was young, I read a book, How to Lie with Statistics. Basically, you can present numerical data in ways that will create a false impression without actually lying. One of the things Goodstein points out is that, sure, that's one way to look at it (but he says 10^40 -- 10^50), but then he points out that the necessary reduction in distance between the nuclei is only 10^1. I.e., one-tenth of the normal separation. (By the way, this isn't a simple calculation, it's not specified in sufficient detail.) So what does CF require? A change in a value by 10^50 or a change in a value by 10? The statement in the article is what has been referred to by others as a "negative" about cold fusion without any counterargument. Is there a counterargument? Why is this an argument showing a "violation of basic principles of physics"? I'm aware that we can find reliable source for such a statement, but it's certainly not clear in itself.

Predicting the frequency of am emitted photon for an excited nucleus, when the photon is free, not bound, is fairly straightforward. However, when the nucleus is part of a crystal structure, it can be different. A nuclear process proceeds differently in this case. This is the Mossbauer effect. The nucleus, unbound, would emit the photon (a gamma ray) and recoil, to conserve momentum. But when it's in the crystal, it can transfer the momentum to the whole crystal, shifting the frequency of the emitted photon a bit. The crystalline environment is affecting how the nucleus behaves, even though there are, we might think, these "vast spaces" that would make this impossible. (This touches on argument three.) Mossbauer won the Nobel Prize for his work, the year I became a freshman at CalTech, which was his school.

In the end, what is important here is, indeed, the article. But what we do here is to discuss the article, which necessarily involves discussing the topic, as background. I find the current text *in that section* to be POV imbalanced. So I'll be looking to find ways to balance it, if possible. Consider this a request for assistance. --Abd (talk) 19:39, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Abd, I have been following this talk page for a long time, and I can honestly say that I don't understand what assistance you are requesting. Can you summarize in two or three sentences what you want to change about the article? Olorinish (talk) 20:05, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

(Long thread moved to its own subsection below, to preserve the sanity of people trying to make sense of the indentation) --Enric Naval (talk) 00:18, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Phil, some of what you wrote is exaggerated. In hot fusion the 24MeV, when that is what the fusion produces, mostly takes the form of a gamma ray. As you know, that is rare; most of the time the products of hot deuterium fusion are associated with about a sixth of that much energy. You may be aware that some of the CF people claim to have found those other reaction products. If true, and regardless of whether or not enough were found to explain the total heat measured in CF experiments, those products would indicate that somehow SOME cold fusions had happened in spite of the Coulomb barrier. I would consider that to be a significant chink in the wall of objections raised by the detractors; it would mean they are at least partly wrong. It would mean it would be worthwhile investing some thought into how those few cold fusions managed to happen. It might mean that after that problem was solved, the answer might point the way to solving the objections regarding how 24MeV could appear as heat instead of as a gamma ray. One kind-of-fun thing to think about: BOTH the CF people and Kirk Shanahan could be right. Heh, Kirk's work could explain where the 24Mev went (it didn't happen), and the CF people could still chortle over the few cold fusions that actually happened. After all, how often is it, in other heated arguments, that the truth lies in the middle? V (talk) 03:23, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

POV problems in "incompatibilities" section

(this thread moved to its own subsection, for clarity) --Enric Naval (talk) 00:18, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

(dedent) Sure. Request assistance in balancing apparent POV in Cold_fusion#Incompatibilities_with_Established_Physics section. The very title is POV. However, certainly there is allegation that Cold fusion is "incompatible with Established Physics." It's a claim that has long been made, and there is broad -- but uninformed -- opinion about this, and lots of RS, in fact, on the issue of Bad Science, i.e., scientific consensus by press conference and mass opinion, as distinct from peer opinion. But this shouldn't be presented as a fact. It's not a fact, it's an opinion, even if widely held among those who haven't studied the field and especially the more recent evidence. What do we have on the other side? Anything? I can find things, but I'm asking for assistance!

(Editors here have insisted on peer-reviewed, reliable source for anything that smells like support for cold fusion; okay, do we have such source for the claim about incompatibilities?) Sauce for goose is sauce for gander. I'm not implying that the sources there can't be used, but only that we should use the same standards for all sides. --Abd (talk) 21:52, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

That section seems pretty NPOV to me, including the title (which I wrote). Olorinish (talk) 02:29, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I've reviewed that section a bit, and I can't find POV problems. The sources are from Accountability in Research journal, an article from knowledgeable source David Goodstein at some silly publication from Caltech (American Scholar), and Scientific American, which look adequate for unchallenged statements. What part are you exactly challenging? (and I mean that you challenge the content so that better sources can be looked for) --Enric Naval (talk) 04:07, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

It may be time for editors here to re-read the WP:REDFLAG section of WP:V.LeadSongDog (talk) 17:16, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

"Exceptional claims require exceptional sources"? OK, since sources such as New Energy Times and Infinite Energy have been excepted from the mainstream, they qualify as "exceptional", right?  :) In a more serious note, what if the title of the section was changed to "Cold Fusion vs. Hot Fusion Theory"? V (talk) 18:10, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

The sources aren't pitting cold fusion against hot fusion, they are comparing cold fusion against several nuclear fusion phenomena, conventional nuclear physics, fundamental laws of physics and existing physical theories.

“ "To believe that Pons and Fleischmann, Jones and Scaramuzzi and many others who claimed to observe either heat or neutrons or tritium were all observing the same phenomenon, one must believe that, when fusion occurs inside a piece of metal, such as palladium or titanium, the outcome is radically different from what is known to happen when fusion occurs in the Sun, or in a hot fusion plasma, or an atomic bomb, or a nuclear accelerator. In other words, it is different from conventional nuclear physics. Let's call the three possible outcomes of fusion a, b, and c. In conventional nuclear physics, fusion results about half the time in a, half the time in b, and one millionth of the time in c." Goodstein[25] ”

“ "Accepting the three miracles does not imply a violation of the fundamental laws of physics: in particular, conservation of mass plus energy is satisfied." Scaramuzzi www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Scaramuzzitenyearsof.pdf ”

“ "All new theories explaining 'cold fusion' effects require large revisions in existing physical theories (one might call them 'miracles')." Scientific American [26] (this one doesn't even mention hot fusion) ”

--Enric Naval (talk) 20:09, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough in what I meant by the proposed title. " Cold Fusion vs Hot-Fusion-Theory " --that first quote, Enric, seems to partially equate hot fusion theory with conventional nuclear physics. The section is not about "Cold Fusion Theory" vs "Hot Fusion Theory". Note that the first Big Problem, getting the nuclei close enough, has a known CF-type solution (muon catalysis) that does not violate any aspects of physics, yet was totally a surprise when it was discovered. (A similar discovery would make the Scientific American conclusion just as totally surprised/wrong.) So, regarding "miracles", I might recommend reviewing one of Arthur C. Clarke's Laws, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." A miracle is simply something we don't understand YET. V (talk) 21:07, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

How about "Incompatibilities with conventional nuclear physics"?

Rationale: I pick the wording from the guy that makes TV programs that educate the masses in Physics-related matters. I suppose that he chose in his article the wording that would be more understandable for the layman reader, which would fit the goals of wikipedia. The Scientific American wording is "existing physical theories", which, honestly, sucks a bit. Scaramuzzi wording is "fundamental laws of physics" which will probably be more protested than the actual one. --Enric Naval (talk) 00:07, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

That's not unreasonable, and the biggest strike against my suggestion was how easily it could be misinterpreted. However, I happened to think that if the words were switched around, "Hot Fusion Theory vs Cold Fusion", that problem would be solved. Another problem, though, is that too many casual readers don't know that a modern Theory is more than just a guess, so using that word can lead to other misinterpretations. ("Evolution is just a Theory", see? Of course, the correct response to that is, "Creationism is just a Hypothesis!", followed by encouragement to study the meanings of those words as used in Science.) And then there is another problematic aspect, which I didn't originally consider: muon-catalyzed fusion is not hot fusion, but has the same product yields as hot fusion. So, how about "Known Fusion Facts vs Cold Fusion Data"? It is the CF data, after all, that encourages proponents to think that fusions happen in that environment. That they don't match up well with known fusion facts, that IS what that section is about! V (talk) 14:52, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Sources are not comparing against fusion "facts", not even against fusion theories, they are comparing against physics theories or nuclear physics.... It's not a comparison of one type of fusion against other.... --Enric Naval (talk) 00:16, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I went ahead and changed it to "conventional nuclear physics". (funny how the old title had "Established Physics" in capital letters) --Enric Naval (talk) 02:27, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Enric, you seem to be missing the point that "fusion" is not the whole of "nuclear physics", conventional or otherwise. And it is glaringly obvious that various facts about already-observed fusions are on stage front-and-center, in basically saying that there are difficulties with CF as an explanation for observations of excess heat, in that section of the article. Why is it not equally obvious that IF cold fusion really occurs inside deuterium-saturated metal, and typically does such things as the D+D->4He reaction, yielding heat instead of gammas, then certain details about how fusion takes place there must be different than the details of either hot fusion or muon-catalyzed fusion? V (talk) 08:04, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

topic derrailment. Pages are to discuss changes to the articles, per WP:TALK --Enric Naval (talk) 23:33, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
(unindent) There is more. Yes, CF requires something quite different from either high-energy fusion or muon-catalyzed fusion. However, excess heat isn't the only reason to suspect that some nuclear process is taking place. There is other evidence for condensed matter nuclear reactions besides the electrolysis work and heat generation; neutrons, other radiation, transmutations. There are hypotheses that attempt to rationalize the fusion, such as electron capture by a proton, creating a neutron which can then approach other nuclei and cause transmutations, including the particular one we call fusion. Every hypothesis, I'm sure, has its difficulties, including the one of rampant experimental error. The first step for a scientific approach would be, not to try to find a theoretical basis for the experimental results, but simply to verify the experiment. But an experiment that may depend on unknown sensitive conditions can be difficult to reproduce, many attempts may fail. However, usually, with time, the exact conditions that generate the anomalous result are likely to be identified. This can take years! Hence the early rejection of the F-P work, before there was adequate time to conclude that reproduction wasn't possible, such that the field itself became a pariah field, is itself an example of bad science, and we have RS for this view. This is a big story that I don't think we are adequately covering. But I think I'm going to begin by a systematic examination of the sources we have, and other editors will be very welcome to join me in that, I'll announce it here, for sure. --Abd (talk) 18:27, 8 March 2009 (UTC) "But I think I'm going to begin by a systematic examination of the sources we have..." Abd, please don't do that here. Talk pages are not the place to discuss the details of various documents. They are for discussing CHANGES TO THE ARTICLE! You have been soapboxing, not improving the article with all this text, so stop it. Olorinish (talk) 18:53, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

For the section title, how about "Difficulties with nuclear explanations"? I think the current title "Incompatibilities with conventional nuclear physics" is better than the previous title, but still find it non-NPOV: If a nuclear explanation is later established for the (alleged) phenomenon, I'm not convinced that that explanation will necessarily be incompatible with current established nuclear physics. I don't think conventional nuclear physics enumerates all the possible things that can happen with those materials: for example, muon-catalysed fusion would not have been listed before it was thought of or discovered.

Re a systematic examination of the sources: that's a necessary step to establishing due weight for the article, therefore an appropriate topic of discussion on this talk page. The discussion should not aim to establish "truth", i.e. things like whether or not there really is excess heat produced not explainable by things like experimental error, whether or not cold fusion is occurring etc., but to establish how much weight to place on various POVs about various aspects of the topic, as well as the relative weight on the aspects of the topics themselves, i.e. how much space in the article to devote to each aspect of the topic in this article. There can also be subarticles expanding on various aspects. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 20:05, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Not obtaining consensus is bad. Source analysis will continue at User:Abd/Cold fusion/Sources --Enric Naval (talk) 23:33, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
I haven't been soapboxing, but neither did I intend to conduct this examination here. I can do it in one of two places: In my user space or in Talk space as a subpage. Apparently, cautious examination of sources isn't part of what Olorinish considers essential to the process of "improving the article," and he's welcome to the opinion, I'm just not likely to join him in it. I'm working on improving the article, and it starts, to my mind, with thorough discussion, not the kind of one-liners that have become far too popular. Nobody is obligated to read what I write, or what anyone else writes. You want to see voluminous text, take a look at RfArs where stuff actually does get considered in detail with wide participation. Total mess. Avoidable if a few editors discuss with thoroughness, which takes patience and time. Olorinish, your work on the article is appreciated. Be careful, though, of the Sisyphus effect. It is what happens when edits are made which don't reflect true consensus, the boulder rolls down the mountain again. Articles which have not gone through what is necessary for true consensus are very difficult to maintain and they tend to become hodge-podges. When consensus has been found, all involved editors -- or at least nearly all! -- become maintainers of the article, and if the process has been documented, new editors can be pointed to that and can remain welcome to join or specifically question the consensus. Otherwise, the wall is up, being battered and pounded and requiring constant effort to maintain. In any case, I'm deciding right now to do it in my user space. It can be moved to article Talk space if there is any agreement on that. It will keep me busy for quite a while, plus I've got Other Important Stuff to do. User:Abd/Cold fusion/Sources. All editors are welcome to help. Underscore help.

