Talk:Cold fusion

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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)

Well, outside of RS, there is at least one and possibly more than one published speculation regarding electrons as a possible catalyst. If your unease would be satisfied by "a source is found that implies", would those be good enough for you? Also, see Note 13 inside the muon-catalyzed fusion article, which mentions the possibility without indicating any degree of liklihood. And outside of formal publication, a quick Google search for "cold fusion" catalyst will bring up 24,000 hits, this one for example: http://mtaonline.net/~hheffner/EcatFusion.pdf . V (talk) 16:46, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Finally, just for the fun of it, here is a REALLY wild idea: anti-proton catalyzed fusion. Consider the fact that when an electron and an anti-electron (a.k.a. positron) meet, they usually don't instantly annihilate each other, they first go into a mutual orbit around each other for a short time, forming positronium, before they merge. I assume here that a proton and an anti-proton will do the same. This means that if we inject an anti-proton into pressurized deuterium gas at room temperature, the anti-proton could replace an electron and go into orbit around a deuteron much like a muon can (only 9 times closer since it is about 9 times more massive than a muon), and COULD catalyze a fusion between the deuteron it orbits and the nucleus of a second deuterium. Would the anti-proton acquire energy from the reaction like a muon, and escape to cause another fusion? Maybe, maybe not (again because it is about 9 times a massive as a muon). At least we wouldn't have to worry about the anti-proton lasting only 2 microseconds like a muon; it is as stable as an ordinary proton. But of course eventually it WOULD destroy itself along with a proton, ending any possibility of catalyzing more fusions. Still, all you, Coppertwig, wanted was support for the idea that something other than a muon could catalyze fusion. I don't care if the preceding is OR; it uses known data with quite good logic, to present you with more information than perhaps you had before, about those possibilities.

Indeed, this abstract http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=APCPCS000420000001001359000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes indicates something I didn't know before about muon catalyzed fusion (that as many as 170 can happer PER MUON in liquid deuterium, before it either dies or fails to escape orbit), so I would be willing to bet 1/9 that many could occur if an anti-proton was the catalyst. INTERJECTION-- I think that math is wrong; forgot to take into account the inverse-square law; the electrical attraction between anti-proton and deuteron would be 81 times the attraction between muon and deuteron. If that has to be multiplied by 9, due to the mass difference, then it would be very rare for an antiproton to escape its orbit; it could still catalyze a fusion, though, after which the electrical attraction is doubled because two protons will be in the nucleus...--INTERJEND (Also (cool!), something I've been speculating about for years seems to be true, that if the deuterium is compressed (as in inertial confinement fusion), the amount of MCF per muon goes up.) On the other hand, this article (RS!!!) indicates that at most only one fusion can be catalyzed by an antiproton: http://www.springerlink.com/content/6658672700g6133t/ --Nevertheless, that's enough to rest my case :) Does anyone want to modify the article here to say "a catalyst such as a muon or anti-proton" and add that reference? V (talk) 16:39, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Certainly not me! And I'd oppose it. Even if we could make up a theory that might eventually win a Nobel Prize, we can't put it into the article! I find it totally obvious that the most likely explanation for the "cold fusion" results is that some form of catalysis exists other than by muons, electron-catalysis, for example, where an electron shields reduces the Coulomb repulsion (and that is, in fact, the hydrino theory that Storms seems to favor: it's hypothesized that the so-called ground state of the electron isn't, and that electrons can therefore, under certain circumstances, have lower energy that the presumed minimum, thus allowing them to be closer to the nuclei, thus allowing the nuclei to approach more closely than expected.) but, without some reliable source suggesting it, with those words or equivalents, I can't say that in the article. And, in fact, it might not be catalysis, the palladium, for example, and every other involved substance or particle, might be a nuclear reactant. We wouldn't know, except by some unusual reaction products, which might not be detectable for various reasons, such as the reaction product being a common element already present in the experimental setup to a level that would mask the tiny quantities produced by nuclear reactions sufficient to cause the observed heat. --Abd (talk) 00:43, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Abd, currently the article has this text: Normally, in the absence of a catalyst such as a muon, very high kinetic energies are required to overcome this repulsion --Coppertwig was leery of the implication by this wording that something other than a muon could make it easy for Coulomb repulsion to be overcome. We are aware that an electron might be able to do that if it could approach an atom's nucleus rather more closely than normal --a thing that, because it is not normal, can't be mentioned in the article without RS. However, the SpringerLink article clearly indicates that an antiproton can also make it easy to counter the Coulomb repulsion between nuclei, and while that quite probably has nothing to do with CF observations, and is almost certainly useless from the practical side of things, it does satisfy the condition that indeed something besides a muon can catalyze a fusion reaction. My question about adding a mention of the antiproton to the article was more about heading off any future editors who might object to the current wording more strongly than Coppertwig --this part of the discussion won't necessarily be readily available to defend the current wording. However, if the antiproton was mentioned as a second catalyst, with the SpringerLink/RS reference, such a future editorial objection would be "headed off at the pass" so to speak. V (talk) 13:16, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

"It's easy to pull a rabbit out of your hat, once you know how to do it with a moose." Seriously, if you had an abundant supply of antiprotons, why would you need fusion? LeadSongDog come howl 17:37, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

True enough, but that is not the issue here; the issue is about catalysts other than muons, for hydrogen fusion. I was simply trying to indicate that certain current wording in the article was basically OK. Still, if you did NOT have an abundant supply of antiprotons, and if they could catalyze a lot of fusions....."if wishes were coins, we'd all be rich". On the other hand, what about injecting an anti-proton into the middle of an ICF compression? The hot environment would keep the antiproton from going into orbit, so it might be able to catalyze a number of fusions, just by passing between two colliding deuterons.... V (talk) 17:45, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

I'll point out that what you are trying to find, V., is a possible example of catalysis. There are theories published using various forms of catalysis; hydrino theory is that. The "argument" from LSD is moot, in fact, because the production of energy is not the point; whether or not cold fusion is ever useful for energy production is completely beside the point as to the science of it. A lot of damage was done, and continues to be done, by overblown expectations. It's very clear, now, reading the 1989 DoE report, that the "rejection" then wasn't of the possible science, but simply of the idea that enough had been shown to justify a massive federal program of research, based on impressions that even if low energy nuclear reactions were taking place, it was still unlikely to become a useful power source. From the ERAB report:

1. Based on the examination of published reports, reprints, numerous communications to the Panel and several site visits, the Panel concludes that the experimental results of excess heat from calorimetric cells reported to date do not present convincing evidence that useful sources of energy will result from the phenomena attributed to cold fusion.

Consider this: there has been about twenty years of work on this, with research groups all over the world, with commercial efforts, optimistic announcements, etc., and still no "cold fusion water heater," nor even a readily available demonstration device showing the phenomena. What has happened, in my view, is that the basic science has been confirmed: there is excess heat, and I'm further convinced as to what was still minority opinion in 2004: there is helium at what Storms calls 25 +/- 5 MeV, and there is alpha radiation, and there are other nuclear phenomena. And none of this means that there will necessarily be, ever, useful power generation. I agree completely with the DoE conclusions, in round outlines: more research is needed, appropriate proposals confirming the basic science (or rejecting it!) should be considered, peer-reviewed publication should be encouraged, etc., but simple prudence suggests no massive program until the science is better understood. Now, tell that to the journals that refuse to consider articles on the topic! The DoE panel recommended further research in 1989, but, in fact, proposals designed to do exactly what the panel recommended were consistently rejected by the DoE. However, other agencies did provide funding at low levels, hence the SPAWAR results, for example, and other research. I'd say that, given the possibility that some way would be found to ramp up reliability, the funding levels were quite low compared to what would have been -- and would still be -- prudent.

Just on the level of basic science, hang the energy production, the possible implications of the experimental results that Storms notes as being considered significant in the field would indicate as appropriate much more serious efforts by skeptics -- real skeptics, the kind that don't reject what they don't understand, but also don't believe anything without proof, including "existing theories," to find and prove artifact or error -- or to confirm some of the extraordinary results. The Vysotskii experiments, for example, indicating nuclear transformation by bacteria, are so striking, yet the experiment, as described, is so simple (much simpler than your average cold fusion electrolytic experiment) that I wonder -- has anyone tried to reproduce this? If not, why not? In the experiment described by Storms, Fe-57 was detected by Mossbauer spectroscopy. What Mossbauer spectroscopy takes is quite simple, basically a good gamma detector, and the appropriate radioisotope (Co-57 in this case) as a gamma source, and a linear motor. (As I've said, I did Mossbauer measurements in my second or third year at CalTech). In any case, I'm going to report, in a new section below, some of what I'm finding on Vysotskii, who reported the Mossbauer findings. Turns out some of his work (on related topics) is indeed published under peer review. --Abd (talk) 01:30, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Abd, I quote from Coppertwig: I weakly oppose "a catalyst such as" unless a source is found that implies there might be other such catalysts

All I was trying to do was satisfy that request. The SpringerLink article will do that nicely, I'm sure.

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)

I was being facetious, by the way, with the "whole sections" comment -- my aim was to show that Hipocrite was grossly misrepresenting the balance of content. Kevin Baas^talk 14:49, 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)

That's right, we already list reports from other years. I removed the section title because it was accidentally giving it more weight by giving it its own separate sectio, when DOE 2004 doesn't have its own section. I suppose we could make subsections like "DOE 1989", "after DOE 1989", "DOE 2004", "after DOE 2004".

P.D. newer research supercedes past research... when it's of the same or higher quality, and has been reported as having superceded past research. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:25, 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) [1] International Journal of Nuclear Energy Science and Technology, and Hubler 2007 [2] (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)

Surely I mean the view among most scientists that cold fusion doesn't work, as reported by several sources in the article, but many also think that there could be some interesting non-CF phenomena happening, as many of those sources point out. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:28, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

The view of most scientists is an uninformed view, perhaps based on what they heard on the news years ago. I don't think we should cherry-pick sources in an effort to increase the representation of that view.^{(16:26, 10 May 2009 (UTC))} The DOE report, for example, gives views by scientists who have taken the time to look at the evidence. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 17:00, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that I'm cherry-picking sources, and wikipedia is not a place for righting WP:GREATWRONGS. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:35, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I didn't read Coppertwig's comment as accusing you of cherry-picking, at least not deliberately, but as noting that simply finding a lot of references to some term doesn't establish that this is an expert opinion, something we can lean on, and, as to "great wrongs," the only "wrong" I'm interested in is the possible one that our article doesn't fairly represent what is present in reliable sources, with due weight according to the complex principles we've been enunciating, with your help: primary vs. secondary source, peer reviewed or not, probability of neutral evaluation in a secondary source, notability, and avoidance of synthesis (such as interpreting two primary sources as contradicting each other, or a secondary source in, say, 1989, as contradicting a secondary source in, say, 2007, or, for that matter, any primary sources after 1989. Generally, my view is that, to avoid POV dangers, we don't exclude any material from reliable sources, but present it in a context and with proper attribution that makes applicability, time sequence, etc., as well as balance, clear. It's quite possible (I think likely) this can't be done within a single article, so we will, I assume, consider appropriate forking. --Abd (talk) 21:03, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I've struck out the part about cherry-picking: that was a bad choice of words: I'm sorry. Enric, I would appreciate it if you would describe your suggestion, and the rationale behind it, in more detail: I'd like to get a clearer picture of what you're proposing. I'm not sure whether you mean selecting sources on the basis of what opinion they present, and it's not clear to me how much weight you're proposing to put on the sources you're talking about. I suggest choosing and weighting sources based on objective criteria such as whether they're peer-reviewed etc., and after selection looking at what POVs they express (one source may express more than one POV) and using that information to determine the amount of weight to give to each POV in this article: are you disagreeing with that approach, Enric, and if so could you elaborate on the reasons? Since there are lots of peer-reviewed sources and books on this topic, I don't see how WP:PARITY would be needed: could you elaborate on how you see it as applying here, Enric? I agree that we're not supposed to be righting great wrongs here: that means we don't refuse to report information from reliable sources just because we personally disagree with it. Again, it might be useful if you explain in more detail how you see that essay as being relevant here. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 16:26, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

a) thanks for striking that b) WP:PARITY is part of the WP:FRINGE content guideline c) WP:PARITY applies because mainstream has not made serious studies of cold fusion since DOE 1989, with the exception of DOE 2004 and a few comments from individual scientists (like Goodstein or that Sci. Am. article on the 10th aniversary) d) many sources presented here were from the walled garden of cold fusion supporters who formed their own publishing circles when mainstream started rejecting publication e) other sources presented, like Biberian, had very little weight or repercusion outside of that circle f) the cold fusion arb case had a finding saying "Encyclopedias are generally expected to provide overviews of scientific topics that are in line with current mainstream scientific thought." g) the DOE reports had a lot of weight on what mainstream thinks now, so they would have to be given a lot of weight also here h) sources outside the walled garden give very little importance at the individual experiments since they discard all of them, so we shouldn't expand at length on them and we should mention the notable ones.

My proposal was breaking the text into sections that use the DOE reports as divisions, but I'm not sure that it would look well. I fear it would create too short sections. --Enric Naval (talk) 03:48, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Lecture by Robert Duncan

Robert Duncan, the scientist who was asked by 60 Minutes to look at a cold fusion lab, gave a lecture at the Missouri Energy Summit on April 23 about the scientific method and cold fusion. A video of the lecture is here. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 23:08, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

It's a 100 MB file, I downloaded it and watched it, the Duncan lecture -- which is quite good -- starts in the middle. There might be another way to access just the Duncan lecture, but I couldn't find it. Duncan is really emphasizing the scientific method, which is about an ongoing process and which does not involve fixed conclusions. Ever. He reports one incident after the CBS special where a physicist called him up and was very angry, and his report shows the problem. When he asked the physicist to sit down (metaphorically, I suppose) and go over the evidence, that was angrily rejected with a comment that summed it up: something like "We already did this (i.e., in 1989-90) and you charlatans won't give up." The physicist obviously was so angry he forgot who he was talking to. Duncan isn't a charlatan, he's a reputable physicist, and simply looked at the evidence (new evidence! plus, probably, a revisitation of the old evidence, which was never properly analyzed) and came up with conclusions that were already creeping up toward majority opinion in 2004. Our resident skeptics managed, for a time, to keep the fact out of the article that half the 2004 review panel considered the evidence for excess heat "compelling." One-third thought similarly (perhaps not so strongly) about evidence for nuclear reactions. This isn't "fringe science," at least not any more. It's "emerging science," breaking through, supported by a huge amount of research of increasing clarity. If we simply follow reliable source guidelines, and apply the concept of undue weight in a neutral fashion, as recommended, we'll be fine. But if we cleave to either extreme, we'll have an unbalanced article. Right now, it's unbalanced, in my opinion, toward the skeptical side, but I reverted the re-addition of the POV tag because I believe we are working on and can resolve those issues, and since the imbalance is simply a matter of delay in reporting a shift in opinion, it's not as serious as would be, say, imbalance in the other direction, treating cold fusion as if it were a proven and accepted phenomenon. It's not. It's emerging science, with controversy remaining, lots of it, and we can and should report the nature of that controversy as shown in secondary sources like Simon. And if this makes the "pseudo-skeptics" -- the ones who confuse their own negative certainty with skepticism (certainty is the opposite of skepticism) -- look bad, let them generate reliable source to defend themselves. I don't think it's there. Good example of a genuine skeptic: Hoffman (1995). --Abd (talk) 15:25, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

The University of Missouri link above has apparently been edited to remove Dr. Duncan's lecture. Dr. Duncan's lecture is now available on Youtube in three parts, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Krellkraver (talk) 06:23, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Removal of Storms material.

Orinish removed the Storms material on theory with (far too much weight for such a single non-mainstream source; Abd, could you summarize your point in one paragraph?). I reverted this. Storms is reliable source, quite clearly. I'm going to insist that this material is usable. It can definitely be reorganized; if this is out of balance, then it should be balanced with other reliably sourced material. Storms examines, in some detail, the various theoretical considerations; most of what is elsewhere in the article as theoretical objections to cold fusion is also covered in his outline, more coherently. (Parts of the article have clearly been written by editors who were reading sources, all right, but didn't understand them.) These are mostly lists, and I don't see how to present them and extract from them what is significant without distorting them.

(I already condensed greatly, keeping his lists mostly intact.)

We could, indeed, reorganize all the theoretical material into one section that covers all the issues and notable theories, as well as theoretical objections to experimental results and objections to theory (those are two different things) but Storms is practically unique as a recent reliable secondary source that covers the field. Storms should not be presented as an authority on "general acceptance," but on what is notable and accepted within the field of CMNS or low energy nuclear reactions. Some of what he reports may be his own opinion and not generally held, which is why significant attribution was scattered through the text. Even more could be done with respect to this: Storms could be identified as a long-time Cold fusion researcher.

I would also be using the Low Energy Nuclear Reactions Sourcebook, from the ACS (mainstream enough?) but the damn thing is $175. (Amazon $140). There are also recent theoretical papers, at least one presented at ICCF 14 may be of considerable interest, but probably can't be used yet, until it's published under peer review or there is secondary source discussing it. --Abd (talk) 00:24, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

What does Storm mean by this statement? 12. Living organisms are able to host transmutation reactions. Is he implying that critters can survive environments where transmutation reaction occur, such as someone being treated with radiotherapy? Or is he implying there are critters whose biological function employees transmutation? No matter what its a really weird statement.--OMCV (talk) 02:25, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

He means that there is evidence some organisms may be able to "host" or cause transmutation. Yes, it's really weird, quite unexpected, but, dammit, there is also some striking evidence. See above, Talk:Cold_fusion#Living_organisms?. --Abd (talk) 03:02, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Seriously this Storm guy seems to be a nut or at least gone nuts like so many others cold fusion proponents, such as John Bockris and Rusi Taleyarkhan. He shouldn't get much weight in this article.--OMCV (talk) 03:20, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I.e., RS standards be damned, if you think he's a nut, he's not to be used? The question is whether or not an article on Cold fusion can have an adequate section covering theories that have been advanced. Without the Storms material, we can do it, but .... it will be much more difficult, much more complicated. Anyway, Hipocrite just reverted without discussion, removing the Storms material. To me, the question is really how long it's going to take, not what's going to happen. Obviously, I can't predict the exact form of the article, I'm hoping it will be better than anything I can imagine, but the days of excluding RS material because of divisive editor opinion are over.

Meanwhile I just watched the video of Robert Duncan. It's a bit of a nuisance, a big .wmv file and Duncan's lecture is in the middle, but ... he makes the point about the scientific method and about how it was interrupted in 1989, and it's time to restart. Quite a few anecdotes could be told from that lecture; the one that matches so much that I've read from Simons, from the accounts of Krivit of interviewing scientists, is how some physicist called him up after the 60 minutes show and was really angry with him. He asked the man to go over the evidence with him. My memory of his report of the man's response: "We did that twenty years ago and you charlatans won't give up." Obviously, there is something going on that isn't science and the scientific method. And there is something going on here that isn't about NPOV and RS. By the way, Simon notes (RS!) how Brockris was abused, how the research was starved of the labor it needed because graduate students were told that if they worked on Cold fusion, they would have no career, and the Teleyarkhan story has yet to be told here in proper depth as well, but .... I haven't specialized in those yet.

Tell me, OMCV, how you would explain that Mossbauer spectrogram? --Abd (talk) 03:53, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I added my comments on Mossbauer spectrometry above, Talk:Cold_fusion#Living_organisms?. As for Storm and Brockris it clear they are having breaks with the mainstream science if not reality. Its not as if this break is only along the dimension of cold fusion. These guys just got wacky regardless of the quality of work they did when they were younger. Spontaneous combustion? Seriously? The fact that Simon's heart goes out to Brockris reflects poorly on Simon. Borckris was losing his head back in 1982 well before cold fusion when he was talking up his "secret catalysts" that could split water without energy or his 1984 material that could convert light into electricity perfectly. Borckris was lucky that these "discoveries" were attributed to errors and not fraud. I think most of his luck was due to politics, people wanted to sweep him out as quietly as possible.--OMCV (talk) 04:38, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that we have hundreds or thousands of peer-reviewed papers and other reliable source that breaks with the mainstream science." Cold fusion was claimed to be "dead." However, again, the sources show that what is being alleged to be mainstream science is dead, i.e., not showing signs of life by normal review of experimental claims that contradict the prevailing view. So it's a prevailing view, all right, and our article should show that, but it isn't represented in recent reliable source. So, yes, there is entrenched opposition, and we haven't adequately told that story. It's entrenched, like unquestioned orthodoxy anywhere can be entrenched. Do we tell the story of Brokris in adequate detail (not necessarily in this article)? OMCV, Simon is also reliable source, and skeptics and critics use him in the article whenever it suits them. OMCV, your POV is showing through the rhetoric. Showing "heart" reflects poorly? It's "clear that they are having breaks with reality?" A sentence of speculation isn't a break with reality, it's a speculation. I went and read the article on spontaneous human combustion and it seems that there is something there we don't know. When we don't know, we, very properly, speculate, and anyone skilled at problem-solving knows that speculation isn't confined to "reality," i.e., to what we know. It must step outside that, and being able and willing to do so is a sign of mental health, not of being "wacky." Enough. I'm working on the article. All are welcome to help. If that change doesn't stand, it could be messy, because, unlike what I put in, there are a farrago of reliable sources to be asserted. Storms was neat and organized, so I expect I'll be putting in many tidbits of theory from many reliable sources. Simon, to give a little example, covers Mills' hydrino theory. There are many more theories published in reliable source, not reviewed by Storms.

This is the principle: balance is determined by the weight of reliable sources, with preference being given to peer-reviewed reliable source. Sources are not to be excluded on the basis that they are seen as "fringe." If you want to note that some claim is reliable source is "not mainstream," you will need a reliable source for that, but you can't take it out of the article if it's relevant and reliably sourced, though, occasionally, you can move it to a different article that is more specialized. We actually have an article that could hold much of that, Condensed matter nuclear science. It was protected into a redirect to Cold fusion by JzG, and that's one of the claims against him before ArbComm right now.... if there is any sentiment to reopen that article and put the more general theoretical stuff there, with summary here, that would be just fine with me! --Abd (talk) 13:40, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

As I commented a few days ago, Storms' book was only reviewed by the Journal of Scientific Exploration (which works as a journal to allow fringe theories to be published somewhere) and it was apparently not being cited by anybody. So not only the book is at odds with mainstream, but it doesn't seem to have had any real repercusion in science.

Also concerns about conflict of interest. Notice he is also mentioned in the "sourcing" section above as working for "Lattice Energy, LLC", and it appears that he is "[conducting] LENR research as an employee, senior scientist, and minority owner of a privately held company named Lattice Energy, LLC (...) Dr. Storms was a consultant to the company in 2003, became a senior scientist to the company in 2004, and continues to conduct laboratory experiments for the company on a full-time, exclusive basis." [3]. It appears that this company wants to commercialize cold fusion products, and that Storms wrote and published his book while working full-time for them, so there's a huge conflict of interest there in making cold fusion look viable.

So, it represents fringe views, it's not notable, it's not reviewed by any journal apart from a journal dedicated to fringe, it's not cited by other scientists, and it also has a COI. So, it can probably be used to represent the view of cold fusion proponents on the experiments, but it shouldn't be given much weight, and certainly no weight at all regarding the current state of the art in science, as being a fringe and probably biased source.

We already have RS talking about how CF scientists made their own journals and conferences to publish their own stuff away from mainstream because they weren't being accepted. This seems to be one of these cases. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:01, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) Enric, most scientists are employed in their field of research. If the book were self-published, or published by the company, the argument would be cogent. But it wasn't.

