Talk:Cold fusion

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"one quick response from a physicist who looks like he didn't read the paper"

That's the reason given to remove Paul Padley's assesment from the article [1]. However, Krivit's opinion was not removed from the article. The Agence France-Presse source clearly quotes both guys (giving one opinion from each "side"?), so, either we quote both or we quote none. (heh, the New Scientist source cites Johan Frenje, who appears to be a better source. At the end I left it at:

The report results suggest that energetic neutrons have been emitted, but don't explain what process was causing them.

using both sources as reference. --Enric Naval (talk) 05:18, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

It's thoroughly ridiculous that Abd is removing the sourced opinion of a well regarded mainstream physicist on important claims, and replacing it with the speculative opinion of a fringe journalist who lacks even science credentials. Phil153 (talk) 07:32, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

1. He may be a well-regarded mainstream physicist, I don't know. He's someone convenient to the newspaper to ask, he was not a "reviewer of the paper," which would usually refer to someone involved with peer review, or someone who has had more than a few hours -- if that -- to consider it; as far as we know, he was called and the opinion was off-the-cuff based on what the reporter told him. The opinion tells us nothing that would not be expected from your random physicist.
2. I don't have a problem with properly framed reference to his comment ... but this comment will be forgotten by several months from now. Quite simply, there is no cogent criticism there, which is easily seen by actually reading the paper. Done that yet, Phil?
3. I didn't replace it with the opinion of Krivit. He may not have science credentials, but he's an expert in the field, is published and widely known, used as a source in peer-reviewed journals, as I recall -- we'll see when I put up the NET article. That was put in as a "criticism," Phil, but misrepresented as such. It was actually a defense if you read it.
4. Enric's compromise looks good to me. The report also doesn't explain how cold fusion will solve the energy crisis, and which way the stock market will go, but .... if other editors want that in there, fine with me for the moment. Though the paper does explain what might be causing the neutrons, though it doesn't explain the possible fundamental physics. Uh, read it? Krivit's "criticism" was claiming that this was "speculation." Can't win for losing. --Abd (talk) 11:22, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

This is the current text (with refs converted to links, ref text in the brackets):

On 22-25 March 2009, the American Chemical Society held a four-day symposium on "New Energy Technology", in conjunction with the 20th anniversary of the announcement of cold fusion. At the conference, researchers with the U.S. Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR) reported detection of neutrons in a cold fusion cell using a CR-39 detector,[ACS Press Release 'Cold fusion' rebirth? New evidence for existence of controversial energy source] a result published months earlier in Die Naturwissenschaften. [ http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16820-neutron-tracks-revive-hopes-for-cold-fusion.html Neutron tracks revive hopes for cold fusion (New Scientist}] The report results suggest that energetic neutrons have been emitted, but don't explain what process was causing them.[New Scientist, ibid]Scientists in possible cold fusion breakthrough (AFP) Steven Krivit, editor of the cold fusion magazine New Energy Times, pointed out that the results could be caused by some nuclear process other than the one suggested by the authors, deuterium-tritium fusion.[AFP, ibid].

I see the following problems with it; I've made edits based on this and they have been reverted, some of them more than once. I would appreciate discussion of each point, for which I've created subsections below. --Abd (talk) 03:24, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Re the ACS press release, it would be more productive to discuss the actual release, rather than Eurekalert's cut-down version of it. The author of the release is elsewhere described: "Mark T. Sampson holds a B.S. in biology from Washington & Lee University in Lexington,Virginia, and an M.S. in journalism from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York. A member of the National Association of Science Writers, he currently resides in Alexandria, Virginia." Please note that the release is prospective, describing presentations to be made at a later date than that which it bears. We really need documentation of what was presented in order to avoid writing "On 23 March 2009 the ACS announced that Boss et al planned to present during a conference that ...." Of course WP:NOT#NEWS pertains.LeadSongDog come howl 05:13, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

*sigh* And now Abd has changed it again and removed Krivit's comment. You put:

• Such neutrons could be evidence of low-energy nuclear reactions

However, what the AFP source says is that this is evidence that LENR, or cold fusion, produces neutrons. --Enric Naval (talk) 06:46, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Now you put:

• "Neutrons are indicative of nuclear reactions."

However, that's just what the authors claim. The NS source gives opinions of scientists who agree with this and people who don't (Krivit), and the AFP source also cites Krivit and another person who doesn't agree either (the Padley guy). That's not an accurate summary of what the sources say. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:22, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

I can understand why Krivit (who was roundly abused here without cause except "fringe") and Rothwell (who was likewise abused and who also showed some level of contempt and incivility) may have had bruises on their foreheads after this. Krivit does not disagree with "neutrons are indicative of nuclear reactions," nor, indeed, does Padley. Padley suggests that "other sources" have not been ruled out. Those other sources are, in fact, nuclear reactions other than cold fusion, such as nuclear reactions from cosmic rays, contamination of equipment, or, in the specific case of Krivit, nuclear reactions other than deuterium fusion, and there is quite a bit of coverage on this. Krivit is quite explicit. In the New Scientist article, we have:

Johan Frenje at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an expert at interpreting CR-39 tracks produced in conventional high-temperature fusion reactions, says the team's interpretation of what produced the tracks is valid.

"I must say that the data and their analysis seem to suggest that energetic neutrons have been produced," he says, although he would like to see the results confirmed quantitatively.

More controversial is the team's suggestion for the process that produced the neutrons. High-energy neutrons are unlikely to be produced by a normal chemical reaction, says Mosier-Boss. So, it's possible, she says, they are created during the fusion of deuterium and tritium atoms tightly packed in palladium framework at the cathode. The tritium also being a product of the fusion of two deuterium atoms.

Some researchers in the cold fusion field agree. "In my view [it's] a cold fusion effect," says Peter Hagelstein, also at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

And then we have Krivit's remarks, as interpreted by the New Scientist reporter:

Others, though, are not convinced. Steven Krivit, editor of the New Energy Times, has been following the cold fusion debate for many years and also spoke at the ACS conference. "Their hypothesis as to a fusion mechanism I think is on thin ice … you get into physics fantasies rather quickly and this is an unfortunate distraction from their excellent empirical work," he told New Scientist.

Krivit thinks cold fusion remains science fiction. Like many in the field, he prefers to categorise the work as evidence of "low energy nuclear reactions", and says it can be explained without relying on nuclear fusion.

So how Enric can imagine that this is rejecting the idea that neutrons are indicative of "low energy nuclear reactions" is totally beyond me.

Generally, the media reports on this have taken this work seriously, even though within the field this is an interesting result but not at all revolutionary or, what it has been called in the media, a "rediscovery of cold fusion," because the CR-39 results unambiguously show energetic neutrons, so explaining this away will take finding other sources of energetic neutrons besides low-energy nuclear reactions in the Pd-D system, made especially difficult by the controls involved. I.e., they didn't just run the experiment once or several times and saw these triple tracks, they ran it under different conditions and saw triple tracks with some and not with others, quite consistently with the hypothesis that what is critical is palladium highly loaded with deuterium (co-deposition is significant because it accomplishes this quickly, with excess heat and radiation appearing within minutes instead of weeks or months).

A lot of work has confirmed that the effect, whatever it is, is taking place at the surface of the palladium, not deep within the material, which is why experiments that increase the surface area of palladium involved seem to be more replicable or even reliable, such as Arata's work with palladium black or other very finely powdered palladium alloy, pressurized with deuterium and no other input energy.

Their work was to some extent confirming prior findings, not only by their group but by other researchers and groups, and CR-39 results go back to the early 1990s, with a tantalizing mention in Hoffman (1995), A Dialogue on Chemically Induced Nuclear Effects, p. 57:

The mainland Chinese have a team investigating anomalous nuclear effects in deuterium/solid systems that have come up with interesting evidence for charged particles involving charged-particle burst tracks on the plastic film CR-39 with Pd/D systems but not with Pd/H systems.

Padly is quoted in the AFP source, but this is taken (and attributed to) the Houston Chronicle article:

But that does not mean the results indicate cold fusion, said Paul Padley, a physicist at Rice University who reviewed Mosier-Boss’ published work.

“Fusion could produce the effect they see, but there’s no plausible explanation of how fusion could occur in these conditions,” Padley said. “The whole point of fusion is, you’re bringing things of like charge together. As we all know, like things repel, and you have to overcome that repulsion somehow.”

The problem with Mosier-Boss’ work, he said, is that it fails to provide a theoretical rationale to explain how fusion could occur at room temperatures. And in its analysis, the research paper fails to exclude other sources for the production of neutrons.

“Nobody in the physics community would believe a discovery without such a quantitative analysis,” he said.

Padley is reacting to a detail, for the most part: Mosier-Boss actually agrees, in what the same article quotes from her, that the results do not necessarily indicate "cold fusion."

“If you have fusion going on, then you have to have neutrons,” she said. “But we do not know if fusion is actually occurring. It could be some other nuclear reaction.”

Mosier-Boss's comment is puzzling, in fact, because there can be fusion without energetic neutrons, and, in fact, their own work essentially confirms that. What has long been a part of the puzzle is that the excess heat findings, multiply verified, show far more heat than the measurements of neutrons would allow; a major paper involved in the massive rejection of cold fusion in 1989 was a Nature report setting upper limits on the level of fusion involved, given the assumption that neutrons were being emitted from the process, and it far, far from explaining the reported excess heat. Mosier-Boss is important in showing that nuclear fusion is probably occurring, but as a minor reaction pathway; she suggests it may be D-T fusion as a secondary response to some of the other LENR taking place. (I.e., the D-T fusion would possibly be "hot" fusion, the energy for it being a result of different LENR reactions.) For example, they have long found, confirming other reports, energetic ionizing radiation, probably alpha. Energetic alpha particles can stimulate further "hot" nuclear reactions; one of them would generate hot tritons as a result, which can then classically fuse with deuterium; the resulting neutrons would be the right energy to explain her results. Thus her findings do have a classical explanation, though one that depends on a hypothesis of a precedent reaction with no generally accepted explanation (even within the LENR field). There are explanations, though, we discuss one above, that does not depend on "new physics," but simply a more sophisticated (if it is correct!) analysis of the condensed matter environment.

Padley's most cogent criticism is this, except that it is missing crucial detail: fails to exclude other sources for the production of neutrons.

Given that the paper does exclude a series of possible other sources, because of controls or other conditions of the experiments, the question becomes, and it will necessarily be, in critical review of the Mosier-Boss work, the detail, "What other sources"? Krivit suggests "other low energy nuclear reactions," which requires new physics. But experimental artifact can never be ruled out, some very striking results in this field were later found to be a result (or at least possible result) of unexpected experimental conditions that suggested misleading conclusions. Here, though, it starts to get very difficult to come up with alternate scenarios; most of them, in fact, involve something new, if the recent theoretical work cited above is still considered new (which it is, it hasn't been accepted except in a minor way).

[One possible "other LENR" would be muon-catalyzed fusion; the theory would be that muon catalysis becomes more efficient in the condensed matter environment; the muons come from cosmic radiation. This would explain the chaotic nature of the effect; the little "mini-explosions" that have been observed (visually!) on Pd-D co-deposition cathodes would be, effectively, muon detectors, each one catalyzed by a single muon, passed around.) Has this idea been published? I know that the possibility of cosmic muon background being the explanation for cold fusion has been mentioned elsewhere.] --Abd (talk) 20:24, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

cold fusion cell

"Cold fusion cell" is a nonscientific, nonspecific term. Do "cold fusion cells" exist? The process inside the cells is unknown, with only inferences, speculations, or theories, there is no consensus on it among the general scientific community. The cells are called palladium-deuterium co-deposition cells. Read the paper! palladium-deuterium codeposition describes what the cells are with reasonable accuracy. Take a generic "cold fusion cell," which could be taken to mean any cell of any kind where there is an attempt to observe nuclear processes, and it might or might not show neutrons. It might or might not show excess heat. "Cold fusion cell" is not used in the peer-reviewed source, nor is it supported by the references. It's synthesis, which might be acceptable to some degree, but it is far better if we use scientifically precise and neutral language. If we aren't going to describe the cell more precisely and accurately and neutrally, we should just eliminate the reference to the cell itself.

Surely the AFP source says very clearly "low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR), or cold fusion devices", the New Scientist source talks about cold fusion and nuclear reactions, and only mentions LENR in this context: "Like many in the field, [Krivit] prefers to categorise the work as evidence of 'low energy nuclear reactions', and says it can be explained without relying on nuclear fusion.".

So, according to the sources, "cold fusion cell" is a perfectly correct and sourced name for the device used in the CR-39 experiment, it's not synthesis at all, and you are making OR to support other name. --Enric Naval (talk) 06:29, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

When there is difference between peer-reviewed reliable source and media reliable source, we prefer the peer-reviewed source. That a "device" is even involved is synthesis, and that the synthesis might take place in the media makes it usable, but definitely not preferable. To my knowledge, there is no peer-reviewed reliable source for "cold fusion cell" or for calling an experiment that sets up certain condensed matter conditions, and then the behavior is observed, a "device." A "cold fusion cell" would mean a cell in which "cold fusion" takes place by design. The very name is POV until and unless cold fusion is accepted by consensus. --Abd (talk) 16:34, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but "cold fusion cell" gives 47 hits in google books [2], and in quite a few reliable sources: "The golem" from Cambridge UP, volume 357 of Nature, "Cultural boundaries of science" from University of Chicago Press, the proceedings of the 16th IEEE/NPSS Symposium Fusion Engineering conference, "Fundamentals of renewable energy processes" from Aldo Vieira da Rosa, Physics Briefs journal, Science magazine, Physics Abstracts journal, "Voodoo Science" from Oxford UP by Robert L. Park, the "Undead science" book, proceedings of Intersociety Energy Conversion Engineering Conference, "Anomalous Nuclear Effects in Deuterium/solid Systems" from the American Institute of Physics, "Science, reason and rethoric" from Pittsburgh UP, the hearing before the Subcommittee on Energy of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives in 1993, and "Il Nuovo cimento della Società italiana di fisica" from the Italian Society of Physics (that's the one from Preparatta?).

Also, "cold fusion cell" name appears in the proceedings of at least the 2th, 5th, 10th, 11th and 12th conferences in cold fusion. It also appears in lenr-carn.org in 18 different papers [3] and on 46 different pages in newenergytimes.com [4]

My head hurts from all this. I'll let other editors decide if the sentence is understandable without saying that it's a "cold fusion cell". Giving it a second thought, maybe it's already understandable from the context. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:54, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

CR-39

I've wikified this several times and it's been reverted out. Weird. Sloppy editing at best. The CR-39 article has some good photos of the plastic used as a radiation detector, showing both the single pitting obtained from ionizing radiation and the triple tracks resulting from energetic neutrons.

It's reverted because it's wikilinked at three different places, when stuff is usually only wikilinked once. It's usually wikilinked more than once when the two wikilinks are very separated from each other (not the case here), or if there is other specific reason (like lists of stuff where every entry is wikiliked even if it appears elsewhere in the text, again not the case here). --Enric Naval (talk) 06:54, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Wikilinking at any significant mention where the reader might not notice other links is preferred, and there is little or no harm from extra wikilinking. In this case it's particularly important to wikilink because photos of the triple track phenomenon are shown in the CR-39 article. The preferred place to wikilink is in the text where the mention is particularly significant. Photo captions are separate and might be reviewed by the reader separately, so wikilinking there is to be encouraged.--Abd (talk) 16:48, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree on making 1 wikilink in the text and 1 in the photo caption, because they can be read separatedly.... but please don't link both photo captions when they are one directly next to the other, that's just overkill. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:39, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

The report results suggest ...

Results don't make suggestions, people do. There is a strong tendency here to WP:WEASEL and the usage of the passive. It's true that the study reports evidence -- strong evidence, actually -- of the emission of energetic neutrons (report results? how about experimental results suggest? report suggests? -- but those are all still with lost performative. How about cutting to the chase? Why does anybody care about "energetic neutrons"? We care because they are a signature of some kinds of fusion reactions, because it seems very difficult to explain these results without some kind of fusion taking place in there, which even could be hot fusion, given the controls and observations. Neutrons aren't detected when the cells are run with water instead of heavy water.

The report is being widely recognized as possible evidence of low-energy nuclear reactions.

If that's the sentence -- and the "wide recognition" refers to very substantial media coverage, -- then the Krivit remark becomes redundant, actually. Some media sources seem to have thought that Krivit was criticizing the experiment. He wasn't, I'm certain of that. He was criticizing the suggestions of the study authors that the imputed energy of the neutrons suggested D-T fusion, and not to say that that this is wrong, but that this is only one among many possible or theorized low energy nuclear reactions. Krivit strongly supports the SPAWAR work. Abd (talk)

By "If that is the sentence," I meant, "If we use this sentence...." not that this is what was stated. (And there was an extra sentence fragment above, confusing everyone including myself.)

That's not the sentence, please check the AFP source and the New Scientist source and look for the correct sentence, whatever it is, or point to the source where this appears. I think you got the sentences mixed up somewhere. --Enric Naval (talk) 06:57, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

I think I've already quoted Krivit exactly more than once here, from the NS report or others. However, notice this text from Science Daily, my emphasis:

Researchers are reporting compelling new scientific evidence for the existence of low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR), the process once called "cold fusion" that may promise a new source of energy. One group of scientists, for instance, describes what it terms the first clear visual evidence that LENR devices can produce neutrons, subatomic particles that scientists view as tell-tale signs that nuclear reactions are occurring.

One report like this, no matter how striking, isn't the end of the story. However, the SPAWAR work reported here is only one aspect of a series of experiments showing other evidences for LENR, and many aspects of that work was either verification and extension of what had been reported by others, or has been verified by others. It's too big a story to rush into. The point to take home and to have in the article now is that neutrons were a kind of "holy grail" for some, early on. The lack of neutron detection was widely considered (incorrectly, in my view and the view of many others) to be proof that fusion wasn't taking place. Neutrons were detected before, but always using non-integrating detectors, at levels insufficient to account for the excess heat and other results, such as He4. Because CR-34 is well-known to show ionizing radiation from the Pd-D system under "CF" conditions, at much higher levels than what Mosier-Boss is reporting for neutrons, it's possible that more detailed microscopic examination of the tracks in prior work may have missed the rare triple-tracks. The other researchers were looking for an explanation for the excess heat, and the neutron report from Mosier-Boss utterly fails to account for that heat. What it shows is, though, that nuclear reactions, probably of the kind expected, i.e., a pathway that involves emission of energetic neutrons, is, in fact, taking place where it should not. It may be hot fusion, but what, then, is causing hot fusion there in the cell? Where is that energy coming from? (And, of course, experimental artifacts, while becoming difficult as an explanation, still cannot be ruled out absolutely.)

There is an interesting blog at [5]. Somebody should teach the younger generation a little respect! This "nuclear chemistry PhD student" thinks that he's thought of something that the researchers did not think of. Why does he think that?

I asked why they haven’t observed any gamma rays from their cold fusion experiments. Pamela Mosier-Boss was quick to reply that they indeed did measure gamma rays, but they “came in bursts… and are averaged away [over the duration of the experiment]“.