@Coppertwig, "If a nuclear explanation is later (...) will necessarily be incompatible with current established nuclear physics. I don't think conventional nuclear physics enumerates all the possible things that can happen with those materials (...)", aka WP:CRYSTALBALL (that being said, replacing "conventional" with "current" on the title could solve this problem.

Ah, I think I found the problem, I separated the "cold fusion as a nuclear reaction" from the rest of explanations. Now go find reliable sources for those. --Enric Naval (talk) 00:14, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

OK, let me put it this way: the section title "incompatibilities with current physics" violates WP:V by implying that there are incompatibilities between cold fusion results and current physics. Not being explained by current physics is not the same thing as being incompatible with it. If it violated the law of conservation of energy, for example, we could talk about incompatibility. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 01:11, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

(I cut your comment above to create a new section and re-signed it) "problems posed by current physics"? :P The results are not compatible with current physics, you know, that's why they are called "miracles". --Enric Naval (talk) 03:23, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

No problem: just please provide a source to verify that statement. Just now I re-read the Incompatibilities section of this article. The only statement in the section which seems to me to be asserting that the alleged phenomena are incompatible with current physics is the last sentence, "The speed of...", which gives as a reference Goldstein, who says "It proved that there are still genuine surprises waiting for us that, once understood, don't violate conventional physical laws". I still think "difficulties with" is a better description of the section than "incompatibilities"; no one has provided any argument against using "difficulties with". I suggest "Difficulties in reconciling with current physics". ☺Coppertwig (talk) 14:50, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I think I'll "second" that motion. V (talk) 16:03, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The label "difficulties" is more vague than "incompatibilities," so I oppose using it for this title. The current references 7-9 document the view that CF is incompatible with established physics. Olorinish (talk) 18:00, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

So, we have documentation for a particular POV? But the article is not supposed to reflect a particular POV; it is supposed to be evenhanded in its descriptions. I would not object to statements indicating there is a POV that considers CF to be incompatible with what we know, so long as there also are statements indicating that muon-catalyzed fusion was a wild card, too, before its mechanism was understood. That is, some proponents hold the POV that CF may also fit neatly into current physics, once the mechanism is figured out. (Denunciations by Authority, of course, merely turns brainpower away from trying to figure it out.) Anyway, the point is, the section heading should be NPOV --and as previously pointed out, even CF proponents admit the theoretical problems are difficult. V (talk) 20:33, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Other explanations of cold fusion

From Storms 2007:

“ 1. Reduction of the Coulomb barrier by electrons being concentrated between the nuclei,

2. Conversion of deuterium into a wave structure that ignores the Coulomb barrier, 3. Creation or release of neutrons within the structure, which add to nuclei that are present, 4. Creation of clusters of deuterons that interact as units, 5. Involvement of phonons13 to concentrate energy at the reaction site and carry away the released energy. 6. Models showing that the Coulomb barrier is not as high as previous thought if certain conditions are present. Cold Fusion for Dummies. Edmund Storms. lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEcoldfusione.pdf

”

Anyone has a problem with this list going under the new "Explaining cold fusion as other phenomena" section? --Enric Naval (talk) 03:23, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Technically, alas, yes. The way that new section is worded (in the article body, not above), it appears to be wanting NON-FUSION explanations for the observed heat. You appear to be listing explanations for why fusion might be able to occur (and thereby produce heat). While both types of explanations should be in the article for balance, the current wording would appear to preclude one type. V (talk) 06:20, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. Also, the third miracle has to do with propagation of heat and has noting to do with nuclear theories, so back to "physics theories".

I now divided it into 3 sections: "incompatiblities with current conventional physics theories", "Unproven explanations" and "Proven explanations". And, err.... well, I had a bit of a problem filling that last section.... --Enric Naval (talk) 07:37, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

SOMETHING ODD: There is a subsection titled: "Non-nuclear explanations for excess heat", immediately followed by the "Explanations for cold fusion", inside of which is a "Proposed explanations" subsection and a BOX containing this: "Please help improve this section by expanding it with attempts to explain cold fusion as something other than a nuclear fusion reaction." I would say that box is out of place. V (talk) 14:01, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

OK, I see someone has done something about that; thanks! V (talk) 13:55, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

40 or 50 orders of magnitude

(section cut from above --Enric Naval (talk) 03:23, 9 March 2009 (UTC))

This statement seems too strong to me: "Extrapolating from known rates at high energies, the rate at room temperature would be 50 orders of magnitude lower than needed to account for the reported excess heat." It needs qualifiers. For example, perhaps it should say "in the absence of muons". There could be other assumptions also needed. "unless some unknown process is affecting the rate"? "under ordinary conditions"? "under any conditions anyone has thought of yet"? Physics doesn't dictate that the rate is necessarily 50 (by the way, should that be 40 to 50, per Goldstein?) orders of magnitude lower; it might dictate that under some set of assumptions (including the absence of muons, as well as temperature, and perhaps some other things) that that is the rate. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 01:11, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

That sentence is a quote from Scaramuzzi (see cites below). Goodstein says "40 or 50", Scaramuzzi says "more than 50". This refers to the distance between deuterium nuclei in a deuterium molecule. None of the two mention anything other than high/low energy or room temperature that migh affect that rate.

“ Deuterium nuclei repel one another because of the electric force between them, but if they get close enough together they fuse anyway because of what is called the "strong" (nuclear) force. The laws of quantum mechanics allow deuterium nuclei to fuse by accident every so often even if they are not initially close together, but the probability of that happening is very small. Suppose, for example, they are as far apart as the two deuterium nuclei normally are in a deuterium molecule. Then the probability of fusion is much too small to have produced the alleged effects claimed by the Cold Fusioners. There are two ways to look at just how small the probability is. At the inter-nuclear spacing in the deuterium molecule, the probability is too small by forty or fifty orders of magnitude. Goodstein [27] ”

Please note that the above description explicitly specifies whole deuterium molecules. That means the deuterons are surrounded by their electron shells. This is why it should be obvious that getting at least one deuteron out of its shell is pretty important! Why, I might wager that if a deuteron could escape its shell and hover over the shell of a neighboring deuterium (meaning that the original distance between the nuclei is halved), then the probability of fusion occurring at that distance would increase significantly. It might now be unlikely by only twenty or thirty orders of magnitude, instead of forty or fifty! :) V (talk) 06:09, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

“ The first one is a dramatic increase of the probability for fusion to take place. If you try to extrapolate to low energies the known probabilities at high energies, you find that the probability of such an event is some 50 or more orders of magnitude lower than that needed to account for the measured excess heat (7): in other words, there is no chance that two deuterons will fuse at room temperature. Scaramuzzi www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Scaramuzzitenyearsof.pdf (page 4) ”

--Enric Naval (talk) 03:23, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

(unindent). What should be clear is that the spontaneous reaction rate for unassisted deuterium fusion at room temperature would be 40-50 orders of magnitude lower than necessary to explain the heat generation. This is really nothing more than saying that if you have some pure deuterium at room temperature, it is not going to fuse, period. However, as muon-catalyzed fusion shows, that doesn't mean that low-temperature deuterium fusion is impossible, only that it doesn't happen spontaneously. If it did, there wouldn't be any deuterium around! This is not equivalent, to be clear, to the statement that "there is no chance that two deuterons will fuse at room temperature," which muon-catalyzed fusion makes quite clear, give the two reluctant partners a matchmaker to bring them together, they may well fuse. We know that muons can do this. There are enough muons around that there is, in fact, some rate of fusion of deuterium naturally at low temperatures, still very low, but much higher than the spontaneous figure. I think there might be some reference about this from S. Jones. What about electrons? (The muon can do it because it has the same negative charge as an electron.) One of the theories floating about, that more than one author seems to have accepted as reasonable, is that in the metallic lattice, where electrons are largely free, behaving very differently than with isolated nuclei, they may be able to catalyze fusion by allowing the nuclei to approach, in a similar way to how we know muons can accomplish the trick. So I'm a bit concerned about the presentation of this as an argument against cold fusion; there is utterly and absolutely no doubt that the spontaneous fusion rate for deuterium at low temperatures is so low that it just doesn't happen, and we would not even be considering the topic unless there weren't reason to think that some conditions might catalyze or cause it. Why did Fleischmann run palladium electrolysis experiments for so long? He had theoretical reasons to suspect it might occur, see http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanbackground.pdf Thus the argument, though it is indeed made, shouldn't really be an argument against cold fusion, it is misleading presented that way, but only background as to why cold fusion is remarkable at all.

I'd like to interject the fact that on Earth deuterium is about one atom per 6500 of protium-hydrogen. That means that most of the time, even if one deuterium got itself hooked up with a cosmic-ray muon, it would not likely encounter another deuterium before the 2-microsecond lifspan of the muon ended. I'd also like to note that elsewhere on this page an additional factor was listed: "The current density of the electrolysis is larger than 280 mA per cm²" --that means electrons are moving under the influence of an external force, causing them to not move in normal pathways that might keep them from closely approaching loose deuterons in the metal lattice. Indeed, we might expect the deuterons themselves to be moving toward one end of the metal lattice under that same external force, opposite the direction of the electron flow, and possibly accumulating to an even higher "local loading ratio" than such oft-mentioned figures as 80%-90%. V (talk) 14:13, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

There is a simple analogy. Put hydrogen gas and oxygen gas together at room temperature. What happens? Nothing. The spontaneous reaction rate is zero. With a spark, bang, the hydrogen and oxygen bind to each other, releasing heat, the heat causes more combustion, etc. However, there are also catalysts which will bring the suitors together, getting around their reluctance, so combustion below the ignition temperature does, in fact, happen. Fuel cells. Indeed, biological metabolism.

It is also very clear that the conditions under which catalyzed fusion might occur are necessarily very unusual, or else we would have far less deuterium around. From what we now know about palladium-catalyzed fusion (yes, we know something about it, collectively), it might simply not occur at all in nature, the natural occurrence would be far lower than with muon-catalyzed fusion. A rare metal, unoxidized, apparently persnickity about impurities, plus deuterium gas, and possibly flow parameters? --Abd (talk) 14:25, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

If I'm undertanding the quotes correctly, he's talking about the probability that the two atoms of a duetrium molecule, under normal conditions, just all the sudden decide to fuse. While that's an interesting piece of trivia, it's about as relevant to this article as it is to any article on conventional thermodynamic fusion. It's useful, perhaps, as a baseline. ('xcept that we really should be talking about atoms in separate molecules) Or a control in a scientific experiment: "This is how fast plants grow w/out light." But used in any other context, it would just confuse the reader and quite possible even mislead them. Because really, it doesn't have any relevancy outside of that. Kevin Baas^talk 14:48, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

A New Reference

http://www.infinite-energy.com/iemagazine/issue82/releaseoflowenergy.html
"This book is historic because it is the first peer-reviewed book from an established scientific society (published by the American Chemical Society, but available from Oxford University Press)."
The title is: "Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions Sourcebook"
The price is, In My Opinion, ridiculous: $175 V (talk) 18:25, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

And back in Left Field, the place for Sources of Disputed Reliability, here's an article that purports to be a FAQ: http://www.infinite-energy.com/images/pdfs/nagel.pdf

I like the diagram at the bottom of the second page. V (talk) 18:39, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

According to OUP's blurb, that's published in the ACS Symposium Series, a rapid-release system subject only to these publication guidelines. Note that peer review is in essence left up to the editor, in this case Jan Marwan of Marwan Chemie. According to this search, it is the only thing he has done (written or edited) for OUP. This hardly fills one with confidence.LeadSongDog (talk) 19:24, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

LeadSongDog has presented a distorted view of the review process. The editor does "conduct the process," but it is checked by ACS. LeadSongDog may not be "filled with confidence," but the confidence gauge on LSD's dash isn't any kind of standard at all. The book is RS, very clearly. The wall is crumbling, the dike is leaking, and the tide is rising. How far it will rise, I don't know. Don't have a CRYSTALBALL.--Abd (talk) 03:32, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm trying very hard to find a way to WP:AGF consistent with the above statement. I'm not succeeding. I think I'll go make a cup of tea.LeadSongDog (talk) 06:17, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Not a bad idea. I struck part of my comment, I'd thought about it and came to consider it gratuitous incivility, for, after all, you were merely expressing your feelings, which we should be allowed to do in Talk. The "wall" exists on Wikipedia, and it exists outside. In spite of the suggestions in the DOE reviews, that major journals apparently refuse to consider papers on the topic is a "wall," an a priori judgment that makes it impossible to resolve the issues, no matter how clear an experiment might be, no matter how balanced a review might be. I was just reading a paper about neutron emissions from deuterated foils, presented at, I think, ICCF10. Tungsten was the metal involved. This was serious research, but because it shows, if not fraudulent, a probable low level of fusion or other LENR process, because of neutron emission, it would quite likely be unpublishable in major journals covering nuclear physics. (The experiment run with deuterium gas showed neutron emission; controls with hydrogen, no emission. The levels were low, but this was done underground and with shielding against cosmic rays, the emissions were sufficiently above background to represent a clear anomaly. The Italians also found neutrons, in exceedingly careful work, as reported by Goodstein (1994), and the Chinese author of the FPC paper, early in the nineties, I think, found other evidence of anomalous reactions.) I'm beginning to get a clearer understanding of how to approach these issues, it will require creating Talk subpages where we review sources in a comprehensive, systematic way, rather than piecemeal with no clear conclusions. --Abd (talk) 13:44, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I like the fact that we're considering material from the American Chemical Society to provide support for what purports to be cutting-edge nuclear physics. Perhaps we should also scan publications of the Royal Agricultural Society for information on advances in aeronautics. 72.70.9.75 (talk) 01:56, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