This is the publisher's list of works on physics: http://www.worldscibooks.com/physics/nppp.shtml This is not some fringe publisher. This is the publisher's blurb on the book: http://www.worldscibooks.com/physics/6425.html Storms is listed as "(retired from Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA)"

Yes, we have RS on the point about publication within the field, but the tenor of it isn't as is implied. It is about the effective blacklisting of research in the field, where the normal peer-review process is interrupted. In any case, you can suit yourself. If Storms lists a paper, it shows notability within the field, and I'll stand on that one. Storms is cited, but it's quite recent. Book publishing is slow. These arguments are typical coming from anti-fringe editors, who too often seek to exclude what would ordinarily be considered reliable source by any objective standard. However, I'll start, if we don't get Storms back in, or something better, by adding theories and discussion of theories from other reliable sources. As I wrote, it will be messier. It's about time that editors here start seeking consensus on the basic issues around the presentation of cold fusion in this article. I, for one, will start by asserting that reliable sources are reliable sources, and that text supported by reliable source shouldn't be removed based on editorial POV about "fringe." That's been rejected by ArbComm, quite clearly. So, now, we, as free and independent editors, will work out the consequences of that decision. --Abd (talk) 18:51, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I think you are missing the point Abd. The question is whether Storm and Simon are RS for main-stream science or even some form of fringe-science. Storm is seriously discussing spontaneous human combustion and Biological transmutation while he is totting cold fusion with a potentially serious financial conflict of interest. Even if he published a book though main stream channels should his scientific opinion be taken seriously? Even if he can "cite" evidence for these claims its not impressive. Anyone can come up with two three peer-reviewed sources to support any claim they wish. The peer review process isn't perfect, which has already been pointed out by both sides. Is Storm really the best that the pro-cold fusion have to offer? Moving on to Simon, he apparently sympathizes John Bockris a nut case in a bunch of different ways and likes the Mills' hydrino junk which is obviously fraudulent. I don't think Storm and Simon are appropriate RS for a scientific discussion even if they are perfect examples of most of the pro-CF community.--OMCV (talk) 21:29, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

–—I can't believe that you refer to Bockris as a nut. He is a giant in the field of electrochemistry. Also, in 1993, in my opinion he wrote one of the best written papers on the experiments and theory of "cold fusion". I don't have the reference right now, I will add it later. Also, he is a more reliable source than DOE or Scientific American. They have their own agenda's, and commenting on research is creating new data so it should also be treated as adding original thought, so it violates adding new research and the NPOV.Minofd (talk) 13:03, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Let me use an analogy. Just because someone is a police person it doesn't mean they can't brake the law or become corrupt. Borkris made substantial contributions to electrochemistry but his name is severally tarnished. This is not a minority opinion. Look to his work on secret catalysts and transmutation work to understand my position. An academic commite deemed some of his work on cold fusion incompetent rather than fraudulent but I'm not sure which would be worse.--OMCV (talk) 13:18, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Strawpoll

Link to diff - [4]

Abd's version provides too much weight to a single, unreliable source

1. Hipocrite (talk) 04:38, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

   Hey, who says the source is unreliable? Does that "who" understand that there are different sorts of unreliability? For example, Isaac Newton could probably be considered a Reliable Source regarding descriptions of various physical phenomena. However, Newton also put a lot of effort into thinking about various religion-oriented notions. It is likely he would not qualify as a reliable source in that field. So, with respect to cold fusion of deuterium in palladium metal, a particular Source could be very reliable about that, while simultaneously being unreliable about other matters that have nothing to do with this article. V (talk) 05:30, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

   V is correct. Actually, though, Newton would be a kind of RS in the other fields, as a notable individual whose opinions might be relevant; but his work or claims in the other field are irrelevant to his work or claims in the field of his recognized scientific expertise. Storms is widely recognized, published in peer-reviewed journals, as an expert in the field of low-energy nuclear reactions. The book is RS. Because of the nature of the field, claims regarding it must be attributed, they cannot be reported as simple fact, though some of the CF claims are rising to that point (but are not there yet). In this case, though, the article is setting out to describe the theories that have been advanced; at that point, it's necessary to describe theories that might be fringe, even wild, if they are notable, and that Storms discusses them is prima facie evidence of notability. Discussion in RS is the standard, period. There are other theories discussed in other RS, which should be added. Claims about the persons involved, alleged conflict of interest, all this is irrelevant to the basic determination of RS, only to possible balance, and balance is not reached by removal of RS material from one perceived side. Which is what is happening here. --Abd (talk) 11:07, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

2. I agree with Enric's assessment. Verbal chat 09:22, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
3. Any significant scientific discussion derived from the Storm or Simon book is unreliable. Agree.--OMCV (talk) 11:23, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
4. Support. Storms has some notability in the field, and may have something important to say, but adding all this text in the article gives an incorrect impression of the field. It is also partly redundant with the rest of the article. Remember that wikipedia is a service to readers who typically know very little on a topic, so we need to be careful to present the field accurately. I should add that Abd saying (in an edit summary) that he is unable to trim the length of the five paragraphs does not seem helpful. Olorinish (talk) 13:46, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

   The problem, Olorinish, is not that I can't trim them, it's that I can't trim them much without damaging the report. If a source states that there are N necessary characteristics of a theory, for example, the list can't be shortened to N-1 items without distorting the report. I definitely can still shorten the section, but without any confirmation that any of this would be accepted, why should I bother? I'll still try, a little, but ... I also have lots of other stuff to do, an ongoing RfAr, and kids to take care of.... --Abd (talk) 15:42, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

5. Support limitation. While Storms is certainly notable in the field, nothing we've seen yet by reviewers from outside of the believers' circle implies that his analysis is objective and critically balanced. (I use "believer" advisedly as an antonym of "skeptic". "Proponent" is the antonym of "opponent" and has been misapplied in this discussion for too long.)LeadSongDog come howl 14:06, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

   Thanks, LSD. I still claim that we "limit" undue weight by balancing, not by excluding what is in reliable source. "RS" doesn't mean only that a source can be used without balance, lots of RS requires attribution for various reasons. However, Storms' report is mostly quite plain as a neutral statement, and it's fairly easy to establish that. (Consider his very plain statement, "No published theory has met all of these requirements." That includes what appears to be his favorite theory.) It's simply a lot more complicated to get there. --Abd (talk) 15:42, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

6. As I argumented in the section above. --Enric Naval (talk) 08:43, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
7. As Enric ecellently argued in the section above. ;-) --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:26, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

   Apart from removing tons of relevant and significant - and completely neutral and balanced - info - for no apparent reason. Kevin Baas^talk 14:12, 6 May 2009 (UTC) Opps - had it backwards. Kevin Baas^talk 16:40, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

   Notice that he didn't remove any actual info. The diff puts the text in red because of how it calculates what text was removed, it's still all there. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:55, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Abd's version should be used but balanced

1. "My" version over-uses a single source meeting WP:RS, but the remedy is not to remove RS material, but to balance it with other RS material, if that is available. The balancing could be in either direction; the sourcing for CF theories should be extended to show additional RS or more specific reference from within Storms, or if the Storms material does not cover criticism of CF theories, that should be added from RS. The repetitive removals are removals of reliably sourced material in violation of the ArbComm decision at Fringe_science#Prominence and Fringe_science#Advocacy. If balancing material is not available in RS, the claim that the apparent view of a source is not mainstream is questionable. --Abd (talk) 11:00, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
2. I will agree that regardless of how overweighted is the data that Abd used, the proper solution is to find RS data that balances it. Why don't those who think there is a problem here realize that IF THE DATA CANNOT BE BALANCED, then the data may be more true than not-true??? (And therefore there would be less need to strike a balance. Does the article on Relativity include contradictory data? If it doesn't, shouldn't it???) V (talk) 18:25, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

   Ironically, there's a whole bunch of relativity deniers. They are not mentioned in our article about relativity, though they have their own little corner of nuttery at Status_of_special_relativity#Alternatives_to_special_relativity. They have their own little journals and are absolutly certain that special relativity is bunk. Oh - and there's no recent peer reviewed paper refuting them, but they're still totally ignored in the article on Relativity. Hipocrite (talk) 18:39, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

   Yeah, but how much RS is there on this bunch? And especially peer-reviewed publications? The article you cited is totally unsourced on any side. It's a very serious mistake to lump Cold fusion in with ordinary fringe, it's quite an unusual case, it looks less and less like Polywater or N-rays every year. --Abd (talk) 03:27, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

   The references are in the target articles: emitter theory has two papers from Am. J. Phys., Aether drag hypothesis has one from Eur. Phys. J., and Lorentz ether theory has a ton of sources from many dutch, german and american RS. --Enric Naval (talk) 08:40, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

   I suppose I should say something about my question above being somewhat rhetorical. There is a reason why the relativity article doesn't have much contrary data: there simply isn't a lot of contrary data. Well, in the CF field, most of the contrary data is about 20 years old, and it has since been mostly explained in terms of insufficient loading of the palladium with deuterium. Also, some of the newer evidence might be called "startlingly compelling" --I hope you folks saw that video linked above, where the Robert Duncan who appeared on the 60Minutes broadcast was able to show some of the data gathered at that research facility in Israel. That "erupted palladium" image is awesome, with its microscopic spots of melted palladium (m.p.= 1554.9°C or 2830.82°F) (Hey, Kirk Shanahan! How does CCS explain that picture?) V (talk) 13:08, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

3. Kevin Baas^talk 16:40, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

The elephant in the living room: What "proposed explanations"?

Above is a straw poll, proposed by Hipocrite, about the section revision I made that actually described the challenges that cold fusion theories would have to face, the experimental findings considered within the field to require theoretical explanation, and some actual explanations as found in RS, and, sorry, Storms is RS. You may argue that other RS is of greater weight, but not to a ridiculous extent that RS is excluded. I could rewrite the section using more sources, to be sure.

Please read Cold_fusion#Proposed_explanations and see if you think what's in this section is in any way adequate to address the section topic, besides being an extraordinary example of poor writing, including redundancies. I see no proposed explanations there, beyond a brief mention of Preparata, i.e., that some explanation by Preparata exists. (That's quite old, by the way, though of historical significance at least; Preparata predicted that He-4 would be the predominant nuclear ash, which matches experimental results).

If there are "explanations" of the reported phenomena covered by this article, available in reliable source, we should cover them, and excluding them amounts to violation of the ArbComm ruling at WP:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science. What the article does over and over is point out that no explanation has been generally accepted, and then this gets glossed as cold fusion being unexplained, which isn't correct.

In the field, it's a common observation that the problem isn't lack of explanation, it's too many explanations, with insufficient evidence to decide between them. Cold fusion researchers tend to not be experts in quantum electrodynamics, which could be the necessary field. And it's a difficult field and application to what turns out to be the highly complex environment of the surface of palladium in an electrolysis experiment, or the surface of palladium nanoparticles as in the Arata experiments, quite diffcult, perhaps beyond present state of the art in the field. (Preparata proposed a QED explanation, and Fleischmann himself said that he was looking for examples of experimental behavior where quantum mechanics, which the nuclear physicists mostly use, would be inadequate to explain experimental results. He thought that he'd be lucky to see some tiny effect, that mostly likely the differences would be below experimental resolution. He found more than he sought. In other words, his work was, from the beginning, an effort to explore the "fringes" of science, a place where common theory was known to be an approximation. We don't tell this story here, AFAIK, and the source that tells his memory of the history has been excluded. It's not ordinary RS, it's a conference paper, but being by a notable expert, it should be usable if attributed as his report.)

Back to the point here, making a judgment of a section as unbalanced and removing the material, if the section without the material is more unbalanced, makes no sense. Below, please note under each section which version of the section on Proposed explanations is better. You can !vote for more than one, presumably if you think that they are equally acceptable, within range. The third section refers to "the current or other version," which may be different from the two versions I present first, and I ask for permission to put a link with your comment, should you comment there, that shows the version as of your edit's time, if you don't do that yourself.

So.... I'm setting up a new local poll that asks a more relevant question. If we can't find consensus directly, we can then work on a content RfC to get help.

Which is better?

Please choose by signing. Choosing more than one may indicate that more than one version is an improvement over the ones not approved. "Better" means that the encyclopedia is improved by that version, over the others. It certainly does not imply perfection or completion of our process. --Abd (talk) 16:23, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Version based on Storms, largely

Proposed explanations, version 1

1. Abd (talk) 16:23, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

   This has been rejected above already. Hipocrite (talk) 16:33, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

2. Much more informative. Addresses issues that the reader would be interested to know. Kevin Baas^talk 16:41, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
3. There are some things in this version that I think are not appropriate. The Item 2 that includes this text "heavy isotopes with very high Coulomb barriers" --that has nothing do with this article (says at top of article "about the Fleischmann Pons experiments"); we only need to discuss hydrogen and helium isotopes here. Not to mention that there is far less RS available regarding nuclear reactions of other isotopes inside palladium; a hypothesis that explains hydrogen fusion does not automatically have to be able to explain other reactions, even though Storms states that it should. Next, I suspect that this whole section, or the parts of it we keep, should follow something of the original text, in which it is mentioned that Storms reviewed the field in 2007. Next, some of the "observations needing to be addressed by theory" are already described in the first part of the Discussion section; there is no need to repeat it. Next, I don't recall ever seeing anything before about very high detection of tritium. If that was true, then regardless of a mechanism describing its production, its presence should have been, for years, a "red flag" for all detractors, that something interesting has been going on in CF experiments. So I wonder about the actual truth of that claim, since many detractors are as vitriolic as ever. Next, in the Sun the H+D reaction yields helium-3, and while Storms talks about H+D reactions, he seems to be focussing on tritium production instead. Why? (I ask that because it is not reasonable; when tritium does its radioactive-decay thing, it becomes helium 3, so there is no reason, energetically speaking, for the production of tritium to be favored over helium 3, when the H+D reaction happens. Not to mention that the Weak Nuclear Force would have to be involved to convert a proton to a neutron in that reaction, and if it was THAT willing to get involved, then it should be willing to get involved in the H+H reaction that yields deuterium --and that does not seem to be happening in CF control-experiments.) Well, that's enough commentary for now; I recommend the Storms stuff be pared down so that only the hydrogen-fusion parts are kept, and all the other transmutation stuff not kept. V (talk) 20:01, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Version resulting from removal of Storms material

Proposed explanations, version 2

This removal was already covered by "Abd's version provides too much weight to a single, unreliable source" section on the straw poll above, which is probably why nobody !voted anything here.... --Enric Naval (talk) 15:47, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

No it wasn't. The correct response to something that does not have enough sources is to add more sources, not to remove the material. The questions differ significantly in both substance and consequence. If anybody's so stubborn that they can't acknowledge that and thus refuse to vote, well, they're just throwing away this offered opportunity to have their opinion counted. Not the most prudent emotional response, IMO, but it only harms themselves, so I suppose it's no matter. Kevin Baas^talk 15:22, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Current or other version

Proposed explanations, current version (Please edit to show current version section header if it changes)

1. The whole section lacks any reliable sourcing and should be deleted from the article. In the absence, mentioning anything that Storms says as anything other than his reasonably non-notable opinion is providing undue weight to his reasonably non-notable opinion. Hipocrite (talk) 16:33, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

   permanent link to version current as of Hipocrite's comment, the same as Version 2 above. Hipocrite then edited the article to produce [5], which I assume is thought an improvement over Version 2. --Abd (talk) 20:27, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

2. This is also fine for now, maybe even better, it greatly reduces the material, but leaves, at least, two of the most important theories. Storms is RS for "proposed explanations," it's preposterous to think that only CF explanations found in "non-fringe" sources can be shown, because the argument is circular. How can we have an article on a supposed fringe science if we can't state what the "fringe science believers" think, even when they manage to get a major independent publisher to print it? When the fracas settles (edit warring going on now), I'll add in other sources, such as the J. Front. Physics China review, the review in Fusion Technology, etc. Recent reviews take precedence over older, less comprehensive ones. But, hey, if you find contradiction of sources, among reliable sources, you are welcome to compare them and assert them with attribution, and you won't find me claiming we should exclude even old, obsolete, peer-reviewed papers and Nature editorials from twenty years ago. In fact, if that Nature editorial isn't mentioned in the article, I'd intend to put it in, it's an important part of the history, it represented the lowering of the curtain, the end of Act 1, where the nuclear physicists routed the electrochemists and dramatic tension was heightened. Act 2 was a story about how that intrepid band managed to barely survive, wandering in the wilderness, without funding or graduate students to carry water for them. Act 3 seems to have begun, we could only begin to report on it from media sources, of which there is now plenty. Act 4? Well, I wouldn't want to spoil the story. But I'll suggest that it might involve one of the two things: A Nobel prize, or a true closure when the science world finally figures out what, exactly, went wrong in those experiments, not just the stuff where everyone agrees it went wrong, but that pesky excess heat, and the helium associated with excess heat at roughly 25 MeV, and the alpha radiation and, yes, those stubborn little neutrons that just wouldn't go away until the world noticed them.

   Until the edit warring and stubborn removal of sourced material stops, though, it would be silly for me to try to improve the article, so I won't, beyond assisting other editors and maybe adding a few convenience links, easy stuff. --Abd (talk) 21:00, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Other comments

This poll was set up to make an initial estimation of consensus, on a question more relevant than the previous set-up, by --Abd (talk) 16:23, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Note that the version from Storms is only referenced to Storms at this point (in the bulk of it). However, much of what Storms (a secondary source) states can be sourced from his sources, as well. The complication is that sometimes Storms is citing, as a reviewer of a field can do (and often will do), sources such as conference papers that aren't peer-reviewed. My point here is that there is other reliable source on this topic and that the Storms material was used as a secondary source showing notability within the topic of our article, and to organize the material. The "Storms version" still needs work, no doubt about it. --Abd (talk) 16:23, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Response by Abd to misleading comment from Hipocrite

Hipocrite has commented that the Storms version was "rejected above already." However, that process is not complete and the result was mixed and the wrong questions were asked. Note that Hipocrite asked two questions. "My view?" or "Abd's view," to summarize. Abd did not endorce the supposed Abd's view, because it was false and not asserted by me. I acknowledged that the version I put up was imbalanced in some ways, but I assert that the version that was there, which Hipocrite reverted back, was more unbalanced in the other direction, that the Storms text improves the article, and that the way to deal with imbalance is to balance, not exclude. Hipocrite has now removed more of this section, which I'm not challenging since I want to revamp the whole section anyway, why bother with touching up the lipstick on a pig? Hipocrite imagines that he gets a consensus by asking biased questions and looking at short-term results. No, Hipocrite, consensus is negotiated and is not based on !voting. The poll I initiated here is not for the purpose of making a decision, it is for the purpose of guiding negotiations, and it simply begins the process. What you found was simply what we already knew: most editors who regularly edit this article take a fairly strong skeptical position and are likely to demand very strong sourcing for material that isn't skeptical. However, most of them are reasonable and will shift their opinion with discussion. I asked the WP:IAR question which trumps all the others, it even trumps RS details (though not WP:V). In this case, Storms is being used to assert opinion within the field of cold fusion, not overall opinion among scientists, which is something that is, on this topic, quite difficult to assess. The 2004 DoE review has been analyzed (I think well), to show a 2:1 position in favor of the basic experimental finding of Pons and Fleischmann as having, behind it, now, convincing evidence. That was done by excluding the four or five reviews clearly written by nuclear physicists, who have, shall we say, as a group, a conflict of interest, a strong reason for bias. Cold fusion is a topic which crosses fields, and what we appear to have is a good majority of chemists saying "This is not chemistry," and a stronger majority of nuclear physicists saying "You haven't proven that this is physics," with many of them believing that cold fusion was proven wrong in 1989-1990, which isn't supported by peer-reviewed reliable source, not back then, and not since. It's a "popular conception" among scientists and others, that's all. (From another source I was just reading, the CBS 60 minutes report), I might roughly estimate that chemists who briefly review the topic think it's not chemistry by roughly two to one or so, maybe more, and nuclear physticists without review think it's not nuclear physics by roughly ten to one, but it's very difficult to assess at this point.) What chemists in general think based on simple opinion without review is possibly the other way, toward majority opinion that the topic was closed twenty years ago, but that's not clear. In the CBS report, a physicist was found and supported to examine the evidence; a reputable physicist who was initially skeptical. He became convinced. How many other physicists would become convinced if something moved them over the hump of spending time reviewing material in a "dead field," supposedly "junk science"? Storms is RS by WP:RS standards. The use of extraneous arguments, which might apply to questions of conflict of sources, to simply exclude material, is a hallmark of pseudoskeptical editors, dedicated "fringe-fighters." There is, in fact, on the level of peer-reviewed academic sources, no support for the position claimed by Hipocrite as to the current mainstream opinion, and, if we look at the 2004 DoE review, the only general review of the field in the last five years, deficient as it was, but designed to be to some degree "neutral," we see that scientific opinion was divided then. I can sympathize with attempts to keep fringe theories from being presented out-of-balance, but Cold fusion is a quite unusual case, there is evidence that can be asserted that this isn't fringe science at all, it's just science in a field that, because of the enormous possible implications, and because of the difficulty of some of the work, remains very controversial. Hipocrite confidently asserts that this is fringe and junk, but the American Chemical Society doesn't devote a four-day session to recent work in the field, making it very visible with a press release, for a fringe science. That's indirect evidence, but we can look at the 2004 DoE review itself. The DoE doesn't convene panels to consider true fringe science, though I could believe that a government agency might convene a panel to examine some phony-baloney if there was a large political constituency for it. But there is no such political constituency for cold fusion. It's still a largely rejected field; the problem is that the rejection is based on popular opinion and the opinion of scientists who are almost entirely ignorant of the work of the last twenty years. I've talked to some: their first impression is, "Wasn't that proven wrong twenty years ago?" No, it wasn't. What happened was that certain of Fleischmann's findings with respect to radiation were incorrect -- and this represents consensus within the field. Fleischmann found neutrons, he thought, and he was wrong. Then, with respect to neutrons, there was research back and forth for years, some research finding no neutrons, some finding low levels near background. The latest work, which made a huge flap this March, shows that, yes, Virginia, there are neutrons, but at such low levels that, even though careful controls show that the radiation is associated with the creation of high-saturation palladium deuteride -- which should show, by classical theories, no such effect -- the level is so low that it has little to do with whatever produces the excess heat, it is probably some kind of side-reaction, and that it is a side-reaction, and at such a low level, explains the negative findings and the near-background positive findings. The neutrons are theorized by Mosier-Boss to come from a classic, normal reaction, one of the predominant reaction pathways, not the normally rare d+d->He4 reaction that has been one of the classic cold fusion hypotheses. Hot fusion. So what is hot fusion doing in a cold fusion cell? We now have quite a bit of secondary source on the significance of this research. But, at this point, references to this are being reverted as giving undue weight to "non-mainstream" opinion. The perception of undue weight comes from what is easy to find in older media sources and other popular, non-peer reviewed sources, plus some recent media off-hand, unsourced comments that are easily considered to reflect common media habit: don't investigate, just report what's been reported before, you can quickly get it from the files. (Such as "The Pons and Fleischmann work was never replicated," a highly misleading statement, given that there are 153 peer-reviewed papers showing excess heat in the palladium deuteride system. Some of this work is acknowledged to be of poor quality by both "believers" and "skeptics," but ... Hoffman, a skeptic, writing in 1995, when there was much less work available, noted that some of the excess heat work was being done by experts in calorimetry, familiar with possible artifacts, and that much of the work was careful; Hoffman, actually, didn't examine the excess heat evidence in any detail, but focused on the nuclear evidence, which was, at that time, relatively weak. In hindsight, we can see what was later replicated, there was good early work, lost in the noise.) This is the irony here: normally, with fringe science topics, it's popular media reports showing some support for fringe opinion or at least for the notability of it, against peer-reviewed academic publication showing very little, if any, support for fringe. In the present case, it's the opposite, and to scare up "mainstream" opinion against cold fusion from peer-reviewed source, it's necessary to do quite a bit of synthesis. What has happened is an entire field of research has been considered "fringe," but it's quite reasonable to think that, for example, the view that there is excess, unexplained heat from palladium deuteride is probably the majority opinion now among those who look at the evidence, at least minimally. That is shown by the 2004 report, and it took another five years before the ACS devoted more than an occasional one-day seminar to cold fusion, this year a four-day seminar, which shows an increase in credibility. Simon (2002) quite clearly acknowledges that cold fusion was "dead." That general opinion was that the case was closed. But he calls cold fusion "undead science," hence the title of his book. What he documents quite thoroughly is the mechanisms by which the "death certificate" was issued, and it wasn't about scientific process, it was about intense use of media, press conferences, pronouncements of "pseudoscience" and "junk science" and popular books designed to push a point of view (Huizenga, Taubes), and how what little was known about the work was presented and framed. And he notes that research continued, some of it being published in peer-reviewed journals (the "blacklisting" wasn't universal), with conferences and proposals of theory, and that competent researchers were involved, in spite of the serious cutoff of funding. Richard Garwin, the prominent physicist and (I think) member of the 1989 DoE review panel who has remained a dedicated opponent of cold fusion, says that he's not going to be satisfied until the cold fusioneers can brew him a cup of tea, he drinks it, and then they brew him another. There is great video of him saying this in the CBS report that just aired. (See: [60 minutes text]). (Can you spell "smug"?) What this reveals is definitely not skepticism, it's the opposite: it's attachment to an idea. He's skeptical of the ideas of others, but credulous with regard to his own. Cold fusion isn't about solving the world's energy problems (though maybe it could do that), and it is quite possible that the phenomenon could exist and be real and all that, and no cups of tea get brewed, just as we can't brew cups of tea with an accepted form of cold fusion: muon-catalyzed fusion. The first question to be asked, scientifically, is "what are the experimental results, what artifacts might be causing these results, instead of there being some new phenomenon; how can we determine, through controlled experiment, whether the results are artifact or substantial," and on through a process that normally proceeds through back-and-forth peer-reviewed publication and through interaction between theorists and experimental scientists. However, what happened with cold fusion was that a decision was made by a few, such as the late editor of Nature, that "Cold fusion was dead," and there was no use wasting the time of a peer-review panel. Scientists who had negative findings to report also found it difficult to get their reports published, they were rejected just like positive ones, but the most serious impact was that poor negative research that was published before most publication shut down was never challenged within the same publications, which is normally what happens. Examples abound, in fact. It's quite a story, quite worth telling no matter what the ultimate resolution is with regard to low energy nuclear reactions themselves. Here, it is an example of how article quality can greatly suffer whenever there are dedicated factions of editors promoting opposing views. If the faction supporting a popular or "mainstream" view prevails without actually finding consensus, we get an article that might be supportable from sources, but which is boring and incompletely informative and which can, in some cases, misrepresent what peer-reviewed reliable source can show. If the alleged "fringe" faction prevails, we get an unbalanced article that is obviously defective. In my view, while both outcomes are poor, the former result is actually worse, because we then have reinforcement of popular vs. informed opinion, which creates and fosters the entrenchment of shallow thinking, and I know of at least one other major example where an alleged consensus was imposed on a field and stood for roughly thirty years before a more comprehensive view began to break through, with the present situation being that views which have actually been discredited by recent research are still being pushed through the popular media by "experts" who are not following the academic work, they simply work in the field and teach what they were taught. The other side of this model is also bad, obviously, but is much more easily fixed, it's blatantly obvious, and, by definition, it bucks the majority view among editors, who are, more or less, a sample of the population. --Abd (talk) 19:59, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

moved from the Version 2 section above. --Abd (talk) 20:03, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
REGARDING VERSION 2 ABOVE, this is a complaint. Why are the texts of the two subsections, "Fusion-related processes" and "Other theoretical interpretations", so similar? For that reason alone this wording is not good-quality. V (talk) 19:37, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

There is no doubt that Version 1 needs improvement; the question was only whether the removal of Version 1 in favor of Version 2 was an improvement or not. I think not, obviously, or I wouldn't bother with this! Yes, there is redundancy; however, my sense was, in writing this, that having the theoretical considerations present in a focused way before presenting theories would be of great value, and thus we might deal with redundancy by eliminating the other material, making sure that the substance is represented here. As part of that process, the section would become more balanced. Storms, it seems to me, attempts to present the issues in a balanced way, and even what might be seen as way-out wacko (biological transmutation?) isn't, to those who know the field. There is no claim here, in my version, that biological transmutation is real, but only that a theory which explains or allows it might be useful. Storms does not expect that a good theory will explain all the observations, and one obvious reason is that there are thousands of observations in cold fusion experiments and some of them are almost certainly artifacts. A good theory would explain as much as possible, that's all. If CF is possible in the palladium deuteride system, there is no intrinsic reason that some protein can't arrange matters to cause transmutation. It just seems awfully unlikely, doesn't it? But those experimental results that show BT are a bit hard to explain away except by knee-jerk rejection (a la OCMV). Which is quite what the scientific method, in its entirety, is an attempt to get away from. --Abd (talk) 20:39, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Condensed matter nuclear science

Some of you may be aware that we had an article on Condensed matter nuclear science. It was redirected here by ScienceApologist (now topic banned from fringe science articles and presently blocked), edit warring appeared, and JzG reverted it to a redirect and indef protected it, which is, all by itself, quite an unusual response to a single bit of edit warring. This action is one of the actions underlying the present RfAr regarding myself and JzG. Be that as it may, much of the research that is going on can't be stuffed into the category of Cold fusion, the subject was called "Low Energy Nuclear Reactions" by the 2004 DoE panel. Most presentations at the International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science are indeed about what we might call "Cold fusion," but most researchers no longer even mention the word "fusion," rather they report on "anomalous heat production," or "the palladium deuteride system." Given that there are only two kinds of nuclear reactions: spontaneous decay and some kind of "fusion," it's technically true that "low energy nuclear reactions," which almost always involve some kind of induction of a reaction, it's not "spontaneous" like radioactive decay or fission, can be at least loosely covered by "fusion." Except that we don't really know what's going on in there, so calling it "fusion" makes assumptions that could, possibly, turn out to be false. There are excess heat observations, well-established. Are they caused by fusion? Some opinion in the LENR field, notably Krivit, as shown in recent media sources, is that it isn't fusion at all. It's something else.