Aha!, he thinks, imagining that they had overlooked the obvious. They didn't. They simply didn't address it at a news conference where they were getting questions right and left. They found gamma rays in bursts. That's a reported fact. But the student jumps to conclusions:

The answer is simple, they measured background. Background is a random process, it will come in bursts, they may even cluster to make a peak for a short time, but when you run it over the course of the whole experiment it is “averaged out”; that my friend is background you measured.

Okay. He's correct. But they did not report gamma rays. Are there gamma rays from the reactions in the cells? From this report, we don't know. The bursts might or might not be significant. They might or might not be background, and that is actually difficult to determine. This student asked a question and got a very precise answer. The student, perhaps too eager to be smarter than those who might be much more experienced than he, jumped to conclusions, which conclusions, ironically, are implied by Mosier-Boss's answer. He might even be a decent nuclear chemist, but he doesn't know how to listen yet, how to recognize what is true about what others say, instead of simply looking for what is wrong. Here is what he says:

So should I believe the claims of a scientist who does not understand the difference between background and peaks? Should I believe a scientist who doesn’t understand the basic consequences of his own technique? You don’t even have to be a nuclear chemist to call bull-shit on this one.

That's correct. You merely have to be immature. It's she, by the way. What was wrong with her statement? It was actually what a mature and experienced scientist would say in an environment with time constraints: just the facts, hang the conclusions. The conference, by the way, is available as video, so we can listen to this interchange, I suspect, I have a vague memory of the question. (See the ACS site). She gave him the information he needed to conclude that the gamma bursts could be background radiation. He concluded, because she didn't specify this, that she didn't understand....

But then he goes in a more positive direction:

Honestly, if they are measuring more energy out of their systems than the energy they are putting in, then this is fantastic news. If they see excess heat, then they need to chase this line of inquiry down.

Of course, hundreds of researchers around the world have been doing just that for twenty years. The excess heat is quite well demonstrated. (Remember, even given what is also well-documented and extreme bias against cold fusion, half the 2004 DOE panel considered the findings of excess heat to be strong); Hoffmann, in 2005, in his report published by the American Nuclear Society, made cogent remarks on this, and many of the problems he also cites have been resolved in subsequent work. I'll cover Hoffmann elsewhere, he says some very remarkable things about the political situation which we could be covering far better than we have.

The blogger links to the press conference video and says where his question is. I haven't checked yet. Enjoy. --Abd (talk) 21:21, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

That sentence doesn't sum up correctly the sources. A better summary would be:

• This is the first clear evidence that a cold fusion cell is producing energetic neutrons, which are indicative of nuclear fusion. However, the neutrons still have to be measured quantitively, and the neutrons could be produced by other phenomenona.

--Enric Naval (talk) 00:37, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

You have two sentences there, Enric. The first is accurate. There has been a lot of work on neutrons before, but using other methods of detection, not integrating like CR-39, and the levels were always down in the noise because if the measurement difficulties; the lack of reliable neutron detection, coupled with the fact that the levels of neutrons reported were far below what would be expected from the excess heat, is probably the most important brick in the wall of rejection. The last sentence is synthesis if not attributed, and attributing it to a casual source, as distinct from a detailed examination, is a WP:UNDUE problem. However, we might be able to find consensus for some similar statement. "The neutrons would still have to be measured quantitatively (actually, that's done, I think, but I could be wrong. It's possible to estimate neutron flux from the track density, but, this is important to realize: This detection of neutrons is evidence that something is amiss with theory, but it is not evidence about cold fusion. That may have been Krivit's point. A pipe broke above your kitchen, and water is pouring down, massively. You walk in and the place is soaked. You notice a slow drip from the faucet. Aha! Now I know why the kitchen is wet!

The neutron detection is politically interesting, i.e., the politics of science. If confirmed -- and given prior research in the field, the clarity of the results, the controls, and estimation of the energy of the neutrons (which is right for hot fusion) -- that seems very likely, and my guess is that a lot of researchers are now pouring over images of their CR-39 chips looking for triple tracks, so we may actually see some very rapid communications -- this means that nuclear fusion at very low levels -- is taking place in the Pd/D system. Or some other nuclear process, we all agree on that, but it sure looks like *hot fusion*, and the fact that the cell is close to room temperature doesn't negate this at all. (Bubble fusion, for example, though still controversial, is hot fusion, with the extraordinary temperatures being generated by bubble collapse.)

Sure, in theory, there might be some kind of natural radioactivity that is generating the neutron results; except that would probably then upset more experimental science than a conclusion that this is cold fusion. After all, experimental science is not upset by special findings under special circumstances.

I've been following the blogs and it's amazing how many writers think they have invented this killer argument: if it's fusion, how come, after twenty years, we don't have a home cold fusion heater? Huh? Answer me that? --Abd (talk) 00:35, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I'll answer that!

I think I've seen this argument here, too. The answer is that the original research, and most of the academic ongoing research has been driven by science, not practical application, and it is quite obvious that cold fusion, if it happens -- it sure is looking like it does -- only takes place under very delicate conditions, it took years to figure out what they were so that replication rates rose (they are now at 90-100%). The Arata results point to something that might eventually develop into a commercial product, because the heating effect looks stable. Unfortunately, as Jed Rothwell points out -- he's active in the blogosphere on this -- Arata's work is a tad frustrating, short on detail. He also defends Arata; Arata is looking for striking demonstrations, not precision, it may have to do with being older than everyone else! (Rothwell speaks Japanese and has spent a fair amount of time with Arata looking over the work. Arata's lab is apparently teeming with Chinese scientists who are taking careful note. Somebody might end up eating our lunch -- "our" means the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, and Australia.) The fact is that with the science as it is right now, assuming the work of the last few years is real and showing cold fusion, it could still take a long time to develop practical heating systems, if ever. There is a disturbing understanding in the field that these experiments occasionally go into some kind of thermal runaway, there have been explosions and excess heat way above not only chemical levels, but also normal cold fusion levels in ordinary successful experiments. However, suppose that we can get a watt of output from an Arata cell with 7 grams of his alloy. Rough guess. (There is a temperature differential maintained between the cell and the environment of 4 degrees C., but it is insulated, you can see it in the photos.) Arata doesn't give a fig about the calorimetry or total energy generation, he is simply making a thermodynamic demonstration of sustained heat generation, plus he then measures helium. Now, with a mere 70,000 grams of palladium, I could generate 10 KW. I've seen figures of more than 100 years. Cool. Oops! At current prices, that is about $500,000. Plus the cost of the heavy water, I haven't checked that out, and the rest of the device, and if these applications arise, the price of palladium will definitely go up. Now, tell me! It may be expected that this might work. Would you buy one? More to the point, if you are a venture capitalist, would you invest the very substantial sums that it will take to scale this up and be sure that it is safe (how?)? Oh, and one detail. Suppose that the explosions or runaway heat are due to a rare event where a cosmic ray of a particular kind or energy hits the device and triggers excess reaction. That is, this thing might look stable, and be stable for a long time, and then .... kablooey! Clean and safe? Maybe. It will take a ton of money to find out. Until much more is known, I wouldn't want to sleep next to a few kilos of palladium deuteride, not to mention the ordinary fire risk. There is a *huge* amount of explosive deuterium gas in there, it is essentially compressed to practically a metallic state, if I've got it right. Palladium is very unusual stuff when it comes to how it mates with hydrogen or deuterium. Sorry, but dreams of "free energy" are still that, even if this is cold fusion. On the other hand, maybe .... There are claims of devices just about to hit the market, and there have been for years. One of them might turn out to be real, there are some fairly heavyweight people working on this, with some understandable secrecy, and, indeed, if they can get it right, there is more money to be made than I can imagine in one sitting. I'll believe that when I see it. And take it apart and put it back together. --Abd (talk) 00:35, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Enric had a second sentence, However, the neutrons still have to be measured quantitively, and the neutrons could be produced by other phenomenona. I'll start with this not being encyclopedic. "have to" -- according to what? Neutrons don't "have to" do anything, they'll just sit here for practically forever. "Quantitatively," what does that mean. 10 neutrons per chip, i.e., 10 characteristic triplets per chip, I think they say how big the chips are, with a lot of ionizing radiation doing major damage to the other side, the side toward the electrode (but only where it is in close contact with the electrode.) They calibrate each chip with an Am-141 source in one corner; that is ionizing radiation of a known energy, so they can then estimate the energies of the particles causing the pits. The controls? No triple tracks, or very isolated ones. Sure, the work should be verified, but if you think that, for the purposes of our article, this is really important, you've missed a point: this is nuclear radiation, alright, a smoking gun for nuclear reactions, but it's the kitchen faucet with a slow drip. What about the water pouring down from the ceiling? And the work showing lots of ionizing radiation (forget background! it's moot) has indeed been verified, and there was prior work with similar results. One of the real tricks here is that progress in the field has allowed the SPAWAR group to get reliable excess heat, which correlates with both the ionizing radiation and the neutrons and the helium. The neutron levels are tiny, though; the helium is at levels expected from the measured heat. And that correlation has been observed since the early 1990s. Hmmm... that's not in our article, must not have happened....

But, yes, however, nobody showing familiarity with the experiment -- Pauley doesn't show that, his criticism is quite generic, could have been made about nearly every cold fusion report for the last twenty years -- is saying that "other phenomena" means anything but some nuclear reaction other than fusion. But what is cool about this experiment is that the reaction product is what so many researchers were looking for and failed to find in 1989, neutrons of the energy that's right for a known fusion reaction. Just very few of them, but well above background. There aren't that many energetic neutrons flying around in most places. And if there were in the SPAWAR lab, or in the heavy water, or in the cells or electrodes, the controls would show the triple tracks also. They don't.

One more tidbit. Robert Park has reacted to this. Author of Cold Fusion: Voodoo Science.

4. COLD FUSION: TWENTY YEARS LATER, IT'S STILL COLD.

Monday was the 20th anniversary of the infamous press conference called by the University of Utah in Salt Lake City to announce the discovery of Cold Fusion. The sun warmed the Earth that day as it had for 5 billion years, by the high temperature fusion of hydrogen nuclei. Incredibly, the American chemical Society was meeting in Salt Lake City this week and there were many papers on cold fusion, or as their authors prefer LENR (low-energy nuclear reactions). These people, at least some of them, look in ever greater detail where others have not bothered to look. They say they find great mysteries, and perhaps they do. Is it important? I doubt it. But I think it's science.[6]

He's right. It may or may not be "important," at least to energy generation. But, indeed, it is science. Mosier-Boss et al have unexpected experimental results. I'll point out that science does not grow from expected experimental results. Science is not dead yet, and neither is cold fusion, in spite of all the pronouncements that were made twenty years ago and repeated regularly, out there and here.

Park and others are discussed in an excellent article that is, unfortunately, on a public-journalism web site.[7] --Abd (talk) 01:08, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

but don't explain what process was causing them.

The paper should be read:

http://www.newenergytimes.com/Library2/2008/2008BossTripleTracks.pdf

The paper explains as much as is possible what could be causing the neutrons, and refers to theoretical work that has been done.

detailed discussion

The SPAWAR group is an experimental group, reporting observations and measurements in controlled experiments. Lack of explanation of results is not a criticism of an experimental report at all. Like most experimental reports, the authors speculate or note what the results they found suggest, and they do that, and more than that could actually be inappropriate in a paper like this. They are making what is, politically, a very important report, because lack of neutrons was one of the killer arguments in 1989. Some media reports are calling the SPAWAR work a "rediscovery of cold fusion." It's really preposterous. This group has been working on cold fusion since, I think, 1990. They've been publishing results all along. Their work has been shared, for years, with the other cold fusion researchers; detection of radiation with CR-39 in palladium deuteride experiments didn't originate with them. What they did was to look more closely at the chips, apparently. Instead of looking at the heavily pitted areas close to the electrode, they looked in lightly pitted areas and on the other side of the chip (away from the cathode), that's when they found the triple tracks. So what they "discovered" was neutrons, not cold fusion, which was discovered in the years preceding 1989 by Fleischmann and Pons (with some possible earlier reports, plus, of course, muon-catalyzed fusion). Cold fusion researchers had mostly given up looking for neutrons, because they are actually moot in terms of explaining the excess heat. The heat is being produced, quite clearly, by reactions that don't involve neutron emission; what the SPAWAR group found has to be a result of a process that usually proceeds in some other way. What's missing from this report and from most of the media reports is that the same group, and others, have been reporting ionizing radiation for years, radiation that is also evidence of nuclear reactions, but at far higher levels. Given that helium is also being found, in quantities correlated well with what would be expected from the measured heat, it's pretty obvious: there is fusion taking place, by whatever pathway; the helium isn't there when there is no excess heat. The "don't explain" comment is in direct contradiction to what is in the next sentence, though, in fact, the phrase "deuterium-tritium fusion" wasn't mentioned by Krivit, but Krivit's comments don't make sense without stating what the authors of the paper propose as the nuclear process causing the emission of neutrons. "what process was causing them" is referring to the neutrons. The paper suggests that they are caused by D-T fusion, which will produce neutrons of the right energy. But "process" could refer to the mechanism or conditions that allow fusion to take place, in spite of the Coulomb barrier. The flap arose because of the ACS press release; and then the media was present at a press conference. The ACS seminar, though, was merely a presentation and opportunity to ask questions regarding the previously published work, and here is a copy: http://www.newenergytimes.com/Library2/2008/2008BossTripleTracks.pdf If a physicist is going to criticize the work, don't you think he should read it? I don't see any sign of that in his comments. The comments in the original source : Today's announcement is based partly on research published by Mosier-Boss' group last year in the journal Naturwissenschaften. In this sense, she has not repeated the mistake of Pons and Fleischmann, who announced their findings before they had been tested by the peer-review process and published in a scientific journal. But that does not mean the results indicate cold fusion, said Paul Padley, a physicist at Rice University who reviewed Mosier-Boss' published work. "Fusion could produce the effect they see, but there's no plausible explanation of how fusion could occur in these conditions," Padley said. "The whole point of fusion is, you're bringing things of like charge together. As we all know, like things repel, and you have to overcome that repulsion somehow." The problem with Mosier-Boss' work, he said, is that it fails to provide a theoretical rationale to explain how fusion could occur at room temperatures. And in its analysis, the research paper fails to exclude other sources for the production of neutrons. "Nobody in the physics community would believe a discovery without such a quantitative analysis," he said. If such experiments did produce fusion reactions, they would generate highly energetic neutrons as a byproduct. These are what Mosier-Boss says her San Diego-based group has found. "If you have fusion going on, then you have to have neutrons," she said. "But we do not know if fusion is actually occurring. It could be some other nuclear reaction." What Padley said is simply a continuation of prior opinion without any reflection of the new findings. His objection is purely based on theory, with one exception: if it were plausible that the neutrons were coming from source other than a nuclear reaction (which might not be "fusion," and his theoretical argument is against fusion, not against any and every possible nuclear reaction), then he'd have a major point: but it is, quite simply, false to say "the research paper fails to exclude other sources for the production of neutrons. That is, sources other than nuclear reactions. Not necessarily "fusion." But Padley seems to have fusion in mind. Above, in Talk:Cold_fusion#Additions_to_.22further_developments.22, I quote where the paper does exactly that, i.e., rule out other sources. Is every possible other source excluded? No, just the ones they could think of. I suggested above that Mr. Padley might propose some in a communication to Naturwissenschaften, if he can think of any.

While we have reliable source that Mr. Padley said this, the disconnect between his comments and the actual paper are too great: this is a physicist, asked to comment by a newspaper, having had little time (quite possibly), vs a paper published in a peer-reviewed journal. That's undue weight. Padley said nothing that hasn't been said hundreds of times before. What the paper is evidence of is low-energy nuclear reactions, though it's possible that the neutrons are being produced by hot fusion (if cold fusion takes place, it may create energetic nuclear species, such as a triton, which would then normally fuse to produce helium plus a neutron.) The point isn't any particular theory to explain what is happening, but that the evidence is strong for nuclear reactions. It could take years, decades, to figure out what is actually going on in the Pd-D system.

I will edit the article consistently with what I've written here. Please incorporate and accept what you can, and please discuss the remainder in detail. --Abd (talk) 03:24, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

You are doing a bunch of OR to "prove" that Padley didnt' read the paper. Do you have any secondary source saying that they explained what process what causing the neutrons? --Enric Naval (talk) 06:33, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Sure, and there is indirect reference to it. What in the world was Krivit talking about? He was suggesting that their explanations were premature, and was trying to deflect criticism based on the explanations rather than the actual experimental findings, which are stunning in their simplicity. I certainly cannot prove that Padley did not read the article, but his comments don't show that he was aware in detail as to what is in it. A lot of the media reports of the last week have been like this, they make assumptions about what was in the paper, then respond to it. What Padley stated to the paper was a stock comment, which could have been made, and has been made, about nearly every cold fusion paper, whether or not it was actually cogent in context. If we are going to report the Mosier-Boss paper, and we are practically forced to, we should not report criticism that clearly isn't on point, unless we do it in a way that reflects proper balance. Reporting a probably unconsidered comment to a newspaper reporter looking for "balance" as distinct from doing research in depth, as if it were on some equal level (peer-reviewed vs. quick comment to a reporter who clearly doesn't know the topic), is a violation of WP:UNDUE. --Abd (talk) 13:50, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

So, to sum up, it is your contention that:

A. Professor Padley does not reach the same conclusions that you do from the available data

B. Anyone who does not reach the same conclusions that you have must not have read the data

C. Anyone who has not not read the data should be excluded as a source for this article.

We can skip step A, and merge B and C to get the central conclusion you are making:

Anyone who does not reach the same conclusions that you do must be excluded as a source.

This is pure, unabashed POV pushing. You're attempting to a priori exclude sources that do not agree with your preconceptions of what the outcome should be. Your logic is falling into the No true Scotsman fallacy of excluding evidence that disagrees with your predetermined conclusion, with "has really read the papers" substituting for true Scotsman. --Noren (talk) 14:15, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Noren, that's not a fair characterization of what I've said. I'm sure that there are cogent criticisms that could be made of the Mosier-Boss work. But Padley's comments show no evidence that he has actually read the work and the background to it. The vast majority of physicists wouldn't have. As to source for this article, what Padley says is utterly not new, and it is explained through the filter of a newspaper reporter who also didn't appear to understand the issues. In other words, fairly common "science" journalism, based on a cursory review of a press release, without further research but pulling together the most obvious claims from the past ("unable to reproduce it" is a very common one, as if 150 papers in peer-reviewed journals confirming the excess heat observations of Pons and Fleischmann don't exist), and then a call to an "expert," a physicist, who who should know about these things, right?

In fact, the science of low energy nuclear reactions (that is, the search and effort to confirm or refute that they take place) is extraordinarily complex, and few physicists would have an inkling of the complexities unless they have studied the specific field. From Hoffman:

Young Scientist: I can see that this field is no place for electrochemists to play amateur physicist.

Old Metallurgist: [...] this field of research is one no place for physicists to play amateur electrohemist. Actually the best requirement is experience in doing these experiments. There are too many ways to get false-positives and false-negatives from these experiments for an experimenter to work intensely for several months and then claim definitive realities. It takes years of refining the experimental technique and instrumentation ot learn how to avoid the pitfalls that trap.

This was Hoffman writing in 1995, A Dialog on Chemically Induced Nuclear Effects, A Guide for the Perplexed About Cold Fusion.