If someone has figured out how to grow aircraft from seeds, we might indeed. The field of cold fusion, known to those working in it as "chemically assisted nuclear reactions," among other names, is one where chemistry and physics cross; the original work was done by electrochemists. Low-energy nuclear reactions are, precisely, those which might be chemically influenced, so if they happen (aside from muon-catalyzed fusion, then the expertise of chemists is relevant. Consider: chemist runs experiment that by all rights should be dissipating no more than so much energy. The measurement of generated heat is a technique used in chemistry, the field is called calorimetry, and it's not so common among physicists, if I'm correct; further, the determination of how much energy dissipation is chemically possible from the reactants is in the field of chemistry. The experiment generates, allegedly, much more than that. Whose expertise is needed to assess this claim? What has been happening is that chemists are saying, "This isn't chemistry, it must be nuclear in nature." And nuclear physicists, by and large, have been saying, "This couldn't be nuclear physics, nuclear reactions don't happen in chemistry labs, it must be chemistry, you must be making some mistake." So to speak. (Obviously, they can, be careful how much U-235 you allow to accumulate in a particular reaction vessel, I heard Feynman himself tell this story, but that's not what I mean.) --Abd (talk) 03:22, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

If plutonium was in the chemical mix, even less would need to be present to notice excess heat (due to shorter half-life). And such mixes do exist; here's a jug that was recently found: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/science/03plut.html

Anyway, back to CF-related stuff; I concur with Abd, since chemists spent decades in the late 1800s and all through the 1900s measuring the heat produced from (or absorbed by!) all sorts of chemical reactions. Chemical engineers need to know how much heat to handle, when reacting industrial quantities of chemicals. Not to mention that when the military wanted good rocket fuels, the chemists were the ones to ask, not the physicists. It is simply ludicrous, for physicists to assume professional chemists don't know how to measure heat-production accurately. V (talk) 08:31, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

The concern with the accumulation of U-235 isn't about heat from normal decay, it's about reaching critical mass for sustained fission, which would have wrecked the processing equipment at Oak Ridge. In any case, we have a situation where experts in calorimetry, many of them, are reporting anomalous heat they consider impossible to be from normal chemical process, and we have physicists, most or many of them, refusing to consider any other explanation than chemical process or experimental error, and clinging to hypotheses about such errors that aren't supported by the literature, which is, in my opinion, odd. Some physicists are looking for independent evidence of anomalous nuclear reactions, and they have been finding it since the early 1990s or before, but this is only being published, for the most part, in non-mainstream journals. However, one of the remarkable things about the FPC paper discussed above, in the "Holy Grail" section, is that He Jing-tang is a nuclear physicist with the Institute of High Energy Physics, Academia Sinica, and was one of the 8 co-authors of the 1993 paper from that institution, published in China Physics Letters, "Study on Anomalous Nuclear Fusion Reaction using HV pulse discharge." This paper was cited above, but for convenience, it's at [28]. --Abd (talk) 14:04, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I'm aware that with U235 and a half-life of something like 700 million years, one would likely have to invoke fissions to see significant heat. For plutonium, however, most of which is likely to be Pu239 derived from U238 absorbing a neutron ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neptunium#History ), the half-life is only about 24,000 years, and that decay rate would be associated with considerably more heat (therefore I mentioned it above). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Objectivist (talk • contribs) 16:12, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

More papers mentioning cold fusion.

• http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/-search=61804500.7/0954-3899/31/10/040

This paper seems to take cold fusion (i.e., nuclear reactions that are not at high energies) for granted. I've been finding a number of papers on theory like this, this one is published in Physical Review.

• http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/-search=61804500.4/0954-3899/32/11/L03

Published in 2006 J. Phys. G: Nucl. Part. Phys.

Tell me again, please, what the reliable source is for the concept that cold fusion is generally rejected? I mean now, not twenty years ago or even five years ago. (And rejected by whom? The general public? Scientists in general? Physicists? Nuclear Physicists? Chemists?) (By "now" I would mean, maybe 2007 or 2008 or later, given that there is ongoing publication in RS about low energy nuclear reactions.) It's a sincere question. --Abd (talk) 22:29, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

If you think fission=fusion (your weird interpretation offered of the first paper) or that 10 MeV is room temperature (your weird interpretation of the second paper) you probably do not belong editing here. Neither of these papers are about cold fusion or have any relevance whatsoever. ScienceApologist (talk) 23:11, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps I was deluded by the fact that the paper's title is "Studies of neutron-deficient nuclei near the Z = 82 shell closure via cold fusion reactions." Cold f u s i o n. Weird interpretation? If this paper has "nothing to do with cold fusion," what in the world is "cold fusion" doing in the title? If there is some other kind of "cold fusion" that is "hot," then we need to say so and disambiguate. For many reasons, the one who may not belong editing here is you. I thought it might be different. I was wrong. There is still time to look at the paper again and notice that they are fusing Zr and Mo, SA. Better response from Phil, below. --Abd (talk) 03:45, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Isn't the second paper about obtaining Ununquadium by ion bombardment at high speed? Isn't this a perfectly understood phenomen that has nothing to do with cold fusion? --Enric Naval (talk) 23:27, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Come on Abd - at least try to read and understand cites before posting them here. You seem to be doing a literature search and posting anything that fits and appears to vindicate cold fusion, then using it to support some specious text. But neither of these are related to palladium and deuterium in any way. These are "hot" fusion done at low energies. Such studies examine what happens when you bombard very heavy elements at energies near the coulomb barrier to create new isotopes. It involves easily understand freshman physics. For an explanation of what these are about and related discussion of CF (before it gets derailed by a toon), please read this Phil153 (talk) 02:18, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I was asking about the usage of "cold fusion," which appears in the title of the first paper. What specious text? I didn't propose no stinkin text. I noted the usage of the term "cold fusion," and, yes, I hadn't read the abstracts very carefully. Here is how I understand the first paper now. They are indeed running hot fusion, but they are using energies near the coulomb barrier; the energy may still be below the barrier, but this will cause nuclear approach to the point where the fusion rate starts to go up; they are trying to avoid fission, which becomes more likely the more the energy of impact. The name "cold fusion" is probably inappropriate in the title. Note that our article on muon-catalyzed fusion says that it might better be named "cool fusion," which is a total mystery to me, since the experiment described is run at a few degrees Kelvin. Here, it's warm fusion, really, just warm enough and no warmer.

Okay, now, looking at the source you pointed to -- are you proposing this as reliable source? -- it seems the term "cold fusion" is indeed used to refer to cool fusion. We need RS on that. Note that this source is typical of pseudo-scientific literature I've seen recently that is holding impressions of "looney tooney cold fusion" from twenty years ago, and that assumes that cold fusion experiments are simply the Pons-Fleischmann ones, that totally neglects all the work that has been done to address the problems with the P-F experiments. I'd be pretty sure that the author would think the reviewers at the DOE were off their rockers for giving cold fusion the time of day. Unless, maybe, they actually read the research, such as Iwamura's work.

The field I'm interested in is Condensed Matter Nuclear Science. We actually have an article, currently merged to this one. So the assumption that cold fusion has to be about palladium and deuterium is way off. There is plenty of work that doesn't involve palladium.

Now, the second paper. It likewise uses the term "cold fusion" to refer to much higher energies than are involved in what our article here discusses. So, definitely, we need disambiguation if we can find a good source, I'm not thrilled at just picking up the word from some usage examples. --Abd (talk) 04:06, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The link contained an explanation of what the studies were about. It was for your benefit (since you seemed not to understand what the studies said) and since it was a forum posting, obviously not proposed as any kind of source for the article.

As for the name, cold fusion is like fusion power in that it has an English meaning which is sometimes invoked and also as a popular and most common name for a specific field. Phil153 (talk) 05:37, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Abd, I suspect that the physicists attempting to make high-atomic-number elements would call the Farnsworth Fusor a cold-fusion device. For them, see, the atoms they want to make are mostly so unstable that a high-speed collision of the nuclei they want to fuse together --that collision would not yield a fused nucleus. But if the speeds of the two nuclei are JUST enough to get on top of the Coulomb barrier, then a fused nucleus has a chance of resulting. Note that the velocities of the two nuclei, having slowed due to Coulomb repulsion and now located just close enough to start to fuse, would be practically zero (COLD!) A Farnsworth Fusor also need only apply just enough kinetic energy to deuterons, to get them close enough to fuse. V (talk) 05:52, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, V, I understand what they are talking about. The high-speed collisions do result in a fused nucleus, but with so much excess energy that it then immediately fissions, so it doesn't "yield" a fused nucleus. Yes, the term "cold" can be used, though I'd still call it misleading, because what is being used to overcome the Coulomb barrier is sheer energy, same as heat. But the point isn't my opinion or your opinion, it is that the term "cold fusion" is being used for something that we don't cover. Phil, what I'm discussing here is not the phenomenon that they are reporting. Yes, the link contained that explanation, and I wasn't complaining about that link being provided, it shows usage, but if we are going to incorporate that usage of the term, it would be better to have a more reliable source, don't you agree? We do have some flexibility, we could go ahead and note that the term is used for these kinds of reactions. And then he slaps his head! We can cite one of these papers as an example of the usage. Which one is better, do you think, or does anyone have a better idea? I'll go ahead and make an edit, but others are certainly welcome to improve it! --Abd (talk) 16:15, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Section "Incompatibilities with conventional nuclear physics" must be greatly expanded

This section is currently very short. But the reason why there is so much skepticism is very important to explain in this article and that can only be done by giving the detailed theoretical reasons why cold fusion cannot work.

So, I suggest that we explain that according to quantum mechanics, the validity of which is almost unversally accepted, one can write down formally exact expressions for transistion rates. In practice one cannot analytically evaluate such expressions (different approximation scemes are possible) but one can still theoretically study the mathematical formalism and set bounds on any enhancement of nuclear reaction rates.

E.g., one can approach the cold fusion problem in a possitive way and ask what is necessary for the transition rates to be enhanced and then make estimates, which will then turn out to be negligible. See e.g. a different investigation here Count Iblis (talk) 00:23, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

This is the problem with such a theoretical approach: it assumes that the mechanism for cold fusion is known. It isn't. There are lots of hypotheses, but none of them have general acceptance even among those working in the field. Are you aware, Count Iblis, that Fleischmann has written that quantum electrodynamics theory is what led him to suspect that cold fusion might happen? What you have done is what many others have done: assume that "cold fusion" is just a matter of two deuterium nuclei deciding to get married. If we look at them in isolation, there is a large Coulomb barrier, and if the two nuclei are all that are present, the only way to put them together is with high energy that overcomes the barrier, like temperatures of millions of degrees. Are you also aware that cold fusion is an accepted reality, it is actually not controversial? I.e., muon-catalyzed fusion, in which a muon catalyzes the approach, brings the two lovers together at low energies?

It's pretty simple, actually. Normal deuterium fusion taking place in a plasma, which is where it was primarily studied, results in one of three reaction pathways, it's described in the article.

D + D → ⁴He + 24 MeV

In high energy experiments, this intermediary has been observed to quickly decay through three pathways:

n + ³He + 3.3 MeV (50%)

p + ³H + 4.0 MeV (50%)

⁴He + γ + 24 MeV (10^-6)

Conservation of momentum, if this is happening in isolation, requires that the energy result in at least two products, so in the first reaction, we get a neutron and a helium-3 nucleus flying off in opposite directions; in the second reaction, it's a proton and tritium, and in the third, normally rare, it's helium and a gamma ray. Now, all the products have been reported in low-energy experiments, but the levels of neutrons or Helium-3 or tritium that have been found are far, far below those that would be expected to explain the reported excess heat. Whatever is happening isn't standard fusion as was previously studied.