I'd like the opinion of editors here about unprotecting that article and beginning to develop a more general approach there. In particular, I have in mind the work of Vysotskii, for starters, since what he reports is elemental transformation, and some kind of catalyzed fusion is simply one speculative interpretation of what might be happening. Vysotskii has also reported acceleration of radioactive decay by bacteria, and that isn't fusion. Probably.

Unprotecting the article doesn't mean that it would necessarily not continue to be redirected here, but only that we can make the decision by ordinary editorial process. Ultimately, what I see would be that there would be at least two articles, one about the science history, sources being media and other secondary sources, including work by sociologists (quite a number of whom have examined the Cold fusion affair), and one (or more) about the science, where peer-reviewed academic publication would be the standard for sourcing. A science article and a history article. The researchers in the field call it Condensed matter nuclear science. So should we, I'd say, with a redirect from Low energy nuclear reactions to it. None of this means setting up a POV fork, but simply recognizing that there are two topics here, and mixing them does justice to neither. Each article would summarize the other in a section under summary style. --Abd (talk) 01:51, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Vysotskii and biological transmutation

Right now, biological transmutation isn't mentioned in Cold fusion and a See also link was just [removed by Enric Naval]. (He removed several things, all of which are okay except this one, so I'll put it back.)

(If biological transmutation isn't "Cold fusion," what is it?)

In any case, the most common researcher name that comes up connecting cold fusion and biological transmutation is Vladimir I. Vysotskii, who in 1997 was associated with Kiev Shevchenko University, Radiophysical Faculty, Kiev, Ukraine. So I thought I'd comment on what sources I find about him and his work.

[6] is a peer reviewed (mainstream journal) 1998 paper that might not, at first glance, seem to have anything to do with cold fusion. Except that the abstract begins with:

A general theory of controlling and changing the spontaneous nuclear γ decay is proposed. The phenomenon of nuclear decay controlling is a result of the interaction of the excited nucleus with zero-energy electromagnetic modes, which in turn interact with the controlling screen. In the general case the spontaneous decay probability with the presence of adjacent material bodies always differs from the corresponding probability for free space.

I was sensitized to this by a comment in Hoffman (Dialogue, 1995) pointing out that Be-7 is stable in free space and yet has a short half-life when absorbed on a surface. Hoffman points out that "If changes in charged particles orbiting around a nucleus can cause major changes in events within the nucleus, then there are chemical effects on radioactivity."

Vysotskii is proposing in his paper theory regarding the influence of chemical environment on radioactive decay. This is very much a Condensed matter nuclear science topic, but has nothing to do with fusion, directly.

So, we find Vysotskii presenting conference papers at ICCF conferences, for example: ICCF10 (2003): http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/VysotskiiVsuccessful.pdf Successful Experiments On Utilization Of High-Activity Nuclear Waste In The Process Of Transmutation In Growing Associations Of Microbiological Cultures

There are twelve conference papers in the lenr-canr.org bibliography by Vysotskii, or papers published by Infinite Energy which I'm not prepared at this time to assert as reliable source (!); the earliest I saw was presented at ICCF4 in 1993: On Possibility of Non-Barrier DD-Fusion in Volume of Boiling D2O During Electrolysis In 1996, an article appeared on Infinite Energy: Experimental discovery and investigation of the phenomenon of nuclear transmutation of isotopes in growing biological cultures

And at the recent ACS seminar in March, 2009: [7] Nuclear transmutation of isotopes in biological systems: History, models, experiments and perspectives (page 3 of the document with presentation summaries).

There is no doubt that Vysotskii's work is highly visible in the cold fusion field, thus it is no wonder that Storms would consider this prominent enough to include in a list of reported phenomena that a LENR theory should attempt to explain. Vysotskii isn't an isolated researcher, he appears to be a physicist and most of his papers have co-authors who are also academics.

The lenr-canr biblography page for Vysotskii is at http://www.lenr-canr.org/PDetail12.htm#3345.

Vysotskii appears to have done research sponsored by the U.S. goverment, see [8].

A book has been published, Nuclear Fusion and Transmutation of Isotopes in Biological Systems By Vladimir Vysotskii and Alla Kornilova author-provided description, Moscow, "MIR" Publishing House, 2003. The book is available though Infinite Energy's online store. Now, what is "MIR" Publishing House? This seems to be Mir_Publishers. This looks like it could be reliable source, though, obviously, the topic is controversial. And I'm not finding independent confirmation. Note, though, that there is earlier work reporting biological transmutation, by Kervran and Komaki; Vysotskii may be a more sophisticated confirmation of that earlier work.

Vysotskii is a heavily cited author at [9].

And, I shudder to note (antifringe editors, please avert your eyes), Vysotskii has written about possible physics behind Water memory.

mmmm... Here is a googlebooks result: [10] Metal Ions in Biology and Medicine - 1998 By Peter Bratter, Philippe Collery, Virginia Negretti De Bratter, Lylia Khassanova] The chart shown here is the same chart as is shown in Storms. This is Vysotkii's paper, and gives much more experimental detail than Storms reported (worth reading for those who have criticized Storms's report of this work). This was a collection of papers given at International Symposium on Metal Ions in Biology and Medicine organized in Munich in May 1998. There appears to have been some kind of review process for papers, but how deep that would have been, I could only speculate.

So: what do we have? We have some very remarkable reports, considered notable by Storms, and an apparently competent researcher, albeit one willing to challenge norms, working with established academic institutions. I'd say we have enough to include mention of biological transformations as an aspect of our topic, which was done in the material recently removed by Hipocrite, and to justify a See-also to Biological transmutation. Beyond that, the lack of independent confirmation makes it difficult to do more than mention the existence of the research.

The credibility of this research rests politically on the credibility of cold fusion research in general. While at first I was inclined to be extremely skeptical of the concept of biological transmutation, on reflection I've concluded that if CF can be pulled off by a surface effect with a palladium lattice, where it isn't actually the bulk palladium that manages the trick, and if CF effects take place with other systems (which apparently it does), it wouldn't, then, be so surprising at all that a biological mechanism could evolve, proteins can pull of some amazing tricks. My guess is that within a few years we'll have much better information all this. --Abd (talk) 08:10, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

There is no source for the biological transmutation thing apart from Storms, who only dedicates it a one-liner. The lack of relation to CF was discussed in the "Living organisms?" section above, and the problems with using Storms as a source are discussed at "Removal of Storms material." section above.

The biology book is about transmutation of Fe⁵⁷ and not about deuterium or lattice, and it makes no reference to cold fusion. You need to provide a source making a direct relationship between biological transmutation and cold fusion (one that is not Storms) if you want it mentioned in the article. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:58, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Enric, you seem to have missed something. Storms devotes more than a one-liner to this. The "one-liner" is where he cites explanation of the possibility of biological transmutation in his list of observed phenomena that a theory of cold fusion would profitably address. Elsewhere, he gives almost two pages to it, pp. 141-142. The research he gives the most ink to, reproducing the Mossbauer spectra, is cited above. Then there is the book published by MIR, which is a major, established Russian publisher. Then there are myriads of conference papers, not just Cold Fusion conferences. Then there are many non-CF related peer-review published papers by Vysotskii, and he's widely cited for these and they go way back. And from all this, I'm only suggesting that there is a relation between biological transmutation and cold fusion, which, by excluding having an article on Condensed matter nuclear science, which any biological transmutation would be, we force to be in this article. Do you get my drift?

Absolutely, in now way should we treat biological transmutation as an established fact. But there are books on it that predate 1989. It exists as an obviously fringe field, with a typical fringe phenomenon: because the possibility is considered preposterous, the research reports are not taken seriously, and neither refuted nor confirmed. There is enough to treat it as notable, and it's even notable enough to have its own article (which is more notable than necessary for a mention). How can you argue that Condensed matter nuclear science stuff belongs here, but Biological transmutation doesn't deserve a See also? --Abd (talk) 11:13, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

In that both are examples of pathological science perpetuated by fraud and bad experimental procedure? I kid. No, it does not. Hipocrite (talk) 11:59, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Since you are so concerned about fraud and bad experimental procedure, perhaps you can find some reliable source on significant fraud with respect to Cold fusion or the work of Vysotskii? Cold fusion is a field which, because of the huge potential market for inventions, is going to attract all kinds of parasites, and you can find quite a bit on hucksters on New Energy Times; as to "bad experimental procedure," again: researchers make mistakes and the normal publish/response cycle cleans it up. That cycle was interrupted, such that bad experimental procedure and interpretation, in 1989 or 1990, got published, and the responses were suppressed, normally considered a very, very rude thing for a publisher to do. Hipocrite, it seems you think you are supporting a scientific point of view, but you aren't. You are, instead, supporting non-science, i.e., uninformed opinion. I will be asserting, first here in Talk, a series of reviews of cold fusion, both in peer-reviewed publications and in media sources, showing the evolution of the field. But we could start with both DoE reviews. I presume you have read them? --Abd (talk) 13:53, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

If you cannot remain civil, I will not discuss this with you, except to say that consensus above states that your proposed sources are unreliable. Hipocrite (talk) 14:11, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I shall "call" you on that claim. The straw vote was about this statement: "Abd's version provides too much weight to a single, unreliable source" --the people who voted in favor of that are not necessarily all claiming that both parts of the statement are true. One part is about too much weight to a single source, and the other part is about the reliability of the source. Any crooked politician can tell you about wording something so that something bad for everyone can get included with a bunch of things that are good for most everyone. That's why when I saw the statement I immediately focussed on YOUR claim that the source is unreliable, when that is too broad; all we need is reliability with respect to Cold Fusion involving palladium and hydrogen only. Shall we have another straw poll SPECIFICALLY about that, just to see how right or wrong you really are, about Storms and Pd/H/CF? V (talk) 15:55, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Eh? Uncivil? Where? As to the alleged consensus, can you point me to it? Your version of the poll asked if my edit was unbalanced, and I agreed it was unbalanced, in fact, though not as to degree and comparison with your edit. You did not ask the single question of whether or not Storms was RS, so it cannot be determined if the answers were to that part of the question or the other, and it would be difficult for a mere poll, without adequate discussion, to determine that a book published by a major publisher is not RS, this cuts to policy and guidelines. Further, only Storms was considered, above I assert Vysotskii's book published by MIR. Where was it found that this wasn't reliable? In your imagination? Can you document that? --Abd (talk) 15:34, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

By the way, examining the comments with the !votes shows division on the RS question; the principal question answered was balance, which was actually a moot question. As to current status of the two polls: With some pile-on of editors who agree with you, with very recognizable names that would be expected to do so from consistent edit history: 7:3 in "your" favor (with similar predictability on "my" side. And "my side" is actually what guidelines suggest for the situation, what does that tell us?

However, the more to the point and simpler question I then asked, the !vote is 3:1 that your edit made the article worse, all things considered. And what does all this mean? Not much. I don't see enough support to assert my position with article edits, at least not yet. Rather, I will explore the issue in detail, make other compromises, use wider sourcing for basically the same thing, because it exists, etc. It's just more complicated and takes longer. --Abd (talk) 15:45, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Everyone who signed the "Abd's version provides too much weight to a single, unreliable source" called your source "unreliable." That your second confusing poll has failed to draw responses is because you can't phrase things that are easy for people to understand.

You are incivil when you call people "uninformed," or that they are supporting "non-science." Do not repeat this behavior.

If you intend to use Vysotskii as a reliable source to anything other than Vysotskii's tiny-minority opinion, I suggest you seek editiorial opinion on that, perhaps by having a clear strawpoll so that you can, yet again, be shown that your proposed content changes have no support from the vast majority of editors, and, in fact, aside from one editor, are supported only by what are now effectively single-purpose accounts (that would be you and Objectivist.)

Since you agree that edits you make are unbalanced, I suggest you review WP:NPOV. Making edits that are knowingly in violation of our core policies is a problem.

Finally, please attempt to stay on topic. Your stream of conciousness responses are dificult to follow and I will not continue to do so much longer except to say that any edits you make to the article should be proposed on the talk page before they are made. Hipocrite (talk) 15:57, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

mmm... and you? My "knowingly unbalanced" edit would have required twice as much work to balance, and it was more balanced than what it replaced. You, Hipocrite, removed reliably sourced material without adequate discussion. Your positions will ultimately have no support overall, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Not worthy of further response. No, straw polls are not necessary before asserting edits. Etc., etc. --Abd (talk) 17:02, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

As Hipocrite points out, the second poll covered the same point as the first one, which is why people didn't !vote there. To all effects the second poll is 3:7:1. It's only 3:1 if you refuse to take into account the results of the first poll. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:51, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm certainly not refusing to take into account the results of the first poll, but that poll suffered from a severe POV slant in the questions, such that even I didn't support the first poll alternate option, and had to create a third option. Nobody is questioning that the text based heavily on Storms is out of balance, the real question is whether or not it was out of balance more than the alternative of its pure removal, i.e., Hipocrite's action. Hence the second poll. The third poll is pure disruption. Do you support that, Enric? By the way, the result that you synthesized (essentially 7:3) was also stated by me, above, so how could you claim that I refused "to take into account the results of the first poll"? --Abd (talk) 16:34, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

You were saying that the polls made different questions, and that the 3:1 result showed that Hipocrite's edit was making the article worse. So, yeah, you weren't taking into account the result of the first poll. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:12, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Presenting contrary evidence is not the same as "not taking" other evidence "into account." The first poll presented two options, with the first option combining two independent questions, and without sufficient evidence being presented for people to base !votes on, plus no independent, neutral editors have been solicited. Later, that can be arranged. The second option, then, asserted a position that nobody was asserting, a straw man. That's an excellent example of an abusive poll, designed to produce a result. Enric, we've worked together long enough for you to know better. The first poll did not answer the question of whether or not the edit made the article better or worse, and that is, in fact, the ultimate question about a revert. If the revert made the article worse, it was out of line. If it made it better, it was proper. ("Worse" or "Better" are overall judgments that understand that defects exist in all text and, further, that content guidelines are not fixed rules but merely helpful general principles, to be applied with discretion by editors seeking consensus.) By asking about specific defects instead of the overall issue -- improvement of the article -- our process has been reduced to wikilawyering over source reliability, not the substance of the article, which was, and remains, missing any solid material on theories advanced to explain Cold fusion. Hence, indeed, I will largely ignore the polls, but see in them sufficient support for my position that I'm certainly not dropping it. I'm merely waiting for the day when conditions are right to clean up the mess. I'm not going to try to clean it up when more mess is still being made. --Abd (talk) 17:07, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Reliability of sources

(This poll was set up by Hipocrite)

Setting up a poll every time someone disagrees with you, without any new edit in controversy? This is disruption! --Abd (talk) 17:17, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I am confused. Is this section a request for comments about the reliablility of these sources? If so, then it is a waste of time. The talk page is intended to be used for discussing EDITS TO THE ARTICLE. If you don't want to discuss edits to the article, the honorable thing to do is to refrain from editing this talk page. Those discussions should take place somewhere else. Olorinish (talk) 20:44, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

It looks like that to me, Olorinish. The first poll was set up by Hipocrite when I started discussing his revert of my addition of material on "proposed theories" from Storms, who is probably the most reliable source we have on what theories are proposed, aside from the pure experimental error that some seem to think is the only allowable theory. The questions asked were, in my opinion, if we are going to poll -- which is utterly unbinding, particularly when not preceded by adequate discussion, but which can sometimes be useful -- the wrong questions, stated to attract !votes in a certain way, so I first added a third option that represented the actual opposing view, not Hipocrite's straw man, which nobody supports, and then I added a poll that asked the fundamental question. Hipocrite had framed the issue as, essentially, "does Abd's edit have faults?," when the practical question should have been "was reverting this edit an improvement? or "is some other version even better?" So poll number two asks a real question that could give real guidance as to how to proceed. Then, when I began discussion of an issue raised as part of the discussion of Storms, and, only in Talk, pointed to some information on biological transmutation, which has, to my knowledge, two recent sources showing notability of the claims, Hipocrite opened up this third poll which wasn't based on any edit and was an attempt to establish source unreliability in the abstract, a doomed exercise. Source reliability is dependent on the text cited and the context of usage, once sources are within certain very broad categories. Abd (talk) 01:16, 9 May 2009

Storms

RE: Storms, Edmund (2007), Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction: A Comprehensive Compilation of Evidence and Explanations, Singapore: World Scientific, ISBN 9-8127062-0-8

A reliable source for scientific fact

1. Abd (talk) 17:17, 8 May 2009 (UTC) Sometimes. Depends on the text asserted. Inferior, generally, to source that is independently peer-reviewed.
2. Looks like more distorted wording to me. CF is not widely considered to be scientific fact, after all. However, as a source of DATA in the CF field (and only with respect to CF involving palladium/hydrogen, which is all that matters in this Wikipedia article), I would say that Storms is careful enough. V (talk) 19:48, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
3. What i have seem from storms have been compendiums, and pretty comprehensive ones at that. Kevin Baas^talk 15:08, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

A reliable source for notable minority opinion

1. Abd (talk) 17:17, 8 May 2009 (UTC) Absolutely.
2. I can agree with this, without reservation. V (talk) 19:48, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

An extremist or fringe source

1. Hipocrite (talk) 16:02, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
2. OMCV (talk) 03:41, 9 May 2009 (UTC) in terms of scientific material, fact and theory.

Are you saying that theory based on well-accepted fusion observations under certain physical conditions must always, absolutely, apply everywhere and all the time (all other physical conditions)? That any data that hints otherwise must automatically be discarded, even after a hundred replications? V (talk) 13:39, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

1. Enric Naval (talk) 15:44, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
2. Verbal chat 21:04, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Vysotskii

Re: Vysotskii, V., et al. "Successful Experiments On Utilization Of High-Activity Waste In The Process Of Transmutation In Growing Associations Of Microbiological Cultures". in Tenth International Conference on Cold Fusion. 2003. Cambridge, MA

An extremist or fringe source

1. Hipocrite (talk) 16:02, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
2. OMCV (talk) 03:41, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
3. Enric Naval (talk) 15:41, 9 May 2009 (UTC) To explain a bit: notice that Biological transmutation is a fringe field itself, that this is an unpublished primary source, and that the source making the link with cold fusion (Storms) is also a fringe source. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:13, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

A conference paper, not peer-reviewed

1. This source is not usable except for discussion in Talk, whether extremist, fringe, or whatever. Nobody has asserted this paper as a source for an edit, Hipocrite is wasting our time. --Abd (talk) 17:17, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
2. I can agree with Abd here, because the topic is not related to the Fleischmann-Pons experiments. V (talk) 19:50, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

   A technical point: this paper would be related to Low energy nuclear reactions or Condensed matter nuclear science. The latter is an article that was basically salted by JzG, it's protected as a redirect. There is, I believe, plenty of material for an article on the general topic of research into the possibility of differences of behavior in the condensed matter environment from behavior in a plasma or free space and there are known and accepted differences; Hoffman points out, for example, that Be-7 is stable in free space, with infinite half-life, but decays by electron capture when in chemical relationship; there is a page on this: [11]. The recent Vysotskii papers have been, in fact, on the use of bacterial cultures to accelerate decay of radioisotopes. While it sounded totally nutso when I first read the titles, the Be-7 example shows that something might be possible like that. Unfortunately, I know of no recent replications. (Vysotskii can be seen as a confirmation of earlier work, but those experiments were different, and I, for one, would be quite content with replication of the fairly simple and well-documented work that Storms cites, using Mossbauer spectroscopy. As far as I've seen, though, no replications have been attempted.)

   But as long as these articles are redirected here, the notable facts belong in this article, and we determine notability by independent publication. Storms isn't the publisher of his book, nor is Vysotskii the publisher of his book (Hipocrite did not pick the stronest source, big surprise), and both of these are general academic publishers; the books are both technical, academic works. If editors of this article want to fork off the more general field of CMNS, I'm sure it can be fairly easily done. --Abd (talk) 01:39, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

3. I'm not familiar w/this source, but if this question is here and it has a good fraction of votes on it, chances are it's a conference paper that hasn't been peer-reviewed, and I see no risk in calling a spade a spade. Kevin Baas^talk 15:29, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
4. The Vysotskii paper cited in this question was a red herring. Most of Vysotskii's work on biological transmutation has been published as conference papers that are probably not usable as reliable source except under very narrow conditions (which don't apply here.) However, there are quite a few exceptions, just not this one. Storms cites 6 Vysotskii documents, including conference papers and one published book, apparently. Storms is a secondary source, a review of the LENR field. Sources like this are the gold standard, except for one fly in the ointment: Storms is arguably not "mainstream." So if Storms is contradicted by "mainstream" reliable source, we must only use Storms with attribution and caution. So the question becomes, where is the contradiction? I haven't seen it, but I would not insist upon RS for it; rather, what I insist on is that we can use sources like Storms according to RS guidelines, and I would not object to text noting that this work hasn't been confirmed or accepted, even if that is not sourced. I looked extensively for confirmation of Vysotskii's work and I could find nothing either confirming or rejecting it (which is, to me, little short of tragic, but that's a tragedy that won't be fixed here). But it's notable, as Storms shows. There is all kinds of cockamamie stuff asserted at ICCF conferences, though I don't think most of that makes it into the proceedings. As Simon notes, once you are shoved outside the mainstream, you become much friendlier to all kinds of fringe stuff, since you now know what it's like to be unfairly rejected. Cold fusion researchers are acutely aware of the problem, but many of them don't want to imitate the mainstream a priori rejection of the previously unknown and unexplained, so they give these people a hearing. Vysotskii, however, is (or was) a mainstream scientist, reputable and widely published on other things. If the paper which is the subject of this poll were the one presented at ICCF11, instead of the ICCF10 one, I'd be bumping it up as "notable minority opinion." See how important the questions are in polls? In standard deliberative process, no poll is taken until a supermajority (typically two-thirds) has agreed that the question is in final form and that it's time to vote. --Abd (talk) 18:19, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

What is this, a vote?

Is this a discussion or a vote? Come on, people: you clearly know something about these sources, so please share your knowledge. Tell me about this Storms book, for example. What kind of publisher published it? What's the education, experience in the field and other credentials of the author? How extensive is its bibliography? To what extent are statements in the book based on the bibliography, with speculation indicated as such, and to what extent does the author present his opinion as fact? Are there reviews or citations of the book, and what do they say? What other criteria can it be evaluated by? How does the book rate according to the criteria at WP:RS? How does it compare for reliability with other books on the topic? Let's have some real information here; NPOV is not something that's determined by majority vote. If this information is given somewhere else on this page, please give a pointer to it. (This is not intended as a criticism of the person who started the poll, but as encouragement to participants to provide more useful information to the discussion.) ☺Coppertwig (talk) 22:41, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

The Storms book is a recent compendium of pro-CF references. Unfortunately it is biased. As noted in the D. Britz book review in J. Sci. Explor.: "There are some weaknesses...Some expert criticism of Storms' calorimetry (Shanahan, 2006) is not mentioned" And I might add, the book states that the Shanahan criticisms have been addressed, with the preceding paper by Storms which the missing 2006 Shanahan paper rebuts being used as the primary evidence of that. Not so. Further, the paper by Clarke on air leakage into cold fusion apparati still present in 2002-3 work is also not mentioned. Yet, excess heat and He-4 detection are chosen as the two most significant evidences of CF. The Shanahan 2006 paper rebuts any attempt by Storms to discredit the Calibration Constant Shift, and the Clarke paper proves CF researchers (McKubre in particular) _still_ can't keep air (and thus He-4) out of their apparati (a concern of the 1989 DOE review). So, as a listing of pro-CF papers Storms is a good reference, but as an unbiased overview of the field, it fails miserably. You decide if the book should be used in the article. KirkShanahan (talk) 12:05, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

From above, where I wrote, about Storms: This is the publisher's list of works on physics: http://www.worldscibooks.com/physics/nppp.shtml. This is not some fringe publisher. This is the publisher's blurb on the book: http://www.worldscibooks.com/physics/6425.html. The introduction can be read there, there are also some radio interviews with Storms.

The book in question is Edmund Storms, The science of low energy nuclear reaction, a comprehensive compilation of evidence and explanations about cold fusion, World Scientific, 2007 (reprinted 2008). It's a scholarly work, heavily referenced, with 1394 citations. It's the only recent comprehensive review of the topic, and I'm not aware of any earlier review on this level.

Storms is a secondary source, a review of primary sources, secondary sources are highly desirable for referencing articles.

Wikipedia:RS#Scholarship

Wikipedia:No_original_research#Primary.2C_secondary_and_tertiary_sources

Note that source reliability refers to the publisher, not so much the author.

No unreliable statements have been identified in what was removed from the article. The statements did not contradict what other material we have from reliable source, beyond gross summarization as passing mention in books not on the topic of cold fusion (ie., Bird (1998) and Derry (2002); the former writing in Philosophy of Science, the latter is a superficial tertiary source, What Science Is and How It Works.

We also have Jan Marwan and Steven Krivit, editors, Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions Sourcebook, Oxford University Press, August, 2008. This latter book isn't a comprehensive review, but does include some reviews; it's a compilation of significant papers. The blurb from the publisher:

This book is a summary of selected experimental and theoretical research performed over the last 19 years that gives profound and unambiguous evidence for low energy nuclear reaction (LENR), historically known as cold fusion. In 1989, the subject was announced with great fanfare, to the chagrin of many people in the science community. However, the significant claim of its discoverers, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, excess heat without harmful neutron emissions or strong gamma radiation, involving electrochemical cells using heavy water and palladium, has held strong.