The SPAWAR group has been working on the problems for almost twenty years. They know what they are doing, and they have many published papers in peer-reviewed journals. The media missed, almost entirely, the deeper implications of their work, probably because the finding of neutrons was so startling that the fact was missed that these neutrons don't explain excess heat and helium production. They appear to be the neutrons expected from classical fusion, the ones that were tantalizingly present or imagined at close to background before, and good chance that is exactly what they are. Hot fusion taking place in a room temperature device. Why not? But only at very low levels. Good thing. Dead graduate students -- or Navy researchers. In 2007, the same group published similar research, also in Naturwissenschaften, showing ionizing radiation, which is a signature of the predominant process, almost certainly. This isn't new research, SPAWAR was confirming what's been reported and published around the world, using a specific technique that is highly reliable. And, yes, it's been confirmed. And the confirmation published. Yes, I'll stand with what I wrote: if Pauley has read the research and the background, he didn't betray it in his comments, or the reporter didn't report enough of what he said. Both are quite possible.

Instead what appears is that the physicist is speaking as an "expert," i.e., someone who knows stuff. You ask an expert to get the real scoop on something, which works if the subject is one known to the expert. But, remember, this is a "pariah field." I've argued that the alleged scientific consensus is phony, because "scientific consensus" implies the agreement of those familiar with a field, whereas the "pathological science" judgment is almost entirely made by those who don't know the research history beyond what they saw twenty years ago and which has been repeated over and over and over since then in the media and buzz. But not, Noren, in reliable scientific source. Definitely, cold fusion is a pariah field, which is about people and their reactions to things, not science. --Abd (talk) 23:37, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

As to UNDUE, we have two persons quoted here. Dr. Padley has a Ph.D and is a professor of Experimental Elementary Particle Physics at a major university. Mr. Krivit earned a B.S. degree in Business Administration and Computer Science and describes himself as an "investigative journalist, photographer, author and international speaker on the topic of LENR research." Which of these sources should be given more weight, the professor of physics or the business administration major who is operating with a business model of selling articles on the subject? NPOV would clearly indicate the former, yet you are advocating the latter. --Noren (talk) 14:15, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually, Noren, you are a bit confused. I actually took out both comments. However, an editor here imagined that Krivit was criticizing the SPAWAR work. See, these are researchers. They are not "cold fusioneers" out to prove that their baby is alive. They are experimentalists. They build stuff and see what it does. And what they have developed with twenty years of work takes platinum electrodes in heavy water with palladium chloride and lithium choride, as I recall, and electroplates the palladium onto the platinum cathode; because this is taking place in heavy water, deuterium gas is evolved at the same time and place as the palladium is being deposited, so the basic conditions of the Fleischmann-Pons effect are created almost instantaneously: palladium lattice highly loaded with deuterium. They get immediate excess heat. They get He-4. They get ionizing radiation, above 1 MeV, I think. Put those together and smoke them, what fantasy arises? The work has been confirmed, and, in round outlines, it confirms earlier work done by others. The experiments are controlled. Now, what is a particle physicist, whose training includes very little that bears on the condensed matter environment, what kind of comment would you expect?

I've described the situation a number of times: we have expert chemists, starting with Fleischmann and Pons, saying "This is not chemistry." (There are hundreds of them.) And we have physicists lining up to very loudly proclaim, "This isn't nuclear physics." Okay, what is it, Noren? And what would make you think that a particle physicist would know much more about it than any college-level physics student, unless he is one of the rare ones who have actually investigated the field instead of taking news about it from the media. Remember, the journals the guy reads don't publish on this, because it is a pariah field, one in which some consensus is presumed, unless, perhaps, he reads Frontiers of Physics in China. They, at least, publish in English; some of the best work in the field is only published in Japanese.

If you think that a particle physicist would be expected to understand the condensed matter environment, when most of his field has to do with how isolated nuclear entities behave, typically in a plasma, well, you have not grasped the dimensions of the problem.

How many editors here think that the 2004 DOE review soundly rejected low energy nuclear reactions? By now, some of them have, at least, stopped trying to remove direct quotations from the DOE report from the article because those quotations don't jibe with their opinions as to what the result was. There have been some excellent books written on this topic, I just got the next one in the mail today, Undead Science, by a sociologist.

But, basically, the first book to arrive was Hoffman, and what Hoffman says is pretty much what I've been saying here for weeks now, with so many editors imagining that I'm promoting some fringe position. Nope. I am skeptical of any POV, including my own. I'm not a "cold fusioneer." I'm neither an electrochemist nor a nuclear physicist, I just happened to spend some time with one of each. Linus Pauling and Richard P. Feynman, and with that and twenty-five cents, a long time ago, I could have gotten a ride on the subway. --Abd (talk) 23:37, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I will use this link: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/chronicle/6333164.html as my source for Padley's remarks, one of which is this: “Fusion could produce the effect they see, but there’s no plausible explanation of how fusion could occur in these conditions” -- My comment on that is this: Why is it necessary to have a plausable explanation Right Now? Suppose I found some data indicating that a large asteroid was on a collision course with the Earth --do you think the data should be ignored while we try to figure out how that asteroid got onto that course??? I'd say the more important thing is to verify the data first (or show it to be inaccurate), before worrying about other stuff. This means that Padley's remarks, so long as they are not about verifying/disproving the data, are ignorable --or if not entirely ignorable, can be accompanied by commentary to the effect that such remarks are not Scientific because they presume that theory trumps data. Need I remind you that the U.S. Patent office will not reject an application for a perpetual motion machine, provided the application is accompanied by a working model? This means the Office recognizes both the importance and limits of Theory. V (talk) 15:58, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Suppose there is a new article with a headline: "Physicists reject cold fusion, consider it unworthy of discussion, conclusively rejected twenty years ago." You know, we have reliable source which says practically that. So, suppose we have this in the article, clearly supported by reliable source, of a quality higher than newspaper reports, but balanced, i.e., the history of this and the details are not excluded (because we also have reliable source that this rejection is for reasons other than "science," and, in fact, some of the sources cited above as proof that CF is "fringe" go on to show that conclusion). So, now, some paper is published in a peer-reviewed journal, and the ACS, the largest scientific society in the world, and which is the mainstream in chemistry, holds a four day seminar on low energy nuclear reactions, not a token one-day as in the past, issues a press release, holds a press conference, inviting a person whom we have called a "POV-pusher" here to be on the press conference panel, and then a newspaper calls up a physicist and gets a comment that simply confirms what we have already discussed in depth in the article. Do we report it? It's not notable, in comparison, and it isn't balanced. Putting the two together, no matter how much RS we have on it, Padley's remark adds nothing that we did not already know and should have in the article without any dependence on him as a source. There is actually only one source, everything else on Padley about this is copied from the Houston Chronicle source, the copying shows some kind of notability, but, more accurately, it shows how newspapers were desperate for balance, they need to have some kind of negative comment, and anyone familiar with the field would know where to get it, from a particle physicist. Most newspapers did no research of their own, apparently, reports like the one in New Scientist were much better. There are particle physicists working on cold fusion, and they must be prepared for isolation and loss of research support, if they are in the U.S. Miles, a senior researcher, was told, when the Navy shut down his China lake research, to report to the chemistry stock clerk. We only have the results of his later work there because outside funding appear to suport its completion. If the newspaper had called up a particle physicist in China, it would have been different, for He Jing-tang is, for example, I believe, a hot fusion physicist, very much supported by government funding. They are doing CF research there, and cooperating intensely with the Japanese, and if we don't wake up (speaking for the en. world), they will eat our lunch. But my interest here is not saving the world or the "West," it is finding consensus. If the Chinese eat our lunch, maybe they deserve it more than us, and I'll probably be dead before CF makes any difference. And I have a Chinese daughter who will be, quite likely, native-speaker fluent and literate in Chinese and English, and an Ethiopian daughter who will probably be the same. So they will be ready to save a shifting world if I can't! --Abd (talk) 15:28, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I missed this at the time because I wasn't looking for videos. science.discovery.com. They consult a nuclear physicist with the DOE. Some of what he says about what happened in 1989 is off, but he clearly thinks the SPAWAR group are onto something. --Abd (talk) 04:42, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

DOE reviews question: inconclusive mechanism versus [promising?] observations?

Do the DOE reviews reject the observation-claims of cold fusion studies?

Some wiki readers may wonder whether evidence of excess heat (or other metrics) from cold fusion is deemed not conclusive, but some may also wish to know whether "not conclusive" means not potentially promising (an image that might be formed from media reports).

The introduction refers to the question of (unknown) mechanism (a good point), but does it cover the question of reviews of observation claims? Is the introduction guided by the idea that the question of mechanism is primary?

In the future, the observation-claims question might be settled. Is it already settled now?

Is this the crux of some of the epic conflicts herein? --Ihaveabutt (talk) 05:08, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

"Scientific skepticism requires that unless the experimental evidence justifies belief in these miracles, we must conclude that experimental errors are being misinterpreted as positive results."[8]. See also [9] pages 179-180 --Enric Naval (talk) 06:31, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Many useful points in articles' text. It seems like society may be demanding a "yes or no" answer (categorical). --Ihaveabutt (talk) 16:57, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

(Summary of Abd's comment of 19:26, 5 April below:)

The conclusion that the probability was low of it being anything but experimental error were reasonable in 1989-90, but no longer reasonable after sometime in the 90s. Some reputable research groups are now reporting 100% success at excess heat, but, unexpectedly, with energetic helium-4 nuclei and only suprisingly small numbers, (but detectable!), of energetic neutrons.

"Not conclusively demonstrated" just meant there was no certainty that fusion was the cause of the observations. Lack of proof of presence is not proof of absence. But now the emerging consensus is that it's some kind of nuclear reaction. Recent RS generally support the solidity of the calorimetry, except in popular sources recycling older ideas.

It's a fragile effect to initiate, but on rare occasions produces "heat-after-death", where sometimes a huge amount of heat is produced after everything is turned off: a perfectly valid form of "remarkable evidence" despite its rarity.

Present skepticism isn't based on the recent research; it's based on the events of 1989.

Being a nuclear phenomenon doesn't necessarily mean promising as a practical energy source that would be necessarily be funded by DOE; think of muon-catalysed fusion for example. Abd as summarized by Coppertwig 00:41, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the link to the SciAm article, Enric. Useful. First of all, this is a popular magazine, though relatively authoritative as popular magazines go.

"I entered graduate school wishing to help solve our impending energy crisis, so I studied 'cold fusion' carefully and with an open mind in order to make a wise career choice. I learned that the critical positive results have not been reliably and independently reproduced, and many careful and thorough studies have yielded negative conclusions, although often these unexciting results went unpublished. It is probably impossible to prove that 'cold fusion' is nothing more than the result of misinterpreted experimental errors, but the probability of it being otherwise is low.

I don't know when this scientist studied the matter, but what he says he learned was a reasonable belief in 1989-1990. Sometime in the nineties, it became unreasonable. He is making general observations that are true, but the implication that this applies to, say, excess heat, is misleading. This article was written in 1999, and, by then, there were many careful independent studies. (And apparently many careless studies showing excess heat as well.) He's right about the phenomenon of perhaps finding what you are looking for, but if a researcher does, say, 250 cells, finds no heat in 90% of them, and finds heat in 10%, and the heat is stgrongly correlated with some independent signature of fusion (usually helium is the one that works), and is likewise strongly correlated with a control (such as a cell with normal water in place of heavy water), that is actually conclusive evidence for excess heat. If the research selects the results, it would prove nothing at all.

By the 2004 DOE review, the reviewers were evenly split on the question of whether excess heat was reasonably clear. Given the huge entrenched bias, acknowledged by every independent review of the field, that's a stunning result. There are now research groups, reputable ones, reporting 100% success at finding excess heat. Is it fusion? Whatever it is, it isn't classic fusion, the primary ash is helium-4, and energetic helium-4 nuclei are the primary radiation signature, not the neutrons which everyone was looking for. There are neutrons, but at such low levels (but well above background) that many of the early confirmations of neutrons were probably artifacts, or certainly not conclusive. (For the neutrons, google "Mosier-Boss neutron" and you will find tons of references to the work which was published in Naturwissenschaften in January of this year.

So, as to the question. "Not conclusively demonstrated" meant exactly that. It did not mean "bogus." It did not mean "probably bogus." It meant that there was no certainty that fusion was the cause of the observations. The emerging consensus, rapidly shifting, is that there is some kind of nuclear reaction going on. Is it fusion? Nobody knows. But in skeptical sources, such as Taubes, it's said that if neutrons of a certain energy are found, then fusion is clear. The SPAWAR group found such neutrons, with a very simple method that appears to be artifact-free. (There have been objections raised, but the objections I've seen seem to be based on the theoretical difficulties, and proposals of artifact that don't seem to be aware of the actual experimental data and procedures.)

I have seen plenty of recent RS on the solidity of the calorimetry, and little or none recently that seriously challenges it, other than popular sources where, clearly, it's old opinions being recycled. Shanahan is one known critic who has been published, but his objections don't seem to apply to much of the confirmation, and are simply a proposed source of error for some of them.

If the SciAm editor's comments were considered to still apply, the 2004 DOE review results were phenomenally stupid. Further, understand that the field is extraordinarily complex. Calorimetry is not a simple thing, and the experimental setup that produces cold fusion, as the situation was in 2004, still quite difficult. It's a fragile effect, apparently, to initiate. (Sometimes it's not fragile at all once initiated, hence the "heat-after-death" results, which are sometimes (rarely) drastic; the energy input is stopped, and the cell continues generating heat until, sometimes, it produces more heat than could have been produced by any known chemical reaction. The rarity of such events doesn't discount their validity; indeed, these can be the "remarkable evidence" to prove "remarkable claims." Unless, of course, one wants to assume fraud or major delusion, far worse than simple expectation bias.

Hoffman makes a cogent remark about this. He has the Young Skeptic say, "Truly significant heat is very rare, this must mean that it's a result of experimental error, the heat is not real." (Or something like that, this is from my memory). the Old Metallurgist says, "The residents of San Francisco [and other cities with rare earthquakes) will be happy to know that earthquakes are not real."

Hoffman, by the way, is a skeptic, but one who realizes that lack of proof of presence is not proof of absence. Knowledgeable people active in the cold fusion field are now claiming that low-energy nuclear reactions are a certainty, there are so many studies with so many independent approaches, that they consider it preposterous to continue denying the matter. But that perception hasn't penetrated the wall of skepticism that still exists. At the present time, though, the skepticism is not based on recent peer-reviewed research, it is based, for the most part, on the events of 1989 and the strong belief that cold fusion "died" that year, this is why Simon calls it "Undead Science." It was declared dead, but it didn't die, the work and publication continued, in spite of major obstacles. In fact, if one looks at the 1989 review, it did not conclude what most have assumed, and it, like the 2004 DOE review, recommended continued study and focused grants to target specific questions. Storms reports having taken that seriously, making grant proposals, which were rejected. It appears that nobody ever got any DOE money after 1989; but, we must remember, the DOE is not the review panel, and the DOE seems to have taken the "dead science" conclusion from the report.

We also should keep in mind that the DOE would be interested in funding research reasonably likely to lead to useful energy generation. It is unknown if cold fusion will ever accomplish that. This is really a completely different question from the science, and funding decisions based on desire for cheap energy say little about the science. Nor is it necessary to brew a cup of tea, according to one famous skeptical demand, to show that the effect is real. Muon-catalyzed fusion is real cold fusion, accepted, and brewing a cup of tea with it is so far away from possible that it's a joke to even talk about it. Maybe a method will be found to scale up the reactions and get reliable usable excess heat, but major investment should be based, first, on conclusive demonstration of the heat, and until the physicists sign on, this will remain controversial. They won't sign on until they have the opportunity to truly explore the field, which could not happen, probably, in a one-day exposure (as with the 2004 DOE review.) --Abd (talk) 19:26, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

As to the second source that Enric provided, for example:

The experiments that had the best controls detected no fusion products and little or no excess heat.

Tell you what, if you think this is reliable, just try to put that in the article. It will be demanded that you provide reliable source. The book is reliable source, but not sufficient to counterbalance what is blatantly obvious from peer-reviewed literature, and other reliable source, more clearly sourced and referenced, that shows the opposite. Specifically, there is ample report of experimental measurement of He-4 production that correlates well with excess heat, and likewise with radiation (generally alpha radiation). You can put it in the article, yes, but only if you attribute it and allow balance to appear from what else is in sources of equal or better reliability. Frankly, that piece is so bad that I don't see any role for it except as a citation showing how widespread the misconceptions became. The book was published in 1998, and, long before then, anyone who deeply researched the matter wouldn't have said that.

There is a recent paper that applied Bayesian analysis to the body of experimental replication. They developed four criteria to apply to experimental publications, and showed that the criteria predicted, with high accuracy, success or failure in finding excess heat. This was a 2008 conference paper, we can't use it yet.