Perhaps the best way to introduce you to the subject of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science would be to suggest that you look at Iwamura. The paper is published in reliable source, and its been cited a bit, I discuss it below. http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/IwamuraYelementalaa.pdf is a hosted copy of the paper; can't create the link because one of our friends arranged to have the whole library of papers at lenr-canr.org globally blacklisted, another story for another day. Iwamura does have an operating hypothesis that has guided his experiments, and it led him to try something nobody had tried before. Long story short, he takes bulk palladium and sputters thin layers of calcium oxide and palladium onto it, followed by a somewhat thicker layer of palladium. The process creates very pure layers of these materials. Then a very thin layer of cesium or strontium is deposited onto the surface. The experimental apparatus includes equipment for X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, allowing determination of the chemical composition of the surface of the test material without removing it from the apparatus. The experimental chamber is then filled with deuterium gas at atmospheric pressure; the other side of the palladium is maintained at low pressure. The deuterium gas dissociates at the surface of the thin palladium layer and diffuses through the bulk palladium, recombining on the other side to reform deuterium gas. At intervals (2 days to 1 week), the deuterium is evacuated from the chamber and the surface of the test piece is analyzed by XPS. "New elements that did not exist on the test piece at the beginning of the experiment can be detected. Usually this process is repeated a few times to observe the time dependence of the given or newly generated elements." Then the chamber is filled with nitrogen. "The test piece is removed from the chamber and its surface is analyzed by secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS). SIMS is a surface analysis technique in which energetic primary ions impact the surface and generate secondary ions, which are subsequently mass-separated and detected. SIMS is capable of analyzing all the elements with isotopic discrimination."

I advise reading the paper carefully. This paper was reviewed by one of the reviewers for the 2004 DOE report, who obviously didn't pay much attention, completely missing important experimental details and observations, and mistaking an observation for a theory that, of course, the reviewer rejected as impossible. What Iwamura found is that as the element originally on the surface disappears, a new element takes its place. Strontium disappears, Molybdenum appears, but not just any isotope of molybdenum, the mass spectroscopy reveals that it is almost entirely Molybdenum-96, very different from natural Mo, which is distributed between isotopes weighing from 92 to 100 daltons. Strontium was mostly Sr-88. This fits with a reaction where fusion of four deuterons with a Strontium nucleus has taken place. The four protons bump Strontium to Molybdenum in atomic number, 38 to 42, and the four neutrons plus the four protons bump the weight from 88 to 96. Likewise Cesium (No. 55, mass 133) becomes Praseodymium (No. 59, mass 141). When the experiment is run with hydrogen instead of deuterium, no transmutations are seen.

A big complaint about the excess heat experiments is that they were -- originally -- short on evidence of nuclear ash, i.e, the reaction products. Here, there is nothing but reaction product. No radiation, and the heat generated from this level of fusion would be below detectable levels (I think, and they didn't try).

The DOE reviewer wrote (also quoted below):

The analytical results, from a variety of techniques, such as mass spectroscopy and electron spectroscopy, are very nice. It seems difficult at first glance to dispute the results. However, the Japanese workers conclude, not that the elements in question are constituents from the interior of the Pd that migrated to the surface, but that they are the products of sequential nuclear reactions, in which changes of atomic number and atomic mass of 4 and 8 are preferred.

From a nuclear physics perspective, such conclusions are not to be believed ...

This is precisely what many observers have claimed about the whole cold fusion affair. Experimental results are discarded in favor of theoretical rejection. This reviewer comes up with a hypothesis, a simple one, but it was, indeed, so simple that Iwamura explicitly considered it in the paper, did the reviewer notice this? My guess is not. When someone has their mind made up, it is really, really easy to overlook contradictory details. The values of 4 and 8 are observations, not theory, based on quite precise measurements. There are numerous reasons why the migration hypothesis is preposterous, described below, isotopic composition being one. Another would be the mystery, then, of why a thin layer of Strontium becomes Molybdenum, so we'd have palladium contaminated with Molybdenum. Fine, that sounds possible. But wait, when we layer on Cesium, we get Praseodymium. What happened to the Molybdenum, it was scared of the Cesium?. No, there are only two reasonable explanations that I can think of: there was nuclear transformation under circumstances where classical theory would predict none, or there was fraud. Given that other, independent researchers have reported evidence for nuclear transformations, just not so precisely and simply and clearly, fraud is not likely. There are now many different experimental situations which have shown evidence of nuclear transformation (which includes fusion), and it's continued since the 2004 DOE review, where many reviewers were already convinced that there was something worthy of investigation, they just didn't think the time was ripe for a federally-funded program. Remember who was in office then? -- not that this would have influenced the reviewers, necessarily, but it might have shaped the conclusions of the report.

How much of this could go in the article is still quite unclear to me, but there is plenty of RS on various aspects of this whole affair, enough to keep us busy for a while. --Abd (talk) 03:29, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The only thing that bothers me about all this transmutation stuff is that it is a variation of the original theme. To the extent that, say, Strontium sequentially fuses with four deuteriums and becomes Molybdenum, ordinary physicists should (1) state that this is more difficult to occur (thanks to Coulomb repulsion) than deuteriums fusing with each other, and (2) state that if Sr does undergo fusions with deuterons to become Mo, then it would be completely logical to accept the idea that deuterium-only cold fusion can happen (regardless of not knowing how). Other than mentioning in this article that sort of support for the original form of cold fusion, all the transmutation stuff might best belong in its own article--or perhaps added to the existing nuclear transmutation article. V (talk) 05:40, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't follow. "The only thing that bothers me about all this transmutation stuff is that it is a variation of the original theme." - why does that bother you? "...then it would be completely logical to accept the idea that " no it wouldn't. reasonable to consider, maybe, but not "completely logical" - though it may recondition one's ontological priors to make it seem more plausible, it doesn't make follow logically. and this is supposed to be why it isn't relevant?!? It seems to me like that would make it more relevant. "Other than mentioning in this article that sort of support for the original form of cold fusion, all the transmutation stuff might best belong in its own article..." why? you assert this, but you never make a case for it. Kevin Baas^talk 13:53, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Elsewhere on this discussion page is at least one remark to the effect that the main topic of the article is the idea of D+D fusion occuring inside solid metal at ordinary temperatures. The transmutation stuff seems to have been discovered as a side-effect. So, logically, in the article, it could be mentioned, but it need not be given a lot of space in this article; it's different enough from D+D fusion to deserve a separate article (because other atoms, such as the Strontium mentioned, have quite a few layers of electron shells to inhibit fusion-type transmutations). V (talk) 14:09, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Besides the significance of the material due to its corroborating nature, many people take the approach that a theory which explains D+D fusion phenomena should also explain the transmutation phenomena (this is consistent with "theory"). While I don't have any problem with there being a separate page for these transmutation results - or one on the broader topic of C.M.N.S. (after all, wikipedia is not paper), I think there should always be a summary of the transmutation results in this article in due proportion to its relevance both as corroborating material and as (potentially) theoretically bound. And in the absence of any article on CMNS or C.M.N.-transmutation, the phenomena should be described here in sufficient detail to elucidate its full scope and significance - at least insofar as the critics and supporters are concerned. Kevin Baas^talk 15:13, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, it should be easy enough to create a "stub" page for CMNS, and likely the very first thing on it should be a note to the effect that many physicists regard the notion as preposterous as perpetual motion. That should at least prevent immediate deletion of the page. I see that when I typed the phrase into the Wikipedia search box, it redirected to the CF article. I'm not sure how to intercept that and put a stub-article in its place. Be my guest? Later, of course, plenty more information can be added to it, as we decide what should belong there and what should belong here.

I see I neglected to explain the "completely logical" thing that you questioned. It's quite simple: the Coulomb repulsion between two deuterons is far less than the repulsion between a deuteron and any heavy nucleus like strontium's, so any mechanism that can overcome the latter, enabling fusion, can also overcome the former. V (talk) 16:49, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) Ahem! Condensed matter nuclear science. Here is the basic issue: it was concluded long ago that mere chemistry, including the condensed state, could not affect nuclear reactions; there are quite a few reasons why this idea is reasonable. However, it's not at all clear that there was a dedicated effort to look for such reactions. When the P-F work became known, others started to look for evidence of LENR. My guess is that there are actually quite a number of different pathways to low energy nuclear reactions, it is not just one mechanism, which would explain why there are such inconsistent results as to radiation and nuclear ash. Yes. If elemental transformation is possible, as Iwamura reports, D-D fusion might be easier. So it's related. But we really should have at least two articles: Condensed matter nuclear science (go to the link then, from the redirected from link at the top, you can quickly get to the redirected article and look at the history to get the most recent version before the redirect. You can also look at Talk:Condensed matter nuclear science directly. The other article would be on the history. --Abd (talk) 17:56, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Iwamura

http://jjap.ipap.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle?magazine=JJAP&volume=41&number=7R&page=4642-4650 Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. Vol. 41 (2002) pp. 4642–4650

convenience copy: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/IwamuraYelementalaa.pdf (cannot be linked due to blacklist)

This is, of course, a stunning piece of work. Does anyone know what critical or other response it has received outside of the cold fusion community (where he has been widely cited)? Iwamura is reporting nothing less than total transformation of elements in a very thin film in an experimental setup where he could monitor the elemental composition of the film, taking place under highly controlled conditions, during the experiments, using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.

We noticed that a certain rule exists between given and produced elements. The increase in mass number is 8, and the increase in atomic number is 4. At present, we do not have a complete theory that can explain the obtained experimental results without a few assumptions. However, if several assumptions are accepted, they are basically explained by the EINR model,(5) which is one of the working hypotheses in the investigation of the nature of this phenomenon.

5) Y. Iwamura, T. Itoh, N. Gotoh and I. Toyoda: Fusion Technol. 33 (1998) 476.

Now, this paper is mentioned in the 2004 DOE reviewer submissions. Lenr-canr.org claims to have obtained a copy of the 18 individual review papers, ( http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/DOEusdepartme.pdf ) and this is in Review 7:

The paper by Iwamura et al. presented at ICCF10 (Ref. 47 in DOE31) does an exhaustive job of using a variety of modern analytical chemistry methods to identify elements produced on the surface of coated Pd cold-fusion foils. . . .

The analytical results, from a variety of techniques, such as mass spectroscopy and electron spectroscopy, are very nice. It seems difficult at first glance to dispute the results. However, the Japanese workers conclude, not that the elements in question are constituents from the interior of the Pd that migrated to the surface, but that they are the products of sequential nuclear reactions, in which changes of atomic number and atomic mass of 4 and 8 are preferred.

From a nuclear physics perspective, such conclusions are not to be believed ...

Storms and Rothwell -- http://www.lenr-canr.org/Collections/DoeReview.htm#Report -- respond:

... The anomalous element could not migrate from the interior of the palladium because:

1. Deuterium atoms, flowing from the surface to the interior, would cause diffusion of the anomalous element away from the surface, not toward the surface.

2. Mass spectroscopy done at various depths shows that the anomalous element was not present in the palladium.

3. The element that was originally on the surface disappears at the same rate as the anomalous element appears.

4. The isotopes of the anomalous element are unnatural, and the isotope shifts are exactly what are expected should the missing element transmute into the new element

It's extremely clear that the reviewer dismissed Iwamura by making up another explanation that anyone understanding the Iwamura report could see could not be possible. Iwamura actually considers the possibility that the entire substrate contained the element that appears (it's a rare element, so I think he uses an upper limit for its possible abundance in the base material); if all the atoms in the substrate migrated to the surface, they could indeed account for the observed effect, but this, then, would violate the laws of thermodynamics. And, of course, there is the detail that the effect doesn't occur with hydrogen diffusion in place of deuterium, and the objections above. The numbers 4 and 8 are significant, of course, because they would represent the absorption of 4 deuterons by each atom of the element being transmuted.

In any case, the real point would be not the unbelievability of Iwamura's "conclusions," but his experimental data. Iwamura simply noted that the element disappearing and the element appearing differed in atomic number by 4 and mass number by 8. That's an experimental observation, not actually a conclusion. The reviewer seems quite confused.

Absolutely, it's a stunning result. But is it so stunning that it should be hidden under a rock? (Note that we aren't hiding this one, it's cited in the article.)

No matter how clear this becomes to me, or to anything short of a consensus of editors, I don't see anything yet to use in the article about the 2004 DOE review, except to note that the Iwamura paper is in a peer-reviewed journal and is reliable source, and it's possible that more of it could be used.

The individual reviews cast some severe doubt on the comments made earlier in debate over the reporting of the DOE review that the mention of continued research was mere boilerplate. There is very substantial support for research with some reviewers. As I've said, this isn't actually a fringe science, fringe science doesn't get that kind of support from a body of scientists chosen to advise the DOE.

Here is what I'd personally say about Iwamura. He is either a gross fraud or he has proven beyond reasonable doubt low-energy nuclear reactions. It's not an easy experiment to reproduce, but it could be done, and there is other work that supports that something like this is happening. There is reason why scientific frauds are essentially run out of town on a rail, they can cause tremendous damage, wasted effort, and all that. It's understandable that the scientific community was upset with Fleischmann, but it was also largely their own fault: they rushed to try to duplicate the work, not realizing the complications and difficulties, not waiting for full information, etc. There are DOE reviewers who strongly confirmed that more research is needed, but note that Iwamura's technique and many of the other techiques, including Pons-Fleischmann's original work, are not necessarily scalable to energy-generating applications, it's entirely possible that they would remain scientific curiosities that only take place under very unusual circumstances, and not scalable. Iwamura's work is done in a near-vacuum, the element to be transmuted is sputtered on, making a very thin film, and the level of reaction was very low, the released heat predictable from the conversion of mass to energy would still have been undetectable. But the scientific implications are spectacular. Iwamura essentially watched the transmutation taking place, very precisely. Occam's razor.