I mention this here because a paper by Vyosotskii is included, see a list of the contents at [12]: Vysotskii, Vladimir I. [1], Tashyrev, Alexandr B. [2] and Kornilova, Alla A. [3], "Experimental Observation and Modeling of Cs-137 Isotope Deactivation and Stable Isotopes Transmutation in Biological Cells," [1]Kiev Shevchenko University, Kiev, Ukraine, [2] Kiev Institute of Microbiology, Kiev, Ukraine, [3] Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia.

Further, the Sourcebook is "Sponsored by the ACS Division of Environmental Chemistry, Inc., American Chemical Society, Washington, DC" Unfortunately, this book is very expensive, I can't afford to buy a copy.

It is getting a tad oversimplified to claim that cold fusion is out of the mainstream. It's clearly still quite controversial, but acceptance is also obviously spreading. In prior years, there have been occasional one-day seminars on cold fusion at ACS conferences, and a scattered few at American Physical Society conferences, but this year it was four days at the ACS conference in Salt Lake City, with the ACS issuing a press release on research featured there and holding a televised press conference.

I'm not claiming that Storms should be used without caution; however, that research is cited in Storms shows notability within the field; likewise coverage in the ACS LENR Sourcebook. There are thousands of papers written on topics related to cold fusion; Storms and Marwan and Krivit didn't include or cover papers they did not consider notable; and it is on judgments like these that we based our inclusion policies. What's crucial is independent publication.

Storms was being used to source "proposed explanations" of cold fusion. The only proposed explanation that was allowed to remain in the article by Hipocrite was "experimental error," and gross generalizations from the 1990s, never accurate even when formulated, are being repeated as fact, because they are found in some shallow coverage in a book on, say, scientific controversies, like Derry. --Abd (talk) 02:51, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Some News of work with superdense deuterium

Discussion of some possible fusion claims by chemists working with superdense deuterium. Collapsed because it doesn't discuss improvements to the article, per WP:TALK
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Here's some news coming out of a university chemistry department, the essence of which somehow reminds me of the original Fleischmann & Pons news.... http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/05/university-of-gothenberg-making.html Enjoy! V (talk) 21:45, 11 May 2009 (UTC) How does that in any way remind you of Cold Fusion? Hipocrite (talk) 21:58, 11 May 2009 (UTC) Duuhhh, chemists talking about nuclear fusion. I suppose you will now completely ignore their data and automatically call them "fringe". V (talk) 16:01, 12 May 2009 (UTC) I see a few differences. It's laser driven nuclear fusion, not electrolysis driven. The end result is "dense deuterium", not excess heat. The energy is supposed to get stored in the material, not released, and it gets released again by applying another laser. I'm not even sure that it can be called "cold fusion", more like "high energy fusion" because you pump lots of energy through the laser. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:18, 12 May 2009 (UTC) It seems to me they are carefully not saying enough for anyone to be sure what they are talking about. For example, what if they are making hydrinos? If that stuff could be made, then of course hydrogen could get quite a bit denser than normal. On the other hand, they say they are applying energy to make their dense hydrogen, and hydrinos are claimed to be associated with energy-release, when/if they form. Then there is the fact that laser energy need not be associated with HEAT; it can be associated with other things. One of the things talked about in the linked article is "Rydberg matter", which if memory serves has something to do with ultra-cold temperatures and nearly-ionized atoms. So, start with some ultracold deuterium and apply a laser to pump electrons to a very very high orbit. If it's cold enough for such things as a Bose-Einstein Condensate, a high density of the deuterium might well become possible. (And I know of at least one speculation about "BEC Fusion" happening if those deuterium nuclei can be considered very close together in a Condensate.) V (talk) 17:59, 12 May 2009 (UTC) Please consider my comment again, their setup has nothing to with a typical cold fusion cell or with any cold fusion cell ever. The only things they have in common is that both use deuterium and that both claim to achieve nuclear reactions (not even the same reactions). About calling it "cold fusion", I'm sorry, I meant that it can't be called a "low energy nuclear reaction (LENR)" because it's a high energy reaction. Basically, they use a pulse laser that provokes Coulomb explosion which have as signature a "high kinetic energy release (KER)" of 630 eV, which I think has never been observed in any cold fusion cell ever. I suspect that the laser they use has quite a lot of energy (let's not confuse heat with energy). This needs a RS making the link between this experiment and CF (and explaining the link in detail, if possible) --Enric Naval (talk) 01:18, 13 May 2009 (UTC) Enric, please re-read my original post in this Section. It says, "somehow reminds me of the original Fleischmann & Pons news" --notice I did not use the magic words "cold fusion" there, and there was a reason for that. I'm fully aware that these guys are running a very different experiment. But STILL, they are members of the Chemistry Department talking about nuclear fusion. I had no intention of suggesting anything about this needs to go into the main article here; I just thought this piece of news was interesting and sharing-worthy. CF, after all, is supposed to be about nuclear fusion happening in an environment more typically suited to chemical reactions (and in which palladium is more often a catalyst than a reactant). Why IS a Chemistry Department reporting news like that, anyway? Because it's been done before, maybe? Heh! :) V (talk) 03:16, 13 May 2009 (UTC) Oh, doh, well, sorry if I was a bit obtuse :( if I see someone post something here then I expect that the poster wants it to go into the article, or wants to make a change to the article using it. I don't expect people to post stuff just to talk about it :-/ --Enric Naval (talk) 16:24, 14 May 2009 (UTC) No real complaint. On another hand, such data as this MIGHT in some oddball manner be related to CF. What exactly is "Rydberg matter"? Ah, I see we have an article about it. Hmmm.... What if some variant of it happens to spontaneously form inside a small region of a palladium metal lattice, say, because hydrogen and palladium have practically identical electronegativities? Sure, we couldn't talk about any such thing in the article NOW, but if the editors are kept up-to-date on developments, however remotely related those developments might be, the article will eventually benefit from it, one way or another. And with less arguing between editors, too! V (talk) 21:20, 14 May 2009 (UTC) If it doesn't remind an editor of cold fusion, that just goes to show. Sure, it's not the same. However, the really striking claim is this: we believe that we can design the deuterium fusion such that it produces only helium and hydrogen as its products, both of which are completely non-hazardous. Read my lips: b r a n c h i n g r a t i o. "Design" fusion? The major opposition to cold fusion was that the reaction apparently didn't match normal branching ratios, and these researchers are now claiming that they can arrange things so that there is some different branching ratio. They are working with condensed matter, and thus the behavior maybe quite different than in plasma. This may not be cold fusion (looks more like hot fusion), but the claim is looking like it in that the condensed matter state must somehow influence the branching ratio or possibly induce new kinds of reactions. Alternatively, though, they might be controlling the branching ratio through tuning the laser or other qualities of that excitation. The paper: [13] I don't know what you will see, I was able to read the whole paper. It's doi:10.1016/j.ijhydene.2008.10.024. The paper talks about High-density atomic hydrogen, which is believed to be a quantum liquid, can be formed by heterogeneous catalysis at the surface of hydrogen-transfer metal oxide catalysts. And then it goes into even denser forms of hydrogen. "Catalysis at the surface" really is reminiscent of palladium deuteride cold fusion: the reaction appears to take place in what Storms calls "NAE," nuclear active environment, which is only very small regions at the surface of the palladium lattice. The reaction doesn't take place deeper in the palladium, from various evidences, even though the palladium has soaked up deuterium and is essentially saturated with it, to the point of being very high density compared to deuterium gas. The required hydrogen density for laser-induced “fast ignition” fusion is estimated to be >0.3 kg cm−3 [14] and [15]. Using the bond distance of 2.3 pm for the dense atomic hydrogen (deuterium) material described here, its close-packed density is found to be >130 kg cm−3. In reality, the material may not be so dense due to filaments or fractal shapes of this quantum liquid. This ultra-dense material is however much denser than what is considered to be necessary for “fast ignition” laser-driven ICF (inertial confinement fusion). In the case of muon catalyzed fusion the average distance between the protons is approximately 0.5 pm. Thus, the deuteron–deuteron distance of 2.3 pm in the ultra-dense deuterium material described here is larger but comparable to the distance known to give spontaneous fusion in the muon catalyzed fusion process. The article even mentions cold fusion: Alternative approaches involving absorption of hydrogen as atoms in dense metals (so called cold fusion) have not been able to demonstrate fusion in the generally accepted sense. Of course, what do those approaches demonstrate? We know it's not fusion in the "generally accepted sense," that's been obvious from the beginning; the physicists essentially said, "This isn't fusion as we know it." Which was correct. --Abd (talk) 02:05, 12 May 2009 (UTC) Near the bottom of the article they say that by "ultra-dense deuterium" they mean a (theoretical?) Rydberg matter state they call D(-1) -- the "inverse" of D(1). Kevin Baastalk 20:43, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm dropping work on the version of the article here

[14] reverted another effort to add actual material on "Proposed explanations" for cold fusion. These removals are reaching the point of violations of rulings in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science; they amount to exclusion of reliably sourced material on the claim of "fringe."

I urge review of the material reverted, with comparison to the text that was returned by Hipocrite.

However, it's impossible to work on this article under the present conditions, and there is insufficient support from other editors to deal with the disruption without creating more disruption. I will, therefore, begin to work on a fork of the article in my user space, I am not going to roll a boulder up the hill more than once. It takes a community to create an article, but if the community is dysfunctional, it won't happen. I will invite other editors to support this drafting of an alternate version, so that, ultimately, the community can consider which to choose. --Abd (talk) 03:37, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

I certainly prefer SmackBot's version. There's just more information in there. The choice is obvious. Kevin Baas^talk 15:12, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Undue Weight

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Discussing "Proposed explanations" for Cold fusion by reference Edmund Storms is providing undue weight to a fringe source. If Storms/Takahashi is a notable minority source, feel free to provide him weight in proportion to his notability. However, he cannot be used to say that things are true, accepted, or widely believed. The edit that Kevin reverted included Takahashi being used to source "our deuterons condense to make ⁸Be, which quickly decays to two alpha particles, each with 23.8 MeV." This, of course, is nonsense. The edit that Kevin reverted included Storms being used to soure "It is postulated that some atoms with an appropriate available energy level can catalyze the transition of electrons to this state." This, of course, is nonsense. Please don't attribute fringe nonsense to fact or theory. Thanks. Hipocrite (talk) 15:32, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Four neutrons, not "our neutrons," and this is reported as a "proposed explanation," not as a fact. What part of it is "nonsense."? Basically, I'd have to guess, the fusion part, because if, somehow, four deuterons did fuse, the rest would follow naturally and would explain the well-known experimental results. Thus instead of the "triple miracle," there would be only one. How in the world would four deuterons fuse? Why not two or three? I can think of ways, but I'm not a quantum physicist, I just know one. Nevertheless, I'll say it. The lattice creates a kind of channel at the surface, where deuterons congregate, so to speak. It confines them. Storms claims that the lattice cannot overpack deuterons, the chemical bond strengths don't allow it, but this analysis doesn't prevent transient effects from occuring. If two or three deuterons are found in a "channel," nothing happens. But with four, even though for a very short time, the fusion rate starts to go up. The rate is still very low. Fortunately! Highly unlikely that this is the story, but the point is that we don't know what is possible, we only know what has been observed, and we can develop theories to predict observations; when the theories successfully make new predictions as well as explaining prior ones, we begin to place some trust in them. However, that trust, in real science, never becomes absolute, such that experiment is out-of-hand rejected if it doesn't match theory. At some point, a theory is well enough established that isolated reports of some experimental anomaly won't receive much attention, but the phenomena involved in cold fusion have gone way beyond "isolated reports." That's why, even with a huge bias among nuclear physicists in general, the 2004 DoE panel was evenly divided on the reality of excess heat, and was roughly 2:1 against evidence for nuclear reactions being strong. Given work since then, plus better knowledge and analysis of what had been done before 2004, my opinion is that an overall panel review today would come out quite differently. However, what must be noted is that it is still possible that there would be no recommendation of massive funding. Just because there is a nuclear effect doesn't automatically mean that money should be thrown at it. This is, apparently, a fragile effect, difficult to control, it's taken almost twenty years to figure out how to do it reliably to show even small amounts of excess heat. Personally, I'd recommend better funding, but still not the Manhattan-scale project that Fleischmann opined it would take to make this commercially successful.--Abd (talk) 18:06, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

"Discussing "Proposed explanations" for Cold fusion by reference Edmund Storms is providing undue weight to a fringe source." --that is unsupported opinion. Do you know that there are "sources" and then there are "sources"??? If you don't, let me spell it out: A primary source is Original Research. A secondary source is a reporter. Into which category does Storms better fit? A reporter writing about something on the fringe is not inherently part of that fringe. Now, I agree that such a reporter cannot claim that something is true just because the Original Source made that claim, but the reporter CAN say that the Original Source made such-and-such a claim. And we editors of this article can make such statements, too, especially after someone like Storms said it first. That is, if Storms says that so-and-so claimed such-and-such, and we can verify that so-and-so did indeed claim such-and-such, then, to the extent that Storms was consistently correct, then Storms is RS for this article. All we have to do is ensure that various claims that are included in the article are properly labeled as being claims --and then only until enough other RS agree that the claims qualify as facts. (And should that day never arrive, the article will be fine, so long as claims remain marked as claims.) V (talk) 13:45, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Consensus on this talk page is that Storms is an advocate of Cold Fusion and an unreliable source for scientific fact. He may be a reliable source for his personal opinion, and that opinion may be notable. Because storms says x says y does not make either the x or the y notable or true. See WP:RS, specifically "Extremist and fringe sources." While storms may or may not be an extremist or fringe source (talk page consensus here appears to be that he is), many of the sources he references unquestionably are. You cannot backdoor hydrino fraud into this article because someone mentions it. Hipocrite (talk) 13:51, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

You have twisted what I wrote into an irrelevant direction. It doesn't matter how convinced Storms is that CF is real. What matters is his reporting . If he consistently did the type of job I described above, properly indicating that so-and-so claimed such-and-such, and we can verify that so-and-so did indeed claim such-and-such, then his report qualifies as an appropriate secondary RS source for this article. If he slipped up here and there, that could be understandable in terms of "flow of text" (it is possible to over-use a word such as "claimed"). If he mostly didn't describe claims as claims, then I will withdraw my objection to excluding his reports. The rest of my argument is below; you need not reply at both places (thank you). V (talk) 16:14, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

From what you write here, it appears to me that you are getting your opinion mixed up in the wikipedia editing process. Please review WP:NOR and WP:Verifiability. also note that the text abides by proper attribution of opinion as stated in WP:NPOV, contrary to what you say above. Also keep in mind that I did not write the material that you removed. I do not appreciate you accusing me of things that I am clearly not responsible for, and that - in fact - did not happen at all - as a review of the text and wikipedia policy of the text will show.

Now if you have more material to add on the topic of proposed explanations - which is a rather key aspect of the topic "cold fusion" - feel free to add them. If you feel that undue weight is given to anything, please discuss it on the talk page w/the other editors, focusing on the content and not the editors. And try to refrain from making bold, vague, and far-reaching claims like "fringe" and "nonsense". Such appeal to ridicule does not shed light on anything or aid discussion. Kevin Baas^talk 15:43, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

You're responsible for the changes you keep reverting in, regardless of who wrote them. I'm fully on board with WP:NPOV, especially the section on Undue Weight. Please review it. There's a whole strapoll up there about your edit and your sources, which basically rejects them. Please don't continue reinserting unbalanced material in the article and telling other people to balance it, thanks. The vast majority of notable opinion on explanations for Cold Fusion, as shown by the mainstream sources that discuss cold fusion is that its "experimental error or fraud." This article does not weight that opinion nearly enough as it yet, let alone with the addition of massive inclusions of tiny minority "explanations." Hipocrite (talk) 15:48, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the straw poll wasn't about Kevin's edit, it was about a much longer previous version. The version Kevin reverted back in was boiled way down to satisfy the concerns of some editors about undue weight. Now, be nice, Hipocrite. --Abd (talk) 21:04, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

In this diff you can see the differences between the diff shown at the first poll and the version reverted by Kevin.

The version reverted by Kevin still gives a lot of weight to Storm's book by placing it at the very first paragraph, and then citing it again to add Takahashi's theory of ⁸Be and Mill's hydrino theory. Both theories have failed to gain any sort of traction in mainstream science, and they weren't even mentioned at DOE 2004, so it's also giving undue weight to fringe explanations when compared to the weight given to the maintream explanation of experimental error. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:16, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

From what I've seen, that "vast majority of notable opinion on explanations for Cold Fusion, as shown by the mainstream sources that discuss cold fusion" are simply repeating conclusions that were reached almost 20 years ago, and except for recent news, have deliberately kept themselves ignorant of research that followed --at least some of which took to heart early criticisms. What is a valid basis for thinking that OLD data is superior to NEW data, when it is possible for new data to be associated with better tools (and a larger suite of tools)? What side of this issue really has "undue weight" given to it? V (talk) 13:16, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not the place to right great wrongs. If the bulk of reliable sources are failing to accurately report something, Wikipedia will, as well, fail to accurately report something. The way to fix that is not to fix Wikipedia, it's to fix the sources. Thanks. Hipocrite (talk) 13:36, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

What I wrote is not about "righting great wrongs"; it is about Wikipedia editors acting as if Generally Reliable Authority is identical to Always Reliable Authority, and that only the things they say can be included in articles here. It will seldom hurt an article to include off-the-wall claims that are marked as claims. --and inclusions of such, perhaps in their own section, could make an article more interesting to casual readers. That's because all sorts of History are about people, not just facts, and most people typically find the foibles of other people to be interesting. Is there no guideline anywhere about that? That is, is Wikipedia supposed to be "dry" or "interesting"? Or, from another angle, consider the cliche that "knowledge is power", and its logical corollary that ignorance is slavery. Thus those who would limit the spread of knowledge, in whatever manner, are in effect claiming some kind of right to have power over those who they would keep uninformed. It is therefore extremely important, in an encyclopedia , to include as much relevant data as possible. For example (I haven't looked yet as I write this), articles on Moon Landings can include claims/data/logic by those who say the events were staged and not real--and counter-logic can be included, too. The readers, of course, should be free to make up their own minds --and they should have the data that allows them to do it. Does Alexander of Macedon really deserve to be called "Great" when his actions appear to have consisted largely of large-scale theft of other rulers' territories? Winners may write the history books, but an encyclopedia (I haven't looked at that article either) doesn't have to restrict itself to the POV of the winners. I'm still waiting to hear about somebody on a witness stand, having sworn to tell the whole truth, object to the Judge that one of the attorneys is interfering with his/her ability to fulfill that oath. Well, with respect to CF, the "whole truth" includes a lot of claims that are not Officially Reliably Sourced. You do not deny that fact, do you? Yet your actions appear to be describe-able as attempts to suppress parts of that whole truth. Why? V (talk) 16:04, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Please remain civil. Examples of incivility are things like the in-genuine "thanks" you use. And again, it is not "my edit" and they are not "my sources". I only noticed your removal of material from the article when someone mentioned it on the talk page, and reverted it as I thought it unjustified. I did not contribute the any of that content, and I don't know - or care - who did. Please try to remember this so you do not continue to repeat the actions that I just told you I do not appreciate.

And no, I am not responsible for other people's actions, only my own. That is how responsibility works. If people would go to jail for other people's crimes by design, needless to say, we would have much bigger problems to worry about than this article.

Any ways, I'm not really interested in discussing this content - it's not that important to me -, and so far it hasn't been very productive anyways. I seem to be a distraction for you from discussing the content, anyways, so I'll leave this and let you discuss it w/others. Kevin Baas^talk 16:02, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, enough Talk. I'm not going to work to add material until the environment makes it reasonably safe, but that doesn't mean that I can't support other editors. Pudding. Proof. --Abd (talk) 18:21, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

I'd be able to put together additional sources for the Storms material, and additional material on "proposed explanations." For example, looking at the material on ultradense hydrogen mentioned above, the same journal had a Mills paper on hydrino theory, [15]. Given this paper, and Storms' description of prior work by Mills, can it really be claimed that this isn't notable? Storms is a secondary source, independent from Mills. In fact, Storms appears to be a critic of Mills, see http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg25595.html. Krivit, likewise, has published criticism of Blacklight Power, Mills' company.[16].

But I'm not going to put more work into actual article editing until we have some spirit of cooperation going here again. It's too frustrating to work for hours on a piece and see it ripped out without any attempt to find consensus on it, to improve it, to balance it, etc. --Abd (talk) 02:37, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Those sources have already been considered and rejected as not reliable. Hipocrite (talk) 02:43, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Hmmmm...so YOU say. Care to prove it? Also, please specify precisely in what way you are using the phrase "not reliable". Thank you! V (talk) 13:25, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Hipocrite mistakes his POV for consensus. There is no closure above; what's visible, if we set Hipocrite aside, is the existing camps of editors, !voting rather predictably, in dispute without resolution. There was, however, an operating consensus that was proceeding, slowly, with article improvements. My addition of Storms was intended as a contribution to this process, and I expected it to go back and forth, settling on agreed-upon improvements, as we have been doing for some time. Hipocrite entered with an outside agenda, quite clearly, and destabilized the situation, asserting, without restraint, an extreme anti-fringe position that is directly in contradiction with Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science, and his opposition to that decision is already well-known. I'm a tad occupied at this point, what with being a named party in an arbitration myself (going well, thank you very much), but I will support other editors as I see appropriate. When I have time, if someone doesn't beat me to it, the problems here will go to Arbitration Enforcement, for efficiency. What we are seeing is blatant exclusion of material from ordinarily reliable source based solely upon opinion that it's "fringe" and "extreme." In this case, what was being sourced was "proposed explanations," and to only source such proposals from critical sources, while excluding sources that might be friendly to them, solely on the latter basis, will maintain article imbalance. No specific errors have been alleged in Storms. When reliable sources are in conflict, we will typically report the conflict using attribution and framing ("due weight"). Storms is a cold fusion researcher and reputable scientist before that, as have been many CF researchers. His 2007 work is published by an independent publisher of science texts, not some fringe publisher. We have a similar work published (2008?) by the American Chemical Society and the only reason I haven't been sourcing from that is that I don't have access to a copy. Storms is, by objective measures, a reliable source. That doesn't mean that his material can't be impeached, but you will have to show contradiction, and no contradictions have been asserted that will hold up on examination. Instead, behind Hipocrite's objections is a belief that cold fusion is based on fraud and pure error. That is obviously a controversial position, given the level of ongoing peer-reviewed publication in the field, and a great deal of media attention recently showing respect for the research. The claim that cold fusion is a rejected field, to be given little weight in comparison to "mainstream scientific opinion," is based on old sources and persistence of popular opinion, and scientists, unless they specialize in a field, are typically reliant on media for their opinions on matters like this. Last time I noticed, the American Chemical Society was representative of the mainstream, it's the largest scientific society in the world, and the ACS clearly considers this a legitimate field of inquiry. (That's not equivalent to considering cold fusion a proven phenomenon, merely that a shift of opinion has taken place, the question is no longer considered closed.) --Abd (talk) 16:55, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

That's a very interesting take on the ACS position. Inferring from their willingness to listen that there is actually something worth listening to. I'm prepared to believe that someone performing death metal-gangsta rap-salsa fusion on the harpsicord might have novelty value, but that doesn't mean it will be good by any reasonable standard.LeadSongDog come howl 21:58, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

It's called Wikipedia:Notability. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 12:33, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

That's right, Coppertwig. LSD, one may infer "novelty value," or, perhaps, "collegial respect for the quirky thinking of minorities," from the occasional one-day seminars, hidden in a corner. Not from the four-day seminar, with a press release/press conference, announcing some historically significant research, the SPAWAR group (Mosier-Boss et al) finding of energetic neutrons, which were the original holy grail of both cold fusion researchers, and of the critics. What the SPAWAR group did was to confirm earlier reports of very low-level neutrons, with controls such that it can be concluded that they are not artifact, they are coming from what is happening in the cell, but the levels are so low that the predominant reaction must not produce them. Thus the findings explain (not without leaving behind a great mystery, what is the primary reaction?) why so many groups found no neutrons and concluded that nuclear reactions were not happening, since plasma branching ratios predicted copious neutrons. What I'm suggesting is that we start paying attention to current reliable source, and understanding that what is in reliable source twenty years ago about a scientific controversy isn't necessarily so reliable any more, it is of historical interest, but dangerous when used to determine "due weight." --Abd (talk) 13:27, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

With regards to the March 22-26 ACS national meeting sessions on cold fusion, first off the claim it was ‘four days long’ is erroneous. The program does list sessions for four days, but the ‘session’ on Wednesday was in fact an announcement of a single poster in the Wednesday night poster session. (One wonders where all the other author’s posters were. Normally, presenters will have posters too.) Examination of the Tuesday PM session indicates it had nothing to do with cold fusion. George Miley, a CF researcher, did present a talk, but it was on borohydride based fuel cells, not CF. Vysotskii presented a paper on memory effect in water (another pseudoscience field), and two potentially ‘normal’ talks were given. So, in actuality we have 2-1/2 days of talks, which could have probably been reduced since Steve Krivit gave two talks, and he is just a journalist (per his own abstract) and did not contribute new information (P.S. Krivit’s claim in his first talk’s abstract (“has engaged proponents and opponents alike”) is false as he has only had cursory contact with me and therefore has not seriously dealt with the primary outstanding criticism of excess heat.). Several ‘reviews’ were presented (Miles, McKubre, Gordon, Srinivasan (x2)), which in a scientific session such as this is somewhat suspect, as normally new research is presented (if the field is dynamic and growing). (The introductory one by Marwan would be considered normal.) A number of the other talks were not on ‘cold fusion’ per se. Bezhotov talked on ‘Erzions’, whatever those are. Vyotskii gave a talk on biological transmutation, which is CF only by a severe stretch of the imagination. Shestopalov talked on what is known as ‘fractofusion’. Stringham talked on what is known as ‘sonofusion’, as did Taleyakhan. Together these add up to at least a day’s worth of presentations, so the ‘new’ information presented here was really about 1-1/2 to 2 days worth of material tops, not significantly more than found in an ICCF. As well, it’s all the same folks that present at ICCFs, so I suggest that this ACS session is no more reliable than a typical ICCF, which are generally considered 'not reliable'. KirkShanahan (talk) 14:58, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Nice to see you stop by, Kirk. Did you see the video linked above, in the "Lecture by Robert Duncan" section? How does CCS explain several megajoules, boiled electrolyte, and melted palladium? V (talk) 16:47, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

(ec with below) "Careless Clumsy Scientists"? I'm more interested in those neutrons. I'm also more interested in how CCS can explain the very strong correlation between excess heat measurements and helium, specifically what Storms claims as 25 +/- 5 MeV/He-4. How, in an extensive series of P-F cells, set up and measured in the same way, helium was only found in the cells that also generated excess heat. No matter how many of these findings are developed, critics like Shanahan find ever-more-preposterous ways to explain them away. Shanahan, however, is practically alone at this point, the only scientist who is making specific criticisms, at least we have to give him that -- at least with regard to calorimetry. Nevertheless, the stretch gets greater and greater. For example, the long-maintained 4 degree C. temperature rise after the formation of palladium deuteride in the gas-loading experiments of Arata. I believe that McKubre has confirmed that. This is not an electrolysis experiment, there is no supplied energy, and only the natural heat of formation of palladium deuteride is involved: hydrogen shows the expected generation of heat as the gas is admitted to the cell, which then settles down, within hours, to ambient temperature. Deuterium shows the same kind of initial release, but then settles down to a steady generation of heat for thousands of hours, showing no sign of lessening.