This simply proves the case of the "wall of skepticism," and what has been called the "success" of certain critics of creating impression of "bad science" and "lack of replication." What the cited page states is certifiably incorrect, it's not marginal. It wasn't ever true, but the impression that it was true was widely promulgated. To imagine that this claim is relevant today is preposterous. Consider the SPAWAR work (the latest results are just that, the latest results, showing energetic neutrons). The SPAWAR group is using a quite reliable method of showing excess heat, and it, itself, is confirmation of earlier findings. Ample controls, clear findings. --Abd (talk) 19:49, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Lol, I see that you just found the quote. I was wondering how long it would take you to notice that I had already added it 9 days ago XD --Enric Naval (talk) 05:08, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Enric, re "scientific skepticism" quote: that explains a lot, but I find that a fundamentally illogical approach. I'm with Hoffman on that, as cited by Abd above. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 00:43, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

CBS Sixty Minutes to do a report on Cold fusion

preview

My comment: while it is possible that low-energy nuclear reactions could lead to significant energy production, it's far from obvious, and could take a lot of time and a lot of investment; the effect is obviously fragile and difficult to control and may not scale well. On the other hand ... Arata's little bottles of palladium alloy hydride that sit there indefinitely being warmer than ambient, steady, show that something stable can be made; however, with that concept and $100,000 worth of palladium, you could make a water heater and save on your energy bills. Further, I'm suspecting that the basis of the report is the SPAWAR neutron report, which actually does not show that "the energy of the sun" is responsible for the heat, because the neutron levels are way too low. It seems to be the other way around: an unknown nuclear reaction that starts with deuterium and ends with helium is generating sufficient energy to cause a small level of classical fusion, which is a side-show, not the main act. --Abd (talk) 02:41, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Removed proxy edits for banned user by Abd Verbal chat 09:18, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

diff of removal --Abd (talk) 14:54, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I'll put in my two-cents worth, regarding the removal: Please recall WHY an editor might be banned: it is usually for some specific type of offense. Well, the assumption behind a ban is that the editor will continue to be offensive in that way, and Wikipedia doesn't need to have it. Also remember that most bans are temporary, to give banned editors a reason to mend their ways. Well, we all know that some people learn faster than others. If an editor writes something that is both relevant and not objectionable, then why should it be deleted just because the EDITOR has been objectionable/banned? The purpose of the ban is to prevent objectionable posts, NOT to re-define "objectionable" as "anything written by so-and-so". V (talk) 14:36, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

It's actually well-established that editors may revert back in useful material from banned editors, on their own responsibility, so I was quite surprised to see the tenacious deletion here, that went far beyond the simple original reversion that is arguably legitimate. I'm considering confronting this, in a very simple way. But first I have an RfAr to file. --Abd (talk) 14:51, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

The comment above was removed by Verbal, with the edit summary, (→CBS Sixty Minutes to do a report on Cold fusion: nope, banned editor - do not add by proxy. This is not an addition by proxy, period, the summary is preposterous, and the removal is a violation of community practice regarding talk page behavior. I'm warning the editor. --Abd (talk) 04:35, 19 April 2009 (UTC) The removed commentary can be found on my Talk page. --Abd (talk) 04:06, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

There is some reporting on the program in New Energy Times, see
http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2009/60MinutesTurnsUptheHeat.shtml
Most remarkable is the section on physicist Robert Duncan, with whom CBS consulted and funded for some investigation. Apparently, take a skeptical physicist, show him the actual papers and research, he's no longer skeptical. He's convinced it's real.--Abd (talk) 05:23, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

The full program is here. --Abd (talk) 03:38, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Does anyone have a reference to the DoD review mentioned in the report? According to the spot, the report concludes something like "there is no doubt regarding anomalous excess heat" (quoting from memory). I would think this would serve as a counterbalance to the 2004 DoDDoE report since it presumably incorporates the more recent advances such as the work at SPAWAR. Ronnotel (talk) 12:36, 20 April 2009 (UTC) fixed typo per following comment Ronnotel (talk) 14:33, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

That would be the 2004 DOE report. Note that the reviewers for the 2004 DOE report were evenly split on the excess heat question, which is remarkable considering the massive wall of rejection existing, it's unlikely that this wall didn't affect some of the reviewers. Beyond excess heat, there is the question of how much excess heat. In Pons-Fleischmann experiments, excess heat is highly variable, from none (used to be the norm until they nailed it down better) to melting the electrode (rarely) or more. (No explosions, though, the only explosion was found to be from rapid recombination after recombiner failure. I haven't seen that report, it may be confidential with release only of the page shown. But I'll ask those who should know and who shall not be named or else the sky will fall. There is plenty of RS, though, going back to the 1990s, supporting excess heat as being a real phenomenon. Excess heat does not automatically mean "cold fusion," though put that together with helium and alpha radiation and we have walking and quacking, maybe it's a duck. --Abd (talk) 14:14, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I should qualify my statement. The 2007 DoD report might serve as a counterpoint to the 2004 DoE review. It depends on the what the report actually says and who is saying it. But I agree that it seems somewhat silly that the person mostly likely to have access to this document, Jed Rothwell, apparently doesn't exist as far as this page is concerned. Censorship is an ugly thing. Ronnotel (talk) 14:39, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Ronnotel. Actually, I asked Krivit. If Krivit comes up negative, I'll ask Rothwell. If they both come up negative, the document is probably not publicly accessible. I did find excerpts from a 1993 report to the Pentagon. As found in many sources, the excess heat findings are considered credible and worthy of further investigation. http://newenergytimes.com/v2/reports/GarwinLewisReport/garwin.shtml

http://newenergytimes.com/v2/blog/ has an illuminating discussion of the 2007 report and a screen shot of part of it. Very strange story, actually. --Abd (talk) 19:27, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Based on the available description, it doesn't sound like the report is on par with the DoE review. Still, if it became available publicly it might be interesting to cite or link in the article. Ronnotel (talk) 19:42, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree, Ronnotel. There is actually a huge body of RS on this topic, covering research not mentioned yet here, the history and sociology of the affair, etc. It is likely much more than one article can bear, we will need to break this down, and it's a huge task, one reason I've been doing so much discussion and so little article editing. I'm not going to make major changes just to see them reverted, until the time is ripe, i.e., there is sufficient consensus for it. The DOE review(s) are definitely of greater weight, but the last DOE review was five years ago, the memo is from two years ago. The article has emphasized a comment in the 2004 review that the conclusions were much the same as in 1989, but what has been largely hidden is that, in spite of the problems with these reviews, they did not treat the field as a pseudoscience or fringe science, but rather as emerging science, still quite controversial, but worthy of investigation. Here, the recommendations for further research were treated by some editors, explicitly, as "boilerplate, they always say that." No, they don't, and there was no basis in RS -- at all -- for such a claim negating the plain words of the reports, and contradicting the individual reports. Cold fusion wasn't, in the view of these reports, a proven hypothesis to explain the experimental results, nor was it proven to be spurious or false. And I'd have to agree with that, certainly as to the 1989 report. By 2004, it's more debatable; when I mention that I think the 2004 report was still reasonable, I get off-wiki flak from Rothwell et al. He may be right. The truth is that "it's debatable."

Want to talk about "fringe," how about biological transmutation? Reported in RS (Storms, 2007). Plausible experiments which, if accurately reported, are next to conclusive. Replicated. And easily and immediately identified as quite "fringe." Yet sufficiently notable to warrant mention somewhere in the project. I have a special affinity for the report given prominence in Storms because the method of identification of the rare Fe-57 isotope reportedly produced, by bacteria which needed iron, was Mossbauer spectroscopy, which method I did in physics lab at CalTech, it's insanely specific and accurate. Most editors wouldn't see that immediately. --Abd (talk) 17:21, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Something I posted a while back and appears to have become archived, but may be relevant in terms of the "60 Minutes" report: http://www.analogsf.com/0904/altview.shtml There is a Choice Quote in the article: "I think we’ve reached a point where the deniers are now going out on a limb." V (talk) 15:53, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Removal of comments from this page

Verbal has been repetitively removing comment from this page, on the argument that it was from the allegedly banned JedRothwell. Whether or not Rothwell is actually banned is moot, because it's clear that there is an argument that he is, though that has not yet debated and decided by a neutral administrator. Any editor may revert edits from a banned editor, on sight. However, it's well established that an editor may revert these edits back in if the editor considers them a contribution to the project; this can even be done with article edits from banned editors. In a recent case of a topic ban, I consulted with an arbitrator on this issue, noting that a banned editor could make an edit and self-revert, and that any other editor could then revert it back in, and the original edit, self-reverted, would not be a ban violation. In prior situations, I have reverted in edits from banned editors, been taken to AN/I over it, and was sustained, so I'm quite clear on policy and practice on this. The original removal(s) were legitimate; however, reverting me and Coppertwig in our decisions that the comments were relevant, or, in the latest extremity, reverting a reference to the move of the comments to my Talk page, as suggested by Verbal, is not legitimate and violates Talk page guidelines. Comment from other editors is invited; because Verbal's latest two edits have clearly crossed into edit warring, I have warned Verbal, and, since this editor continued removal in spite of warning, I have asked the editor to suggest a mediator. I greatly prefer this to going to AN/I, which I consider a move of last resort. I must attend to other business, I will return with diffs and references to policy later today. --Abd (talk) 13:46, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Please don't do it here, another violation of WP:TALK. Take it to your talk page, I'll see it, as will others here. Verbal chat 14:42, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Do what? What part of WP:TALK is violated by notice here of a problem in discussion on this page, and inviting comment regarding the usefulness of the removed discussion? No, my Talk page -- or Verbal's -- are places where personal disputes may be resolved. This section does not raise a personal dispute, begins with facts and review of community practice, and what is relevant here is the usefulness of the removed discussion, the rest is context, and I don't believe the facts stated are controversial. Diffs will be supplied for the convenience of editors reviewing this. --Abd (talk) 15:46, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

To be clear, I could, of course, go to AN/I at this point; however, if there is no sentiment here for the retention of the material on this page, or for, as was most recently removed, notice of and links to the discussion as moved to my Talk page, I wouldn't bother. I move slowly and carefully, until the time is ripe.--Abd (talk) 15:49, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Jed is still up to the same behaviour that got him banned from this page (WP:OR, WP:UNDUE exaggeration of the importance anything positive regarding cold fusion, denial and smear of anything negative about it, applying WP:RS only to the sources he likes, etc), so I see no reason not to keep applying the ban. It's blindly obvious that he doesn't believe that he did anything wrong. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:48, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Other editors enabling his problematic behaviour is also causing further disruption. This banned editor seems to be the Dana Ullman of Cold Fusion, and long as his ban stands his posts will be removed. This is not the place or the way to get Jed unbanned or to try to work around his ban. Verbal chat 15:57, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

There is no position asserted here that the comments cannot be removed. The issue is the removal of re-additions by other editors, taking responsibility for them, and precedent is clear on that. I reverted in an edit by ScienceApologist here, to the article, after he'd been topic banned. I've reverted in other contributions from banned editors, it has been appealed to a noticeboard, and was always confirmed as legitimate. You are out on a limb, Verbal. Enric, you can "keep applying the ban" as long as you like, unless he's unbanned and that's clear. But don't revert insertions of comments from other editors, who take responsibility for them. Verbal keeps misstating the issue, repeating "proxying" over and over. Jed only adds discussion, as a COI editor, and he's expected to be biased, there is a total misunderstanding here of WP:COI. The only problem with Jed was occasional incivility, and if I'd been treated as he was treated -- it's likely to come out in the current RfAr wherein he is mentioned -- I might be uncivil too. --Abd (talk) 19:33, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Don't worry too much about Jed and his buddies, see http://en.alternapedia.org Kirk Shanahan —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.33.240.30 (talk) 19:33, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I think it's very important for people to remain courteous and assume good faith, or else you might get banned from wikipedia like this editor: [10] Olorinish (talk) 00:35, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

The "taking responsability" part of the policy was for content in the articles, not for comments on talk pages. This is just enabling Jed to keep using this page as his soapbox for his personal opinions (I already described in my post above the problems that got him banned). --Enric Naval (talk) 15:03, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

That's correct (about the policy). However, article content is stricter than Talk. This whole affair, in which this matter of the ban of Rothwell is just one incident, is now before the Arbitration Committee, and looks like the RfAr will be accepted, and that the Committee may examine the behavior of all parties, which includes Enric Naval and Verbal, since they have commented before the RfAr, see the acceptance vote of FloNight. Looking at the ten acceptance votes so far, I get warm fuzzy feelings, every one of them is spot on. We'll see. Pursuing a dispute with an entrenched administrator can be hazardous to one's wikihealth, but I've been pretty careful. We'll get to see just how many mistakes I made, I'm sure that every one will be dredged up, these things can be quite thorough. --Abd (talk) 16:56, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

60 Minutes piece broadcasted on April 19, 2009

Now that the 60 Minutes piece on cold fusion has been broadcast, Energetics Technologies' technique seems to bear on the "x" discussed in Dr. David Goodstein's article. Is this enough to merit an inclusion in the "Further Developments" section?

Krellkraver (talk) 11:25, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

An Overlooked Book?

Here's a book on the subject that seems relevant. Both sides of the issue are included, and the preface indicates quite a large number of papers were researched in writing it. I specify "overlooked" in the section header here only because I don't recall seeing it mentioned here before, and yet the book is in its second edition:

http://newenergytimes.com/v2/books/excessheat/ExcessHeat.shtml
V (talk) 19:09, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Beaudette's book does not deal with the CCS. I was in contact with him right at the time he was proofing his 2nd edition. He challenged me to explain several papers that he though proved excess heat, so I did, and I never heard from him again. Cold fusioneers are good at bringing up explanations for objections that they have actually answered. It's the ones they can't answer they never talk about (see Storms 2007 book for a prime example). Unfortunately, those are the ones that strongly suggest CF isn't nuclear. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:18, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Beaudette was listed in the bibliography for quite some time, but then someone decided it was self-published, I think, and it was taken out. However, it's cited all over the place, we should probably put it back. Kirk, if you never heard from him again, why, that must prove you were right, eh? How about McKubre? Further, it's difficult to use CCS to explain away results like this, reported in Undead Science, Simon, 2002, p. 144:

"Melvin Miles at the China Lake Naval Weapons Research Center in California performed some of the most highly regarded helium experiments during the 1990s. Miles collected the gases that bubble off during electrolysis experiments, generating excess heat, and sent them to other laboratories for blind analysis using mass spectroscopy. In one set of experiments, six out of six cells producing excess heat also produced anomalous helium-4, while eight out of eight cells that did not produce heat also did not produce helium-4. In addition to this, Miles reported that the amount of helium could be correlated to the excess heat measurements such that the reaction D + D -> 4He + heat might be the prevailing reaction."

If I'm correct, Kirk, your CCS theory or analysis provides a possible explanation for excess heat in some measurements, but wouldn't it also predict loss of heat in some? Why would it favor error in one direction over the other? And then, how would this calibration constant shift manage to produce the correlation with helium? Miles' results actually answer two objections: possible calorimetry problems, and possible confusion of helium from natural occurrence with that from whatever is producing the impression, at least, of excess heat, plus the correspondence between heat and helium is supportive of fusion as the "result," not necessarily the specific reaction path. I.e., the workers who have confirmed Arata's excess heat from direct gas-loading of deuterium into palladium black or nanoparticle palladium alloy are hypothesizing that four deuterons are fused to one Be-8 nucleus, which then fissions into two energetic helium nuclei. This would, of course, explain where the missing momentum would go, and why there is no radiation (other than the alpha radiation detected by the SPAWAR group and others over many years) which is rapidly absorbed with the kinetic energy converted to heat and leaving the helium). it's an intriguing hypothesis.

Anyway, I've asked on your Talk page my first question. By the way, folks, Simon, quoted above, is a reliable secondary source, usable in the article. There are other results that are similar, from Miles, and from others. Storms (2007) discusses this work, pp 86-87) and gives more information than Simon:

"First, 12 studies produced no extra energy and produced no extra helium. Second, out of 21 studies producing extra energy, 18 produced extra helium with an amount consistent with the amount of extra energy. The exceptions were one sample having a possible error in heat measurement and two studies using a Pd-Ce alloy. Miles calculates the chance occurrence of this result as being 1 in 750,000."

And then there is McKubre, as reported by Storms (p. 89), with a nice chart showing a direct ration of estimated energy in kJ (from calorimetry) to measured helium; this set of experiments used palladium deposited on carbon, exposed to deuterium gas. "The helium content of the cell increased over a period of 45 days and exceeded the concentration in air after 15 days." From "a single very careful measurement made at SRI," "reported by Peter Hagelstein and co-workers," Storms reports the determination of energy generated: 24.8 +/- 2.5 MeV/He, which is consistent with d-d fusion being the source of the energy and the helium. (This is the Arata process, this work was replicating Arata's results.)

Storms goes on to note, after citing many other studies:

Once again we are faced with good work being done by independent laboratories producing an "impossible" result. To reject this work, we have to assume that errors in helium measurement and errors in heat measurement both conspire to produce a similar ratio regardless how or by whom the measurement is made. In addition, we need to assume these errors only operate when anomalous heat is actually detected. If the data are accepted, we also need to accept that somehow helium and energy are apparently being creaetd at the same time without generating gamma emission. Or this information can simply be ignored, as it was by many members of the DoE panel convened in 2004 to evaluate cold fusion.

I see that what we have in the article is pretty wimpy compared to what I've reported here from RS. Anyway, I'll appreciate your comments, Kirk. --Abd (talk) 04:27, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

New paper out

The infamous Jed R. has posted a new paper to his banned website by D. Kidwell, a presenter from ICCF14 (lenr-canr.org/acrobat/KidwellDtraceanaly.pdf). This is the same Kidwell that was denigrated in New Energy Times, Issue 30 (newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2008/NET30-jgk39gh12f.shtml), Item 12 under subheading “Two Oddities” (just search on Kidwell) . This paper is an excellent example in several aspects of what a good cold fusion paper should contain, and is highly recommended reading. When you read it, be careful to note:

a) the description of instrumentation, reagents, and methods used b) the comments on MS interferences, both from what he calls ‘adducts’ (which are the equivalent in ICP-MS to molecular ions in SIMS, see footnote 5) and from overloading of the instrument (aka ‘memory effects’) c) the comments on limits of detection of trace contaminants in the bulk Pd material (comments also made by Scott Little and brought up by myself on these Talk pages (and rejected as non-RS) – this paper shows that this knowledge is ‘standard knowledge’ in analytical chemistry) d) the fact that this paper does not make any CF claims, it’s strictly a study of ICP-MS applied to trace level analysis of Pd e) the fact that this is all about _trace_ level contaminants (standard analytical chemistry knowledge says that trace level work is significantly harder than non-trace work, thus necessitating better methods and proving the problems noted above are not detracting from the results, which no CF paper has done to date).

Undoubtedly the CF proponents who dominate this forum will cite ‘non-RS’ again, but in the opinion of this professional scientist familiar with both the cold fusion field and analytical technology, this is a must read. But I have no intention of debating that here. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:33, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice, Kirk. The problem is going to be that conference papers aren't peer-reviewed. My opinion is that we can and should cite them for discussion purposes, but they aren't reliable source in themselves, and, you surely realize, this applies to the many hundreds or thousands of conference papers that are "pro-cold fusion," as well as the handful that aren't. By the way, this paper appears to assume that the FPE (Fleischmann-Pons effect) is real. What, exactly, is your point? However, I haven't reviewed the paper in detail, and the application of it to our topic here would probably require WP:SYNTH, something I consider fine on a talk page, but not in the article.