But one point could make it quickly into the article. The full nature of Iwamura's report is still not revealed in the article, and the article cited as if it were a refutation of Iwamura was written prior to the Iwamura publication, it mentions earlier reports of transmutation, much less specific and much less well-measured. Remember, Iwamura is reporting 100% conversion, under conditions of high purity. No batch problems, no "sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't." --Abd (talk) 00:52, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Iwamura's XPS work has been discussed before, by a published scientist in the field whose opinion of the work was much less favorable than yours. Perhaps you should consider the science before making the sweeping claim that either Iwamura's a fraud or those who doubt this work are being unreasonable. You do not appear to have considered that the reviewer might have dismissed Iwamura for good reason- that he made claims his experimental data did not support. There are a number of ways this data can be misinterpreted (mistaking S₃⁺ for Mo⁺ is one way that appears to have happened.) [this edit was by Noren and was separated from its next paragraph by edits by Kevin Baas (originally) and then Krirk Shanahan, the continuation paragraph begins "There was an RfC on the question ...." and the original signature is there]

Thanks for the support Noren. You might find this amusing:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090304/sc_livescience/modernproblemeveryonesanexpert Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:51, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Noren, the possible S/Mo confusion is interesting, for sure, but Iwamura did not just report Sr/Mo transmutation, he also reported Cs/Pr transmutation. And two different spectrographic techniques must conspire to form the same error. I have not reviewed or seen the work Shanahan refers to, and it wasn't cited, as far as I noticed, in the prior discussion. Perhaps Shanahan can fix that. My comments were mostly based on the DOE reviewer's comment, which was ... terrible. The reviewer's job was to consider new evidence, and instead the reviewer's position apparently was, this would contradict theory, so however good the evidence looks, it must be wrong. A claim that Iwamura made a specific error, such as S/Mo, while it seems unlikely to me given how many ducks have to line up, is on another level. A claim that Iwamura's work is discredited because someone made up a possible but not demonstrated error, though, would be inappropriate. A doubt would have been raised, and, yes, if a series of such can be found, it then becomes possible to consider Iwamura wrong without being fraudulent. When I give my feelings about this work, it's not been approved by my lawyer, and every possible implication or meaning may not have been considered. I'll say it again, now that you know this. Iwamura's work is fraud or conclusive. But, of course, I haven't seen that paper Shanahan refers to.

In the Talk page discussion, V made the comment that transmutation isn't necessarily fusion. That's correct. It can be fission. What Iwamura reported would be fusion. Sr disappears, Mo appears. Cs disappears, Pr appears. The product is heavier than the raw material, Mo is Sr plus 4 D, Pr is Cs plus 4 D. Absolutely, I don't blame anyone for being skeptical. This just is not supposed to happen. --Abd (talk) 03:22, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, posting links and information here does not always lead to others choosing to read them. Had you read the previous discussion of the topic I referred to you would know this, but I'll excerpt it here: "The problem comes in insuring they are not simple contaminants arising from simple chemical effects or in misidentifying anomalous peaks with the wrong element. The Iwamura XPS results fall in this latter category. The 'Pr' could also be identified as Cu, which is much more common, and the Mo (in XPS) was actually S, as per Mizuno's ICCF14 abstract." The alleged Cs/Pr transmutation was also addressed, as was the other experimental technique. I'll say this again, now that you know this. Iwamura's work was sloppy and optimistic. Occam's razor was ignored by Iwamura, he jumped to an exotic interpretation of his data without first considering the more mundane possibilities. --Noren (talk) 13:54, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Now he did not make claims that his experimental data did not support. I believe what you meant to say is that he put forth a hypothesis that his experimental data did not conclusively confirm. Because, for instance, there are ways that "the data could be misinterpreted" - things that could trick the equipment or person reading it. but this does not mean that you should jump to the conclusion that the proper precautions were not taken AND that tricks did in fact occur (even thou you have no evidence of this) - (which many critics - even "scientific" ones! - seem to do). rather, the thing to do then is to figure out how one could avoid being thus tricked, and find out if the experimenter had taken such precautions. and if not, to do the experiment again with said precautions. one clearly can't do this in a criticism published before the experimenters' results - because the experimenters have not yet told you what they did. but this piece of logic (and others like it) doesn't seem to stop - or even slow - pseudo-skeptics. Kevin Baas^talk 15:10, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The 2002 Iwamura paper we are discussing was not convincing to the scientists who peer reviewed it in the (reliable secondary source) 2004 DoE review- published 2 years later.

I do not know of anyone who self-identifies as a pseudo-skeptic. The term is used here as a pejorative, and is inappropriate for this discussion. --Noren (talk) 13:54, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

The term is innately pejorative. (and aptly so - a person who employs unreason in the guise of reason is a burden on any society.) But that does not make the term inappropriate in every circumstance. Hell, we have [an article] (or section, rather) on it. A person who takes the above descripted approach in spite of logic undoubtedly meets the definition of "pseudo-skeptic". In that sense, it is relevant to what I was saying. And it is not directed at anyone in particular. Also, said fallacy is surprisingly common and it is important to distinguish it from real skepticism. (Pseudo-skepticism is just bad for the brain.) So what I said was relevant and important. And though I concede that the "...doesn't seem to stop..." aspect was an opinion, it is consistent w/the nature of pseudo-skepticism: it is persistent (stubbornly) in the face of contrary logic - unable to absorb any information that contradicts it. In fact, that is one of the ways to recognize pseudoskepticism - one of the ways to distinguish it from real skepticism.

Now above I just enumerated the difference between a real skeptic and a pseudoskeptic - and what they would do (or at least believe the proper course to be) in the example situation (i acknowledge the existence of a third position - that of saying "it's not important or promising enough to continue experimenting" ). I give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are, like me, a real (scientific) skeptic. I communicated this when I said "I believe what you meant to say is..." The rest of the paragraph was just meant to elucidate that difference, and why it is important. Kevin Baas^talk 14:01, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

There was an RfC on the question Is this topic fringe?- the result was yes. You may want to consider the fact that your opinion on this matter is counter to consensus. --Noren (talk) 07:20, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

You may want to read WP:Fringe and the comments on Is this topic fringe? referring to it. I say this because you seem to be misinterpreting the consensus and/or policy. Kevin Baas^talk 15:10, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Please indicate where in the two short sentences above that you perceive that I misinterpreted either of those things. --Noren (talk) 13:54, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I should have probably been more clear. I was refering to the fact that many of the people who voted "yes" commented that they did so on account of the broadness of the definition under WP:Fringe. For example, you can take a look at my comment on the vote. Interperting "Fringe" (as it pertains to WP) too narrowly can result in actions contrary to policy and consensus. Also, the broadness of the definition in WP:Fringe has implications to how the such topics should be treated, which if I'm not mistaken are spelled out on the page. Let me end by saying that I'm responding more to a feeling/sense I get of your response than any specific thing you said. If I am mistaken, then just interpret this as a general word of caution. Kevin Baas^talk 14:08, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Kevin. Noren, "opinion" "counter to consensus"? Consensus does not apply to opinions, it applies to edits and text, and to tendentious argument, sometimes. And consensus can change. If there were a problem with having an opinion counter to "consensus," meaning some determination of consensus in the past, then it would be impossible for it to change. I have given strong evidence that the topic is not fringe, I'd even say conclusive evidence. It is, however, commonly regarded as fringe, and, then, we face a true and difficult issue, the role of an encyclopedia when it comes to knowledge. Should an encyclopedia reflect "common knowledge," which boils down to opinion, or should it reflect "informed opinion" which requires basis in fact. It is typically possible to find sources for both, and the classical answer is "both." However, thanks for the pointer to the RfC. I'll examine it carefully and come back. --Abd (talk) 15:24, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Consensus can change, but I would nevertheless suggest that you carefully consider the existing consensus. Repeated, verbose, and/or emphatic exclamations of support for a claim do not make it true, nor can or should they trump a reliable source that disagrees with that claim. We do have a reliable source, the 2004 DoE review, that explicitly considered the 2002 Iwamura paper among others and found neither it nor the other submitted papers conclusive in demonstrating Cold Fusion.

I perceive that we do face a difficult problem, an area where common knowledge and informed opinion coincide, but where there is a determined minority who disagree with both. In this case the predominant view of the article should reflect what is both informed opinion and common knowledge, but the determined minority will never accept this, leading to prolonged and difficult conflict. --Noren (talk) 13:54, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

As long as CF-related phenomena are not completely understood, there will be political issues associated with this article. Even if the pendulum swings toward a pro-CF view, there will be a minority of opponents. Is there not still a "Flat Earth Society"? At the moment, part of the problem is the definition of "reliable source". For some info on how so-called "reliable sources" can be mistaken, read the Arhennius article. Or consider the various remarks about scientific progress on this page: http://atmoz.org/blog/2008/07/29/planck-and-science/ --possibly the first of Clarke's three laws is relevant, too. Now I recognize that the body of self-consistent scientific knowlegde has grown to such a size that most things that don't fit (like perpetual motion) simply can't fit, and generally the old fogeys of Science are right most of the time. But their knowledge does not make them omniscient, and they are still human enough to be able to occasionally jump to an incorrect conclusion. In the case of the excess heat of most CF experiments, we have the Chemists' Club offering some support for their own (knowing their required calorimetry skills), and the Physicists' Club denying the evidence, mostly because of how it was interpreted. I object! That is not the way Science works. And so there is no rationale for this article to be biased toward that denial-of-evidence, by excluding information that could be relevant to a pro-CF explanation. Even if a non-CF explanation comes along that correctly explains the heat, that is better than denying the evidence and exluding data (it could be historically useful). V (talk) 18:18, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

As to your claim that "they rushed to try to duplicate the work, not realizing the complications and difficulties, not waiting for full information, etc." How do you reconcile this with the 1992 through 1997, $20 million Japanese research program on Cold Fusion that ended with the conclusion that, "We couldn't achieve what was first claimed in terms of cold fusion"? Is it your contention that this 5 year effort was a rush job that didn't wait for full information? --Noren (talk) 07:29, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

That was a different experimental; a different apparatus; a different setup; a different design. that's like saying the wright brothers were wrong about the possibility of human flight because of the many failed experiments before them. As Thomas Edison discovered himself, there are over a hundred ways not to make a light bulb. Kevin Baas^talk 15:10, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Interjection in the name of accuracy: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/747226.html V (talk) 22:45, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

The "rush" refers to the early work, not to the later work. Noren, they rushed. We have reliable source for that. Are you questioning that? That other researchers, later, were more careful, doesn't contradict that at all. As to the NY Times report, I'm not satisfied that they are reporting their sources in a balanced way, the impression of "failure to confirm" was so strong at that point, in spite of plenty of publication to the contrary, that what was really a funding decision and not a scientific one (it was more of an engineering decision, where do you allocate resources likely to produce profitable results?), is being reported as if it were a scientific decision, a search for replication, when, I'm pretty sure, that kind of money was being spent on efforts that would scale. And until you have the basic experiment solid, scaling is way premature. Reliable replication didn't start to appear until the next decade, if I'm correct. In any case, what peer-reviewed publication came out of the Japanese effort?