Absolutely, skeptics should give this every shot, but ... at some point skeptics need to do some experimental work themselves. N-rays were debunked through careful experiment that showed the origin of the "effect." Likewise polywater. That was never done with Fleischmann's excess heat, and, indeed, the excess heat has been verified in 153 peer-reviewed papers, I'll provide a link to a list of them. Many of these reports are not just selected experiments, only showing "success": they show a series of experiments, reporting "failures" as well as "successes." Where Fleischmann screwed up was in reporting neutrons. What we now know, quite conclusively, is that neutrons are rare, not normally produced in these experiments at levels sufficient to be considered anything more than a by-product (unless somehow they are efficiently "used"). What is produced is plenty of alpha radiation, starting with a Chinese group in 1990, and, again, how does Shanahan explain that?

Here is the press release: [17]. Low-energy nuclear reactions could potentially provide 21st Century society a limitless and environmentally-clean energy source for generating electricity, researchers say. The report, which injects new life into this controversial field, will be presented here today at the American Chemical Society's 237th National Meeting. It is among 30 papers on the topic that will be presented during a four-day symposium, "New Energy Technology," March 22-25, in conjunction with the 20th anniversary of the first description of cold fusion. Krivit received a lot of attention for his presentation, his comments were widely reported in the media. Journalists can be considered experts, though in a different way than scientists, as such. Shanahan's view of the field is highly biased. It's notable because it has been published, at least parts of it have. Some of the criticisms he makes are odd. The general field isn't "cold fusion," it is more commonly called "low-energy nuclear reactions," and Vyosotski's work with biological effects, which involve two different kinds of nuclear transformations, have long been of interest to LENR researchers as shown by the notice that Storms takes of it. (The forms are transmutation, as has been described above to some extent, and acceleration of radioactive decay, which is roughly possible in theory, i.e., chemistry is known to be able to affect decay rates under some circumstances.) I'm not surprised to see a session focused on reviews, because the goal of CF researchers there would be, not to present new research, unless it is truly striking as with the SPAWAR neutrons, a subject Shanahan notably avoids above, but rather overviews to "spread the word" to other chemists. The new research would be more likely to be presented at ICCF conferences.

No suggestion is made that the papers presented at this conference are "reliable source," in themselves, that is, they are not peer-reviewed, nor are they, by virtue of presentation, "published." Rather what was the subject of my comment was the notability of the conference, due to media coverage and due to the obvious increase in attention paid by the ACS. Conference papers are primary source, occasionally they are useable, more often not, unless they are cited in a reliable source, in which case the full reference would include the citing source as well as a primary reference. --Abd (talk) 17:50, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

The only notable point about the ACS meeting is that it is another tick mark n support of the comment "The field continues to be pursued by a band of dedicated fanatics' KirkShanahan (talk) 18:08, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Line-by-line response to Abd's silliness on my talk page. KirkShanahan (talk) 19:56, 18 May 2009 (UTC) - That's this talk page please - Kirk shanahan (talk) 19:59, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

The same it does the Letts-Cravens effect, which is the same way it does for any apparent excess heat signal. You should know that, you claim to understand the CCS enough to discredit it. I might throw in the problems Scott Little mentioned in measuring ultrasonic power input when he investigated the similar Russ George claims several years ago, which by the way, explain the 'melting' too (think 'cavitation jet'+'power mismeasurement'). KirkShanahan (talk) 17:34, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh and P.S., this isn't the place for your comment. Comments here are to be directed towards improving the article, as mine was. KirkShanahan (talk)

Kirk, I'm pretty sure it takes actual heat, not apparent heat, to melt palladium and boil the electrolyte out of an electrolysis cell. So, if CCS can't explain boiled electrolyte and that picture of melted palladium, then any mention of CCS can be moved to the "mere speculations" section (which if doesn't exist under that or an equivalent name, should), improving the article thereby. That's pretty simple logic, and should suffice to deal with Hipocrite's remark below. V (talk) 21:21, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Patently ridiculous claims, based on a total lack of understanding of mainline explanations. Also, not relevant to the article. Please stop this V. KirkShanahan (talk) 13:00, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

If it hasn't been done already, I'd like to see mention that Robert Duncan video (a presentation by a University counts as RS, doesn't it?) in the article. V (talk) 01:52, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

The video was taken down by the university, reasons still unknown. See [18]. In the video, Duncan talks about receiving an angry phone call from a physicist who called him a charlatan. I'm suspecting a great deal of pressure has been brought to bear. For some people, their beliefs become religious, and not in a good sense. --Abd (talk) 02:33, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

This all has nothing to do with improving our article. If you all want to chat about Cold Fusion, could you take it elsewhere? Thanks. Hipocrite (talk) 17:55, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

H, please see my comment immediately above yours here. The relevance to the article is in my prior comment, pre-V response, which is an explanation of why the ACS session is non-RS. Now, the bit V brought up isn't related I agree, so to honor your request, I will not respond to any non-article related point subsequently. KirkShanahan (talk) 18:03, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Hipocrite, Shanahan is a published expert, and his opinions are important. I'm very much interested in his views on the matters raised, with a goal of improving the article. I happen to think that it's impossible to work intelligently on a science article without some understanding of the science, so some level of discussion of the science is necessary. Don't want to read this, don't read it, there is no obligation. --Abd (talk) 18:11, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Tha's rich Abd! Wow! I can't believe you wrote that! For those following this, see my Talk page section 15 for more details. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:06, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I can't agree to that. This talk page is for discussions surrounding the article, not chatting about science. There are multiple other fora people can use to chit-chat about cold fusion. It needs to stop happening here. I'm blad Kirk has agreed to focus on improving the article. You should do the same. Hipocrite (talk) 18:23, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

On Improving the Article

Despite certain claims made by Hipocrite, the previous section did have a few things in it about improving the article. For example, I quote something I wrote to Hipocrite:

"... it is about Wikipedia editors acting as if Generally Reliable Authority is identical to Always Reliable Authority, and that only the things they say can be included in articles here. It will seldom hurt an article to include off-the-wall claims that are marked as claims. --and inclusions of such, perhaps in their own section, could make an article more interesting to casual readers. That's because all sorts of History are about people, not just facts, and most people typically find the foibles of other people to be interesting. Is there no guideline anywhere about that? That is, is Wikipedia supposed to be "dry" or "interesting"? Or, from another angle, consider the cliche that "knowledge is power", and its logical corollary that ignorance is slavery. Thus those who would limit the spread of knowledge, in whatever manner, are in effect claiming some kind of right to have power over those who they would keep uninformed. It is therefore extremely important, in an encyclopedia, to include as much relevant data as possible. For example (I haven't looked yet as I write this), articles on Moon Landings can include claims/data/logic by those who say the events were staged and not real--and counter-logic can be included, too. The readers, of course, should be free to make up their own minds --and they should have the data that allows them to do it. Does Alexander of Macedon really deserve to be called "Great" when his actions appear to have consisted largely of large-scale theft of other rulers' territories? Winners may write the history books, but an encyclopedia (I haven't looked at that article either) doesn't have to restrict itself to the POV of the winners. I'm still waiting to hear about somebody on a witness stand, having sworn to tell the whole truth, object to the Judge that one of the attorneys is interfering with his/her ability to fulfill that oath. Well, with respect to CF, the "whole truth" includes a lot of claims that are not Officially Reliably Sourced. You do not deny that fact, do you? Yet your actions appear to be describe-able as attempts to suppress parts of that whole truth. Why?"

Hipocrite failed to reply to my question at the end of that, tsk, tsk. If Hipocrite was really interested in improving the article, instead of skewing it one way or another, an answer to my question should have been posted.

Then there is Kirk Shanahan wanting us to believe that a small amount of chemical heat from hydrogen-oxygen recombination can throw off a calorimeter designed to register lots more than a "small amount" of heat, and throw its calibration off to the extent that if it measures a lot of heat while an electrolysis cell boils its electrolyte away and melts one of its electrodes, we have to pretend it didn't actually happen; that it was all an illusion associated with a temporarily uncalibrated calorimeter. I agree that that speculation should be in the article, for entertainment purposes if nothing else! I disagree on giving it any more weight than claims that hydrinos can explain cold fusion. V (talk) 15:24, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

More ad hominem from V. I will post a reply on my Talk page immediately. KirkShanahan (talk) 15:54, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

( Partly because his talk page does not have a reply there yet)... More bad logic by Shanahan. My paragraph above contains a description of the CCS hypothesis, admittedly written to blatantly expose its most fundamental flaw (excess heat can possibly be detected by means other than a calorimeter). Since CCS is "pushed" and defended by Shanahan, there is nothing faulty in writing about "Kirk Shanahan wanting us to believe" it. NOR is there an inherent fault in, generically, Person A wanting Person B to believe something-or-other (sometimes that desire is even vitally important, like when Person A discovers the house they are in to be on fire). But somehow Shanahan has concluded that my statement somehow describes a flaw in Shanahan; by definition the statement "More ad hominem from V" can only be true if my statement describes a flaw in Shanahan. WELL, WHERE IS THAT DESCRIPTION??? I'm fully aware that THIS paragraph is not properly relevant to immediately improving the CF article, but I'm also aware that the only way to discourage people from injecting wildly flawed remarks like the one in the immediately-previous paragraph...the only way to get them to stop is to expose the wild flaw as publicly as possible. I explain my stance in more detail in the "ways and means" section near the bottom of my own talk page. And after they stop, then this page will be improved thereby (along with, in the longer run, the main article) --which means this paragraph (and any others like it in the future) might not be such a waste, after all. V (talk) 19:28, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, your description of the CCS is woefully inadequate. It is the fact that I have said this to you many times (now repeated on my Talk page, again...) that brands you clearly as a fanatic who repeats what he reads/is told by the CF advocates, and doesn't think for himself, i.e. a fanatic. Kirk shanahan (talk) 19:54, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Tsk, tsk, look who's really doing the "ad hominem" thing, instead of answering my question about where **I** supposedly did the ad hominem thing. So, your ad hominem statement is another obvious example of bad logic presented by you, Kirk (read the article to see why). Care to attempt it yet again? V (talk) 21:50, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Ummm...'check my Talk page' - What is it about that you can't understand. Especially note the answer to Abd I posted in response to his 'chastisement'. Why is it you can't focus on improving the article here? (Note to others: the current CF article has no significant description of the mainline reasons why 'CF' is not nuclear. I would think an interested reader hitting that page would like to know that. I came here to add such, and have been repeatedly blocked (note that I don't add edits unless there is consensus first, so the 'blocking' has occured primarily on the Talk pages. However my original edits of Sept. 17, 2008 and before were block deleted by Pcarbonn)). Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:46, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I do not object at all, to there being a section in the article about non-nuclear explanations for the evidence. I might note, though, that your POV is showing, in your description above, "mainline reasons why 'CF' is not nuclear", since the phrase "is not" presumes itself to be fact, when that is not known to be fact. Regarding your talk page (haven't yet studied the stuff that's now there), I am remembering that some time ago Abd asked you to write an "idiot's guide to CCS", and have been wondering where that is, just so I can see how different it is from the impression I already have of it. The longer you take to write it, the more I'm going to think I understand it well enough. For example, I'm encouraged by your description above, "woefully inadequate" of my description above that, simply because you did not say outright I was wrong (nor in what way I was wrong). V (talk) 13:30, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

OK, outright: You are wrong. Actually, that's difficult to say since you have never responded to the standard scientifc challenge I issued to any of you to prove you understood any of my comments by repeating back what I was trying to get across and then by discussing the implications of that. Abd started but fizzled out. You haven't even tried. What you write implies strongly that you have no understanding of what I am trying to say (and get into the article somewhere). Prove I am wrong by successfully answering my challenge and I will be happy to recant my assessment of you.

P.S. For teh record, rspond to my challenge on my talk page, not here. Kirk shanahan (talk) 14:12, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I have written the "idiot's guide" several time here and on my Talk page. You (and Abd) didn't understand it.

I don't recall ever seeing something described as an idiot's guide to CCS. And if Abd saw one and didn't understand it, then I would tend to think that you didn't describe it well enough; it wasn't written for the really uninformed person (as little as one word of specialists' jargon can lead to misunderstanding). Fixing that could mean going so far as to define all terms used, plus defining all the key terms in those definitions, just for starters. For Examples of How To Do It Right, read lots of nonfiction by Isaac Asimov. V (talk) 17:01, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I have a POV. It is a 'mainline scientist' POV. It needs to be in the article for balance. I have no intention of contributing to a pro-CF POV. BUT, I DO NOT BLOCK SUCH AN ADDITION TO THE ARTICLE. Pcarbonn blocked my additions. I tried to gain consensus on this page. He never agreed. Others supported him. He was then banned. Next, up pops V and Abd to take his place (with kevin Baas chipping in through all ot this). I do not 'POV-push' as you imply by bringing this up (another indirect ad hominem) since I FREELY ALLOW THE ALTERNATE POSITION TO BE EXPRESSED. Who else do you know who will defend my CCS proposal and the deceased Brian Clarke's work? The mainline gave up on the field years ago, they usually don't care. It is only because I work in this field that I do. If you want mainline thought in the article for balance, I am it. But, it is obvious from your vehement objections to everything I write, that you don't. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:54, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

You may have misinterpreted what I wrote above about POV. Ideas and facts associated with a particular POV are completely allowed, but the wording used to describe them needs to be non-POV in any place where ideas and facts are in contention. That means one cannot describe an idea in terms that assume the idea is True, when the idea is not certainly known to be true. Also, it helps if the idea makes logical sense. So far, from your descriptions of CCS that I've read, it does not, as I've pointed out here and there. But it's been a while since the last time I examined it; perhaps your descriptions have improved. We shall see.... V (talk) 17:01, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't respond to people who ask me why I'm beating my wife ("Yet your actions appear to be describe-able as attempts to suppress parts of that whole truth. Why?") The "Whole Truth" for the purposes of Wikipedia includes only claims in Reliable Sources. Wikipedia cannot solve the GREAT WRONG that mainstream science has perpetuated on Cold Fusion. You'll have to get it published elsewhere. Hipocrite (talk) 19:57, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

"The "Whole Truth" for the purposes of Wikipedia includes only claims in Reliable Sources." --that is a false statement, as proved by the existence of articles on completely fictitious things such as Star Wars, Dracula, etc. The WP:Verify rules are what allows those articles to exist. And in a contentious science-oriented article, while RS may be preferred, there is no rationale to give it a monopoly. For a less extreme example, consider the high temperature superconductor article --there is no argument about the existence of that phenomenon, but there is plenty of speculation as to how it happens, even plenty of RS speculation. As soon as one of those guesses emerges from the debate as the "winner", all the others, despite the fact that they are currently RS, will have to be "demoted" at the least. Should they be deleted as irrelevant, and the winner be given a monopoly on the article? Why? The presence of those other ideas would stand as a testament to the creativity exhibited in tackling the problem; there will be historical value there.

In this article the primary subject has the major problem that the evidence, if it is to be regarded as real, needs to be explained in a way that appears to require some significant modifications or additions to certain well-verified facts. And the initial difficulty in replicating the original experiments did not help at all. So years have gone by while the experimenters kept trying different things, to isolate relevant variables. According to them, in non-RS publications of course, they can now fairly frequently replicate the original experiments. And according to one actual RS source, neutrons have been detected above the natural background level. Eventually that claim will be either verified or not-verified. For the moment, there is a good logical reason to include a fair amount of non-RS stuff in the article: There is currently no RS regarding neutrons-not-verified, and non-RS is the only place to find proposed explanations for HOW (detailed "how", not just "Duh, fusion did it") those RS-reported neutrons happened to appear during certain CF experiments. In other words, it would be a lie to say, in effect, by restricting the article to RS-only, "There is no detailed explanation for those neutrons." It is certainly true that there is no agreed-upon explanation, even in the non-RS literature. Very equivalent, that, to the high-temperature-superconductivity guesses.... V (talk) 21:50, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

If a claim is not made in reliable sources it cannot be used in Wikipedia. Period. End of discussion. Hipocrite (talk) 22:24, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Then you "lose" because speculations, such as detailed suppositions regarding how CF could happen, are not identical to claims, and therefore RS is not required for speculations, exactly as RS is not required for pure fiction. Only verifiability-of-publication is required, regarding that aspect of this field. V (talk) 13:06, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

No, I'm sorry, that's not how wikipedia works. Hipocrite (talk) 13:08, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Prove it. And just to spice things up, I might mention Chain Reaction (film), a movie which seems to have a variety of a cold fusion reactor in it. Verifiable/fictional stuff, that. (That article mentions bubble fusion, but the phrase never actually is used in the movie, leaving the audience to wonder.) How many articles are there in Wikipedia that talk about one aspect of science fiction or another? Anyone who wants to claim that "cold fusion" is fictitious science should be willing to accept non-RS stuff in the article. V (talk) 13:34, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

WP:V is a policy, which reads "Material challenged or likely to be challenged, and all quotations, must be attributed to a reliable, published source." I have no idea why you are talking about sourced information in fiction articles. Perhaps you should broaden your editing from just Cold Fusion to something else, also, to understand how Wikipedia works. Hipocrite (talk) 13:53, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

It is exactly because you have no idea why Wikipedia allows articles about fictional things, that you fail to understand my argument. The definition of "reliable" is the key point of contention here. If I have a reprint of "Frankenstein" (note the novel is in public domain) published by somebody selling old-fashioned computer printouts, and I quote text from it (in that article), will you automatically assume that the quoted text does not actually exist in any other editions, such as a reprint published by a major publisher? It seems to me that if you can grab a random copy from any publisher, and find the quoted text, then my computer-printout copy qualifies just as much as a "reliable" source for quotes, as any other copy. Or, how about the "reliability" of publishers like "New Energy Times" and "Infinite Energy", in publishing CF articles? You cannot deny that they are reliably publishing, when new issues become available at regular intervals, and they have been doing that for years. You cannot even deny that they can be relied on to publish artices about CF. And will those CF articles reliably contain claims about the subject??? Almost certainly!!! Therefore, if this Wikipedia article contains a claim, which is described in the article as being a claim, and it is easy to verify that that claim was indeed published in a source that can be relied upon to publish claims, then just exactly what is your problem about including it in the article???? V (talk) 16:21, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Our policy on reliable sources is clear. What part of "Extremist and fringe sources" and "Self-published sources" from WP:RS are you having a hard time grasping? Hipocrite (talk) 16:33, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Apparently WP:RS#Overview and WP:RS#Scholarship.LeadSongDog come howl 16:38, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, I see this: "How reliable a source is depends on context." Both of you know full well the context here is controversial. That means if the average highly educated CF-detractor eventually turns out to be wrong, the average highly educated CF-detractor suddenly becomes, by definition, an unreliable source on this subject. The mere fact that there is controversy over interpreting the data here means that nobody is truly the sort of Reliable Source you are talking about. Especially since the average "RS" in this field has, apparently, ever since the initial failures to reproduce excess heat, has turned a blind eye to improvements in experimental technique, that are claimed to more-reliably produce excess heat. When has ignorance ever been a valid Reliable Source???

Next, I see this: "if an article topic has no reliable sources, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." This does not explain why there are many thousands of articles on fictional things, which have no sources other than their original publications, for example Star Trek (film), which just came out and there has been no time for any ordinary/traditional RS material to have been published on it. So, the fact that such articles are quite-well allowed/tolerated (especially in light of the "Scholarship" section) means that there is leeway in interpreting the Rules -- and any claims by you to the contrary can be completely ignored!

Next, in the "Overview" section is this: "The following specific examples ... are not intended to be exhaustive. Proper sourcing always depends on context; common sense and editorial judgment are an indispensable part of the process." WHERE IS YOUR COMMON SENSE, HERE? A while back I wrote this: "Well, with respect to CF, the "whole truth" includes a lot of claims that are not Officially Reliably Sourced. You do not deny that fact, do you?" How do you expect to get away with claiming that Sources who are Reliable on other subjects are also Reliable on this one, when evidence is accumulating against the things they concluded more than a decade ago, and all they have done since is pretend that that evidence does not exist???

Just to spell out more completely what I'm talking about, Hipocrite, while I care not that you have chosen a handle that reminds one of double standards, I do care about the application of double standards toward Wikipedia articles. So I challenge you and LeadSongDog and anyone else who wants to insist that RS must strictly apply to this article ...I challenge you to see how far you really get, trying to strictly apply it to ALL the other articles in this encyclopedia. Because if you can't do it everywhere in Wikipedia, you have no basis to insist upon doing it here. V (talk) 13:10, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

So, untill we fix every other article on the encyclopedia, we can't fix this one? Hipocrite (talk) 13:13, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

PS - [19]. Hipocrite (talk) 13:26, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Straw man argument. He's saying that the same RS standards apply here as elsewhere. Otherwise, V is barking up the wrong tree, a bit. The problem isn't WP:RS, i.e., that "the whole truth" isn't found in RS, the problem is biased and POV-pushing application of the standards. We should and we must follow WP:V at all times; WP:RS is a documented way of doing that; other ways do exist, but they depend on consensus. --Abd (talk) 13:31, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

(Heh, and now to bring up the definition of "fix", as used in the classic phrase, "to fix the race"....) No, Hipocrite, I challenged you to see how far you get, trying to do that. I fully expect you to fail, for example, to be able to enforce a deletion of the article about the new Star Trek (film), since there is no scholarly RS for it anywhere, yet (although I admit I could be wrong about that finicky detail, given the nature of the Internet and the popularity of that particular fictional universe). Or, you would likely fail to enforce deletion of News articles on the front page of this site. I'm sure that with very little research quite a few articles could be identified, about fictional things, for which there is no Official Reliable Source other than the original publication of a fictional work. They exist for a reason, in spite of the RS rules. "Common sense" likely has something to do with that reason. Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, you only need to fail just once, to strictly apply the RS rules to another article, to lose any right to strictly enforce them here. V (talk) 13:36, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Abd, you are wrong about what Objectivist is stating - he has now said multiple times that it's ok to use unreliable sources in articles about Star Trek films (this, of course, is wrong), and that it's thus ok to use unreliable sources here. The article on the Star Trek film is reliably sourced to the following sources - the British Board of Film Classification, Entertainment Weekly, The Wall Street Journal, The Courier-Mail, MTV, the Los Angeles Times, TV Guide, IGN, Rotten Tomatoes, and scores of other reliable sources. That there are problems in the Star Trek article are undeniable. That I have any interest in fixing them is fabrication. Am I required to fix every article before I fix this one? I think not. Hipocrite (talk) 13:43, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Hipocrite, in what way are all of those publications more "reliable" than Infinite Energy or New Energy Times? V (talk) 13:52, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

That's easy! WP:V "Articles should be based upon reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." "Questionable sources are those with a poor reputation for fact-checking. Such sources include websites and publications expressing views that are widely acknowledged as extremist, or promotional in nature, or which rely heavily on rumors and personal opinions. Questionable sources should only be used as sources of material on themselves, especially in articles about themselves. Questionable sources are generally unsuitable as a basis for citing contentious claims about third parties." "Certain red flags should prompt editors to examine the sources for a given claim: 1. surprising or apparently important claims not covered by mainstream sources ... 3. claims that are contradicted by the prevailing view within the relevant community, or which would significantly alter mainstream assumptions, especially in science, medicine, history, politics, and biographies of living persons. This is especially true when proponents consider that there is a conspiracy to silence them." Hipocrite (talk) 14:04, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Nice try, but there are two flaws. The first is simple; the list of publications referenced in the Star Trek article are all second-party, not third-party. Likewise are NET and IE second-party publications. The second flaw relates to "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" --who decides what a reputation should be? Consider the evidence that the mainstream science publications have mostly ignored information published in IE and NET --how can those mainstream publications claim that NET and IE are not checking the data (and therefore are unreliable) when they themselves are not checking the data? (Please remember that that "CF" is one particular interpretation of the data about excess heat; the data deserves examination regardless of whatever interpretations are applied to it.) V (talk) 14:20, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

{unindent}The mainstream journals have not ignored cold fusion. As a reviewer for some of these journals, I have reviewed several submissions in recent years. I have found in all cases that they are technically inadequate. Obviously, other reviewers have agreed with me, because they don't get publshed until they hit IE and NET, and I am one reviewer out of 2 (if the other agrees with me) or 3 (if not). Also, we have the Goodstein reference in the CF article that states that CFers do not conduct critical reviews of collegues work. This negates the purpose of peer-review. So, if submitted papers are rejected by mainlne journals as inadequate, and are then published unchanged in IE or NET, what does this say about the 'fact-checking' that goes on at IE and NET?

Thank you; that's more than I expected to see, having read elsewhere about so many mainstream publications not even bothering to send submissions on this subject out for peer-review. And that is the mental place from which I wrote what I wrote above. On the other hand, what of papers by some of the acknowledged leaders in the field, such as Michael McKubre? (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54964-2004Nov16?language=printer) I'm such they wouldn't say he was among the best if his work was consistently "inadequate". If you haven't happened to have seen any of his preprint papers, what might you say about the paucity of his publications on this subject in the mainstream? V (talk) 19:11, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

The idea that journals reject CF papers out of hand is overblown by the CF advocates. All journals have topic definitions, and CF usually doesn't fit there. Then there was the position the nature editor took way back, which was also overblown, even if reasonable. What the CFers usually say is that their submissions are rejected for bad reasons, which may be true given the mainstream gave up on CF a long time ago.