By the way, the New Energy Times article on ICCF14 is fascinating. Quite simply, investigative reporting on this level involving cold fusion or condensed matter nuclear science doesn't exist anywhere else. If one is interested in what is actually going on in this field, reading NET is a must. Because NET mixes reporting of fact, interviews, etc., with editorial comment, its use as reliable source is subject to great caution, at least, but for background, it is utterly invaluable. --Abd (talk) 17:52, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Dude, _I_ assume the Fleischmann-Pons-Hawkins Effect is real. I assume there are 'new' elements detected. I assume there are pits in the CR-39. I just don't require a nuclear process to get them. Kirk shanahan (talk) 19:09, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Real dumb experimenters, electrochemists who don't understand calibration constant shift? Mouse turds in the cells? Mouse bites on the CR-39? Come on, Kirk, don't leave us hanging! The Fleischmann-Pons effect isn't merely an appearance of heat caused by calibration constant shift, because it's known to exceed possible errors from that, and it's been shown with many different calorimetric procedures, plus it's hard to melt palladium with calibration constant shift or to boil away one bucket of water after another in a heat-after-death experience reported by Mizuno, and many other similar reports. There has been one peer-reviewed critique of the CR-39 results, by Kowalski, and I doubt Kowalski himself believes it any more. It was demolished in a reply in the same publication. And then the very distinctive patterns from energetic neutrons? Are you saying that you don't need a nuclear process to get energetic neutrons, missing from controls? There comes a point where excessive skepticism begins to violate Occam's Razor. I hasten to add that healthy skepticism is essential; Mizuno apparently said goodbye to the field at ICF14 because he felt there wasn't enough of it. But healthy skepticism doesn't reserve skepticism for the work of others, it includes itself in its purview; a very good example is Nate Hoffman (1994). --Abd (talk) 01:49, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Against my better judgement... "isn't merely an appearance of heat caused by calibration constant shift" - Actually, yes, it is. If you had actually read my 1st paper or the manuscript version of it on lenr-carn.org, you would have understood that, if you can handle algebra. "because it's known to exceed possible errors from that" - No, that's the point of my publications, a 1-3% error can explain the data in the Storms case, no info is provided by anyone else to be able to actually assess it, but the Szpak, et al publication I analyzed and published a comment on fits the pattern, as does most all of the other claims to have observed excess heat. "and it's been shown with many different calorimetric procedures" - no, it hasn't. Oh wait - inretrospect I'm not sure what the 'it' you refer to is, I thought it meant the 'falsity' of the CCS. Please clarify. "plus it's hard to melt palladium with calibration constant shift" - didn't ever claim that, I believe I actually did mention once that an explosion can produce that kind of appearance, but that was probably on sci.physics.fusion, which I'm sure you don't read either. "or to boil away one bucket of water after another in a heat-after-death experience reported by Mizuno" - you need to stop shilling for Rothwell, or I may have to bring up the rat pool party again (and the more rational evaporation explanation that Jed couldn't understand). "one peer-reviewed critique of the CR-39 results" - yes, I haven't published any comments on the CR-39 yet, but I did post two conventional mechanisms to develop pits back in 2002, which have never been addressed to date (there was one handwaving mention of one possibility, but I don't think it was in reference to what I posted in 2002, and we don't do science by handwaving). "the very distinctive patterns from energetic neutrons?" - to what are you referring? Surely not the 'triplet' garbage. 10 examples or less in a plate with possibly 100's of thousands of pits, and you expect me to believe the 'triplets' are not coincidental? Real n-ray thinking there Abd. Interesting to hear about Mizuno, seems he has a modicum of common sense left. "There comes a point where excessive skepticism..." - Yup, you've been talking to Rothwell far too much. It really astounds me that a person who claims to be capable of editing a technical article on Wikipedia has so little judgement. But, as I've said before, I can't fight a screwed up system like Wikipedia. Bye. Kirk shanahan (talk) 03:02, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

So many points, so little time. I didn't get anything on Mizuno from Rothwell except that Rothwell translated the book, so the references to Rothwell and his alleged lack of understanding are completely moot. You seem to have completely missed the point about those "10 examples," which is comparison with controls over many experiments, and that the 10 examples are obviously outside the heavily pitted areas, or on the back side of the CR-39, away from the cathode. They are missing from controls. And that's 10 examples in one run, not 10 examples overall. My guess is that if other experimenters re-examine their CR-39 samples, they'll find those neutron tracks. Conventional explanations of the pits? Remember: controls, and for *all* the radiation (i.e., the copious pits), CR-39 protected with thin mylar, CR-39 outside the cell, CR-39 suspended above the electrodes in the effluent gases (Oriani), please, be my guest, even if you haven't published, clue us in. I'm all ears. Yes, I expect you to believe that the triplets aren't coincidental. If it were one run, fine, some cosmic ray burst came down and smashed some poor heavy nuclei to pieces. Anyway, go ahead, there isn't any serious published criticism, and we need some. Give it your best shot. That's what experts are for, advice, to clue us in. Though, of course, not to control the article, that's for a different project. --Abd (talk) 03:55, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

See my general response below. Your fixation on 'nuclear' will most likely make it impossible for you to answer my challenge. This bias you have makes your comments here pure POV. Neutrality is supposed to be the rule. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:25, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Abd, I have to disagree. Stuff being reported in this source is not notable. Wikipedia should report on Cold Fusion whatever information is deemed noteworthy enough to be published in reliable sources. We are not here to cover obscure details that are essentially original research. Jehochman ^Talk 02:27, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Jehochman, thanks, but I think you have missed a few things. I didn't start this section, it was started by Kirk Shanahan, who is a published author in the field, one of the few skeptics in recent years to have that honor, and we are blessed with his participation, serious and knowledgeable critics of cold fusion are getting hard to come by. I stated that we couldn't use the source for the article, but that it might be interesting for background discussion. In other words, as to the article, I agreed with the position you are claiming is in opposition to mine. The usage of the paper cannot be ruled out completely, but, in any case, nothing can be used at Cold fusion without a key ingredient: consensus. There has been long-term exclusion here of reliable source (not the paper in question here) based on some very shaky claims about priority of sources and synthesis of contradiction, but that is going to take quite a bit of time to address; meanwhile the field is shifting rapidly with recent events. However, as to New Energy Times, it could be considered a blog or private news report by an expert, a professional journalist, paid to do the work, and there is plenty of RS calling him just that, recently. (The discussion on RSN is way out-of-date.) The news report on ICCF14 is coverage that simply doesn't exist anywhere else in depth, detail, and actual reliability; unfortunately, it's mixed with editorial comment. Notability decisions are tricky, and there are no hard-and-fast rules beyond, in the end, that they are decided by consensus. To find consensus in situations of high controversy is known, off-wiki, to require extensive discussion, sometimes requiring obsessive detail, and too often we substitute "rough consensus" for deeper consensus, and the result is long-term dispute that never reaches resolution, blocked and banned editors but constant newcomers raising the same points, and ArbComm cases. But, hey, thanks for showing up! Stick around if you like, help keep us honest.--Abd (talk) 02:56, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

You guys are crazy. Reread what I wrote. I already said none of you would accept the paper as 'RS' because it doesn't fit Wiki's screwed up rules. So why are you arguing about whether it is RS and who said it is (it isn't and no one has!)? Abd, for the record, you do NOT have my consensus, and you will never get it until you can correctly repeat back my points and explain why they are important, possibly even crucial. Your contributions to this page have dumbed it down to a typical 5th grader level, and are highly biased towards the 'pro-CF' side. Revert to Sept. 17 2008 and start over, and maybe we'll see about getting my consensus. Kirk shanahan (talk) 03:12, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Kirk, I have made very few edits to the article. I know quite well I don't have "your consensus," it takes time to get that, and it also takes civility. Wikipedia's "screwed up rules" actually are quite sophisticated, but you have to understand the context and the purpose of the project, something which evades your understanding. I know what you wrote. I don't know if you noticed that I was the one who put your papers on calibration constant shift back in the references when you complained that they had been removed. Was that part of how I damaged the article and dumbed it down? Or is it just osmosis from my ignorance in Talk here? You want consensus? Start with one point, make it as narrow as possible. It works if pursued with good faith, try it. We might need to move the discussion off this page, however, and maybe bring only a result with a reference to the full discussion. --Abd (talk) 03:42, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

You first. Answer my challenge above and perhaps I'll answer yours.

For those who don't know what's going on with my references to Abd shilling for Rothwell, a) what he says has already been said by Rothwell years ago on spf and answered by me there, and b) see http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l%40eskimo.com/msg31406.html Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:21, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Rothwell is also an expert on the topic, possibly more widely informed on it than anyone else on the planet, except maybe Krivit. If my independent conclusions or opinions resemble his, sometimes, I'm gratified. My opinions here are not based on assuming that Rothwell is an authority or that Shanahan is not, but on the direct evidence I've examined, and the opinions of other reviewers. As to challenge above, I'll review it, but what is above seems to be a shotgun, not a single issue to be examined. If Shanahan doesn't lead the way, I will. He's listed critical points on his Talk page, some time ago, so I may start there, or I can extract a few points from his comments above. I'll link here to any discussion started there. --Abd (talk) 16:13, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I reviewed Shanahan's comments above, and while they contained questions, I found it very difficult to extract a clear point to discuss. So I'll ask again, "What challenge?" Shanahan, Please be specific and don't mix it with irrelevancies like Rothwell or "screwed up rules" that don't necessarily apply here in Talk, and especially in User Talk. You are an expert, pretend I'm your client. You've "challenged" me, you claim. Please explain what it is, without the noise. Let your challenge, if it is one point, be the one point you raise. You can raise it on my Talk; I don't necessarily watch yours so I might miss it, or not. --Abd (talk) 17:01, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I have, however, initiated discussion on User talk:Kirk shanahan. --Abd (talk) 01:42, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Some more relevant info?

I'm well aware that a lot of web sites are presenting lots of the same information, because of the hype over the 20th anniversary of the P&F announcement. Nevertheless, some of them seem to come up with odd tidbits that others miss. So, here's a couple of things I found:

http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=after-20-years-new-life-for-cold-fu-2009-03-23

Search that page for the comment by lewisglarsen

Next: http://www.groundreport.com/Arts_and_Culture/The-ghost-of-free-energy

That page has some stuff in it about CR-39 which seems to be independent of the SPAWAR data. And there is a remark made, about publishing new data, that we already all know about here: "They say it is a Catch-22 situation whereby the tide of scepticism deters journals from publishing, which in turn prevents scepticism from ever receding." V (talk) 15:33, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

mmm.... Groundreport.com looks like a blog, but this is on the About page: Every day Ground Report’s network of over 4,000 international contributors publish breaking news articles, videos and photos, which are vetted by trusted corps of trained editors. That might qualify as reliable source, or at least somewhat reliable source. The facts in the article are pretty well established, I could probably find independent source for most of them, but the author puts them together in a clear way. Let's see what comments we get. There is lots of regret expressed out there in reliable source for the situation, the effective blacklisting of papers on "cold fusion," and how this inhibited true closure (both ways!). So we have all this great reliable source showing lots of phenomena that point to low energy nuclear reactions, we have secondary sources reporting this, we have very little recent reliable source on the same level that is truly negative, but we also have media reliable source and "scientist" opinions that cold fusion isn't worth the time of day, that "it" was never replicated, etc. So how to balance this? I think I know, but it's going to be a lot of work. One step at a time.

I want to note something: "it" was the Pons-Fleischmann report. It was wrong. It reported two basic things (of the top of my head): excess heat and radiation. The radiation was a mistake, everyone working now in cold fusion would say: there wasn't any significant radiation and we wouldn't expect what he found to be real. It was either a complete mistake or it was definitely not radiation at an important level. So, yes, you can say that "it" wasn't replicated. However, half of it, the important half, the excess heat, was, in fact, replicated, I have a list of over 150 peer-reviewed papers saying just that. We can find skeptical sources saying things like, back in the early 1990s, "they claim there are N papers, but I've looked at the papers, and only 10 of them are good studies, and there are more negative studies than that." Notice that the statement accepts that there are confirmations of excess heat, and good studies to boot. There is a very simple hypothesis that accounts for the excess of negative studies in the early days: nobody, including the cold fusion researchers and Pons and Fleischmann knew how to make the damn thing reliable. But that has changed. The shift began to occur in the 1990s, and the 2007 Chinese paper, from Frontiers of Physics in China, I cited above (now in archive, I think) reported that studies "in the last year" were 100% "successful," showing the phenomena every time. I haven't asserted these sources with article edits yet, because I was very new to the topic and wanted to assess the editorial environment; that phase is, I suspect, over for me. --Abd (talk) 20:09, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

CR-39 is mentioned in Hoffman, A Dialogue on Chemically Induced Nuclear Effects (1994), a quite reliable independent secondary source, pp. 57-58:

there is an interesting example of an artifact negating a possible positive result. The mainland Chinese have a team investigating anomalous nuclear effects in deuterium/solid systems that have come up with interesting evidence for charged particles involving charged-particle burst tracks on the plastic film CR-39 with Dd/D systems but not with Pd/H systems. When P.B. Price et al. did the experiment, they found a pair of tracks, but no burst mode. The discrepancy was found to be a chloride film from an aqua regia rinse. This cleaning step formed a few hundred angstrom thick barrier over the palladium that prevented the creation or permanent recording of charged-particle bursts from the palladium surface. The linking of the disappearance of particle burst tracks with the chlorine barrier layer was confirmed by augur analysis of the surface and replication of the effect with chlorine gas exposure rather than an aqua regia rinse.

The Chinese work was published as an AIP paper in 1990, see the expanded comment below. It's possible that Price refers to it in his 1989 paper, in which case it was even earlier. Because of the review by Hoffman, this is usable stuff. There is an extensive history for the use of CR-39 to show radiation in cold fusion experiments. This affair also shows how negative results were -- prematurely -- worked up to show rejection, when, in fact, negative results were simply negative results, which may have other explanations besides the non-existence of the phenomenon. It cuts both ways, and that's why it was so damaging that the normal scientific process was shut down by 1990. --Abd (talk) 20:37, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

search for early Chinese work

Unfortunately, Hoffman doesn't reference sources for this beyond the name of Price in the text. I found this: http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/LiXZtheprecurs.pdf Response by Xingzhong Li, et al, to the Price finding, 1990 AIP paper. Cites Price as: P. B. Price, et al., Phys. Rev. Letts. 263, 1926 (1989). Remarkable comment in: http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Srinivasannuclearfus.pdf Srinivasan, M., Nuclear fusion in an atomic lattice: An update on the international status of cold fusion research. Curr. Sci., 1991. 60: p. 417. One of the unique features of cold-fusion experiments, and possibly the main reason for this phenomenon to be looked upon with considerable degree of skepticism119 by the scientific community in general, is the poor reproducibility of the experimental results. During the crucial months immediately following the first announcement by Fleischmann and Pons there was a scramble the world over to replicate the apparently simple ‘battery and bottle’ electrolysis experiment. After months of patient experimentation, however, many experienced research groups failed to obtain any positive evidence for the claimed phenomena. They neither found excess heat nor neutrons, tritium or gamma rays[120-134]. Some experiments that were tailored to look for charged particles also failed to give any positive results[123,134]. By December 1989 there were perhaps more experimental papers with ‘negative results’ published on the topic of cold fusion than those with ‘positive results’. However, as of the present writing, the situation has been fully reversed, following the appearance of a large number of papers with positive results during 1990, as described already. The persistent efforts of many dedicated experimentalists appear to have turned the trend and the reproducibility has begun to improve significantly, as may be seen for example from the title of one of the recent papers[135] from Los Alamos, namely ‘Reproducible neutron emission measurements from Ti metal in pressurised D2 gas’. Price is cited for the bold text as note 123: Price, P. B. et al, Phys. Rev. Lett., 1989, 30. I finally found the original Price article: [11] Abstract: Searching for evidence of ‘‘cold’’ nuclear fusion in deuterium-loaded Ti and Pd foils with plastic track detectors, we detected the emission of α particles from trace-heavy-element decay, but found no evidence of dd fusion. Cycling TiD2 and PdD>0.4, in high-pressure D2 cells between 1 and 15 bars and 77 and 300 K, gave an upper bound of 0.7 cm-3 s-1 for the mean rate of dd→3He+n fusion. For electrolytically deuterated PdD0.8 our upper bound is 0.0018 cm-3 s-1 for the mean rate of dd→p+t. This is ∼1.5×106 and 180 times lower than ‘‘cold’’-fusion rates reported by Fleischmann, Pons, and Hawkins and Jones et al., respectively. There is much to consider here for the article.--Abd (talk) 20:29, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Reports of nuclear products in association with excess heat

Cold_fusion#Reports_of_nuclear_products_in_association_with_excess_heat has some problems. I tried to fix them, I was reverted. So, here we go.

The section heading refers to "association." These are not merely findings of nuclear products, they are nuclear products associated with excess heat. 100% association would mean that whenever there is excess heat, there is a finding of a nuclear product, and vice-versa, no excess heat, no nuclear product. The section gives the general reader little clue that this is the meaning, and treats the finding of helium, for example, as if it were simply an absolute measurement of helium, which, of course, then suffers from the problem of background helium. Current text:

In association with excess heat, researchers have reported observing gamma rays, neutrons, and tritium (3H) production.[76],[77] Although these reports do not measure quantities commensurate with a rate of deuterium fusion that would account for the excess heat, the quantities were reported to be in excess of background levels.

This first sentence is correct. What the article doesn't make clear is that consensus in the field is that excess heat is accompanied by helium generation, at levels commensurate with d-d fusion to form helium, with release of the known energy from that reaction accounting for the excess heat; it's not being released as gamma rays. The actual reaction may not be directly d-d fusion; for example, a paper I was just reading hypothesizes 4-d fusion to for Be-8, which then fissions to two energetic He-4 nuclei. These, then will occasionally generate other forms of radiation; hence the low-level findings of neutrons, X-rays, gamma radiation, etc. The low levels of these other products, then, are a characteristic of whatever process is taking place; they are not totally absent, but the levels may vary not only with excess heat but with other factors as well. Current text:

Considerable attention has been given to measuring 4He production.[78] In the report presented to the DOE in 2004, 4He was detected in five out of sixteen cases where electrolytic cells were producing excess heat,[79] although the amounts detected were very close to background levels and contamination by trace amounts of helium normally present in the air is difficult to avoid.[80] Gamma radiation was not detected, which led most of the scientific community to regard the presence of 4He as the result of experimental error.[80]

Again, yes, the first sentence is true, though what the source says is stronger: "Although there appears to be evidence that supports the existence of both elemental and isotopic anomalies near the cathode surface in some experiments, it is generally accepted that these anomalies are not the ash associated with the primary excess heat effect. The primary focus of attention has been on helium as the primary nuclear reaction product.[53]"

But the second sentence isn't supported by that source, as far as I could find. I changed the text to:

In the report presented to the DOE in 2004, an initial series of experiments, later replicated several times, was described where ⁴He was detected in eight electrolysis gas samples collected during period of excess heat production (as determined by calorimetry), whereas six control samples gave no evidence for ⁴He

This is what's in the source (Hagelstein, et al, New Physical Effects in Metal Deuterides,[12] presented to the DoE in 2004:

3.1. Correlation of Excess Heat and Helium

The first and historically most important experiments were performed by Miles et al., to correlate the helium content of gas produced by electrolysis (D2 or H2, and O2) with the average heat excess during the interval of sampling. Because of the very low 4He concentration expected and observed (1-10 ppb) extensive precautions were taken to ensure that samples were not substantially contaminated from the large ambient background (5.22 ppm). In an initial series of experiments, later replicated several times,[55],[69] eight electrolysis gas samples collected during episodes of excess heat production in two identical cells showed the presence of 4He whereas six control samples gave no evidence for 4He.

My edit was reverted by Enric Naval with a summary that indicated the text was supported by the Scientific American source.[13] However the text itself attributes the report to the Hagelstein paper, not to Schaffer in the Scientific American article, and what is in the Hagelstein paper is a far stronger report than the weak finding (weak in appearance as explained) that is described in the text. No "correlation" or "association" is described. Basically, the whole point is missed.

The Scientific American source has Some experiments eventually did report helium 4 production, although great care must be used to avoid contamination by trace amounts of helium normally present in the air. That's true, but isn't necessarily relevant to the Miles findings. What's happened is that editors have mashed together material from two sources. The real key here in the Hagelstein claim is the correlation, and it goes much further than simple "presence of/no evidence for," the amounts of helium found were commensurate with the estimated excess heat, such that estimates could be made for the energy involved in the formation of each helium nucleus from two deuterons, and it's the right energy. And other work, such as that of McKubre, confirms this energy value.