Here is the point about "rush." Many groups rushed to confirm. Because of the rush, shortcuts were taken, and so failure to confirm could have been because there was nothing to confirm, or it could have been because shortcuts were taken. However, a rush of failure-to-confirm reports, then, came to be seen as proof that there was nothing there, and this was a perversion of normal scientific process, which is the big story here. Both sides screwed up, leaving us with a situation where ongoing work doesn't receive sufficient respect to enjoy either confirmation or rejection. There is now a paucity of anti-cold fusion publication in peer-reviewed publications. Yet there are truly remarkable claims being made in RS. Iwamura is an example. The only review of Iwamura that I've seen, from outside the CF field, is that comment by the DOE reviewer, which was preposterous. It boils down to, "impressive work, too bad your experimental results are impossible." In other words, cold fusion can be rejected out-of-hand because it is impossible, and it is impossible because ... why? CF not only does not violate any basic laws of physics, we know CF happens, with muons. We also know that momentum transfer to a lattice is possible, under some conditions, which would explain the low radiation. Fleischmann points out that cold fusion apparently violates certain laws of Quantum mechanics, but that these laws are known to be inadequate to deal with condensed matter, which is better addressed with Quantum electrodynamics. --Abd (talk) 15:56, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

A Chinese View on Summary of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2301330/A-Chinese-View-on-Summary-of-Condensed-Matter-Nuclear-Science

Li, X.Z., et al., "A Chinese View on Summary of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science," Journal of Fusion Energy, Vol. 23(3), p. 217-221, (2004) Cites Iwamura. --Abd (talk) 01:04, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The journal is an engineering journal, most articles are related to hot fusion. --Abd (talk) 01:39, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

(At least this one does have an impact factor[29], no need to reply to thos comment, please) --Enric Naval (talk) 02:25, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Very cool web site. I'm annoyed that Science and Nature are listed under Cell & Molecular Biology but I can deal with it. Based on this analysis the Journal of Fusion Energy is completely isolated from the scientific community. What warrants including this citation in this article?--OMCV (talk) 02:29, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

It's not the most reliable or well regarded journal, but I think the journal easily passes reasonable reliability standards, unlike the rather laughable Frontiers. It just needs to be understood that this isn't a particularly well regarded journal, and weighted appropriately. Phil153 (talk) 02:43, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Laughter is healthy, contempt is not. What, by the way, is wrong with the Frontiers series as reliable sources? Specifics? --Abd (talk) 02:49, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Whether a particular document is a "reliable" source depends on how that document is used in the article. The Chinese paper could be used as a reliable source that a particular person reported a certain result, but it shouldn't if it reports something dramatic like that the whole field changed because of that result. This is why I keep asking people to focus on EDITS first rather than sources. Olorinish (talk) 03:57, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

That's right, Olorinish, usage does depend on context. However, that is not the only approach, and when a topic is highly controversial, some background discussion first can make the later process much more efficient. If you want to focus on edits, please, be my guest. Participating in background discussion and consideration of sources in general is totally optional. Don't read it if you don't find it useful. Please. When I edit the article and I write, See Talk, then, yes, you should look for a Talk page comment specifically about that edit, especially before reverting it! --Abd (talk) 04:10, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Contemptable sources deserve contempt. The Frontiers article is an embarassment to the writer, the review board, and the publisher, and not because of conclusions. Similar conclusions are reached in the above paper, and in Storms, and I'm advocating for inclusion of those sources with appropriate weight.

About journal reliablility generally, I think the RS pages make the point well, although they are not clear enough and sometimes you have to go to example subpages. I'll have to tackle this on the RS pages to make them clearer.

The trouble is that there are tens of thousands of journals, and many of them are willing to publish all kinds of things for the right fee, or because a big name person is writing it or has influence, or because they're new and eager for articles. Often a key person on the editorial board is biased in a particular way or has peculiar opinions, and this reflects in what goes into the journal, regardless of peer review. The reputation of a particular journal matters a great deal in how reliable an academic, peer reviewed source is considered. This is even true among reliable publishers; some journals deliberately have more open policies allowing for speculative dialogue, which are not considered as anything but speculative dialogue by their peers.

This is why the ISI listings and eigenfactor rankings are so important, and why our RS pages states the vast majority of well regarded jouranls are indexed by the ISI web". A journal that is not cited by its peers cannot be considered reliable, because it indicates that the articles in it or the journal's reputation generally are worth much to those peers. This especially raises a WP:REDFLAG when the claims are extraordinary ones, and there is other evidence of poor scholarship or care.

RS is not a yes/no thing; the only thing binary is automatic exclusion of the worst sources such as self published works. A journal can have serious issues as to reliability and respectability in the field, in which case the things it references are close to worthless, especially in topics where it contradicts general mainstream views. Phil153 (talk) 04:22, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Which is one more reason why major journals, having taken the stand that CF is nonsense, must continue to keep that stand. After all, should they be proved wrong, with CF becoming mainstream science, they will be the ones contradicting the mainstream, and thus unrespectable! V (talk) 13:15, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but Nature and Science and Physical Review A don't stop being industry leading journals because they publish a paper supportive of cold fusion. On the flip side, if they're the first to break credible research or reviews vindicating a major new field or theory, the upside is massive. Your suggestion is just conspiracy theory with lipstick on it.

The point is that many of the tens of thousands of journals with low citation indexes and little regard in the field lack many good reasons to exercise care, and have plenty of causes to publish less than careful work. Just like The Baupville Daily News or North Korean Herald have far fewer reasons to be accurate than the New York Times. Phil153 (talk) 13:55, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

This discussion slid gradually and then rapidly downhill, becoming two editors exchanging derisive comments. I'm collapsing it; there is probably some useful discussion in here, but it's too mixed with inappropriate comment to do much with it as it is. Both of these editors are perfectly welcome, as far as I'm concerned, to refactor their comments under a new section, this time taking care to avoid gratuitous inflammatory remarks. Consider this an informal warming regarding civility.