Do you realize that McKubre may have published less in peer reviewed journals that I have? He has workd in the field since the beginning, he has 'published' via ICCF proceedings and the like. I know he published 1 paper in '93 that I studied, but I can't think of any more off the top of my head, I'll have to check into it. In any case, why would anyone ever use a newspaper's assessment of who is the 'best' in a field. The reporters ask the CFers "Who should I talk to, who is the best in the field?", and they get some names. Of those McKubre is definitely the smoothest. You figure out the rest. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:15, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I think I have seen McKubre described in more than one place as one of the best researchers in the field. Even if other workers had been asked, and had given his name, it would be reasonable to think those workers had plenty of names from which to choose, so picking him must mean something. So, if he actually is a good researcher, then it should logically follow that seldom would a paper he submits to an appropriate mainstream journal get rejected for being "inadequate". So all I'm saying is that the paucity of papers published by him (OR by any equivalently competent CF researcher; I would think there should be more than just one among hundreds worldwide) in the mainstream might be evidence of mainstream bias against anything/everything coming from CF researchers. I half-suspect that SpringerLink published that paper about CR-39 partly because it was so out-of-the-ordinary, for the field, and partly because evidence for neutrons has been requested by mainstream physicists since 1989 (how could they refuse to publish what they had been asking for?). V (talk) 21:57, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

One interesting reverse case is the paper by Szpak, Mosier-Boss, Miles and Fleischmann in TA 2005 that I wrote a comment on. That paper was originally 'published' at part of an ICCF Proceedings. Possibly due to reviewer comments, possibly due to the authors knowing they needed 'new' material to satisfy the standard requirement that a submission be new information, they added a section that discussed errors in calorimetry. It was in that section that they denigrated my CCS propsal based on my email to a collegue of theirs (a communication that I was not informed would be used as a reference in a publication). Clearly, the TA reviewers or editors (or indirectly via submission requirements) 'checked the facts' by requiring an attempt at reviewing the potential errors of the technique.Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:09, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

And as you know I would tend to denigrate the idea too, mostly for these two major reasons: (1) Calorimetry equipment has been used reliably for many decades, and only now this particular misbehavior manifests? (2) In control experiments using ordinary water, not heavy water, the excess heat basically does not happen, certainly nothing comparable to the heat measured when deuterium is used. Why would CCS occur only in the heavy water experiments and not in the light water experiments, when that is the only difference between them? V (talk) 19:11, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Re: (1) - Because never before had the particular experimental configuration been used. The heat redistribution causing the CCS is a unique feature of the F&P cells. That's why Storms should not lump them together (open and closed) with the other types of calorimetric data in his Table in his book. I don't know why the other types of apparati might have a CCS, I haven't studied them. But I know a CCS should be checked for, and isn't.

I wasn't clear above. The CCS, if caused by my proposed mechanism, is a unique ... Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:05, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I can't properly respond to that until I have more information (requested at your talk page). V (talk) 21:57, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Re: (2) Actually there are many claims for light water cold fusion in the lit. They usually use Ni based materials though, as I recall. This eliminates your 2nd objection, but further, H and D are NOT the same. Usually their physical properties are different by about 30%. Their thermoneutral voltages are different, their viscosites (as water) are different, their thermal conductivities as gases are different, etc. One should never expect the same results with H and D under the same nominal experimental conditions. Again, the CFers set up 'controls' with only nuclear effects in mind, and never understand that the chemical effects mess up their attempts. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:03, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm aware that there were some reports of a very small amount of excess heat, proportionate to the natural proportion of deuterium in hydrogen on Earth, but have personally had some doubts about it (1/6500 implies a REALLY REALLY GOOD calorimeter is needed to detect that outside its error range!). If there are claims that might be connected to fusion between two ordinary protium hydrogen nuclei, I'd certainly like to know more about that. I'd MUCH rather build a reactor based on that reaction, than any other, with its fuel being the commonest stuff in the Universe.... I'm also aware that there are some significant differences between ordinary hydrogen chemistry and deuterium chemistry, entirely due to the doubled mass of deuterium, compared to protium. (For example, drinking heavy water exclusively, over regular water, will eventually lead to death; the body's chemistry is fine-tuned for protium reactions. A cup or two is certainly harmless, though.) On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that the energy released by protium chemistry reactions is slightly more than the energy released by deuterium chemistry reactions. This would imply that if CCS could happen as a result of heat redistribution from a hydrogen/oxygen recombination, it should be MORE likely to happen for light water than for heavy water, because there is more heat energy (from the recombination) to redistribute. V (talk) 21:57, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Another demo of V's lack of knowledge on the subject, which makes some wonder why he is participating here. Check Britz's bibliography, search on 'nickel'. I quickly found two refs. before I quit. One claimed 20-30 sigma excess heat signals and more reproducibility that heavy water experiments. The maximum power converted into electrolysis products is given by the current times the thermoneutral voltage (TV). H's TV is 1.48, D's is 1.54, thus D provides more power in its electrolysis products. Further, %recombination can vary from 0-100, so which gives more power in a given experiment is unpredictable. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:14, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

How exactly is the Wall Street Journal related to Star Trek? Do you know what third party means? The Wall Street Journal (and the other sources I listed) have a reputation for accuracy and fact checking. They also have no relation to cold fusion at all. New Energy Times and Infinite Energy have either no reputation for fact checking or a poor reputation for fact checking. They are very related to cold fusion (as advocates). I've finished discussing this. You can take it to the reliable sources noticeboard - please be clear that you are challenging the WSJ as a reliable source in your report. Thanks. Hipocrite (talk) 14:28, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps we are using different definitions of "third party". The WSJ is a news publication, right? Does it not subscribe to any news services whatsoever (the Associated Press for example)? Would it not receive, as a part of normal events, descriptions of upcoming productions from the movie studios? To whatever extent they send their reporters out to see a movie and write a review, they are second-parties to the production of the movie. An example of a third-party publication would be something like Storms' book, which reviews lots of data in the second-party publications. I'm almost certain there are none yet of that type, with respect to the new Star Trek movie (and therefore the current article should be deleted until true 3rd-party publications appear, regarding it, see?). Another example would be, even though it occurs in the second-party publication, someone who attempts to replicate a previously-reported experiment, and publishes the results. This is why the CR-39 data is interesting and frustrating, with respect to this article; we await 3rd-party results about that. But there are lots of equivalent 3rd-party results with respect to the older claims of finding excess heat. V (talk) 19:11, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

(The following part of this overal thread seems to have become orphaned from the message to which it was originally a reply. Please keep that in mind as you read it. V (talk) 21:57, 21 May 2009 (UTC) )

As to articles, and when they are under examination, this is true. Who is claiming otherwise? And as to neutrons, there is plenty of reliable source on neutrons; most recently, there is the peer-reviewed Naturwissenschaften paper of Mosier-Boss (2009), and there is massive media notice of it. There is, in the paper, some level of explanation of the neutrons, a reasonable hypothesis. By the way, it refers to the Takahashi theory so derisively tossed aside by Hipocrite, above, in beginning his Talk:Cold_fusion#Undue_Weight discussion. There is actually a huge amount of reliable source we could be citing, but if every individual sourced text is immediately reverted out by someone claiming it's not the "mainstream" view, when there is nobody named Mainstream to whom we can ascribe the view, and even though the view was attributed to reliable source, it's impossible to improve the article. I have no problem with attribution of cold fusion "claims." I'm not claiming that cold fusion is "mainstream." But it is, quite simply, no longer acceptable to totally exclude cold fusion research and reviews, it's probably time for Arbitration Enforcement.

As to lack of theory, there are theories, and Storms is quite clear that, as of 2007, there is no generally accepted theory, even among cold fusion researchers. However, Wikipedia doesn't require an interpretive theory to report facts. Rather, we require verifiability -- that's the actual policy, not WP:RS, which is a guideline, and this is a place where the distinction is important. I'm not rejecting RS standards, au contraire, but how they are interpreted is crucial, and they cannot be interpreted to exclude sources based merely on some alleged support of fringe opinion in them. Storms (2007) is RS, period, otherwise our RS standards have become totally subjective. Sure, if there is conflict of sources, then we consider source quality, with preference being given to peer-reviewed and academic sources. ArbComm has been quite clear on not allowing fringe reliable source to be excluded, and, no, that's not an oxymoron, so I'm thinking it may be time to take this up the ladder. Advice welcome. --Abd (talk) 00:04, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

To be clear, we have pits, not neutrons. And we have claims the pits come exclusively from neutrons, but there are at least two conventional mechanisms to get pits without neutrons that have not been addressed by the CF authors. If that is to go into the article, we need to make the distinction and problems clear.

The 'massive media notice' is a flash in the pan because Mar. 23, 2009 was CF's 20th anniversary. The journalists needed _something_ to update their 'same old story'. This is the problem with 'recentism' in editing Wiki articles. Kirk shanahan (talk) 12:05, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Sure. With neutrons, we get pits in a characteristic pattern, not ascribable to chemical damage. It's already in the article, Kirk.

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 energetic neutrons in a palladium-deuterium co-deposition cell using CR-39,[60] a result previously published in Die Naturwissenschaften.[61] Neutrons are indicative of nuclear reactions.[62]

Absolutely, you can get pits without neutrons, but the paper extensively analyzes the difference between these triple-track pits and pits formed by non-neutron radiation, and, as well, the paper and prior published papers by the same group, cover with controls and analysis the other possibilities. For example, Kowalski criticized the "radiation" conclusion re the massive pitting (not the later neutron report), and there was response from the SPAWAR group back-to-back with the criticism. Note that Kowalski was reporting excess heat. What is now generally expected is that if there is no excess heat, there won't be any radiation, either. With co-deposition, excess heat has become reliable, apparently, so they do other forms of controls than merely looking for absence of heat, which was a common form of control in earlier work. (they would call these experiments those with "inactive electrodes," and this kind of control is in some ways even more convincing, because the experiments were as alike as they could make them. In other words, the difficulty of reproduction, that each experiment produced, even with attempts to keep conditions the same, different amounts of heat, becomes a tool of investigation, a maximized control; one is then studying, not the initial conditions, but correlation of effects.)

The papers do NOT extensively analyze the non-nuclear mechanisms proposed in 2002 (and well known to the CF community at the time since the proposal was indirectly (through Rothwell) responded to by R. Oriani.) They don't even consider other than nuclear sources. The papers are prime examples of the psuedoscience at work, in that scads of words talk about non-neutronic nuclear pitting, while shock wave or O2 induced pits are almost completely ignored (a grouped statement that H2, O2, and something else was tested is made, but with no data or references supporting it, i.e. supposition presented as fact). This is even when Kowalski himself has posted a picture of pits arising from a simple scratch, many of which look to me very 'tripletish'. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:38, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Kirks synthetic and improbable tale of the media coverage is pure speculation. While some reports may be ascribed to the 20-year anniversary, some of the reports clearly involved investigative reporting of a greater depth. Further, the CBS Sixty Minutes documentary was very much an investigative report, as we'd expect from them and that program, and Robert Duncan very much a mainstream physicist. It's just one example, to be sure, but it is looking like this: take a mainstream physicist, motivate him or her to read the research, to spend more time than it than a one-day seminar (as in the 2004 DoE review for half the panel), and to talk with the researchers, a skeptic is converted to a "believer." ("Believer" is offensive, actually, it implies that the judgment is biased based on prejudicial assumptions; technically, it could be applied to stubborn skeptics quite as well as to stubborn proponents. Stubborn skeptics, as distinct from natural and rational ones, are attached to rejection, are skeptical only about the views of others, not about their own.) --Abd (talk) 16:19, 20 May 2009

I didn't say the reporters didn't do some work. But what they did is get the 'newest' stuff, and bring out the 'oldies' like Garwan for 'tried and true' commentary, with precious little in-between. Can you look at their reports and what I have been saying here for over a year, an actually claim they did a good, comprehensive job?? Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:38, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

As I posted on Henry Bauer's blog, Duncan was a 'newbie'. The CCS is subtle since it lies further back up the chain of typical errors. Duncan had no clue about it. I can look at the papers from ET than Rothwell has up, and see clear signs of CCS activity. (P.S. ET doesn't seem to know the difference between flow and isoperiboic calorimetry.) I sent my papers to Duncan after the report, but have heard nothing back, and probably won't. His video shows he is 'convinced', like V and Abd, but he never considered the recent critiques of the work, as V and Abd don't. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:38, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Shanahan, it must be frustrating to see your work neglected, and I've tried to do my bit for inclusion, and I'd support the return of User:Abd/Calorimetry in cold fusion experiments so that adequate detail could be shown. There's lots of source on the calorimetry as actually used, experimental results in detail, and criticism, including yours. Sure, Duncan was a "newbie." That, indeed, was the point, someone neutral and not affiliated with one side or the other, except the general "side" of "physics."

I think you might consider being a bit more sympathetic, surely you can see the problem that research is neglected and there is difficulty getting papers published. I, for one, would like to see a really clear exposition of CCS, and how it applies to the various forms of calorimetry, and, I'm afraid, your expositions so far have been inadequate to explain the material to nonspecialists -- and maybe even to specialists --, and you haven't addressed at all the correlation problem of excess heat/helium. So I'll make up an explanation. CCS is due to some local heating effect, unanticipated, cause not stated, necessarily, though some are proposed (such as recombination). The local heating effect drives helium out of the palladium, thus raising helium levels in association with excess heat. Now I'll shoot down my own explanation. Helium isn't found in the palladium to an extent that would be necessary to explain the rise in helium. Further, excess heat from palladium deuteride in gas-loading experiments would have great difficulty throwing off calorimetric calibration with sealed containers that conduct heat well. Consider the Arata work where there is a cell inside a cell. The interior temperature of the inner cell is recorded, the interior temperature of the outer cell is recorded, and the ambient is recorded. They show a steady two degree C. increment, from ambient to outer and from outer to inner, both, after the heat from the formation of palladium deuteride settles down. With hydrogen, the cells both drop within a couple of hours to ambient. With deuterium, the temperature drops to the differential shown, and stays that way for thousands of hours. Just from a rough estimate, the energy generated in the later steady-state phase would be well over an order of magnitude greater than the energy released from the only known chemical reaction taking place in there. And helium is generated. I fail to see how anything like CCS could explain this. Further, the alpha radiation and X-ray radiation detected by the SPAWAR group, not to mention the neutrons, is hard to explain with CCS. Sure, I know what you do. You essentially claim that the pits aren't radiation, yet the controls used by SPAWAR pretty much rule out every alternate explanation, and the X-ray results from X-ray film are also pretty hard to explain. At some point, Kirk, you are working hard to find alternate explanations, and Occam's Razor collapses. Maybe if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it's a duck.

I'm sympathetic: you can't seem to get published, when you think you have a plain and simple explanation. But this is the exact problem that cold fusion researchers have faced for almost twenty years now. Some of the conference papers are junk, I have no problem assuming that. But some of them aren't, and yet they still face difficulty publishing in the major journals, they are rejected without peer review, based purely on the assumption that cold fusion research is, ipso facto, junk. And what you've done is cold fusion research. Leaving you out in the cold.

Your work is notable, though, because Storms responds to it on p. 41 and p. 172. The latter response is a bit more detailed:

Shanahan has proposed that changes in locations where heat is produced within an electrolytic cell could introduce error when flow calorimetry is used. This error is shown by Storms to apply to neither flow nor to Seebeck calorimetry, although the isoperibolic method can be effected. Swartz used a computer model based on hypothetical temperature errors to question the accuracy of flow calorimetry. No demonstration of the proposed mechanism has been reported. On the other hand, a potential error may occur when D2 and O2 gases are allowed to leave the cell. Jones and co-workers (BYU), and Shkedi and co-workers (Bose Corp., MA) observe the obvious, that an uncertain amount of recombination between D2 and O2 within a cell could introduce an uncertain error. Using this argument, Jones criticized heat reported by Miles, who replied in a series of exchanges. Miles answered by pointing out that he, as do many people, measured the amount of internal recombination occuring in his open cell, for which corrections were made. Accurate correctionss can be made as described in Appendix A [Storms' appendix A]. This error does not occur in a closed cell, which is now used by most people when anomalous heat is observed. [and he goes on].

Yes, Kirk, I notice that he's citing himself, and I would factor for that in any usage of this passage. I also just edited the Calorimetry article a little. Comments can corrections are welcome. --Abd (talk) 21:39, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

discussion of editor, not needed for work on article

Kirk's opinions here are actually not helpful; if he supplied us with reliable source on the objections, or even, for our purposes in Talk, specifics about the objections, the "other explanations," we could use it. Instead, we are seeing what comes from some experts: "Trust me! I'm the expert, you are ignorant." The attempt to discuss the Calibration Constant Shift at Talk:Kirk shanahan was a bust, he would not engage on the issues, kept claiming "ad hominem" attacks whenever his claims were criticized, and then asserted that if what the "teacher" is "teaching" is questioned, that's a personal attack. Yeah, some professors think like that. Not the good ones, that is, not the ones who know how to teach. They might be experts in their fields, but not in teaching. If developing true scientists is the goal, skepticism must be encouraged. Feynman had little respect for teachers who expected students to just copy down and study what they said, as if it were gospel, and little respect for students who followed that and didn't question. --Abd (talk) 16:19, 20 May 2009 While I think it is possibly inappropriate to discuss this here, as your interpretation of the discussion that you've been having with Kirk was raised here it needs a more public response: having just read the material on User talk:Kirk shanahan, the above comments represent a serious mischaracterisation of the discussion. Kirk has provided a line-by-line analysis of your points, while you seemed to have missed his central arguments. His analogy, and following claims, seemed apt based on what I read prior to that. It would be best if you focused on discussion about the article here, and tried to avoid attacking the editors. - Bilby (talk) 00:00, 21 May 2009 (UTC) You have got to be kidding, right, Bilby? Shanahan's section header: Abd shows his fanacticism. If it's ever necessary, the sequence there can be extracted, showing how efforts to glean a coherent explanation from him were met with derision and contempt; however, of course, this isn't for here. Shanahan is not an editor of this article (for a long time), his opinions and behavior on his Talk page are moot. I will collapse this part. --Abd (talk) 01:27, 21 May 2009 (UTC) Striking or removing would make me happier, but I can live with collapsing. - Bilby (talk) 01:53, 21 May 2009 (UTC) Hey Abd, reread Bilby's comment of 00:00 21 May. Do you get the message yet? Here's another _new_ editor who can see what I have been saying. It's very plain to him, and everybody else, except CF fanatics. You can't see it because you have emotionally committed to a nuclear-only position. How can you do that, when you admit you are new to the field?? There is only one explanation, and I've offered it. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:45, 21 May 2009 (UTC) Wow, Kirk, where did you learn to read minds like that? Ask for your money back. People emotionally committed to a field tend to be those actually invested in it. I was a skeptic five months ago. I'm still a skeptic, but one who has moved to a neutral or somewhat pro-cold fusion position, and I'm a dialectical thinker, which means that, depending on context, I will appear to be asserting one side of an issue. Look more carefully, you will see that I provide comments on both sides. For example, above I mention Vyosotskii's work on Water memory, which is about as fringe a topic as one can currently find outside of looney bins. To me, skeptic doesn't mean someone who believes anything new is false. It's someone who doubts all alleged knowledge, but there are practical limits. I don't doubt that I'm sitting at a keyboard entering this edit, not in practice. Please, Kirk, tell me what happened with Robert Duncan (physicist)? How did they get to him? Bribery? Dancing girls? Sleight-of-hand? Or is it merely that a skeptical but open-minded physicist took a careful look at the research and the published material? I'm new to the field, but I'm not new to recognizing attachment, I'm an old hand at it, and attachment to opinion is what I see. Show me some quality research refuting the present major claims of the cold fusion researchers. I don't see the papers of 1989-1990 as contradicting more than a few of the positive results, earlier or later. Period. Rather, those papers raised reasonable doubts. In some cases, those papers were themselves defective, but in others, the doubts with respect to work they were directly criticizing were reasonable. There isn't any debate over the difficulty, regarding what was well-established by 2004, of demonstrating the excess heat and other results and, as you know, they go together, excess heat as inferred from experimental records is highly correlated with helium as independently measured. Sure, that can happen by chance, but we routinely risk our lives depending on low probabilities more likely to fail us than that the correlation is to be due to chance. So how are we going to approach this situation? I'm inclining toward a meta-article, a set of documents that reviews the topic from different perspectives. it might be best to start with history. What's the history of the cold fusion affair? What is the publication record? There is a huge difference between a negative replication and a refutation. We will not be likely to come to consensus on this topic unless there is a detailed examination of every necessary element, that's what I know from consensus process. Until then, it's one set of bull-headed conclusions against another, and "victory" is awarded to whatever side can successfully appeal to editor ignorance or prejudice. Kind of like what happened in 1989 with scientists. The Fleischmann report was quite disturbing to some, it meant we didn't know bleep, if it was true. Or so it seemed. (Actually, it would have only meant that the boundaries were slightly different than we thought. But never underestimate how much people dislike having their world-view revised.) Until there is real consensus here, this article will be plagued with edit warring and contention. There are some who obviously believe that such contention is unavoidable and necessary. I disagree, and I have life-experience that teaches me otherwise. Many of those who are strongly opposing my work have been doing so for a long time, because I'm opposing what has been called "Majority POV-pushing," and, guess what? -- the majority can tend to think that their POV is neutral. It's a very easy mistake to make, especially when communication between the majority and the minority is poor. Improve that communication, and disputes sometimes disappear. The last thing I'd want is to win here at the expense of other editors. My goal is true consensus, not that my supposed opinion prevails. If we have true consensus, improving and maintaining the article will be much easier, many hands make short work. Do the math: if there is a 2:1 majority, often considered a supermajority, that still means that, compared to 100% effort, we have 33% net effort. The available labor can triple if people are united. --Abd (talk) 21:25, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Excess heat is "confirmed"

In his most recent reversion Abd states that "Well, the observations [of excess heat] are not only not challenged in the literature, they are confirmed massively." This, of course, is not true. Said observations are challenged as experimental error in multiple sources, including, but not limited to, "What is the current scientific thinking on cold fusion? Is there any possible validity to this phenomenon?" Sci.Am. October 21, 1999 - "The case for experimental error is supported by the unreliability and lack of independent replication of key results." "The NHE lab of MITI described a large series of experiments devised to check the original claims of Fleischmann and Pons. No excess heat was found," amongst others. I suggest that stating excess heat is a fact is misniforming our readers. Excess heat is measured in some experiments, perhaps, but that is considered by reliable sources to be experimental error. Hipocrite (talk) 13:52, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Hipocrite, the problem with that quote is that it is approaching ten years out-of-date. At the rate Science progresses, ten-year-old conclusions can hardly be called "current" in at least one sense of the term. Offhand, I'd guess that the actual majority current state is more like "trying to save a sinking ship" against a flood of data from the minority view. It will certainly be entertaining to see if that minority can hold the interest of the Popular Press, because only the Popular Press has the power to influence hard-core detractors into actually paying some attention to that data (when the data is everywhere, how can it be completely ignored?). SOMEONE among the "moderates" (like Robert Duncan originally was) will eventually be able to decide to put some resources into mediating an Experiment refereed by the detractors (who will know and watch out for all the pitfalls) and performed by the proponents (who will know what detailed experimental procedure is most likely to produce interesting results). I can hardly wait for the outcome! V (talk) 22:23, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Agreed in principle. It is considered by some reliable sources to be experimental error. But that seems to imply that it logically follows that it is experimental error. (due to the meaning of the word "reliable") Problem is is that many -- if not all -- of these reliable sources can't possibly know whether or not the excess heat observed in these experiments were due to excess error because they were not at the "positive" experiments, they did not examine the particular run, they did not check over the equipment, etc. etc. - there's no way for them to know whether or not those particular experiments were false positives. Unfortunately, many of them seem to like to give people the impression that they were there (or does the logic really elude them?), when, in fact, the most they can say is that the excess heat could be due to experimental error. Let's be careful not to misinform our readers in this regard, either. Kevin Baas^talk 14:41, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

For the record, APPARENT excess heat has been confirmed many times. It is difficult to get and very irreproducible. However, the calibration constant shift systematic error is fully capable of explaining these observations, so in the article, the idea that excess heat has been shown to exist should be clearly labelled as a CF advocate position, not a scientific fact. Kevin Baas points out that there is no way to know if reports of excess heat are false positives. This is completely correct, but likewise there is know way to know if they are not. The correct position to take in such a situation is to state clearly that experimentation to date has been inconclusive, not to conclude for one or the other alternative. KirkShanahan (talk) 15:51, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

If a thing is at all "irreproducable", it simply cannot be reproduced; there is no "very" or "somewhat". If you want to say "very" i think you need to say something like very "difficult to reproduce", or "not very reproducable". The "ir-" implies an absolute. You bring up "calibration constant shift systematic error" again. Why don't you just say they could have mis-calibrated it? That's a lot simpler and usually simpler is better when it comes to writting or speaking. And it's not fully capable of "explaining away" - it is only capable of explaining a corresponding amount of error when it is in fact a cause of error. And when it can be completely ruled out as a source of error it's "capability" is zilch. I don't agree that the idea that excess heat has been shown to exist should be clearly labelled as a CF advocate position. I certainly don't think it should be labelled as a scientific fact, but I certainly don't remember when we got into the habit of "clearly label"ing things as CF-advocate or CF-?antagonist? - nor do i think such a dichotomy would benefit the article -, and it is certainly a feasable position to take that there is excess heat but it is not due to fusion or any nuclear process whatever; i.e. one can hold that position and not be an advocate. One can also hold a neutral/impartial position - one can hold that the experimental evidence seems to suggest excess heat -- a purely empirical stance --, yet have no opinion or stance as to the source/cause. Finally, I do not point out "that there is no way to know if reports of excess heat are false positives." and this is in fact in-correct. There are ways to test hypthesis on the cause of the apparent excess heat by reproducing the exact experiments such that u get the positives. There are ways to apply the scientific method to determine the cause. And there are historical instances of such approaches. One has only to look at polywater to see how it is possible to conclusively demonstrate the falsity of a positive. (excuse the awkward phrasing) Kevin Baas^talk 21:45, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

No Kevin, irreproducibility and reproduciblity are not binary terms. Random error always exists in all scientific experiments, so nothing is _ever_ totally reproducible. The relative proportion of error to signal is the measure of reproducibility. Somewhere around 10-20% error, we can begin to use the term ‘irreproducible’. It is a judgement call based on what the judge is considering at the moment. ‘Very’ irreproducible means a very large % error apparent in the data.