Our text papers the correlation over. It isn't supported by the source named. I did find, on page 19 of the Hagelstein paper, a reference to a chart showing "6 of 16 results of helium measurements in paired cells," which isn't what our article implies. Hagelstein is making a strong case for helium generation correlated with excess heat, quantitatively. --Abd (talk) 02:55, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

From DOE 2004:

“ "The detected ⁴He was typically very close to, but reportedly above background levels. This evidence was taken as convincing or somewhat convincing by some reviewers; for others the lack of consistency was an indication that the overall hypothesis was not justified. Contamination of apparatus or samples by air containing 4He was cited as one possible cause for false positive results in some measurements"quote in a book full text of final report of DOE 2004 ”

Additionally, Schaffer's analysis in Scientific American is a secondary source providing an analysis of a primary source, including not only the experimental data but also how much and why it has accepted by the scientific community. Schaffer should be preferred over our own analysis of the original paper. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:53, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Enric, the text attributes to Hagelstein's presentation what isn't the core of it, on the topic of helium. What they actually presented trumps the objection about background. Tell me, do you understand why? Simple question. Hint: it has to do with the title of the section, Reports of nuclear products in association with excess heat, and the text you restored doesn't! The title is not "Reports of nuclear products."

And how could the article presented in 1999 be considered a criticism of a report presented in 2004? Sure, with quite a bit more text, you could tie things together, but that's not what's there. It's actually a poor job of synthesis, and you've taken responsibility for it by reverting it back in. I'll wait a bit before reverting. --Abd (talk) 04:55, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

What Abd says is reasonable, and I support Abd's version. A 1999 paper can't be used as a secondary source to evaluate a 2004 report without a bit of OR. I also ran across the report of 8 runs with helium and excess heat and 6 runs with no helium and no excess heat: Abd is right that that correlation tells you something, regardless of a priori reliability of the helium measurements. I'm not sure whether it was the same or a different study, but I also saw something about the use of measurements of another substance (was it argon?) in conjunction with the helium measurements, as a way of determining whether contamination from the air was occurring; it would be good to say something about that, I think; and given the existence of such measurements, the current wording "there is the possibility of contamination" may be too strong. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 15:44, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

|Thanks, Coppertwig. I'm going to toss in a complication here, but it is only for background and to keep us from tipping the balance too far the other way. It turns out that there is substantial controversy within the CF community over the precision of the energy estimates, and addressing it is going to be complicated. But for starters, this editorial by Steve Krivit, which seems to sum it up well. To balance Krivit's view, I'll note something: under the d-d -> He4 hypothesis, any loss of helium, by whatever mechanism, will increase the estimate of energy per helium nucleus formed. Helium in evolved gases, for example, will probably be only half the helium generated, roughly. Further, if there are any other net exothermic reactions taking place, this will also likely increase the estimate as well (and there is evidence for other reactions). What remains uncontested, though, in fact, is that estimates of net energy per helium nucleus are consistent with the known value of 23.8 MeV (which allows them to be pretty far off, given all the variables). Further, time correlation isn't contested. --Abd (talk) 17:22, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

@Copper, I was unclear, the 1999 Scientific American is of course not analyzing the data from DOE 2004, it's analizing the reports of presence of Helium that were available at 1999. DOE 2004 is also a secondary source, it's analyzing the results available at 2004, and it says things that are very similar to what the 1999 source says (that's why I could source some of the sentences from both sources). P.D.: Hum.... maybe it should be rewritten to explain first the 1999 source's conclusions and then the 2004 source's conclusions, that would solve any synthesis problem.

@Abd, the possibility of contamination is sourced from both Scientific American and DOE 2004. Do you have any reliable secondary source examining the presence of helium and its significance?

Hagelstein was, and still is, being used only to source only one sentence, a sentence that I didn't change at all, and which doesn't conflict with the other sources but those don't make statements about how important the helium presence is. Turns out that it was a review that was sent to DOE 2004 reviewers so they would examine it and make conclusions for their reports http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/DOEreportofth.pdf. It was later published as a conference proceeding in the 11th Cold Fusion Conference[14]. Now, you see, the paragraph that I quoted above is from the final report of DOE 2004, it's the conclusion of the panel after reading the evidence in Hagelstein's review. We should be use the conclusions from the final report, not our own interpretation of an intermediate review, specially if our own interpretation conflicts with that of the final report. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:03, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Reliable secondary source examining the presence of helium and its significance? Sure. Storms, 2007. It's more complete than Hagelstein, I was simply pointing out that what was in the article, what you reverted back in, wasn't what was actually reported in Hagelstein. Still isn't. However, I'll fix that, I'll put in Storms. It's a stronger claim anyway. There are two issues here: what are the researchers claiming, and what is the basis for criticism. The comments about difficulties of measuring helium don't address the correlation *at all*. Suppose the background were noisy, and the measurement so close to background -- or nonexistent -- what would be seen? Well, depending on what level is used for "background," a certain percentage of the cells would be above the control level, and the rest would be below, but this wouldn't be correlated with excess heat, at least not ordinarily. What Storms reports is, from a series of reports from Miles,

12 studies showed no excess energy, and produced no extra helium. Second, out of 21 studies producing extra energy, 18 produced extra helium with an amount consistent with the amount of excess energy. The exceptions were one sample having a possible error in heat measurement and two studies using a Pd-Ce alloy. Miles calculates the occurrence of this result as being 1 in 750,000."

But before this Storms notes:

Measurement of helium is a challenge because air contains enough helium (5.24 ppm) to make the small detected amount appear to be the result of air leak or diffusion through the walls of the apparatus. In addition, very few laboratories have access to tools needed to measure small helium concentrations with required accuracy. In spite of this limitation, on at least seven occasions at laboratories in three countries, helium has been found in amounts consistent with energy production. Of these efforts, four deserve special discussion because great care was taken and the data are presented in a form permitting evaluation.

Storms is much more specific and thorough than any of the other, earlier sources. The four laboratories would be

• Miles, summarized in "a recent review," Storms notes, and cites Miles, M., Correlation of excess enthalpy and helium-4 production: A review, in Tenth International Conference on Cold Fusion, Hagelstein, P.L., and Chubb, S.R., World Scientific Publishing Co., Cambridge, MA 2003, pp 123. http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MilesMcorrelatioa.pdf
• Bush, B.F. and Lagowski, J.J., Methods of generating excess heat with the Pons and Fleischmann effect: rigorous and cost effective calorimetry, nuclear products analysis of the cathode and helium analysis, in The Seventh International Conference on Cold Fusion, Jaeger, F. ENECO, Inc., Salt Lake City, UT, Vancouver, Canada, 1998. pp. 38. http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BushBFmethodsofg.pdf
• Gozzi, et al. a series of references are provided. From the lenr-canr.org bibliography and library:

• Gozzi, D., et al., Calorimetric and nuclear byproduct measurements in electrochemical confinement of deuterium in palladium. J. Electroanal. Chem., 1995. 380: p. 91.
• Gozzi, D., et al. Excess Heat and Nuclear Product Measurements in Cold Fusion Electrochemical Cells. in Fourth International Conference on Cold Fusion. 1993. Lahaina, Maui: Electric Power Research Institute 3412 Hillview Ave., Palo Alto, CA 94304.
• Gozzi, D., et al. Helium-4 Quantitative Measurements in the Gas Phase of Cold Fusion Electrochemical Cells. in Fourth International Conference on Cold Fusion. 1993. Lahaina, Maui: Electric Power Research Institute 3412 Hillview Ave., Palo Alto, CA 94304.
• Gozzi, D., et al., Quantitative measurements of helium-4 in the gas phase of Pd + D2O electrolysis. J. Electroanal. Chem., 1995. 380: p. 109.

• McKubre, M.C.H., et al. The Emergence of a Coherent Explanation for Anomalies Observed in D/Pd and H/Pd System: Evidence for 4He and 3He Production. in 8th International Conference on Cold Fusion. 2000. Lerici (La Spezia), Italy: Italian Physical Society, Bologna, Italy. http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHtheemergen.pdf
• and then "A single very careful measurement made at SRI is reported by Peter Hagelstein and co-workers." This cites the report to the DoE. So we have, in Storms, a secondary source review of this paper, in more detail and later than the 2004 DoE review.

One more citation. Above, I referenced an editorial in New Energy Times that might be seen as casting cold water on the 24 MeV/He4 correlation between excess heat and Helium-4 detection. In the next issue, there were responses from a series of well-known researchers in the field and some others, giving great detail and perspective on the situation[15]. Among other things, Miles points out that Preparata and Chubb had predicted He4 would be found, from theoretical considerations. Miles says that he was trying to show that Schwinger was right, Schwinger had (earlier) predicted that the reaction was D + H -> He3, but instead of He3, he found He4. To quote:

MM: When we first came out with helium-4, Preparata made a trip from Italy to our lab in China Lake. He was so excited about it because his theory previously predicted the helium-4 based on quantum electrodynamics (QED), and that's the theory that Fleischmann liked. He and Fleischmann became very close because they both agreed that was the correct foundation for a model that would explain the helium-4 production. In Chapter 8 of his book, Preparata presents his case for cold fusion and production of helium-4.

The second person that I didn't know beforehand, who contacted me and was quite excited, was Scott Chubb because he also had published a theory that predicted helium-4 in the outgas. Both he and Preparata predicted correctly that we would find helium-4 in the outgas. They were both excited that I verified that. I don't know who's right and who's wrong on theories, but I give them both credit for having a theory that predicted what we found experimentally.

This is the first time I've heard that serious theory, instead of the hunch of Fleischmann about quantum electrodynamics vs. quantum mechanics, had predicted major findings in the field. The absence of theory has long been alleged. --Abd (talk) 04:40, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

(All the research done at 2003 and before should be considered as covered already by DOE 2004).

Please remember WP:UNDUE, Storms 2007 is way less notable than the DOE report and Scientific American. I think that it's ok to add Storm's conclusions if you find them significant, but you shouldn't replace the conclusions of the other two better sources, you should give Storms them way less space and relevance than those sources, you shouldn't imply that the other two sources are somehow wrong just because Storms says that they are, and you should make clear that Storm does not reflect the mainstream thinking in the matter (just plain attribution to Storms should accomplish that). --Enric Naval (talk) 12:41, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Of course, but how do we determine due weight? It seems, Enric, that you are holding some assumptions about that. Perhaps you should review WP:UNDUE, which provides some guidance on it. On science topics, peer-reviewed publication has priority. My own view is that we don't exclude anything that is found in reliable source, though we have quite a bit of discretion as to where and how we present it, and that we make these decisions by consensus, not according to fixed rules. My original point here is that a rather arbitrary juxtaposition was made of material from quite different sources, anachronistic, with the criticism being very general and not necessarily applicable. No, we can't assume that the 2004 DoE review covered all prior research, we know exactly what they considered. What they primarily considered was the McKubre presentation, which was that of a small subset of researchers working in the field, not even necessarily representing the consensus in the field (though they are certainly strong figures in the field.) We have, now, an independent review of the field by a neutral (nay, originally quite skeptical) physicist retained by CBS News. How much weight do we give that? How do we know what "mainstream thinking" is? We know what it was, but, in fact, it was always a complicated question. Mainstream what? All scientists, including, say, biologists? All physicists? All chemists? All those familiar with current research in the specific field? It's all problematic in a field which was rejected outside of normal scientific process. The shutdown of access to major journals, which allowed poor negative research to be published, but response was suppressed, is well-known, now, we have plenty of RS on it. It's a huge story, that mostly we haven't told yet. Storms less notable than the 1999 Scientific American report? What part of the report? Some of it was favorable to cold fusion, you know! Absolutely, no repression of reliably sourced information. Balance it with other reliably sourced information. Okay?

I'm going to repeat a question, since you passed over it: Enric, I'm not confident that you understand the issue of "correlation" or "association," as distinct from simply finding helium in a cold fusion cell. Can you relieve my anxiety on that point? --Abd (talk) 19:42, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

I tried to asses the notability of Storms' book, and I could only find one book review at the Journal of Scientific Exploration [16] Looking at google scholar[17] it seems that his book hasn't been cited by anybody. So, yes, it seems to be less notable than an "ask the experts" report published by the Scientific American in the 10th anniversy of FP announcement, and it's certainly way less notable than DOE 2004 report. Again, see WP:UNDUE.

(your anxiety is noted but my knowledge about statistics is off-topic here, you are welcome to leave me a message on my talk page to discuss it) --Enric Naval (talk) 20:15, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

The reason I asked, Enric, is that you don't seem to have answered the central objection at all, about correlation or association vs raw findings, but have focused on other issues, hence I suspect you don't understand it. Anyway, don't worry. I'm just going to edit the section according to the source, or according to better sources. Storms is actually a stronger source than the McKubre report to the DOE, truth be told. Storms is important as a review of actual, named, papers that otherwise wouldn't be sufficiently notable, in particular, conference presentations by expert research groups. As to disagreements we may have, there isn't anything that can't be handled with dispute resolution process. Usually at quite a low level. --Abd (talk) 20:37, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

The SciAm report is notable and quite useful as to the state of the field in 1999! That is 10 effing years ago, Enric! What would those experts think if they saw the energetic neutrons found by SPAWAR? What would they think if they saw the Bayesian analysis presented at ICCF 14 showing that you could predict, with amazing accuracy, which experimental papers would find excess heat and which wouldn't, from characteristics of their description of the experiment, four criteria? (That's another statistical analysis that shows, quite convincingly, that the negative results were negative because they didn't reproduce the experimental conditions!)

What would they say if they visited the labs and talked with the researchers, and carefully reviewed their work, as the CBS advisor did with Energetics Technologies in Israel?

You have consistently, Enric, tried to compare an off-the-cuff comment by a physicist at Rice University, reported in the media on the basis of a single interview, with reports from investigators who spent significant effort reviewing the literature. As of 2004, it's clear, half the reviewers were convinced excess heat findings were conclusive. Where would the level of agreement be today? The evidence has not gotten weaker! Reproducibility is way up, the Chinese paper was reporting, as of 2007, over the previous year, 100% success. At what point do we notice that the balance shifted?

I'll answer that: we start to follow what is in peer-reviewed reliable source, preferentially, and we use other source as well to report on how society views it all. We start telling the full story, not one expurgated and effectively censored by editors who wikilawyer out solidly sourced material because of WP:UNDUE weight arguments. If a topic is truly fringe, then the weight of what is in reliable source will -- with appropriate caution -- reflect it. This is the problem, Enric: peer-reviewed reliable source is now, majority, on the side of cold fusion being real. That's not common when the media sources have been the other way. I've only seen a few examples in my life, say, this one and Atkins Nutritional Approach. The research has shifted, but the prior conventional wisdom is still, apparently, majority POV in popular sources. --Abd (talk) 20:37, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

Edit what you like, but if you violate WP:UNDUE then don't act surprised when you get reverted or reworded for compliance. --Enric Naval (talk) 02:30, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

OMG, you mean my edits can be reverted? Look, Enric, around here, I expect to be reverted when I don't violate WP:UNDUE. I'm going to insist, though, on accuracy of what's in the article, that it be true to source and not synthesized, and that what's in reliable source be included. One of the problems here is that some active editors seem not to understand the sources, always a problem when people without the technical background and specific interest become very active with an agenda. I've been a bit distracted, what with all this RfC and ArbComm flap, and I'm eager to start using the sources I have, which, by the way, include Taubes and Huizenga, I didn't just buy books by "true believers." Well, okay, perhaps the last two are true believers. In themselves and their firmly held opinions. Taubes I know as an excellent science writer, and Hoffman claims Taubes is quite accurate as to fact, and only off-the-wall (not his exact words!) when he's mindreading as to people's motives. I also now have good relationships with experts in the field, who know the sources, and who aren't shy about telling me when I'm full of shit, so .... let's go! --Abd (talk) 03:36, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that prolongating the discussion here right now is going to repercute into improvements in the article. I suggest that you do your edits to the article, as this gives specific examples of what you mean, and other editors can tweak them. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:05, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

POV tag placed

Cold_fusion#Reports_of_nuclear_products_in_association_with_excess_heat

The current text misrepresents the claims made before the DOE in 2004 by McKubre et al, vastly weakening them, and then juxtaposes them with general criticisms that may not apply to the experiments in question. For example, what levels are close to background? What, indeed, is "background"? Level of helium in ambient air? Average level of helium in control cells? Hint: it's the latter, and the levels in the control cells, and generally in the cells under test, is much lower than ambient. What's been done here is to mash together nonspecific criticisms with specific claims, as if those criticisms were made of the specific experiments. Essentially, criticism of any cold fusion experiment becomes, by extension and synthesis, criticism of all of them, even very careful ones and even later ones which addressed prior objections. We need to rewrite this section to reflect what the section header says. The criticism is of general findings re helium, i.e., someone runs experiment, sends off a sample, Helium is found. That's pretty shaky. The section is about "association."

The source has, not 6 out of 16 (that's in a later section not strongly about association, but, frankly, much more difficult to understand), but "12 studies produced no helium and no extra energy." Of 21 studies that produced extra energy, 18 produced helium." (That's a combination of different studies, so there are some problems, but I'm just picking this example; within a single study, there is actually more uniformity, and there is, in addition, correlation of the amount of helium with the excess heat.)

This is a far stronger claim, and "background" doesn't explain it at all. In fact, the correlated results strengthen both findings of excess heat and findings of helium, absent some independent process that would produce both or not neither. Obvious hypothesis: whatever produces the helium also produces the extra heat! Now, what would do both? We better not say the name, because we'll be called fringe. Leakage of ambient air would produce helium, but not heat. Calorimetry errors would produce an appearance of heat, but not helium. How to put them together? The probability of this being by chance aren't difficult to estimate.... hint: very low. Miles wrote one in 750,000. I haven't done the math, but we treat people with medicine, risking their lives, with far higher probability of error than that. We invest huge sums of money with far higher probability of error than that....

The big objection of nuclear physicists to cold fusion research? Where's the ash? Helium is the ash. There is then the problem of the transfer of momentum to the lattice or the rest of the cell, and that's addressed, in fact, by the more recent findings, confirming much earlier ones, of alpha radiation (which is, of course, correlated with heat and is, in fact, the same finding as helium except it's energetic helium nuclei. That's where the energy is going; the problem of momentum has more complex solutions, such as an intermediary product of Be-8 which then rapidly decays to two energetic helium nuclei. If this is what is happening, it's quite convenient: it means no harmful radiation; alpha radiation like this is non-penetrating, and helium is harmless or even useful. Other ash is found, but not in enough quantities to explain the heat, this includes the SPAWAR neutrons from the big media flap in March.