I'm curious to know how a top-notch journal, that previously published papers dismissive of cold fusion, could publish a paper supportive of CF without its editors appearing to be fools (or worse)? Especially if the originally published articles are not formally retracted as "hasty" (or worse)? My previous post assumed they wouldn't publish any pro-CF articles precisely because of this question. And then I simply reached the logical conclusion, regarding the consequences of a prejudiced editorial mind-set...contemptable, it is! V (talk) 18:14, 11 March 2009 (UTC) Well, if the CF researchers actually submitted a high quality paper that actually supported the contention that cold fusion was real (rather than just claiming that was so), I would assume they would publish it easily. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:25, 11 March 2009 (UTC) Except, the prejudiced mind-set automatically can do such things as assume any CF paper is low-quality. What have you to say about the claimed rapid appearance of excess heat in the co-deposition experiments? Your anti-CF hypothesis previously involved great-enough timespan that one MIGHT accept the possibility of a calorimeter getting out of calibration in that span --but that amount of time doesn't pass in these experiments. V (talk) 22:51, 11 March 2009 (UTC) Or...the prejudiced mind-set automatically can do such things as assume any CF paper is high-quality. "What have you to say about the claimed rapid appearance of excess heat in the co-deposition experiments?" Perfectly consistent with my proposed mechanism. "Your anti-CF hypothesis previously involved great-enough timespan" - no, the DATA involved great timespans, and with the co-dep experimetns, it doesn't. As I said, my explanation is perfectly consistent with all this data. Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:21, 12 March 2009 (UTC) Nonsense! Nobody has that mindset at the "top" journals, while indications of the other mindset, the one I described in my last message, are documented in editorials in them. And more nonsense: You specified that the calorimeters got out of calibration. You also specified the long timespan allowed buildup of material that would catalyze hydrogen/oxygen reactions. You also needed the electrodes close enough together for plenty of oxygen to travel from its production site through the water (dissolved) to the other electrode, for any such reaction to occur. You have not indicated that any of those conditions are true in the co-deposition experiments, much less all of them. V (talk) 15:02, 12 March 2009 (UTC) ROFL...you really don't get it do you. That's why you shouldn't be editing this article, you can't attain or even approach neutrality. The fact that you can't understand what I wrote and misstate it routinely is another reason. (P.S. ...all of them are.) Kirk shanahan (talk) 15:53, 12 March 2009 (UTC) Tsk, tsk, an obvious lie: "...all of them are." Because the long timespan is NOT a part of the co-depostion experiments. Which proves you wrote nonsense, and therefore any claims on your part, that another cannot understand it, is ALSO nonsense. Others can understand just fine that you have written nonsense. And, being able to identify nonsense has nothing to do with POV; it has a great deal to do with plain facts and simple logic. V (talk) 17:33, 12 March 2009 (UTC) Define 'long' in the context of our discussion here. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:07, 12 March 2009 (UTC) You defined it yourself on your own talk page: "You need to remember that _most_ CF experiments runs hundreds of hours. The Szpak codep process cuts that way down" V (talk) 18:22, 12 March 2009 (UTC) (unindent, I was going to keep going but it is getting a bit boring...) Wow…you just keep making my points for me! Thanks V! The rest of you, please note the full quote just below, note what it says about what is needed to get a heat shift, and note what I say about the co-dep process. Seems clear enough to me… ‘Long’ in this context is however long it takes to form the ‘special active surface state’ I explicitly postulated in my 2006 paper. From my User Talk page: “This requires enough bubbles to be impacted to get a noticeable shift in heat production, which requires enough contaminants or structural changes at the surface to do that. That could take very long times in very clean systems, or, in the case of the co-deposition experiments, it could happen quickly due to the special conditions of that select system. You need to remember that _most_ CF experiments runs hundreds of hours. The Szpak codep process cuts that way down - why? Because it makes dendrititc Pd with lots of contaminants on it (from the plating chemicals). Kirk shanahan (talk) 21:54, 21 January 2009 (UTC)” Now, what point was V trying to make? That I had somehow lied?? “Tsk, tsk, an obvious lie:” Yup, that’s what he said. Lets see…I wrote above, responding to V (V’s comments in quotes): “"What have you to say about the claimed rapid appearance of excess heat in the co-deposition experiments?" Perfectly consistent with my proposed mechanism. "Your anti-CF hypothesis previously involved great-enough timespan" - no, the DATA involved great timespans, and with the co-dep experimetns, it doesn't. As I said, my explanation is perfectly consistent with all this data.” Then V wrote: “You also specified the long timespan allowed buildup of material that would catalyze hydrogen/oxygen reactions.” So, does my comment from my UserTalk page from Jan 21 (which V _partially_ quotes) jive with what V says? Did I really lie??? Y’all be the judge… Kirk shanahan (talk) 19:01, 12 March 2009 (UTC) Why do you assume that the codep experiments involve a contaminated solution? You specify that a clean system takes a long time for contaminates to accumulate/have-an-effect, yet you offer no rationale why the codep experiments would not start off equally clean, and therefore not also require a long time for contaminates to build up. Which therefore means you are not making sense. As I indicated in a less-detailed way, above. V (talk) 20:04, 12 March 2009 (UTC) Oye ve! (Much banging of head on desk…) “Clean” is a palladium-only surface. Any chemical that contacts that can absorb and alter chemistry. There are more chemicals in the codep process because in addition to the electrolyte chemicals, you have the plating chemicals. As well, every chemical reagent used has contaminants, and the more reagents you use, the more contaminants you have. Part of the conventional explanation for ‘heavy metal transmutation’ is concentration of contaminants on the electrode. The codep approach both increases the electode surface area, allowing a faster, more efficeint concentration, but also profers more varied chemicals for absorption, i.e. it is a ‘dirtier’ process. Keep it up V, you continue to prove my point... Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:32, 12 March 2009 (UTC) If you are going to arbitrarily change standard definitions, no wonder YOU think you are making sense while others don't. "Clean" in my book includes the whole system. That means the chemicals used are as pure as available. It means unneeded chemicals are not included. For a codep experiment, the electrodes don't have to initially be palladium; palladium will be in one of the chemical solutions, to be plated (even if as dendrites) onto one of the electrodes. Why you think there needs to be lots more junk in the experiment than a mixture of heavy water, electrolyte, and soluable palladium compound, is beyond reasonable. It means the contaminants YOU claim must build up quickly, in a codep experiment, are not necessarily there, and don't get there in the short time of a codep experiment from, say, dust in the air. Not to mention, the voltage used is intended to plate palladium and elecrolyze heavy water. Since hydrogen and palladium have practically the same electronegativity, there is very little range that would encompass other elements. So a great many elements, even if present as contaminates, will stay in solution at that voltage, and not become the kind of plated-on contaminants your hypothesis requires. Platable candidates look to be molybdenum, rhodium, ruthenium, osmium, iridium, platinum, tungsten, gold, and lead. Most of that list is too valuable to not have been carefully extracted at the chemical-product plant, and any chemist who knows his stuff, especially one aware of an argument like yours (how long ago did you say you published it?) would take steps to plate out anything less reactive than palladium, before using that solution in the main codep experiment, in which the palladium is expected to be plated out. It means you still wrote nonsense. V (talk) 21:11, 12 March 2009 (UTC) "If you are going to arbitrarily change standard definitions, no wonder YOU think you are making sense while others don't. "Clean" in my book includes the whole system." - Given that we are talking about the 'special active surface state' that forms on an electrode surface, your book needs revising. _I_ am using the standard definition of a clean surface from surface science. No, you've told another lie. THIS is what you wrote: "That could take very long times in very clean systems" --The word "surface" is not in that quote. **I** know I'm talking about what you wrote, but apparently you don't. Which is more reason why the result of your writing is nonsense. "That means the chemicals used are as pure as available." - Ah yes, that means 'still contaminated'. I agree that what I wrote is not specifying 100% purity. The degree of impurity that qualifies as "contamination" is relative; it depends on the situation. For example, your household tap water may have lead in it (from soldered joints in copper water pipes, but it depends on the age of the house). Does that impurity count as contamination sufficient to discourage you from ever drinking any of it? "It means unneeded chemicals are not included." - Your book again, not mine. I should have been more clear. If a recipe calls for sodium chloride, I'm not going to add lithium fluoride. "Why you think there needs to be lots more junk in the experiment than a mixture of heavy water, electrolyte, and soluble palladium compound, is beyond reasonable." - please cite (with sourcing) where I specify what I think needs to be there at the level you here imply that I do. "It means the contaminants YOU claim must build up quickly, in a codep experiment, are not necessarily there," - which would those be, and more importantly, where do I specify them??? Citation please. On your talk page you wrote: "it makes dendritic Pd with lots of contaminants on it (from the plating chemicals)." I then asked: "if the system is very clean, where are the contaminants coming from, that you need to exist?" --You never answered that. Therefore I only have your unsupported claim (possibly equivalent to another lie) that there were lots of contaminants present. "and don't get there in the short time of a codep experiment from, say, dust in the air." - nice reference to Bockris' work. "Not to mention, the voltage used is intended to plate palladium and elecrolyze heavy water." - 'intended' being the key word. "Since hydrogen and palladium have practically the same electronegativity, there is very little range that would encompass other elements. So a great many elements, even if present as contaminates, will stay in solution at that voltage, and not become the kind of plated-on contaminants your hypothesis requires." - Where do I specify this?? "dendritic Pd with lots of contaminants" --"with" can only apply if the contaminants electrolytically come out of solution, as in "plated-on". "Platable candidates look to be molybdenum, rhodium, ruthenium, osmium, iridium, platinum, tungsten, gold, and lead. Most of that list is too valuable to not have been carefully extracted at the chemical-product plant," - first off, ppm concentrations of contaminants would likely be adequate, next, manufacturers at best offer '5-9"s' purity components in all but extremely rare cases, which means ppm level contaminants, finally, you fail to understand that my SASS is not limited to what you are claiming I limit it to. In fact I do NOT specify the nature of the SASS, as there is no specific data to support such an assignment. I will express some confidence that you are flatly wrong, that such a tiny amount of impurity can catalyze the quantity of hydrogen-oxygen reaction at the RATE needed to explain the heat-production detected by the calorimeters. Especially since very few substances are able to catalyze the reaction in the first place, which lowers the odds that one of them will be platable along with palladium. AND you are neglecting the fact that if one part per hundred thousand is your needed contaminant, right after one atom of it gets plated out, 99,999 palladium atoms also plate out at the same place and cover it, preventing it from being able to catalyze anything--I'm saying its effectiveness as a catalyst can't increase significantly, as plating continues. One atom per hundred thousand will be a constant whether dissolved or at the surface of freshly-plated metal. If we were discussing automobile catalytic converters, you'd be laughed out of town; one atom of catalyst (I see you mention platinum below) per 100,000 duds, at the interaction surface, is essentially the same as "poisoned to uselessness" (meaning, it's not about to catalyze a high rate of hydrogen/oxygen reactions). "and any chemist who knows his stuff, especially one aware of an argument like yours would take steps to plate out anything less reactive than palladium, before using that solution in the main codep experiment, in which the palladium is expected to be plated out. - and where does it say that this was done by the codepers? Specific citations please. Quotations would be better. (And, there is another problem even if this is done, which I will not explain at this point. Let's see if you can guess it.) I have no evidence that it was done, because there is no evidence that it needed to be done. But it remains a fact that in electrolysis the voltage determines which metals plate out; platinum can be plated out at a lower voltage than palladium. If a solution contained both, and if one had reason to think that platinum, with its excellent catalytic properties when pure, would pose a problem when plating palladium, then plating platinum out of solution first solves the problem, because it will be buried by layers of palladium after the voltage is raised. "(how long ago did you say you published it?)" - well, I never did publish what you imply I did in your diatribe above. Instead I just take the general condition of some "special active state", mentioned by Storms and perhaps others as well long ago, and add 'surface' to it since I studied a FPHE on Pt, which does NOT hydride, which means it must be occurring on the surface if related to the hydrogen. I explicitly mentioned the SASS in my 2006 paper. The answer to my question (2006?) merely would allow some comparison between experiments performed before and after it, to see what steps were taken to deal with things you claimed were problems. Where they took CounterStep "A" but not CounterStep "B" indicates (to me) places where that your description of "Problem A" was accepted as posssible, but your description of "Problem B" was considered to be nonsense, by the CF researchers who read your paper. "It means you still wrote nonsense." - Well, if I had actually written what you say I did perhaps (but you are doing very poor job of understanding what I am saying). But in fact I didn't, so it certainly doesn't. But what it does mean is that you are doing the standard CFer tactic of misrepresenting what I write in an illogical a fashion as possible so it becomes trivial to rebut. Except they rebut the strawman version they create instead of what I write. Looks good to the unaware layman, but proves nothing scientifically. Your adoption of this tactic again proves you are a POV-pusher who can't stand any criticism of the pro-CF position. Kirk shanahan (talk) 03:46, 14 March 2009 (UTC) Looks to me like you are indulging in a twisted form of psychological projection. I ignore your additional nonsense, therefore. V (talk) 09:49, 14 March 2009 (UTC) "No, you've told another lie. THIS is what you wrote: "That could take very long times in very clean systems" --The word "surface" is not in that quote. **I** know I'm talking about what you wrote, but apparently you don't. Which is more reason why the result of your writing is nonsense." Phase 3 - quoting out of context. - a) The _entire_ context of my thesis is the SASS. The second "S" is for "surface". b) Try looking at the sentence that preceeds the one you quote. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:31, 14 March 2009 (UTC) "I agree that what I wrote is not specifying 100% purity. The degree of impurity that qualifies as "contamination" is relative; it depends on the situation. For example, your household tap water may have lead in it (from soldered joints in copper water pipes, but it depends on the age of the house). Does that impurity count as contamination sufficient to discourage you from ever drinking any of it?" Phase 4 - The use of red herrings. - What has any of this got to do with my thesis? (That was a rhetorical question, please don't answer it.) Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:31, 14 March 2009 (UTC) "I should have been more clear. If a recipe calls for sodium chloride, I'm not going to add lithium fluoride." And my comment didn't refer to what you are discussing. Recall that 'unneeded chemicals' is your phrase.Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:31, 14 March 2009 (UTC) " On your talk page you wrote: "it makes dendritic Pd with lots of contaminants on it (from the plating chemicals)." I then asked: "if the system is very clean, where are the contaminants coming from, that you need to exist?" --You never answered that. Therefore I only have your unsupported claim (possibly equivalent to another lie) that there were lots of contaminants present." Phase 3 (again) - quoting out of context. - The key is the word 'dendritic'. If you a) understood my thesis, and b) read the full paragraph you extracterd the quote from, you would realize why. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:31, 14 March 2009 (UTC) " "dendritic Pd with lots of contaminants" --"with" can only apply if the contaminants electrolytically come out of solution, as in "plated-on" " - No, not really. Again, if you understand my thesis you will understand why I replied 'not really'. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:31, 14 March 2009 (UTC) "I will express some confidence that you are flatly wrong, that such a tiny amount of impurity can catalyze the quantity of hydrogen-oxygen reaction at the RATE needed to explain the heat-production detected by the calorimeters." What I actually wrote was: "... the clean metal surface under the bubble catalyzes H2+O2->H2O." So, again, your strawman fails to impress me. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:31, 14 March 2009 (UTC) "Especially since very few substances are able to catalyze the reaction in the first place, which lowers the odds that one of them will be platable along with palladium. AND you are neglecting the fact that if one part per hundred thousand is your needed contaminant, right after one atom of it gets plated out, 99,999 palladium atoms also plate out at the same place and cover it, preventing it from being able to catalyze anything--I'm saying its effectiveness as a catalyst can't increase significantly, as plating continues. One atom per hundred thousand will be a constant whether dissolved or at the surface of freshly-plated metal. If we were discussing automobile catalytic converters, you'd be laughed out of town; one atom of catalyst (I see you mention platinum below) per 100,000 duds, at the interaction surface, is essentially the same as "poisoned to uselessness" (meaning, it's not about to catalyze a high rate of hydrogen/oxygen reactions)." Phase 4 again, combined with Phase 2, the use of strawmen. Aside from the quote above, the only other time I invoke catalysis is here: "... possible in cells to get catalytic deposits formed in the gas space". Within the context of this discussion it is clear that a better word thatn 'clean' in the above quote would have been 'bare'. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:31, 14 March 2009 (UTC) "I have no evidence that it was done, because there is no evidence that it needed to be done." - Say what?? What planet did you learn your science on? Reports of heavy metal transmutation all over the place, and you think that is not evidence that might be explained by contaminant concentration? I suggest you read Scott Little's RIFEX report... Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:31, 14 March 2009 (UTC) "But it remains a fact that in electrolysis the voltage determines which metals plate out; platinum can be plated out at a lower voltage than palladium. If a solution contained both, and if one had reason to think that platinum, with its excellent catalytic properties when pure, would pose a problem when plating palladium, then plating platinum out of solution first solves the problem, because it will be buried by layers of palladium after the voltage is raised." Another red herring, but you are getting close to the point I was going to mention last time. I'll give you another chance at it. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:31, 14 March 2009 (UTC) "The answer to my question (2006?) merely would allow some comparison between experiments performed before and after it, to see what steps were taken to deal with things you claimed were problems. Where they took CounterStep "A" but not CounterStep "B" indicates (to me) places where that your description of "Problem A" was accepted as posssible, but your description of "Problem B" was considered to be nonsense, by the CF researchers who read your paper." Answering the 1st sentence: I _explicitly_ mentioned the SASS in my 2006 paper. Pre-electrolyzing the electrolyte goes way back though, but I recall only one instance of it being reported in a CF-related paper right now, and I'm not sure it was a CFer or one of those who were unable to replicate results back in the early days. The publication list is quite short post-2006, but the point is that this need is well known in electrochemical circles. So "did they or didn't they?", that is the question. Answering sentence 2: I agree, all CFers consider my explanation nonsense. Unfortunately that is a bad decision on their part, since all their arguments are based on strawmen and use a lot of out-of-context quoting and red herrings. P.S. What is Phase 1 you readers mught be asking? This: "No, you've told another lie." "your writing is nonsense" "(possibly equivalent to another lie)" "Tsk, tsk, an obvious lie" - the ad hominem attack (AKA "If you don't like the message, shoot the messenger.") V is a highly biased editor who doesn't want to understand the proposed conventional explanation for how to get a CCS, or the fact that the CCS is proven in one case and easily extrapolatable to all others via inductive reasoning. As such, his edits should be expected to reflect this. He should not edit the CF article and none of you should trust his writings. I'm done wasting time responding to V for now at least. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:31, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) However, all this only applies to balance when there are questions of conflict in sources. While there may be journals which are financially motivated (payment for publication), even these kill their own golden goose if they fail to be selective; but a journal like Frontiers of Physics in China has strong motivation to have good standards. The whole purpose of the Frontiers of "X" in China series is to raise respect for Chinese science, and the Chinese government is behind it as well as serious money. Cold fusion appears to be considered a respectable field in China, and the article that led to the title of this section simply reflects that. I'll remind editors that the publisher of FPC is Higher Education Press, and I wonder if there is any larger publisher in the world that doesn't have an article here yet. They are roughly number 45; and they are in active cooperation with Thomson Reuters, which is number one in the world, and which considers FPC to have very high standards (citations for this have been provided elsewhere, above. Some editors here may think the journal "laughable," but that does little more than expose their POV and bias. It's clear that, since they publish in English, they need a better copy editor! Absolutely, I don't deny that there are problems with FPC, but "laughable," they are not. This will all be tested if edits are asserting using information from FPC, which I expect is likely. --Abd (talk) 16:05, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Again with the accusations of POV and bias. Reliable does not just apply to source conflicts, it's a sliding scale, and it also applies to general conflicts with mainstream understanding. Please read very carefully and absorb WP:REDFLAG. It's part our core content policies. Phil153 (talk) 16:24, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Sometimes it feels like swimming through molasses here. How do we know what "mainstream understanding" is? Does it appear, lotus-born? Or is it based on what we find in reliable sources? I'll stand with it. While WP:RS isn't a rigid standard, we should not pick and choose among reliable sources, unless there is *conflict* between them, and there is no conflict with a "mainsream understanding" unless there is a reliable source regarding that understanding. So the conflict is between two sources, (or sources on one side and sources on the other); further, the determination that there is conflict is itself a complex task, sometimes. If it requires synthesis, it can get dicey. If there is reliable source on the conflict itself, much better (perhaps a third source that covers the first two).

Suppose that we have source A which makes a statement, and it's in the article. Then I come up with source B, which says something different. It seems contradictory to me. Can I put in the article, "however, contradicting this, B asserts that ..."? I'd say that, generally, absent clear consensus or reliable source on the contradiction, not just A and B (let's assume they don't mention each other), we shouldn't assert contradiction. If it is acceptable to the editors, just saying, "however, B asserts that," may be okay, but even putting the statements together like that implies contradiction, so caution is in order.

There is no way to find NPOV without respect for consensus and consensus process. Which often takes a lot of discussion. --Abd (talk) 20:42, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Whitelisting lenr-canr.org and newenergytimes.com?