Look it up: [20] [21] I never said they are binary terms. I said that "irreproducible" is an absoltue term, and then showed how "reproducable" can be used to show varying degrees. How could I show how reproducible can be used to show varying degrees if it is an absolute? More to the point, why would I if my aim was to show that it was an absolute; that it couldn't be used to show varying degrees? Please try not to over-generalize what i say to the point of making me out to say things that i disagree with. Kevin Baas^talk 17:37, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

The CCS has nothing to do with the experimenters ‘miscalibrating’. It’s not their fault. Specifically, the proposed mechanism for the CCS is purely chemistry. What the whole CCS package says is that the experimenters calibrate (assume perfectly for the sake of discussion) and then chemistry happens, shifting the system dynamics. That means the perfect prior calibration is now inapplicable, which in turn requires recalibration. However, the process of shutting down the experiment seems to cause the system to change again (see my 2006 pub for deails), which is a nasty, nasty experimental problem for anyone.

“And it's not fully capable of "explaining away"” – Sorry for trying to be compact. I guess I should have written that: “The CCS has the potential to induce errors of very large proportion. Thus without having published information to judge the potential magnitude of a CCS-induced error, the observation of apparent excess heat signals cannot be taken as any kind of evidence that true excess heat has been produced, by any process, not just a nuclear one. Two relevant pieces of information would be the time-to-time variation in calibration constants, and the amount of input energy that is registered by the system when the unitless part of the calibration constant that adjusts for losses is arbitrarily set to 1.” – would that have been better?

a little overdone, IMO -- but I understand that's intentional for rhetorical purposes, i.e. you know that. i thought my wording struck a nice balance between brevity and accuracy - though it was in response to what u were saying rather than a rewording of what you were saying, so the subject matter was somewhat different. anyways, i would change "cannot be taken as any kind of evidence" to something more like "cannot be taken as conclusive evidence", and in any case less absolute. It might be an indication, but other factors still need to be ruled out. but to say outright that it has absolutely no merit ("cannot be taken as any kind of evidence") is excessive and unjustified. (and remember, evidence doesn't need to always point to the right conclusion - for instance, both sides in a court case have "evidence", but one of them is inevitably wrong.) But yeah, my main qualm is that you seem to be using absolutes where things are not absolute, whether it just be in subtle nuances of phrasing or word choice (e.g. "irreproducible"). So I admit I'm being nit-picky, but I mention these things because I'm concerned that they may be an indication / symptom of a latent bias. Kevin Baas^talk 17:37, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

“I don't agree that the idea that excess heat has been shown to exist should be clearly labelled as a CF advocate position.” - Well, I don’t think it is anything but. The scientific position is that the case is unproven. We have an anomaly, yes, but proof that excess heat is real? No way. Only the CF advocates take that position, so I contend that it should be labeled such, as there is no RS for the alternative position.

Well in addition to the other arguments I've made, I think it would be original research to label it. Kevin Baas^talk 17:37, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

“Finally, I do not point out "that there is no way to know if reports of excess heat are false positives." and this is in fact in-correct. “ - previously you wrote: “there's no way for them to know whether or not those particular experiments were false positives”. If I take what I wrote and 1) contract ‘there is’, 2) insert ‘for them’, 3) replace ‘if’ with ‘whether or not’), and 4) replace ‘are’ with ‘were’, the only conceptual difference between what you wrote and what I wrote is that you wrote ‘those particular experiments’ and I wrote ‘reports of excess heat’. Now, I believe that one can correctly say” “Cold fusion researchers reported on ‘those particular experiments’ and claimed ‘excess heat’ (i.e. made ‘reports of excess heat’)”. That’s good English, right? So, I don’t get your point. Am I supposed to only ‘exactly quote’ all the time, and never reword concepts, even when I am not quoting?

you need to be more conservative in your interpretation. logical nuances abound and it's quite easy to accidently twist a person's words. people do that too often, i'm afraid, and it causes a lot of unnecessary suffering. i guess i'm saying that if you read what i write more like a question on an LSAT and less like a poem, esp. when we're talking about technical things, we might be able to understand each other better. (and more efficiently.) I try to be precise when i write, because there are a lot of things nearby that i don't mean. but that effort's wasted if the reader doesn't make a similiar effort. Kevin Baas^talk 17:37, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Though if i'm not mistaken, this misinterpretation here is a simple matter of a failure to recognize the difference between "did not" and "can not": I said they did not I did not say they can not. Kevin Baas^talk 20:07, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

“There are ways to apply the scientific method to determine the cause.” – Absolutely, I use them myself whenver needed. I’m talking about statistically designed experiments. I do my own, don’t need to consult statiticians for help. CFers never do. That’s the primary reason, when combined with their refusal to consider anything but a nuclear source, that their results are still so irreproducible 20 years on. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kirk shanahan (talk • contribs) 13:10, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I would say that not having discovered and mastered control of all of the conditions would be the primary factor in making any result difficult to reproduce. Whether those conditions be errors, unknown circumstances, or what have you. Kevin Baas^talk 17:37, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Let's see what Hipocrite is talking about. He had changed a long-standing part of the article with [22]:

An excess heat observation is based on an energy balance. Various sources of energy input and output are continuously measured. Under normal condition, the energy input can be matched to the energy output to within experimental error. In experiments such as those run by Fleischmann and Pons, a cell operating steadily at one temperature transitions was alleged to have transitioned to operating at a higher temperature with no increase in applied current. At the higher temperature, the energy balance shows an unaccounted term. In the Fleischmann and Pons experiments, the Fleischmann and Pons alleged a rate of excess heat generation was in the range of from 10-20% of total input. The high temperature condition would was alleged to last for an extended period, making the total excess heat disproportionate to what might be obtained by ordinary chemical reaction of the material contained within the cell at any one time. These high temperature phases did not were not found to last indefinitely and did not occur in every experiment, but in those experiments where they did occur, they would usually reoccur several times.

What's the problem with this? Well, it totally side-steps scientific tradition, and the reason why we place preferential reliance on peer-reviewed sources. The tradition is that experimental reports are accepted as more than allegations or arguments or volleys in debate, they are accepted as true testimony. The testimony is not as to underlying fact, but to observation. Fleischmann reported experimental results showing a measurement of excess heat. He could be wrong, i.e., there could certainly be experimental error. But his observations (which include his calculations) aren't "allegations," they are reports. And that is exactly how we should report them, ourselves. We do not report that there was actual, real, excess heat. We report that the experimental technique and analysis indicated excess heat. These are not "allegations," they are reports of the work done by the experimenter, which includes analysis. Now, if Fleischmann said that this was nuclear fusion, that was a conclusion and we could call that an allegation.

I reverted, with an explanation in my edit summary of (Well, the observations are not only not challenged in the literature, they are confirmed massively. The open question is interpretation; the apparent excess energy could be artifact.) It appears that Hipocrite did not understand this, from his objections above. Shanahan, a strong critic of cold fusion, above confirms this. The "observations" are massively confirmed, what Shanahan contests is the interpretation that the apparent excess heat is real, i.e., not just some kind of common problem with the experimental setup, or, if I'm reading Shanahan correctly, some unanticipated effect that causes calibration to go out of whack in a consistent way (i.e., always toward apparent excess heat, when this effect arises, not in the other direction).

I modified the language in an attempt to satisfy a possibly legitimate objection, as can be easily seen in the diff, I was simply adding a little language to make it clear that we are talking about an experimental report, an interpretation of data through a known method of analysis, as previously described, not necessarily actual excess heat.

Hipocrite removed this, with (excess heat is considered an experimental artifact. Replication failures do not make the fact that broken experiments break repeatedly meaningful - WP:SYN), substituting his own synthesis and giving undue weight, in this case, to outright rejection of the apparent excess heat findings, citing a 1999 source, the Scientific American article, apparently to justify this text (bolded):

In other experiments, however, no excess heat was discovered, and, in fact, even the heat from successful experiments was unreliable and could not be replicated independently.[ref] If higher temperatures were real, and not experimental artifact, the energy balance would show an unaccounted term. In the Fleischmann and Pons experiments, the rate of inferred excess heat generation was in the range of 10-20% of total input. The high temperature condition would last for an extended period, making the total excess heat appear to be disproportionate to what might be obtained by ordinary chemical reaction of the material contained within the cell at any one time, though this could not be reliably replicated.

He cites page 2 of the SciAm article. What does it say?

There is no widely accepted theory that might explain such effects, however. Therefore, most of the scientific community concluded that the 'Pons and Fleischmann effect' was experimental error.

Even so, several laboratories continued cold fusion experiments. Excess power remained small and sporadic. If some of the recent reports of new work can be verified, however, the years of effort might be paying off. Pons and Fleischmann now report excess powers of 100 watt (150 percent of the input power) sustained over a 30-day run. The Pons and Fleischmann technique calls for about 20 days of electrolytic conditioning, after which the cell is allowed to heat to boiling for the power run. This technique was reportedly reproduced by a separate group under G. Lonchampt, with support by the French Atomic Energy Commission and in consultation with Pons. Other groups in Japan and Italy are beginning to report excess powers in the 30 to 100 percent range. Experimental results of this magnitude are far beyond ordinary chemistry and point toward the possible existence of some new effect. It might not be 'cold fusion' at all. Whether the effect is a new kind of chemical reaction, a new pathway for nuclear reactions, or something either more surprising or more mundane will only be known after more research.

The source he cites is far from confirming his text, his text is made up to promote his personal conclusions, and he doesn't understand the text he is editing, he made mincemeat of the "energy balance unaccounted term" language. There is an unaccounted term, that's not in controversy; what has been in controversy (to the point that in 2004 the DoE panel was evenly divided on the question, half saying "convincing," the other half "not conclusive," which, by the way, isn't "rejected.") is whether or not there is real excess heat.

Note that since the 1999 SciAm report (which had another, more skeptical section), there has been a lot of work, and reproducibility is apparently way up. I'll pull up the reference from prior Talk here. See, folks, I put my research notes in Talk, I share them, and all this research into sources is dedicated to improving the article, in the end. There are also techniques that produce steady heat ("reliable,") and they've apparently been confirmed (I'm thinking of Arata in Japan, with gas-loaded nanoparticle palladium deuteride, no electrolysis energy put in to complicate things, published in Japanese peer-reviewed physics journals, and McKubre's confirmation, not sure about publication of that.) --Abd (talk) 01:15, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Reproducibility of "cold fusion" experiments.

The issue of reproducibility in cold fusion experiments is a complex one. The first difficulty is that no clear and consistent definition of reproducibility is used. If the cold fusion researchers are correct, what Storms calls the Nuclear Active Environment, or NAE, is difficult to form, and, for classic Pons-Fleischmann electrolytic cells, forms chaotically, and under conditions which are still poorly understood. So researchers may take what seems to be the same exact experiment, same everything as far as they know, and come up with different results. There are many phenomena in nature where this kind of result may be found. Simple example: toss a coin, repeatedly, and record the results. You may think that you toss every coin with the same starting conditions, it's even the same coin, but unless you control all the variables with insane accuracy, you are quite likely in a series of ten tosses, to come up with a range of results. If you manage to control the coin toss and catch very precisely, you might still come up with one set of results being "heads confirmed," and another group comes up with another set, "tails confirmed." Depending, of course, on the exact initial condition of the coin. Nevertheless, with statistical analysis you could show a probable frequency for the results, and many such studies would show confirmation of the frequency, not of the specific results for each study.

However, there are other techniques that apparently create an NAE, more reliably, but are these "replications"? If we look at the field in general, and ask, is there confirmation of the concept that excess energy is possible? (To take one result.) The answer is yes; but what is common is that the experiments vary in approach. One of the reasons is that researchers are searching for ways to improve reliability as well as to increase excess energy, questions of utmost importance for possible ultimate applications, and someone finding such a technique will be, to put it bluntly, rich. Whereas reproducing the work of someone else, years before, who got, say, 35% of cells to produce excess heat, and that was, at the time, considered inadequate, and the absolute amount of energy generated of no commercial interest, and a reproduction of the old result is likely to be rejected for publication (after all, it's the same-old, same-old), is boring and not likely to attract the serious effort required, given that there isn't funding for this. Complicating this is the fact that the U.S. Patent Office will reject patents, so researchers who do find a technique to increase reliability and energy output are highly motivated to keep it as a trade secret until they can develop into a product. Which, of course, has become much more difficult because various research groups may not be sharing successes! One of the early complications with Fleischmann's work, which is pretty well documented, is that his group didn't disclose exact techniques, on the advice, apparently, of their lawyers.

However, there is a document which examines publications in the field, put together by Jed Rothwell of lenr-canr.org, it's at http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJtallyofcol.pdf. By its nature, the information in this document is verifiable. I'm not proposing the document as a source for our article, but for review by those editors who are willing to take a neutral view of the subject. It shows some reason to suspect the common claim that negative papers outweigh positive ones in this field, and it shows an increase in publication frequency after 2004 or 2005, pretty clearly a nadir. (see p. 4 for the Britz bibliography chart and p. 5 for the lenr-canr.org chart). It should be known that Britz is skeptical about cold fusion, and, of course, Rothwell is quite sure cold fusion is real. I am most interested, for our purposes here, in an examination of the most recent publications in peer-reviewed journals, academic publications, and popular media. The graph on p. 11 shows publication by year of positive and negative results, as classified by Britz. Rothwell, later, challenges some of the interpretations, giving some specifics. In 1989, negative publications outweighed positive, roughly 83:46 (reading off the graph). Remember, by the end of 1989, the physics community was shouting "junk science." For 1990, the figure was about 76:75. And for every year after that, positive papers greatly outnumbered negative, there really are only a handful of negative papers after 1996. After 2005, there appear to be no negative papers.

Now, as to recent results, I recommend a review of HE Jing-tang, Nuclear fusion inside condense matters, a review article, from Front. Phys. China (2007) 1: 96―102. The journal and the paper were discussed at some length above, see Talk:Cold_fusion/Archive_24#Holy_Grail_Found.3F_--_2007_Review_article. Regardless of that discussion, this is reliable source, coming from a hot fusion researcher at a major fusion research group in China. In his section on "Reproducibility of cold fusion," he writes that In the process of electrolysis of heavy water using Pd as the cathode and Pt as the anode, if the following two conditions are satisfied spontaneously, excess energy will be produced. And then he gives the conditions:

• D/Pd ratio larger than 0.88
• The current density of the electrolysis is larger than 280 mA/cm2

In his table on p. 98, looking at excess heat, he gives results for groups that have done a total of 14,720 experiments, and he reports results for five years ago of 45% average reproducibility. For the last year before closing his paper, he reports average reproducibility of 83%, and he shows four research groups, in Japan, Romania, the United States, and Russia, as reporting 100% reproducibility. Garwin used to say that when there was 50% reproducibility, he'd be satisfied. He now wants two cups of tea brewed, which, of course, has nothing to do with the science. We don't reject muon-catalyzed fusion because you can't brew tea with it. The lowest reported reproducibility in the previous year was 50%, from an Italian group which we can speculate, from other data provided, has the least experience with cold fusion.

While I regret that this paper didn't provide detail on the sources involved, and is ambiguous in certain respects, this is of higher quality than any popular media source, and with media sources, we generally wouldn't have that kind of detail either. I am aware of no recent academic publications which negate the claim of excess heat. If we read the 2004 DoE review, and especially if we read the individual reviewer papers (they are available on both lenr-canr.org and newenergytimes.com), we can see that, then, there was very substantial opinion (fifty-fifty among the reviewers) that evidence for excess heat was "convincing." The other reviewers were less convinced, to be sure, but not entirely negative. What if the DoE panel had been looking at recent results, instead of older ones? In any case, the He Jing-tang paper is a secondary source, published in a peer-reviewed journal, which would support a much stronger statement in the article than anyone has attempted to place in it, to my knowledge. And against this source is what?

There are those who have been noting that Wikipedia is not the place to right great wrongs, and I agree. However, if we follow WP:RS without bias, we'd have to conclude that, on a matter of scientific research, the most reliable sources almost entirely favor cold fusion, because the "mainstream," whatever they are, abandoned the field. That could be unfair, but tough. If they aren't publishing, they don't exist, would be a hard-line view. However, my own opinion is that we don't reject sources of lower quality, we report them with caution. At this point, there isn't any real controversy over the claim that "most scientists" are of the opinion that cold fusion is bogus. But that view isn't based on current publications, it's based on very old work. Only in 1989 did the negative publications truly outnumber the positive ones, every year after that, positive publications outweighed them.

And, please remember, in 1989 hardly anyone knew how to get the damn experiment to work, Fleischmann's work came to a screeching halt for a while when their original supply of palladium ran out, until it was found how to process the stuff to get it to work. They'd been lucky, the first time, as were other research groups that reported positive results. Absence of proof is not proof of absence, it's a lesson too easily forgotten.

Further, a lot of the original negative work was reporting that there wasn't neutron radiation. And we now know that there isn't neutron radiation at anything like the expected levels, whatever there is, it's way down; enough above background to be quite sure that it's real (now, with the SPAWAR group results, which are confirming earlier results done with other techniques), but it has practically nothing to do with cold fusion; as Mosier-Boss considers likely, it's hot fusion, at very low levels, resulting from the energy release of cold fusion. 24 MeV alpha particles can do that!

He Jing-Tang also cites Takahashi, by the way, about the Be-8 hypothesis. Coming soon to an article near you. --Abd (talk) 19:05, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Abd, this is not what we should do in the article because a) your analysis is based on the numbers run by Jed Rothwell, who is not a reliable source and has a huge POV here b) your conclusions about mainstream sources go against what WP:PARITY says c) you know that Storms is a fringe non-reliable source, as discussed here d) you already tried to introduce He Jing-tang's article in Frontiers of Physics in China by raising the issue here, here and it was explained to you how it was a non-notable new journal of unknown reliability, but you still keep raising the issue regularly.

Your edits are getting increasingly non-helpful as you keep raising the same discarded issues again and again and adding more issues along the way until it all becomes a huge mess that you refuse to untangle. You are now very clearly going into naked fringe POV pushing and tendentious editing. Consider this a formal warning to stop this behaviour. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:38, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Basically, Enric, because I'm implying an intention to follow WP:RS and not a distorted local consensus cobbed together by a phony poll (i.e., a poll which asked leading questions asking for judgments based on inadequate information and inadequate prior discussion), I'm being "non-helpful" and the issues have been "discarded"? No, I don't think you understand dispute resolution. There is enough support here to assert edits; I've been abstaining from that because it's obvious that there are several involved editors willing to edit war, and I was occupied with RfC and ArbComm, where many of the same editors, including yourself, were pushing for me to be banned. I wasn't. ArbComm didn't even think it worthy of mention. That doesn't mean it's over, Enric, that means it's about to begin. A group of editors at this article, and to some extent elsewhere, are blatantly violating Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science. That can't be allowed to stand. I have a suggestion, Enric. Take a look at who preceded you, take a look at whom you are supporting and who is supporting you. And notice the road they are going down, and where it led. ScienceApologist was topic-banned from anything to do with Fringe science, and then Hipocrite assisted him in creating such disruption over it, trying to discredit anyone who dared to enforce the topic ban, that SA was given a lengthy block. SA was highly defended. Are you ready for this? Think about it. You have been able to compromise in the past. You are now working with take-no-prisoners editors who don't compromise. Some of that could fall on your head. Since you have been so kind as to warn me, I'll return the favor on your Talk page, just so it's clear. --Abd (talk) 00:56, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

As to the Rothwell document, it's essentially a collection of lists with some simple verifiable analysis. Against this you have? What I know of are old statements that were made with no actual statistics, they were mere opinions, which have then been repeated over and over. In particular, the chart of positive/negative/undecided publications is simply a graphical presentation of data from Britz. I'm not suggesting that we put this into the article! -- but it is surely appropriate for our consideration here, when we need to make considerations of due weight. Numbers of peer-reviewed publications are indicators of due weight. Britz isn't a "cold fusioneer," according to Rothwell, he's one of the few electrochemists who is still skeptical. (Read the paper, you'll see, Rothwell tears into Britz a bit, even though I know that they extensively cooperate in maintaining their bibliographies.) Rothwell claims that some of what Britz presents as "undecided" were positive, but the graph doesn't reflect those judgments. --Abd (talk) 01:57, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

You mean that *I* might get topic banned from fringe science topics if I pursue this? Not *you*? Seriously? That's... so out of touch with reality.... Do you *really* think that *I* might get topic banned from this page?

About the content. You are still asking us to use an unreliable biased source from Jed Rothwell, in his analysis of an unpublished compilation of papers by Britz in his personal page. And against all the better sources saying that the evidence for cold fusion is unsufficient and flawed. And all because of your personal opinion that the evidence is good (you keep cherrypicking the DOE 2004 by forgetting to take into account that "Most reviewers, including those who accepted the evidence and those who did not, stated that the effects are not repeatable, the magnitude of the effect has not increased in over a decade of work, and that many of the reported experiments were not well documented."), and without taking into account the many discussions here about most if not all of the publications not being good-quality or notable physics or chemics journals, included the one where Moussier-Boss published. And you keep trying to use fringe sources because mainstream no longer publishes about it. And you didn't want to sue media articles when they were negative, but then you had no trouble using the CBS 60 minutes positive coverage. And you said that we shouldn't use some certain negative sources because they used the word "background" without defining but you had no problem citing the positive Storms source who made the same thing. And you kept throwing things like "Mr. or Ms. Mainstream" [23], when in that same page I had gathered already enough RS to show what mainstream thinks [24], not to mention the RS in the section above about how mainstream sources plainly stating that cold fusion is similar to N-rays and polywater. Plain no, this has gone too far. Stop the fringe pushing right now and start acknowledging consensus when it goes against you. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:33, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

How ArbComm would deal with an AE request on this is unclear. But to imagine oneself as above reproach is naive. I'll note that Enric Naval has been calling for my topic ban for some time. "Cherry-picking"? That's the conclusions of the report, where the science is reviewed! The Rothwell source is documented, everything in it is verifiable, except for his stated opinions. These are bibliographies and bibliographic analysis, Enric, and against this, for the claims you make about the state of the science, what, exactly, do you have? "Most reviewers stated that the effects are not repeatable." You have to know some science to know what that means. The effects -- until quite recently, after the 2004 review -- weren't repeatable, for the most part. You'd run twenty cells and see a few with excess heat. However, if you look at only the cells with excess heat, other effects could be seen, in association, correlated. Not in the cells without excess heat. That's a form of repeatability, actually a strong one, and it seems that the 2004 DoE review largely neglected that, but still came up with some substantial support for this being real science, worthy of investigation. You are incorrect about using media coverage, rather, there is an issue with media coverage where clearly what is being said is simply regurgitation of old media coverage. The "couldn't be replicated" claim found in some of the media coverage is a sign of that. That's an old claim that has been repeated over and over. Enric, I'm making substantive arguments and it seems you are stuck. Consider the N-rays and polywater claims. Yes, that's been said. In peer-reviewed reliable source? When? Is it still relevant? But have I ever removed reliably sourced and properly attributed opinion like that?

Absolutely, you've been cooperating with the agenda of those who would exclude all positive information about cold fusion, and, yes, that could result in a topic ban. Just as my own work could result in a topic ban; some of it depends on the politics of the moment. However, some editors, including yourself, tried hard to get ArbComm to sanction me or at least criticize me for POV-pushing here, and they failed. That time. They are still trying. Can't say what will happen if it goes back. As it might, if we can't resolve this at a lower level. How about starting to seriously work on that?

What I see on this article isn't consensus, it's lack of consensus. You can gather together, sometimes, a group of editors to support an opinion, and the names are quite familiar. Remember, these are almost all in favor of what JzG was doing, and at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/JzG 3, two-thirds of the editors were more or less screaming for my head. Was that consensus? No, it was a concentration of interested and largely involved editors. The polls above were a travesty of process, and they certainly don't show the consensus you and Hipocrite have claimed. We will, I assume, do some real RfCs here. Watch and see how it's done, Enric, you might learn something.

Arrogant? Perhaps. But I do have well over thirty years of experience with consensus process. There never was a scientific consensus on cold fusion, there was a popular consensus. Lack of proof was widely considered proof of lack. The situation was very, very different with N-rays and polywater, there were very strong refutations and then the fields died. Yes, people sometimes are die-hards. Good thing, actually, but cold fusion has outlasted that. The biggest problem was the loss of funding, institutional support, and the radical deprivation of graduate students to assist in the research; Simon documents this in Undead Science: graduate students were threatened with career loss if they helped cold fusion research. That's reliable source, Enric. One of the editors here claimed to me that if he let it be known that he was in any way involved with writing about cold fusion, there would go his career. And he's a skeptic. Why isn't this history in the article? Do you have any interest in this side of the story? Or are you only only interested in one side? If you are only interested in one side, and you have worked on this article for a long time, yes, that is the kind of thing that could lead to a topic ban. I'd consider that unfortunate. --Abd (talk) 14:47, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Sources

Abd writes in his edit summary "Please negotiate consensus in Talk." I think that editors who are not Abd and aren't challenging the validity of WP:RS on this article have come to a consensus that Storms and Front. Phys. China were not reliable sources. If anyone disagrees with this (aside from you, Abd, I know you disagree, and you Objectivitst, I know you have stated that WP:RS is depreciated on this article), I'd like to know why, exactly, they consider these sources reliable. Hipocrite (talk) 17:14, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Hipocrite mistakes an unclosed discussion, with very low participation, for a "consensus," and neglects other discussions that approached the issue more objectively. Storms (2007) is published by World Scientific. Front. Phys. China is published by the largest publisher in China, Higher Education Press, one of the largest in the world (45th largest), in cooperation with Springer-Verlag, and is peer-reviewed. Further, these sources are not being used to claim scientific fact, but only claims, i.e., "proposed explanations." Hipocrite, you are on thin ice, and someone following you should be aware of the history. It will come out. V. didn't state what you claim, but if he did, he'd have been wrong. WP:RS applies, not your opinions and point of view. --Abd (talk) 17:27, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, Abd. Hipocrite, what I've previously written here are words to the effect that strict-RS is an inadequate rule for this and other articles. And you have consistently failed to specify why, if this article can contain statements that are marked as being claims, those claims can only come from strict-RS material. Also, with respect to speculative explanations for CF, since practically none exist in strict-RS material, you have failed to explain why such speculations must be excluded. What makes an "RS" speculation superior to a non-RS speculation? By definition, BOTH are just guesses! V (talk) 15:29, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Prior discussion of the FPC paper: Talk:Cold_fusion/Archive_24#Holy_Grail_Found.3F_--_2007_Review_article. --Abd (talk) 18:03, 21 May 2009 (UTC). There was certainly no consensus there. Further, discussion of a source without actual text being backed by it is exploratory, preliminary, and of no conclusive value, even if there had been consensus. --Abd (talk) 18:12, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

To make the point clear, relative quality of reliable sources only comes into play, for balance, when there is contradiction of sources. What reliable source contradicts the information provided in the text Hipocrite has been edit-warring, with blind reverts, to take out? Is there reliable source claiming that these explanations aren't being proposed? I don't think so! Is there reliable source rejecting the proposals? Then balance the text and cite it! Otherwise, this is all just an attempt to exclude reliably sourced material (by objective standards) from Wikipedia based solely on the claim that it is from a fringe source, and following a clear POV agenda. Which is not allowed. --Abd (talk) 18:17, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

By my count, both of us are at 3RR on the section sourced to Storms and He Jing-tang in Front. Physics China, so it's time for other editors to make this decision, ad hoc. And if we can't settle, we can look forward to the pleasant vista of dispute resolution, though there is the possibility of Arbitration Enforcement on this. There really are two disputes: a long-term one with editors like Enric Naval, where ordinary DR is likely to find consensus, and a short-term one with Hipocrite, who arrived here quite recently with no experience in this topic, based on politics elsewhere, and began asserting an extreme anti-fringe position, the kind ArbComm has rejected. --Abd (talk) 18:44, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Wow! Do you realize what you just did right above Abd? You painted a perfect picture of yourself. The only difference is that for Hipocrite we talk about 2-3 weeks, while with you we talk about 2-3 months! ROFL!