If you don't want to read this stuff, watch for edits to the article. There will be some. Reading here isn't obligatory at this stage, because any important arguments will be repeated succinctly and with reference to RS. --Abd (talk) 20:16, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

By the way, thanks, LeadSongDog, for fixing the section-POV tag. I saw that and didn't have time to deal with it. --Abd (talk) 03:36, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, you were right in that I was misrepresenting heavily the source. Indeed, I had cited the wrong source (Hagelstein's review to DOE2004, instead of DOE2004's final report). No wonder that the text didn't fit the source :P --Enric Naval (talk) 21:02, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I reworked the section to separate the 1999 source from the 2004 source, put them in chronological order, attribute who said what and when, etc. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:47, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

or muons

I propose inserting "in the absence of muons" to make Normally, in the absence of muons, very high energies are required to overcome this repulsion, since it's generally accepted that such high energies are not required during muon-catalysed fusion. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 17:51, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

I'd recommend replacing "muons" with "a catalyst such as a muon", because that way we can specify something about why muons are interesting, and leave open the possibility that a muon might not be the only catalyst. Also, "energies" should be expanded to "kinetic energies" for greater clarity. That is, a photon can have very high energy and be completely irrelevant to a fusion reaction. Meanwhile, in the electostatic-confinement fusor device, high kinetic energies of hydrogen nuclei are very specifically/precisely used, without much raising the temperature of the rest of the device. So: Normally, in the absence of a catalyst such as a muon, very high kinetic energies are required to overcome this repulsion V (talk) 20:18, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I see someone has already put this in. Thanks; however, I weakly oppose "a catalyst such as" unless a source is found that implies there might be other such catalysts; I prefer just "in the absence of muons". Or how about "in the absence of muons as catalysts", or something? ☺Coppertwig (talk) 01:26, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Relation to theory

I propose changing "in view of several theoretical reasons cold fusion should not be possible" to "in view of the lack of explanation of cold fusion using conventional physics", as I believe this is a better representation of the views generally presented in sources, for example Goodstein, who says "It proved that there are still genuine surprises waiting for us that, once understood, don't violate conventional physical laws". [18] ☺Coppertwig (talk) 17:59, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

I think the current wording is the result of an earlier discussion regarding the phrase "conventional physics". We do not necessarily need to invoke non-conventional physics to explain fusion (muon catalysis fits within conventional physics, and likely an alternate catalyst could, too). The theoretical problems of cold fusion stem directly from knowledge about previously observed fusions, and I suggest that that is the point the article should be making. So: in view of the lack of explanation of cold fusion using knowledge gathered from past observations of fusion V (talk) 20:27, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

This sentence probably refers to the first weeks after the PF announcement, see how the following sentence continues with what happened after the first weeks/months: "By late 1989 (...)".

I think that no explanation had yet been proposed at that time, neither using conventional physics nor using them, while Koonin and others had just given a talk giving reasons for why it shouldn't be possible, Goodstein says that this talk "[executed] a perfect slam-dunk that cast Cold Fusion right out of the arena of mainstream science"[19]. In the presentation by Koonin one of the points was "Cannot be accommodated by acepted theory". No opinion on how the sentence should be worded, just providing some info. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:43, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, if you want to use the exact quote, referenced, I can't especially argue against that. But it wouldn't hurt to clarify to the reader that "accepted theory" about fusion is derived from observations of known fusions, so that if cold fusion is real, certain aspects of the event must differ from what is known. In other words, just because so-far-observed hydrogen fusions have certain characteristics, CF detractors have mostly assumed that all hydrogen fusions everywhere must have those same characteristics --an assumption which must be wrong if CF is real. V (talk) 13:16, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

One of the problems with the article is that it makes no clear distinction between the rejection of 1989-1990 and what then ensued. Reviews of the field, such as Simon (Undead Science) and Goodstein make it clear that, just as the original press conference bypassed normal scientific procedures, so too did the rejection. It's obvious, especially in hindsight, that if cold fusion is real, it's an elusive effect requiring conditions which were not known by anyone in 1989, Pons and Fleischmann spent five years getting to the point where, what, 10%?, of their experiments showed excess heat. Further, P & F held on to secrets for quite some time because of patent concerns from, first, the University of Utah, and then IMRA in France. The success ration didn't get up to 30% or better until much later, with many different groups working on improving it. Now there are techniques that show anomalous heat immediately, and they've been replicated, but .... the so-called "mainstream" journals reject papers in the field without review. That's breaking down, for contrary to what's been alleged here, Naturwissenschaften is mainstream. As we saw in March, it's easy to find nuclear physicists who will cheerfully repeat what was a rapid judgment in 1989, but without seeming to be aware of the newer findings. This makes synthesizing text across the time span problematic; we should probably be careful to note when results were reported, and when criticisms were made. Often the early criticisms are repeated later, in response to more recent reports, and even though the recent reports specifically addressed the early criticisms, examples abound.

On the point of theoretical possibility, the real theoretical situation wasn't that fusion at low energies was impossible, it is that there was only one known mechanism, muon-catalyzed fusion. It doesn't violate existing physical theory if there are others, so the question is, first, are there any others? And how would we know? There are theories that have been constructed which explain the effect without "new physics," and others which do use "new physics." "New physics" would refer to new theoretical constructs, such as hydrino theory, if I've got it right, that postulate realms of behavior not otherwise observed. We can't say that these are impossible, but, sure, they are unlikely. However, P & F were looking for evidence of a situation where quantum mechanics would not be adequate to explain results, where the more complex and difficult quantum electrodynamics would be necessary. It seems they may have found one, and, through others, a whole class of phenomena; but this doesn't actually involve new physics, necessarily, just a more sophisticated and complete analysis of existing physics. --Abd (talk) 20:31, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Removal of New Energy Times from the blacklist

This publication was once listed as an external link, as was lenr-canr.org and Dieter Britz's bibliography.

I just looked at the 2004 Featured Article version of this article, and, while it had problems, it had much better external links. I also see, in the Bibliography, books about the topic that were later removed. The FA version also had a link to lenr-canr.org for conference papers, all things that I'd expect to see in a good article on this topic.

In any case, http://newenergytimes.com is now usable, courtesy of a neutral administrator requested by me at AN. For reference, the AN discussion, and the blacklist discussion.

It takes time to do this stuff, next will be lenr-canr.org, the blacklisting of which was no more proper than that of newenergytimes.com. If any editor wants to be notified of a request for lenr-canr.org whitelisting here (it's meta blacklisted, so it's not as simple to fix, at all, but a local whitelisting would make the meta listing moot for us), please indicate here and I or anyone else aware can notify you. --Abd (talk) 05:10, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

It still has to meet WP:RS, and I wouldn't expect to see any lenr-canr.org links in a good article. Abd's "neutral" closing admin had a long running dispute with JzG and was censured for it (Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/C68-FM-SV#Viridae). NET also seems to fail WP:RS, so any use would be exceptional and have to be very well justified. Verbal chat 08:20, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Verbal, your POV is showing. I didn't choose the closing admin, there was a neutral notice at WP:AN, and JzG, while he made a comment in the discussion, wasn't involved any longer. It was not his action being reversed, effectively, but Beetstra's, and he had already recused himself. So, let's find out what the actual consensus is, if someone else doesn't beat me to it, instead of blabbering more. I'll be adding an external link, and we'll see what happens. Note that we already have an external link to lenr-canr.org in Martin Fleischmann, and that was heavily reviewed. We should have many more here, as convenience links, if nothing else. Same with NET. Abd (talk) 14:40, 26 April 2009

Could you propose the link here as NET isn't a WP:RS. Also, I didn't say you chose the admin, but it did happen to be one who should have recursed. From your criticisms of JzG I'm surprised you don't agree. Also, things like "Your POV is showing" are inherently uncivil, please strike it. Verbal chat 14:51, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

RS not necessary for external links. People are already complaining about how much I Talk. Cutting to the chase, --Abd (talk) 17:29, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

External links should be reliable, and add to the article. They should meet the criteria in WP:EL. Why do you think NET meets the criteria, including reliability, and what do you think it would add to the article? Verbal chat 17:33, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Link added per WP:IAR: If I were a reader, I'd want the link. I will add some diffs showing views of other editors on this. The position that an external link is not allowable because some POV may be attributed to it is preposterous. As to WP:EL, please review Links to be considered: Sites which fail to meet criteria for reliable sources yet still contain information about the subject of the article from knowledgeable sources. Whether or not NET "fails to meet criteria for reliable sources" is debatable. But whether or not this site contains "information about the subject of the article from knowledgeable sources" is not. It does, period, and it's invaluable for news on the topic, the "state of the art," and the precise nature of the controversy. --Abd (talk) 17:53, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Suffice to say I disagree, and using IAR in such an area, where objections were already raised, is a bit galling. However, it is moot as I've added a See also link to the new article you've written: New Energy Times. Verbal chat 17:59, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Wow! Thanks. Good move. Adequate. As to Gall, you made some good ink with it. That's the use! Look how quick this was! We could have argued for forever. Now let's see if it sticks to the paper. --Abd (talk) 18:21, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

New URL for CBS video on cold fusion.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4967330n

For a report on why the video was edited, see

http://newenergytimes.com/v2/blog/?p=74 --Abd (talk) 21:40, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Revert over alleged copyvio

I add a convenience link to a copy of the Naturwissenschaftern paper by Mosier-Boss, et al, on the neutron finding, hosted at newenergytimes.com, newly removed from the blacklist. It was removed by Bilby citing copyvio. There is no apparent copyvio. I'm not an expert, but this basic issue is the same as with lenr-canr.org, which has been reviewed by experts. (1) no legal risk to the project for a link in a reference unless there is unreasonable neglect of probable violation. (2) violation is unlikely, New Energy Times is quite visible, and papers there would be hosted in compliance with copyright law, it's preposterous to assume otherwise. This isn't some transient hacker site! I would revert but I'll wait. Do I need to cite all the discussions on this with respect to lenr-canr.org? Where the argument was basically blown out of the water? --Abd (talk) 11:25, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

This isn't lenr-canr.org, so it needs to be looked at separately. I had a look at the paper, and it states that it is copyright Springer-Verlag 2008. The place where it is hosted at Springer repeats the copyright claim, and charges for copies of the paper, so it isn't one of the freely downloadable papers that they sometimes have. Although even if it was, the copyright claim is still valid. So without any evidence to the contrary, (nothing on New Energy Times that I could see showed that they were permitted to redistribute the paper), I removed the link (quietly) per WP:COPYLINK. As an aside, the paper was published in the January 2009 issue of Naturwissenschaften, but the e-publication date is 2008 (hence the year of copyright). Normally I reference to the journal, so my guess on year would be 2009, but it may be that 2008 is the correct year to use. - Bilby (talk) 12:11, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I'll look at the year issue, you may be right. As to copyvio, the same situation existed with lenr-canr.org. Except it was Elsevier, in the one case that was examined closely. Now, in the case of lenr-canr, we had an email from Rothwell asserting permission from authors and publishers, at one point, but in the end, this wasn't important. However, on the face of it, Springer is, I'm told, fierce about enforcing copyright. Given how prominent NET is in the field, it's probably preposterous to assert copyvio. This was the argument that carried the day with lenr-canr.org, and it was reviewed by people who should know. Because we have no actual knowledge of copyvio, only the kind of assumption you made, Bilby, there is no legal risk to Wikipedia, only a general guideline to avoid linking to copyvio sites. I have an inquiry in to NET to clarify this, and I think that Krivit may have made statements about this in the past. --Abd (talk) 19:12, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I endorse the removal of this link. NET is may be a big fish, but in a very small pond. Springer-Verlag claims copyright, NET is not a generally a WP:RS, so I don't see why they'd be a reliable source that they're not breaking copyright - I'd like to see something from SV or the wikipedia foundation copyright people okaying this. I find Abd's arguments unconvincing. If SV is fierce on copyvio then we shouldn't host this link. Abd, and others, please propose NET links first to avoid this kind of removal. Verbal chat 19:17, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Please do not forget that while we might not be able to use a tempting convenience linke, we ought to at least be able to reference the original document to the extent that a publication like Springer allows (usually an abstract page). I say this because not having any link leaves the possibility open for some editor to come along and delete article text based on the claim that there is no RS for it. So, having a link to even just an abstract page can allow the Wikipedia article to describe stuff that is located in the RS article, and casual deletion can be detered. The full original article is of course available to anyone who wants to pay for it. It might even be "fair" for someone doubting the Wikipedia description to buy the RS article; that person might think twice in the future before challenging other similarly-referenced information.  :) V (talk) 20:37, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

The doi number in the reference already generates a link to the Springer abstract page. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:26, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Abd, I understand where you're coming from, but I think lenr-canr's assertion that they get permission is important. I've had a look at lenr-canr now, and they seem to mostly link to copies of conference papers, which is perfectly reasonable as in general conferences are much nicer about this. Similarly, I think you're understating the importance of Wikipedia's stance on copyright - it's policy, not a guideline, and it is important to avoid contributory infringement. In this case, I'd argue that it is reasonable to expect that Springer and the journal would not give permission for open distribution of their papers, (especially those published in the last 12 months), and given that there is no evidence to the contrary, we should assume that they didn't. - Bilby (talk) 22:36, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

You may be right, Bilby, for the wrong reason, though you hinted at the right reason in your first sentence. Whether Springer allows reproduction or not in general is moot, they might have given permission specifically, there might be special agreements with authors, etc. However, you are right. Lenr-canr claims permission. When I looked, I found what I'd not noticed before. New Energy Times doesn't claim permission, but, instead, claims fair use for their list of papers, which, I'd say, is a tad iffy for the reproduction of a published paper in toto. Now, perhaps, I understand why lenr-canr.org doesn't have copies of this paper, and why I'm going to need to work on delisting lenr-canr.org (because there are many published papers cited in our article that they host, with claimed permission). Without better information on New Energy Times, I'm certainly backing off and will, I assume, only assert links to it that are, on the face, hosted with permission, or are their original material (which is most of the site.)--Abd (talk) 23:49, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Enric, yes, we can see the abstract. I recommend, if possible, reading the paper. It was being used to make a claim that isn't supported in that paper, detection of neutrons together with excess heat. The paper doesn't actually say that, it reports neutrons from palladium-deuterium codeposition electrolysis, but reports no association with excess heat; it does report, I believe, association of neutrons with copious alpha radiation. I believe there are other papers that do report association with excess heat of alpha radiation. It's quite iffy using an abstract to source text, abstracts can be misunderstood. --Abd (talk) 23:53, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

Confirmation?

There have been some recent reports in favor of cold fusion, but there is still no sign that the mainstream view of scientists is that neutron production or nuclear-related heat has been "confirmed." If someone thinks differently, let's discuss it here. Olorinish (talk) 03:58, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

If there are a series of reports, the later reports confirm what the earlier reports state. That is not the same as this being accepted by "the mainstream," an entity that is pretty vague. We have sources on what the mainstream was twenty years ago, and we have sources that provide some indications about later. The SPAWAR work is, however, a strong confirmation, particularly interesting in that the level found was so low, which, indeed, confirms earlier work. It's not a "replication," because the various experiments used different methods.

It's an unusual problem because there isn't any clear definition of "mainstream." The last DoE review was 2004. Long before then, the cold fusion community had given up making neutron claims, because the levels were so low that, first of all, as Storms notes, a showing of neutrons doesn't provide much evidence about what is going on, it is likely a rare side-effect, and the levels were so low that arguments about cosmic ray and artifacts were difficult to overcome. Storms notes this in explaining why he's not covering the neutron findings. So what is the "mainstream" view on neutrons? It's meaningless. What we do know is that the Naturwissenschaften reviewers thought the paper worthy of publication. We know that the American Chemical Society thought it worthy enough to feature it in their press release on the recent low-energy nuclear reactions session, and it was widely seen as highly newsworthy. No cogent criticism has appeared, as far as I can see; negative comment on science blogs, etc., has been largely confined to regurgitation of opinions from twenty years ago, reminding us of the coulomb barrier, etc.

In my view the neutrons are not coming from cold fusion. They are coming from hot fusion. They are the right energy, apparently. But, then, how is hot fusion happening in this cold fusion cell? And the simplest hypothesis is pretty obvious: cold fusion is creating energetic particles with sufficient energy to occasionally cause hot fusion. Indeed, those particles are what was previously detected with CR-39, that's what produces the copious pitting. Alpha particles, i.e., helium.

Obviously, I'm not putting this in the article. However, it's a simple fact that the SPAWAR report confirms earlier reports of neutrons. "Confirms" doesn't have the meaning that Olorinish seems to place on it. It doesn't have to do with "conclusive." It has nothing to do with whether or not the "mainstream" has accepted the results or the implications. --Abd (talk) 01:00, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

There is an additional complication, regarding the fact that the SPAWAR people have indicated their CR-39 evidence indicates neutrons of greater than 9MeV of energy. I'm not sure if that is the minimum number needed to crack a carbon-12 nucleus into three alpha particles, or if it is a number derived from the magnitude of a triple-track. That is, the more energy a neutron has, the more energy the three alphas will have, and the more damage they can do inside CR-39 before they stop moving. Well, the complication is that the only way to get a 9MeV+ neutron from fusion is if the fusion reaction is the deuterium+tritium reaction --and that normally produces a 14MeV neutron. So, why didn't the SPAWAR people say they saw evidence for 14MeV neutrons??? Perhaps the magnitude of the triple tracks they saw simply wasn't large enough.

Well, then, where did the extra (14-9=) 5MeV go? One possble answer relates to the "electron catalyzed fusion" (ECF) hypothesis that I've mentioned on other occasions, which supposes that a lot of the conduction-band-electrons in the metal can get involved and carry away energy. Note that the ordinary two-deuterium reaction, when it yields tritium-and-proton or helium-3-and-neutron, also yields a total energy (maximum) of about 4MeV, while the reaction that yields helium-4 also has a total energy of nearly 24MeV. Logically, if ECF can carry away say 5MeV from the two-deuterium reaction, then the product of that reaction MUST be helium-4, because that is the only way more than 4MeV can be released. And since researchers aren't being killed by (24-5=) 19MeV gammas, it follows that ECF, if this is what is happening, can carry away rather more than 5MeV.

Back to the SPAWAR experiment, which uses "co-deposition" of palladium and deuterium, with one result being that the deposited metal is very very thin (think 2-dimensional vs 3-dimensional). This will reduce the number of conduction-band electrons available to participate in ECF, so less total energy can be carried away. If less than 4MeV gets carried away, then the two-deuterium reaction can yield tritium or helium-3. The tritium is then available to react with a deuterium, potentially able to release a 14MeV neutron. However, if ECF in the very thin deposited metal is causing the reaction and carrying away a few MeV...then it logically follows that the neutron will have less than 14MeV. It all "fits". Whether or not it is true is another matter altogether, of course! V (talk) 13:41, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Neutron radiation

I reworked this section and want to report on something that I didn't put in. The main problem with detection of neutrons is that neutrons are penetrating radiation, and there are neutrons generated from cosmic rays. Some of the neutron work was done deep underground, to avoid this background, other work was done with detectors that could analyze particle paths to distinguish where the particles were coming from. But there is another possible artifact that could confound these experiments, and one might think it could apply to Mosier-Boss as well. M-B detected very low levels of neutrons, but well above background, and these were controlled experiments, i.e., it's not simply running an experiment and finding triple tracks and announcing neutrons, the experiments are run under various conditions.

One of the problems pointed out by Hoffman is that cosmic rays can generate neutrons from collisions with the deuterons that don't happen with hydrogen, making light water as a control not conclusive as to the matter of neutrons. However, Mosier-Boss did run control experiments simply immersing the CR-39 in the electrolyte.

M-B cite prior work on neutrons:

There have been reports of neutron emissions in the Pd–D system (Jones et al. 1989; Takahashi et al. 1990; Lipson et al. 2000; Mizuno et al. 2001). To our knowledge, this is the first report of the evidence of the emission of ≥9.6 MeV neutrons formed in situ during a Pd–D electrolysis experiment.