By the way, if anyone else is irritated by the fact that we have to pussyfoot around the blacklist, and that we have papers referenced in the article for which we can't provide a link where the papers can be freely read, we can request whitelisting of some specific pages, or of the whole sites. (lenr-canr.org is globally blacklisted, newenergytimes.com is locally blacklisted, so whole-site with NET would just be delisting.) I've been somewhat successful at this (with other blacklisted sites, and, with Enric Naval, one lenr-canr.org page). The politics at meta, right now, make it unlikely that we could succeed in globally delisting the whole site globally, but there was, in fact, no sound reason for the blacklisting in the first place; the blacklist is designed to control linkspam, and there wasn't linkspamming, the links alleged as linkspam for lenr-canr.org were like many here in Talk: not links, so blacklisting didn't prevent them. No linkspamming at all was alleged for newenergytimes.com. There is also alleged copyright violation at lenr-canr.org, but consensus at Martin Fleischmann seems to be that this is a non-issue, and no specific violation has reasonably been alleged. That lenr-canr.org is allegedly fringe should be moot; linking to a specific page that is a permitted copy of a paper, as a convenience link, does not dump the reader into a polemic for cold fusion. In any case, there is about zero chance of getting lenr-canr.org delisted globally if we don't have specific pages whitelisted here on en.wikipedia, or a whitelisting of the whole site here, the argument will be made, and it will be effective, that it isn't needed, don't bother them. --Abd (talk) 15:15, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Copyrights#Linking_to_copyrighted_works Wikipedia:Citing_sources#Convenience links. Note the term "reasonably certain".LeadSongDog (talk) 15:58, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Wow! That whole debate at Talk:Martin_Fleischmann#removal_of_link_to_Fleischmann_account_of_history went by without anybody notifying this page that it was going on until now. In a strange way, that's impressive.LeadSongDog (talk) 16:29, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

(dedent) Since that discussion isn't formally closed as to conclusion, and since it can be reopened even as to subquestions that have been closed, anyone is welcome to join, but I would ask, please, read the preceding discussion first and consider the specific points made, and try to delink the issues, linking of issues is often what keeps us from finding consensus. Further, if there is agreement already expressed there, and you differ, how important is it, because reopening a decided question will take up more time. Decisions in a local RfC-type discussion like that aren't binding, they don't create any kind of precedent that will prevent better decisions from being made in the future. Or at least they shouldn't! However, and this was indeed the intention, they may establish that whatever is agreed there is at least a reasonable decision, to start, not just the unsupported opinion of a deranged tl;dr editor like me.

"We must not X because A and B and C and D and E." "B isn't true." "Maybe, but there are still A and C and D and E." "But D isn't true either!" "It's true!" "(diff showing D is preposterous)". "Maybe, but there are still A and B and C and E. Would you please stop beating a dead horse?"

... and this can go on for a long time. Instead, we can look at A. Is A true? If not, why not? If so, what's the evidence? Why do you believe this? And we can continue doing this, getting more and more specific. In such a process, it becomes really obvious if someone is reasoning from conclusions, and most people, realizing that this just isn't right and that the world will not end if they agree on a narrow point with someone "on the other side," will back down, and agree on the specific point or suggest some acceptable compromise (or shut up and go away). It can become a habit, and points of agreement build. And I've seen this kind of process result in total agreement when previously the sides were digging their heels in.

"But A and B are connected!" Fine. We still should try to find agreement on them separately, then, once we understand and agree on each subissue, we can consider possible connections before addressing a higher-level question.

Just in case someone thinks otherwise, this process often will not lead to X. It will lead to something else that enjoys higher consensus. I.e., perhaps argument A came to be considered valid, and action Y satisfied the concern, as well as the concerns of those proposing X. But when we have a big pile of issues, fringe linkspam copyvio uncivil alters documents kook SPA nonsense conflict of interest block evasion banned unnecessary anyway, WTF do we begin?

We find consensus by pursuing, at least initially, one little teeny-tiny question at a time.

As to the page and section on linking, I don't see the term "reasonably certain" there, and we are not obligated by policy or copyright law to be "reasonably certain" that there is no violation; indeed, read the guideline, it's the opposite: we should not link if we "know that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of the creator's copyright," and the relevant case law cited has to do with "Knowingly and intentionally directing others to a site that violates copyright." When I noticed the blacklisting (I'm here because of that, not the reverse, I did not arrive at this article with an agenda), I asked a knowledgeable administrator, DGG, about the copyright issue. I think his opinions are cited there, and he showed up to confirm it (as he did previously on the blacklist pages). And that is fully consistent with policy and guidelines, and I haven't the foggiest what LeadSongDog was trying to point to. --Abd (talk) 18:20, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

My apologies, I forgot that I had clicked through from Wikipedia:Citing_sources#Convenience links, which is where the actual words were. Now refactored.LeadSongDog (talk) 20:27, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. This is what the referenced guideline says:

A "convenience link" is a link to a copy of your source on a webpage provided by someone other than the original publisher or author. For example, a copy of a newspaper article no longer available on the newspaper's website may be hosted elsewhere. When offering convenience links, it is important to be reasonably certain that the convenience copy is a true copy of the original, without any changes or inappropriate commentary, and that it does not infringe the original publisher's copyright. Accuracy can be assumed when the hosting website appears reliable, but editors should always exercise caution, and ideally find and verify multiple copies of the material for contentious items.

Where several sites host a copy of the material, the site selected as the convenience link should be the one whose general content appears most in line with Wikipedia:Neutral point of view and Wikipedia:Verifiability.

The matter of lenr-canr.org and copyright violation has been considered in a number of venues, and the best opinion expressed is that lenr-canr.org is, indeed, quite unlikely to be hosting copyvio. There are a number of basic reasons: The site does claim permission from authors and original publishers for all the content, and the bibliography that they have is far larger than the set of papers they host, I think it's roughly one out of three that is hosted; Rothwell claims that he has thousands of papers that he'd love to put up, but he can't get the permissions. The site is highly visible. If you search for a paper that is hosted, using Google, lenr-canr.org is usually top ranked. The site hosts papers from publishers known to vigorously pursue copyright violation, so we may presume from the long-continued existence of the site, with these papers, that serious copyvio is lacking. The controlling policy is WP:COPYVIO, and the guideline you cited isn't clear on the definition of "reasonably certain," and links are routinely added to the project, without objection, where there is less reason to be "certain" about copyvio. The policy is in line with the law, with actual violation of copyright and contributory infringement.

Lenr-canr.org copies are only proposed for two purposes: convenience copies of papers cited in articles, where the paper is not otherwise available except through cumbersome or expensive procedures to get a copy, and for discussion in Talk. It's pretty hard to intelligently discuss a source if the interested editors can't all read it.

We show the URL anyway, the blacklisting only prevents the convenience of a direct link. --Abd (talk) 02:45, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Is it "cumbersome or expensive" to visit a library, or would you advocate that we should rely on the quality of journals too obscure for major libraries and journal databases to justify subscriptions? LeadSongDog (talk) 04:55, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, we may rely on any source that meets WP:RS standards. It could be an obscure book very difficult to obtain, and it might not be in English, and the only exception I've seen is where an editor came to be considered untrustworthy, this editor was required to use sources in English. And, yes, it can be very "cumbersome or expensive" to visit the necessary library. Given that we could easily avoid the need for this, why are we making it more difficult for readers to find a copy of a paper cited as a source, or mentioned for further reading? LeadSongDog seems to be conflating two issues here. One is reliability and usability, the other, the issue for this section, is the usage of links for papers that are already considered reliable source for the application, they already are cited in the article, and the citation is stable. I don't see that LeadSongDog addresses the issue, but merely confuses it. The guideline that has been cited obviously does encourage the use of "convenience links," and only raises the two obvious issues for consideration: possible copyvio and reliability of that specific copy.

In the case of the link that is already whitelisted, both objections having been considered by knowledgeable editors, in a cautious environment, there is no reason not to use it. I think there are more such that could be whitelisted. They used to be in the article. When editors started removing them, one of the arguments was that there wasn't a problem with a removal because there were three or four other links to lenr-canr.org in the article. They were picked off and finally JzG removed them all and blacklisted the site without discussion.

(There was discussion later, but in a place where a small handful of spam blacklist administrators make decisions, and the tendency there seems to be guilty until proven innocent, it's an odd process, I've been able to rescue one major web site and get a couple of minor fixes. With tremendous effort. They say, "No problem with blacklisting, if you need a link you can always request it be whitelisted." It can be a mountain to climb. With one simple and quite obviously useful link, it sat for over a week with some discussion, JzG raised the copyright issue there as well, but nobody confirmed that, consensus was the opposite. I went to AN with it, where the usual suspects weighed in with the usual contempt. One of the blacklist regulars then closed the whitelist discussion, with the copyright argument, clearly neglecting the whitelisting discussion, but I ended up being confirmed at AN, essentially, and an admin reversed the close and the English interface to the site, lyrikline.org, was totally whitelisted, opening the door to what will probably be hundreds of links in the end, as many as 600, depends on what the community does with the actual edits, so far, none I've put in have been taken out, I think. I've been very noisy about it, too.)

So... coming soon, a link to lenr-canr.org in the article. Probably today. Some editors have been demanding that I actually edit the article. Happy to oblige. --Abd (talk) 17:19, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

The issue of whether a convenience-linked paper is the same as the cited work comes down to trusting or verifying the online library. Given the level of controversy we have had over trusting this particular library, why not simply agree that before adding a link that an editor in good standing will carefully vett the actual cited paper against the one at the convenience link to ensure they are the same? The doubts over copyright permissions are also easily resolved: simply notify the copyright holder that we intend to add the link. If they've granted permission, there won't be a problem. If they haven't, they'll deal with sending a takedown notice. Either way, we haven't contributed to a copyvio.LeadSongDog (talk) 13:36, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Major lead problems

As currently written, the lead pretty much directly states that muon-catalysed fusion has severe theoretical problems and has been rejected by science

This is because someone keeps making the lead paragraph talk about the broad definition of cold fusion, but has not bothered to transition to the Fleishmann and Pons claims after that point, meaning that the paragraphs discussing problems with Fleishmann and Pons' claims now read as if they applied to a wide array of mainstream physics as well.

Seriously, can't we just through all the mainstream physics stuff into disambiguation and keep the focus of this on the Fleishmann and Pons stuff (and related fringe theories and crankery) that everyone means when they talk about cold fusion nowadays anyway, and just let the broader definition stand as part of a disambiguation link, e.g.

This article is about the Fleishmann and Pons claims of 1987, and the resultant controversy. For fusion at below the high tempratures needed for thermonuclear fusion, see muon-catalysed fusion.

Might have to skip using the template and just write the text in italics (for instance, adding "and related articles" at the end of that would be more accurate, but we could easily disambiguate it, and avoid all these problems. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 04:25, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

It used to have a much better definition in the lead, but it was "simplified" a few days ago here. I'd certainly support restoring the old version of the lead. Not sure about moving this into the disambig section. Phil153 (talk) 04:29, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

We only discuss the one definition in this article, it just confuses matters to act as if we're going to discuss other things too. There are accepted physical processes that were rarely referred to as cold fusion before the events we do discuss, we should make this clear. We should also make it clear they are not what we are discussing. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 21:14, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I offered a reasonable first paragraph some time ago. Nobody claimed it had a POV problem; they just thought it wasn't "formal" enough for an encyclopedia. Even though you might be aware that most readers would rather not wade through technical jargon. So here, I'll copy it so you can complain about it all over again:

The phrase "Cold Fusion" is a description. Whether or not it is a correct description has been disputed ever since 1989, when it was coined. In that year the electrochemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons described some experiments involving the electrolysis of heavy water, and claimed they had observed quantities of heat energy being released that could not be explained in terms of ordinary chemical interactions. They therefore proposed that the energy could be explained if nuclear fusion reactions were occurring between deuterium nuclei under relatively ordinary physical conditions, far colder than the conditions inside stars, where fusion typically occurs in Nature. It is known that special events such as muon-catalyzed fusion can occur even at liquid-hydrogen temperatures, but it is also known that muons are not available to explain Fleischmann's and Pons' results. Therefore the label "Cold Fusion" exists to describe whatever other mechanism might be able to do that, and that label has persisted in spite of all the conflicting research carried out afterward, some of which directly contradicts the original claims that something unexplainable in terms of chemistry had happened.

This article will describe the original experiment, attempts to duplicate it, variant experiments on the general theme, theoretical objections, ...

(take it from there, folks!) V (talk) 15:16, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I can create a complaint, myself. I think I saw something in the article that indicate the phrase was actually coined before 1989, which if true would require the above to need a revision. V (talk) 13:28, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Yoshiaka Anata's experiment

The latest experiments were done in May 2007 by Yoshiaka Anata and Yue-Chang Zang. It is noted that the conducted the experiment somewhat else (they used palladiumpowder in the electrode that was made by injecting the powder with deuteriumgas under high pressure). It was reported that 70% more heat was generated than the electricty put into the experiment.

According to anata, pycnodeuterium is formed in the experiment and they believe the scientific formula that would explain the reaction would be possible if a fonon was included (which they believe was present)

the experiment was documented in Journal of the high temperature society —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.246.135.164 (talk) 14:55, 14 March 2009 (UTC)