There is a reason this report generated such a flap in March. --Abd (talk) 04:57, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Removal of Park book

Please, man, Robert L. Park is not a dubious reference. He's a Fellow and former executive director of the American Physical Society, his book was published by Oxford University Press, and he got reviews at lots of places, and free access ones were glowing endorsements: The Guardian[20], The Economist[21], The Independent[22], New York Times[23], Human Biology journal [24], Angewandte Chemie[25], Discover[26], Issues in Science and Technology[27], Science[28]. The only negative reviews were in the Journal of Scientific Exploration[29] and in the Times Higher Education Supplement[30] by Brian D. Josephson (I loved his opinion that the book should carry a disclaimer saying "the opinions in this book are unquestioningly shared by many scientists, but they should not be"). --Enric Naval (talk) 21:31, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the edit fixed multiple problems, including "electron flux". The previous version said "[not]...accepted" but not by whom, or what theory exactly, or when. "Several miracles" is opinion, not fact, and not necessarily still the author's opinion. Park had said that "energetic neutrons are unambiguous evidence that fusion has taken place", and now that neutrons have been reported, he says: "They say they find great mysteries, and perhaps they do. Is it important? I doubt it. But I think it’s science." [31] Here, "important" would mean practical use for the energy produced. Abd as summarized by Coppertwig 12:57, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Abd's original comment of 01:42, 30 April 2009

Enric did not understand the removal. Here is the diff: [32], (→Lack of neutron radiation: who's been writing this article, anyway. Add proper reference to Mosier Boss. Accepted as plausible? By whom? Remove dubious Park reference, redundant triple-miracle comment.). This is what was there: Fleischmann and Pons reported an electron flux of 4,000 neutrons per second, while the current understanding of nuclear reactions would dictate that even an energy output as low as 1 Watt would have given a flux of 1012 neutrons per second, which would have traspassed easily the walls of the cell and killed both researchers by radiation poisoning. There isn't still an explanation accepted as plausible for this lack of neutrons, as any explanation would require several "miracles" to happen.<ref>{{harvnb|Simon|2002|Ref=Simon2002|p=49}}, {{harvnb|Park|2000|p=17-18}}</ref> The question about who's been writing the article should have been who is "editing" it. Electron flux? "There isn't still an explanation accepted as plausible" has a lost performative: by whom? And "still" would have to refer to the date of publication. The claim of "plausible" is from Simons, and it was with reference to a specific theory proposed by Walling and Simons in 1989, a theory which predicts helium at levels which are actually found. But, at the time, it wasn't considered plausible, for reasons given elsewhere in our article. Simons is talking about 1989: "There was no agreement as to its plausibility; the theory simply required too many "miracles." What does Park have? It's very interesting. He says that "energetic neutrons are unambiguous evidence that fusion has taken place." Now, the absence of neutrons is not proof that fusion has not taken place, because of the d+d -> He4 mechanism, in which case there are some "miracles," which has a certain sound to it, and the words were used that way, for polemic effect, back in 1989. That is, some unexpected or unexplained conditions: what is normally a rare form of fusion is the predominant form, the energy normally emitted as a gamma ray is "transferred to the lattice" -- this is actually an error! repeated in the 2004 DOE report --, and a single energetic alpha particle violates conservation of momentum, there must be some other product. However, there is a fairly common theory that does reduce to only one miracle, and which seems to be consistent with all the evidence: 4 d -> Be8 -> 2 He4 at 24 MeV each. There is no transfer of energy to the lattice, there is alpha radiation, which is absorbed by the matter it passes through, and since the NAE is at the surface, half of this energy ends up as heat in the electrode and half as heat in the electrolyte. The miracle is that *four* deuterons fuse. What would this take? Rather obviously, it would take confined conditions, this would *never* happen in a plasma. But it's only one miracle. If that happens, all the rest is explained. The two helium nuclei are ejected with equal and opposite velocity, thus conserving momentum. A "transfer of energy to the lattice" isn't necessary at all. The stuff about trespassing the walls is true, but basically fluff. This is commonly referred to as the "dead graduate student effect." Park has a much more recent opinion than what he wrote in Voodoo Science. He's turned. From his blog, ... the American chemical Society was meeting in Salt Lake City this week and there were many papers on cold fusion, or as their authors prefer LENR (low-energy nuclear reactions). These people, at least some of them, look in ever greater detail where others have not bothered to look. They say they find great mysteries, and perhaps they do. Is it important? I doubt it. But I think it’s science.[33] "Important" would refer to production of useful energy through LENR. There are reasons to think it possible that LENR will never be a significant power source. The demand for a cup of tea brewed with a cold fusion heater was for show, not for science. We don't demand cups of tea for muon-catalyzed fusion. However, the fact is what is said in our article: there is no accepted theory as to how cold fusion would happen, and if we don't know what's happening, we can't really predict what can be done with it. It may not be scalable. Or it may be scalable. He is agreeing that this is science, the process of developing and testing knowledge. --Abd (talk) 01:42, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

It seems that Park's comment has been blown a bit out of proportion, and claims that Park has changed his position are most probably incorrect. That's because a) he hasn't made any retraction of the claims made in his book, b) just back in November 2008 he had commented unfavorably on Arata's findings[34]. c) looking at that same column I noticed that just six hours ago he wrote: "An appearance on an evening entertainment program [CBS] won't make [cold fusion] science, and it's unlikely to change the minds of many scientists, but it's the most they've had to cheer about."[35]

You are right about "plausibility" in Simon, the current level of acceptance of the ⁴He theory needs a better source.

The "transfer of energy to the lattice" is mentioned as a serious problem in the theory in 1994 by Goodstein [36], in 2000 by Scaramuzzi http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Scaramuzzitenyearsof.pdf in 2002 by Park, and in 2004 by DOE 2004 [37]. Goodstein specifically mentioned the Mössbauer Effect as the exact opposite of what is supposed to happen in cold fusion: no heat is produced at all in the lattice.

The theorical problems are called "miracles" by Heeter in the Scientific American [38], Scaramuzzi, Park, Huizenga (Simon in "Undead Science" seems to source the exact word from his book), Taubes in his book and probably also in a Science magazine article[39], a review of the field by a guy from the Bhabha center in India quotes Hagelstein calling them "miracles"http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Srinivasannuclearfus.pdf and then says that Hagelstein's impression is reflected by the conclusions of DOE 1989, and, eh, you know, just look at this google scholar search and pick any relevant entry, there are plenty of them. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:04, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Implying that any solution to the problem involves multiple miracles is incorrect. The theory D + D + D + D → ⁸Be → ⁴He + ⁴He requires only one "miracle", and doesn't involve any "transfer of energy to the lattice": the energy is carried away by the two alpha particles. Maybe sometimes there's more than 100% loading of deuterium in the lattice, and more than one deuteron occupies the same niche; maybe fusion occurs when there are four in a niche. Many other theories have been proposed. New phenomena seem to be "miracles" until they're understood.

Bottom line: we need to consider the timing of sources, and what evidence those sources would have been considering, not just what they say as if a source on a matter of science is authoritative forever, to be given equal weight with later research and review. Abd as summarized by Coppertwig 12:57, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Abd's original comment of 17:55, 30 April 2009

Enric, I know the "miracles" problem. The point is that "transfer of energy to the lattice" is a problem that doesn't apply with Be-8 fission, there is no transfer to the lattice, the energy is entirely found in the equal and opposite momentum of the two alpha particles. The only "miracle," then, is that Be-8 is initially formed, and, if it happens in a single process, it truly is one miracle, not many. The point is that implying that any solution to the problem involves multiple miracles is incorrect, I just pointed out one, and I didn't invent it, where there is only one "miracle," and any new discovery that shows an exception to previous overgeneralized theory can be seen as a "miracle" until it's understood. Further, to take comments made early on, and then in secondary sources a bit later, as applying to all theories, including those developed later, is synthesis. What we are going to have to do to be fair to all the sources is to start presenting cold fusion as both history and science. There is a history to the claims and counterclaims. In other words, the problem I have with the language that you seem to think you should establish, when it wasn't challenged as such, isn't over the existence of that language, it is that we should not report this as scientific fact. It's not. It was opinion and theory and can't be generally applied outside its original reference, which would be the theories specifically considered by the source. It applies to nothing else. I've been making inquiries about the Be-8 theory, I want to see what is found. I may have seen it only in conference papers. My own thinking about it isn't terribly relevant, but lattice behavior of deuterium could be very different than we expect. It is possible to get loading of deuterium in the lattice above 100%, and loading is subject to local variations. Above 100% means that there are extra deuterium atoms occupying the normal positions in the lattice. Two is obviously reasonably common. What about three or four? What if, whenever four deuterium atoms occupy a single "position," which would be rare (thank God it's rare!), they fuse. How often would this take place? It's possible that a QED analysis of the result would show a high fusion rate. I don't know if that's been done. If that analysis does show a possibility of fusion at some realistic rate, we'd have a theoretical basis for cold fusion that requires no miracles at all, merely something quite unexpected. To repeat the hypothesis, some local condition causes four deuterium atoms to fuse, but probably not two or three unless at very low rates (very much lower than what is already very low!). They form an excited Be-8 nucleus which immediately fissions to form two alpha particles at 24 MeV. This predicts that (1) alpha radiation would be found at significant levels, vastly above background. Check. It predicts that helium will be found in association with excess heat at a value, if all the helium is extracted and measured, and the generated heat (which results from the normal absorption of the helium energy as the local medium slows and stops the alpha particles) is accurately measured, of 24 MeV/He-4. Check! So ... one miracle, which might not be a miracle at all. I hasten to add that many brilliant minds have worked on the problem, and there are many theories to account for what's happening, and some of the theories claim to not involve new physics. Getting a paper published on a theory that explains cold fusion, though, may still be extraordinarily difficult, for a long time, they have been rejected without review by most "mainstream" publications, and what is being published under peer review is mostly raw experimental report, with a few reviews. Still, the Mosier-Boss report does speculate a bit on what is going on. Hot fusion, in fact (i.e., same input, same output, just no proposed mechanism for getting the energy to do hot fusion, though it's obvious, given that these cells generate the famous excess heat that requires, it's long been claimed, nuclear process. Nuclear process generates more energy than is required to overcome the coulomb barrier.) I mean, if that's not interesting, I don't know what is. Bottom line: we need to consider the timing of sources, and what evidence those sources would have been considering, not just what they say as if a source on a matter of science is authoritative forever, to be given equal weight with later research and review. --Abd (talk) 17:55, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

More on Bob Park's current opinion of the field - new What's New talks about cold fusion again - science, but not promising and researchers are prone to embracing any scientific sounding nonsense that purports to show excess energy. - 2/0 (formerly Eldereft) (cont.) 00:04, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Except that the topic here, Cold fusion, was started by two scientists, experts in their field -- which included calorimetry -- that, indeed, found excess heat, a finding which has been repeated as shown in 153 peer-reviewed papers. Yeah, the original report was mixed with errors: the neutron findings were bogus, they were not nuclear physicists. It has become quite reasonable to assert a consensus, now, of excess heat. That was already a 50% opinion of the 2004 panel, and there has long been expert opinion that the heat is real, for example, Hoffman in 1995 points out that the people doing the calorimetry (some of them) were experts at it, and the calorimetry has never been successfully impeached in any conclusive way. Is the excess heat from fusion? How would we know?

Park, from today's blog, I'd say, was backing off from earlier claims that this is all "voodoo science," but hasn't really realized the import of recent findings. Neutrons. Previously, the critics considered neutrons to be the signature of fusion, neutrons were considered conclusive, and that there were no neutrons was considered conclusive evidence, by many, that there was no fusion. (Never mind that there is another previously known pathway that doesn't produce neutrons). Okay, there are neutrons. The SPAWAR group was confirming earlier work; though they estimated the energy of the neutrons, that was original. Where are experiments and confirmations, at what point does this become real science?

I can say it: secondary source. And we have plenty of secondary source on this! Not as much as I'd like, for sure! But enough. --Abd (talk) 01:24, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Another fine source

See http://www.loe.org/shows/shows.htm?programID=06-P13-00008 for a transcript of Public Radio International's February 24, 2006 "Living on Earth" show. The segment "Cold Fusion: A Heated History" seems to be a balanced presentation in language that is fairly comprehensible.LeadSongDog come howl 17:11, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Excellent find, LeadSongDog. Please, folks, read this. It's RS, carefully researched, balanced. Since then, the evidence has gotten stronger, not weaker. Long before this, the CF field had mostly accepted that neutron findings were going to be useless as a proof of nuclear reaction. Now, we have very good evidence for neutrons (Mosier-Boss, 2008, Naturwissenschaften, widely reviewed in news media), just at levels such that they don't tell us much about what's going on, they are obviously some kind of sideshow.

I am not rushing to shift the article, but am pointing in the direction I believe we need to move. --Abd (talk) 18:13, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

By the way, look at the links at the bottom of the article. Why aren't we linking to those sources for further reading? We now have a See Also to New Energy Times, but what about the other one? lenr-canr.org. These can be considered advocacy sites, though lenr-canr.org claims to try to be neutral (but the site owner obviously has strong opinions), but that can be stated. If you want to learn about Cold fusion, would you only want to read reports and documents by skeptics? --Abd (talk) 18:19, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

NPOV - Undue

This article provides undue weight to a limited number of experiments done by a limited number of facilities that have not been confimed or verified. That there are a bunch of hucksters and frauds out there perpetuating a bunch of schemes, and that they have aligned themselves with some less-than-stellar names in physics to promote poorly-designed experiments might be notable in an article about, say Fraud, but to report breathlessly about their "brekathroughs" in an article about Cold Fusion is providing undue weight. Hipocrite (talk) 14:31, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Due weight, in science matters, is determined by the weight of what is found in peer-reviewed reliable source, in other matters, such as general opinion and the history of a science topic, by what is found in media or other reliable sources. Hipocrite wasn't specific, but arguments based on WP:UNDUE are a favorite trick of anti-fringe editors, who have long used it to push in a direction contrary to what has been clearly asserted by ArbComm in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science, to exclude from articles what is found in reliable source. It won't be tolerated any more. If Hipocrite wishes to discuss specific text, the editor is welcome. We have inadequate coverage of the "hucksters and frauds," there have been some notable ones, indeed, though that has little to do with what is actually in the article, there are no notable allegations that there is any significant presence of frauds among those cited in the article. --Abd (talk) 15:30, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

The core claim of Fleischmann in the beginning was excess heat. That claim has been confirmed with experiments reported in 153 peer-reviewed published papers. Fleischmann's original claim to have found radiation was based on experimental error; radiation, however, has subsequently been found by many different research groups, the most recent finding, of neutrons by the SPAWAR group, was itself a confirmation of earlier published findings using different techniques. I removed the POV tag that Hipocrite added, because the tag was removed very recently and there is no ongoing, serious dispute about the article, and Hipocrite was not specific about his claims above. I actually agree that the article has a POV bias, but apparently in the other direction, and the extent to which the article is misleading is that it does not report, accurately, the shift in the field that has occurred over the last five or ten years. That's a problem that can be fixed with time, and unless there is some serious obstacle that appears, I'd prefer to trust the other editors that any disputes can be resolved. --Abd (talk) 15:44, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I can't understand your huge blocks of text. There are whole sections of this article focused on 2008-2009 experiments. This is undue weight. Hipocrite (talk) 16:28, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

If by "whole sections of this article focused on 2008-2009 experiments" you mean there is one section titled "2009 reports" consisting of a single, three-sentence paragraph, then yes, there are "whole sections of this article focused on 2008-2009 experiments". Kevin Baas^talk 18:42, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

This is a science article, where later research supersedes earlier. Hipocrite has not been following this article and appears to be pursuing some external agenda. The topic of this article is complex. I do suggest that editors who don't understand it be careful about how they mangle the article. Hipocrite removed the whole section on 2009 reports with the edit summary, (Per talk page suggestion by KB.) Given the disruption he's creating elsewhere, and unlike any other editor working recently on this article, and unlike editors like JzG and ScienceApologist, I doubt his good faith, I doubt that he believed that.--Abd (talk) 01:03, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Abd is right that there should be some mention of 2009 reports in the article. One small paragraph and an image are reasonable responses to the recent press attention. Olorinish (talk) 01:22, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I believe that usually, for science topics, due weight is based (if possible) on sources such as peer-reviewed review articles, and not on the media. For this topic, due to its controversial nature, possibly some weight on media is warranted. However, I think the main due weight for determining NPOV should be based primarily on three sources: the 2004 DOE report; and two peer-reviewed review articles: Biberian (2007) [40] International Journal of Nuclear Energy Science and Technology, and Hubler 2007 [41] (Surface and Coatings Technology). (I believe these are peer-reviewed papers in regular journals not devoted to cold fusion.) Have I missed any important good-quality sources? Reporting of more recent events and results can be guided by other secondary sources. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 01:43, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

For weight, we should use sources that represent the most widely hold view (the mainstream view), which can be given also by media sources like, for example, the Scientific American or the New York Times (when it's making a serious article). Also, DOE 2004 would have a lot more weight than those two papers, as that report shaped the US spending and probably the worldwide spending. Let's not forget WP:PARITY. --Enric Naval (talk) 03:27, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Those two papers are more recent, and may consider aspects of cold fusion that were not looked at in the DOE review, which focussed on three questions. However, the DOE review used a panel of reviewers, so it can be considered more reliable. As far as media is concerned, we can also use the 60 Minutes piece, which employed a physicist to investigate and reports the views of several scientists.

I'm not sure what you mean by "sources that represent the most widely hold view (the mainstream view)". For example, the DOE report says that the reviewers were evenly split on one question, so the report is not representing only a single view. Similarly, the 60 Minutes piece presents different opinions by different scientists. This article should not present only one view, but at least two views. It's our task to figure out how much weight to give each of those views. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 11:53, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Sourcing

Papers published at lenr-canr.org by people who work for "Lattice Energy, LLC," are not reliable sources. Try to avoud using them. Hipocrite (talk) 14:51, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I have to agree re lenr-canr.org. Not sure about LE LLC, but they do sound suspect. Verbal chat 14:54, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Storms is a notable author in the field. I originally reverted Hipocrite, but undid that because there are other sources less reasonably disputed that would be available for the facts, which Hipocrite merely tagged for citations after removing the one that had been there for a long time. I'm not going to pick today to argue whether or not a paper by Storms, cited to show theories proposed (it is verification of proposal), with original publication on lenr-canr.org, can be used. The place of employment or a company that an author has consulted for has nothing to do with RS. There are a number of companies working in the field, they are real, and they are legitimate, but it's also true that the field has attracted charlatans and frauds. After all, there could be trillions of dollars worth of energy expenditures at stake, or, alternatively, people who believe this to be fleeced. No big surprise. --Abd (talk) 15:49, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

The source was placed by Enric Naval with [42], citing earlier discussion at Talk:Cold fusion, Other explanations of Cold fusion. The paper was apparently published not by lenr-canr.org, but by New Energy Times, on-line. I'll find the link. --Abd (talk) 16:04, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Cold Fusion for Dummies by Edmund Storms. This is not the strongest source to use, I suspect, but the author is notable in the field, for sure. He's the author of many published papers on the topic, plus the 2007 book, The Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions, World Scientific, 2007. --Abd (talk) 16:10, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

"Self-published material may, in some circumstances, be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications. However, caution should be exercised when using such sources: if the information in question is really worth reporting, someone else is likely to have done so." (WP:V) ☺Coppertwig (talk) 11:58, 2 May 2009 (UTC)