For the record, the Storms book is an impressive listing of positive 'cold fusion' results, with two glaring ommssions of recent negative comments/results. It is clearly biased, but could be used by Wiki readers advantageously if they were alerted to the bias. I agree the Jing-tang paper is not useful. Kirk shanahan (talk) 19:05, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh and one other thing, Storms does not assess the quality of the papers he cites. He just cites everything. He carries this problem into his data tables as well. What this does is mark his book as a second-class review. First class reviews always try to bring sense to a field by pointing out the best work and the not-so-good stuff. That argues against inclusion again, but adequate warning could overcome that. Kirk shanahan (talk) 19:31, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that's the main problem I have with Storms. He uncritically lists everything, from reasonable to crackpot without making distintions. He can't be used to decide what is relevant. I'd agree on a brief mention that makes clear that a) it doesn't represent mainstream b) it represents the viewpoint of the small group that continues holding that the evidence is good against the majority opinion that it has lots of deep flaws. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:23, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Enric, you are utterly unqualified to determine what is crackpot and what is not. Further, you confuse popular opinion among scientists -- who get their news from fields in which they don't specialize from the media, just like the rest of us -- with expert opinion. We have no good guide to current scientific opinion among those qualified to judge the matter. For 2004, we have the DOE review, which does not support the kind of extreme view that Hipocrite has been pushing and that you have been supporting. "Small group." How large? Wikipedia doesn't care, we do not assess scientific consensus by taking polls. We rely on reliable sources, with preference given to peer-reviewed reliable source and other academic sources. We know due weight by the weight of publication. You are rejecting sources that are reliable on the face because of allegations of "fringe." And that is circular. It's fringe because there is no reliable source supporting it. And if you reject any source that supports it as fringe, well, there you have it. Now, there is media source that cold fusion is generally rejected. But there is also recent media source that the topic is "hot" again. "A funny thing happened on the way to oblivion," the announcer said in the recent CBS Sixty Minutes documentary. I'm not asserting that cold fusion isn't generally rejected, so our article needs to be clear that cold fusion is not generally accepted. But treating it as proven to be experimental error? That's way beyond the pale. That's not supported by the DOE reviews, especially the 2004 review, where we have more detail.

In order to impeach a reliable source, there must be contradiction with other reliable source. In rejecting Storms as a reliable source, you have not shown one single contradiction in anything sourced from Storms. Rather, you simply reject it out of hand, which totally subverts Wikipedia's method of gauging balance. You are excluding fringe instead of reporting it neutrally and in a balanced way. What's "crackpot"? I can think of two things that you might have in mind: hydrino theory and biological transmutation. How do you know that hydrino theory is crackpot? It certainly does challenge existing theory, but that doesn't make it crackpot, in itself. I think perhaps you should read the sources. Myself, I have no idea if Mills is a genius, an innovator who saw beyond the limitations of existing theories, or an expert con artist. I've been thinking of trying to visit Blacklight Power, they aren't far from me. But would I know the difference? (If they even let me visit, they are very secretive, which is an absolute necessity in what they are doing, since the U.S. Patent Office refuses to grant patents in the field. Think about it.) All I know is that the theory is widely known and considered to be one possible explanation, and it seems Storms may favor it. And, no, he doesn't work for them!

I'd like to interject a remark regarding my first impressions when I first encountered "hydrino" descriptions. I was aware that in Quantum Mechanics electron orbits are "mapped" in terms of whole numbers; the circumference of the lowest orbit is basically equal to one wavelength of the electron; the circumference of the next-lowest orbit is equal to two wavelengths, and so on. Well, if hydrinos are real, the only way it could make sense in terms of QM (to me, anyway) is if the first orbit smaller than the QM-standard-lowest-orbit was such that twice its circumference equalled one electron-wavelength; in other words, the electron orbits twice while doing one "vibration". Obviously the next smaller orbit would have the electron orbiting three times while doing one vibration, and so on. The PROBLEM I have with that is an orbit is itself a type of vibration (cyclic); we would be saying that the electron can do two or more orbit-vibes at the same time it is doing one (ordinary) vibe, and there is something contradictory about that. So, I cannot much support the hydrino hypothesis, until that contradiction is resolved. But I can keep a somewhat-open mind about it, on the off-chance that the contradiction has been resolved in a way about which I am simply currently ignorant. V (talk) 15:43, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

The other possible "crackpot" idea would be biological transmutation. Why is this crackpot? Well, it just seems impossible! But how do we know it is impossible? Well, because nuclear reactions take energies that couldn't be managed by a biological organism. Er, wait a minute. If a palladium lattice could manage to do a little nuclear stuff, why not a protein? Sure, not necessarily! But if you are a cold fusion researcher, you've seen heat-after-death other effects, time and again, you aren't quite so skeptical about other possibilities. I winced, myself, when Storms speculated about human combustion. But it seems to come with the territory, Simon writes about the phenomenon in Undead Science. Since you and everything you work with has been rejected and considered pseudoscience or worse, you aren't quite so ready to reject other strange ideas. But the biological transformation work has come to the attention of cold fusion researchers through the steady and persistent work of Vyosotskii, who seems to be quite an established scientist, with a long history of publication in many areas (not just weird stuff). And the evidence that Storms shows for biological transformation is actually spectacular (and it's clearer in the original paper, which I've seen). This is work that is crying out for replication. So why hasn't it been replicated? I think that's a really good question; all I know is that I've looked for any sign that anyone has even been trying and found nothing. It should be a cheap and easy experiment.

However, Storms notes it. Sorry, Enric. That's a reliable secondary source (reliable because independently published by a reputable publishing company) reporting on a primary source (Vyosotskii). That makes it notable and usable. How it's used is another question. "Not accepted by mainstream science." Sure. But that doesn't mean that we don't report what is in reliable source, with proper attribution and framing.

And Storms was not the only source cited in what was reverted by Hipocrite today. Takahashi's Be-8 theory was also described by He Jing-Tang. I think it's in other reliable source as well, but I had He Jing-Tang handy. There is no way that this paper isn't reliable source, and He Jing-Tang isn't some fringe lunatic. The paper is weird, to be sure, but it's a secondary source, showing notability, and it was in a peer-reviewed journal. Sure, you can claim that this is a journal of lesser quality, perhaps, but ... that only matters if there is contradiction. What contradiction? Show something from a better source that it contradicts!

You seem to have missed, Enric, that these sources were simply being used to show two theories that have been proposed. Do you disagree that they have been proposed? What do you require, if these sources aren't adequate? --Abd (talk) 05:09, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I already gave my arguments, others added other better arguments, and you don't seem to remember them. Or, rather, you discarded them completely. I think that your suggestion to go to mediation is good. However, before spending a sizable effort in compiling the arguments in one place, I would like you to reply to my question here. I want to have assurance that we don't find ourselves in the same situation after the mediation, with you discarding the result of the mediation. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:20, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Prot (again)

Protected, again. Ah well. Complain here William M. Connolley (talk) 20:48, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

No complaint. Possibly not necessary, since both editors engaged in reversion said, before the protection, that they were stopping. But it's gone in a week, nothing in the long view. Naturally, Bill, you protected the The_Wrong_Version. (Seriously, the version you protected was one where my last edit was reverted, but that meant that half of the important stuff I'd put in was left, so this was progress over the pre-revert-war version. What had been done with that, by the other editor was to balance it, after having taken it all out twice, which is what I'd been suggesting our policies would require instead of blindly reverting out material sourced to publications meeting WP:RS. I took a certain risk, a risk that I almost never take. As far as I recall, the last time I hit 3RR was in 2007.) --Abd (talk) (talk) 21:36, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

sections reverted

Proposed explanations

According to Storms (2007), no published theory has been able to meet all the requirements of basic physical principles, while adequately explaining the experimental results he considers established or otherwise worthy of theoretical consideration.[1]

The source:

1. <ref>{{harvnb|Storms|2007|p=173}}</ref>

I assert that Storms is reliable for a statement like this. Is there any contradiction to it in any other reliable source? Besides, it's attributed. Why was this removed?--Abd (talk) 05:45, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Theory of ⁸Be intermediary, not simple d-d fusion

(this section edited to expand consensus)

Outside of mainstream-accepted explanations , cold fusion researchers have proposed a number of different possible fusion pathways other than deuterium-deuterium fusion, but most of them produce too little energy per resulting helium nucleus to explain the excess heat claims of 25±5 MeV/⁴He.[1] One that predicts this energy has been advanced by Takahashi, that four deuterons condense to make ⁸Be, which quickly decays to two alpha particles, each with 23.8 MeV.[2][3] --Abd (talk) 18:38, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

The sources:

1. <ref>{{harvnb|Storms|2007|p=180}}</ref>

2. <ref>Takahashi, A., Deuteron cluster fusion and ash, in [http://www.iscmns.org/ ASTI-5], Asti, Italy, 2004, cited in {{harvnb|Storms|2007|p=180}}</ref>

3. <ref>He Jing-tang, ''Nuclear fusion inside condense matters,'' Front. Phys. China (2007) 1: 96―102</ref>

above edited per suggestion from Enric Naval. Version before edit at [25]--Abd (talk) 21:56, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

---

What, specifically, is the problem with this? There are a number of theories that have been advanced to explain cold fusion, (besides the null hypothesis of experimental error!) While it can be argued that Storms is fringe, or that He Jing-Tang is fringe (harder, perhaps, I think he's a nuclear physicist), the publishers aren't fringe! these sources are being used to establish notability within the field. If cold fusion is a widely rejected field, i.e., if the general belief is that cold fusion is not a real phenomenon, then it should go without saying that theories to explain it would also not be generally accepted! What is the problem with stating this proposed explanation? It's not being asserted that Be-8 is formed. The decay of Be-8 to two alpha particles, though, isn't controversial, that's what would happen, it's a very unstable isotope, see Beryllium-8. What we say here is not that deuterons fuse to form Be-8, but only that Takahashi has proposed this. And, of course, I assert that because it's cited both an independently published volume on the science, and in a peer-reviewed journal, it's notable. --Abd (talk) 05:45, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Why is this theory important? Well, if that kind of fusion could occur, it would explain: the lack of neutron radiation, the low levels of tritium, the conservation of momentum problem, the branching ratio difficulty, the finding of helium correlated with excess heat, the extreme sensitivity of the effect to exact surface conditions, and possibly more. What would this theory predict: alpha radiation. And this is found and confirmed. "Catching" the fusion "in the act" would be extremely difficult, but only one "miracle" is required for this theory: quadruple deuteron fusion. That some effects might exist with multiple deuterons is indicated by the transmutation work of Iwamura et al. The claim that no theories have been advanced is quite misleading. Please remember that Quantum mechanics is inadequate to predict behavior in the nuclear environment when three or more bodies are involved. That requires, I understand, Quantum field theory or Quantum electrodynamics, and Fleischmann's work was intended, not to discover "cold fusion" as an energy source, but to test the limits of quantum mechanics. From our article on Quantum mechanics, which matches my memory of the subject from Feynman: It turns out that analytic solutions of Schrödinger's equation are only available for a small number of model Hamiltonians, of which the quantum harmonic oscillator, the particle in a box, the hydrogen molecular ion and the hydrogen atom are the most important representatives. Even the helium atom, which contains just one more electron than hydrogen, defies all attempts at a fully analytic treatment.

None of this indicates that this actually happens. It only shows that the claims that theory conclusively prohibits cold fusion, or that there is no theory explaining it, are false and easily shown to be so, with reliable source, and only by rejecting reliable source because it's "fringe" can this be blocked, so that the reader remains unaware of it.

We now have in the article, hydrino theory, but not the much more mainstream Be-8 theory. Why? Well, the New York times has covered Blacklight Power, that's why. The Be-8 theory is only covered in peer-reviewed publications (I think I can find more than just the Front. Phys. China article, though that should really be enough), and the independently published, but not mass-market, Storms (World Scientific, 2007). --Abd (talk) 15:17, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

On the ⁸Be thing, I would agree on this wording with two tweaks:

a) replace that "however" with "one of them that would produce enough energy", as the sentence before says "most of them" not "all of them"

b) the start of the paragraph should read something like "Outside of mainstream-accepted explanations , cold fusion researchers have proposed a number of different possible fusion pathways other than deuterium-deuterium fusion,(...)". I think that this is mecessary to address the issues raised by Phil153 about weight [26] (fourth paragraph). That's an introduction that makes clear to readers that this part is describing the POV of the group of CF researchers outside of mainstream that is described in other part of the article, so it would satisfy WP:NPOV and WP:UNDUE.

--Enric Naval (talk) 21:05, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to edit the proposals above to reflect your changes, Enric, since they seem reasonable to me. Thanks. Uh, "explanations"? Okay, there are two. One is actually very reputable, might still be a majority or close: "unexplained anomaly, probably not nuclear in origin." "Experimental error" is the other. The "experimental error," for excess heat, is probably a small minority position now, among those who know the research. From 2004, already one-third of the DoE reviewers were inclined to a nuclear explanation. My guess is that "experimental error" is down below ten or twenty percent of those who look at the research. There are a lot of scientists who long ago decided to stop looking. --Abd (talk) 21:46, 22 May 2009 (UTC) 21:44, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

The 2004 Takahashi paper has been discussed previously on this talk page, and the conclusion at the time was that it does not support the ⁸Be claim. User:JohnAspinall had read the paper and indicated that it does not address the claim of a ⁸Be intermediary that Storms(2007) alleges that it does. Please address these concerns prior to adding material that has been previously considered on this talk page and rejected for cause. --Noren (talk) 00:54, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Can we have another tweak to appease these concerns? Something like adding at the end "Mainstream theory predicts that the fusion of four d nuclei has a much lower probability than the fusion of 3 nuclei, which already has a much lower probability than the fusion of two d nuclei." --Enric Naval (talk) 11:48, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Got any source for that, Enric? I don't know of any, in fact, and don't know that it's true. It would be true in free space, obviously. "Much lower" would be an understatement! But under conditions of confinement, the relationship would be complex. On the one hand, as you add deuterons to a confined space, the probability of fusion increases. On the other hand, the "space" starts to resist the addition of deuterons, and deuterons will be expelled; in addition, the stress on the chemical bonds holding the space together increases. There may be a peak, a level of maximum fusion rate, and it might be sharp. I.e. fusion of two deuterons might be rare, of three a little more, but not much more, and four high enough to see effects before the increasing rarity of the conditions again reduces fusion probability drastically. I'm not aware of any reliable source showing the claim about lower probability, but if you can find one, of course! I have already addressed the concerns previously expressed below. They were misplaced as applied to this text, which is only about a proposed theory. The mainstream response? Mostly none. You want to say that, I don't think I would object, but making up a mainstream theoretical response is beyond the pale. We could say, "There has been no mainstream response to this proposal." Negatives are a bit tricky because they are clearly synthetic, unless based in a source, but sometimes this kind of thing is done as a compromise, and all it takes is someone to find one mainstream response, and out that goes and in goes the actual response. --Abd (talk) 14:11, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Noren. The reference at that time was to a 2001 paper by Storms hosted by New Energy Times that has been moved to [27] The paper is worth reading. For our purposes:

The insistence that gamma emission must accompany helium production is based on how this fusion branch behaves in a plasma. Because the reaction d + d = 4He has two nuclei producing one nucleus, gamma radiation must occur to conserve momentum. On the other hand, suppose the following reaction occurs in a lattice where the d concentration is very high[119] [120]: d+d+d+d --> ^8Be --> 2 ^4He. Such a reaction would not require gamma emission because 8Be would promptly decompose into two particles, each having 23.8 MeV. Other, similar reactions can be proposed to avoid the need to emit gamma radiation. This suggestion shifts the problem from requiring gamma emission, to accepting that such reactions can actually occur. Evidence for such multibody interaction has been reported by Takahashi et al.[121] based on the energy of tritons emitted when titanium is bombarded by D+.

Notes:

119. Chubb, S.R. and T.A. Chubb. Quantum Mechanics of "Cold and "Not-So-Cold Fusion". in The First Annual Conference on Cold Fusion. 1990. University of Utah Research Park, Salt Lake City, Utah: National Cold Fusion Institute.

120. Takahashi, A., Some Considerations of Multibody Fusion in Metal-Deuterides. Trans. Fusion Technol., 1994. 26(4T): p. 451.

121. Takahashi, A., et al., Detection of three-body deuteron fusion in titanium deuteride under the stimulation by a deuteron beam. Phys. Lett. A, 1999. 255: p. 89.

The analysis at our Talk page was largely original research, which is, in my opinion, acceptable for our purposes in discussion, though, obviously, not for article text. To cut it short, JohnAspinall criticized the theory based on evidence for it, specifically note 121, being allegedly insufficient. That is not a denial of the fact that the theory has been advanced. Storms only used that paper as evidence for multibody reactions occurring. However, to understand how the multibody theory might work, imagine a box with openings in each side; the palladium lattice is an array of such boxes. One deuteron into the box: very happy, a little heat is released (the heat of formation of palladium deuteride). Another in: it begins to get tight, probably one deuteron is expelled thorough one of the faces into an adjacent box, but this takes time. Another in: tighter, faster expulsion, or the box ruptures. Another in: this can't last long, but it might be tight enough for long enough that the four deuterons realize that "It will be much more comfortable in here if we get together." So they do. Take this rough explanation and do the math on it. Warning: the math is probably too difficult for present-day analytical techniques, at least using classical quantum mechanics. But, for certain, it's beyond me. There is much other work by Takahashi, referring to the hypothesis, in conference papers.

Googling source 120 should ice it. 120 is cited in the Mosier-Boss Naturwissenschaften (2009 96:135–142} paper, Triple tracks in CR-39 as the result of Pd–D Co-deposition: evidence of energetic neutrons, with explicit reference to the multibody hypothesis. Here is what they say:

The multibody reactions proposed by Takahashi (1994) involve deuteria occupying the tetrahedral and octahedral sites in the metal lattice. In the proposed 3D and 4D fusion reactions occurring in the metal deuterides, high-energy α particles are formed that dissociate deuterons in the system to produce neutrons with a continuous spectrum in the 0 to 10 MeV region. These high energy α particles are also expected to produce Bremsstrahlung X-rays. Experimental data that support this mechanism are evidence of recoil carbon and oxygen atoms on the backside of the CR-39 suggestive of 1.25–8 MeV neutrons (see discussion in “Electronic supplementary material”) and Bremsstrahlung radiation that has been observed in the X-ray and γ-ray spectra obtained during Pd–D co-deposition (Szpak et al. 1996).

Mosier-Boss is leaning on the Takahashi hypothesis to explain why she found a low level of energetic neutrons. They are proposed to be secondary products, which is why they occur at such low levels. However, any other mechanism that allows fusion and predominantly results in energetic alpha particles at the 24 MeV level would likewise explain the neutrons. However, I'd expect those other mechanisms to show more evidence of the other pathways, as JohnAspinall noted. He apparently didn't consider that lattice confinement with less than four deuterons might be insufficient to produce significant fusion. Good thing, too. Otherwise, load palladium with deuterium, disturb it to create a shock wave in the deuterium causing local compression, and bang! there goes the lab and maybe the whole city block. --Abd (talk) 12:41, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

The 8Be theory, and other notable proposed explanations, should definitely be included, IMO. If the section gets too long, it can be made into a new article and briefly summarized here. In a brief summary, many explanations can be mentioned: a couple of them in a sentence or two each, perhaps, plus some more perhaps listed as one word or phrase each (to show people what they can find out about at the other article). ☺Coppertwig (talk) 01:06, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

"proposed explanations" section seems too narrow

I noticed that the proposed explanations section only covers two expl.: experimental error and hydrino theory. They are many more theories out there- both on sources of error or how fusion could happen - or even how excess heat could happen w/out fusion. ideally, a section called "proposed explanations" would give a good survey of them, but the section as is only lists two, and in so doing give them way too much weight in comparison to other theories (namely, infinity). I think this section should show more of the various explanations - a broad survey - or if this cannot be done well in a reasonable amount of space, we should consider removing it, or perhaps putting a broad survey of explanations in the article in some other way. Kevin Baas^talk 15:21, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Ack! You're just noticing that! I've only been complaining about that for months! For the record, any set of experimental observations dealing with the same class of observation (i.e., excess heat, He4 detection, pits, etc.) has a conventional explanation available. My original contribution to the article was to describe these for the specific classes noted in the article in support of the 'nuclear' cause. And I was asked to do this becasue the editors of that time period (c. May '08) noted the same thing you did! Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:42, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

If there were "proposed explanations" listed in a reliable source, like one of the DoE reviews, that would be great. If we're still talking about proposed explanations listed in fringe journals and books, I would oppose that. Hipocrite (talk) 15:31, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Excess heat - 3 pubs in Thermochimica Acta; He4 - DOE review panel concerns on contamination coupled with Clarke paper in Fus. Sci. and Tech (2003); heavy metal transmutation - not peer reveiwed, but specific examples of finding contaminants point of origin and/or re-identifying contaminants; pits - primarily evidence of physical damage effects and admission of same in papers (some not peer reviewed) + commonality of agreement on specific factors in experiments that would lead to such; and on and on. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:49, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I've gathered the impression that you're pretty liberal in your use of the term "fringe", esp. when it comes to any publication that's ever said anything pertaining to C.F., and I certainly wouldn't think it prudent to narrow our sources down to one four-page review, though I realize that's not what you're suggesting. I just think that we should focus on explanations in as much as how much they represent the active research community, since, after all, our goal is to inform the reader about the what is out there and what is going on. In any case, if you have any suggestions about how to make the section better, e.g. some of the more common / representative proposals, or some ideas on wording / phrasing, i'd be interested to hear them. Kevin Baas^talk 15:46, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I was just looking back, and early in March, Phil153, who has generally taken a quite skeptical position here, acknowledged that the paper in Frontiers of Physics In China might be usable somewhere in the article, he wanted to see a specific proposed edit.[28] Well, he got one, though he hasn't edited this article for months, see above for what Hipocrite removed. "Proposed explanations" would, for a fringe topic, necessarily be coming from fringe sources. If, aside from the "experimental error" explanation, they were coming from mainstream sources, the topic would not be fringe, by definition! The mainstream doesn't propose explanations of experimental phenomena they consider a mistake. From Storms, the two explanations that are most notable are hydrino theory, which involves a major revision of quantum mechanics, literally at the fringe (i.e., as a special case not normally seen, fractional energy levels for electrons, below the minimum Bohr orbit), and the Beryllium-8 hypothesis. But there are others which have been published in peer-reviewed journals. I wanted to find secondary sources, and Storms and He Jing-Tang are secondary sources, reviews of the field. I frankly don't understand why we can't use them to source theories as notable. No implication was made or implied that these theories were "accepted by the mainstream" which remains blissfully ignorant of them, as far as I've been able to tell. Cold fusion researchers have largely steered clear of theory, since they consider it most important to establish the phenomena first. Don't you think that's a good idea? Figure out if it is happening before trying to figure out why it happens? But Takahashi is an exception. See http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/TakahashiAtetrahedra.pdf , which is, unfortunately, a conference paper, though it gives an idea of Takahashi's work. From it, The extended model should contain consistent story of He-4 production without neutrons and mass-8-and-charge-4-increased transmutation without hard radiation. Around focal points (t-sites, o-sites, defects, etc.), microscopic coherence in radial dynamic motion of neighboring deuterons may realize the short-time bosonization of electrons to make sufficient screening ofCoulomb repulsion for fusion. There is [29], which appears to be in a peer-reviewed journal.[30] I haven't seen the whole paper, but it does talk about 4D fusion in the page shown. --Abd (talk) 17:46, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

The 2004 DOE review did discuss one theory: To explain these unusual characteristics, the reviewers were presented with a theoretical framework that purported to describe how collective energy from the material lattice couples to a deuteron pair to induce fusion, how the only fusion reaction channel that occurs would be the production of 4He, and how all the energy is coupled back into the material in the form of heat instead of high energy gamma-rays. The reviewers raised serious concerns regarding the assumptions postulated in the proposed theoretical model for the explanation for 4He production.

The problem is that this theory doesn't seem to be generally accepted as viable in the cold fusion field. Sure, it was proposed. Back then. Our article had some stuff about "coupling to the lattice," which is, in fact, a stretch, though it is one of the obvious possibilities that one would think of to explain the lack of gammas, but it's not just the gammas, it's the branching ratio; the mode for gamma emission is rare. The Be-8 theory, which certainly existed at the time of the 2004 review, doesn't seem to have been considered. I looked at the McKubre paper presented to the review panel and it does not seem to have contained proposed theories. However, the panel may have been orally presented with a theory, it might be somewhere in the papers cited in the McKubre review.

The 2004 DOE review is not of a quality comparable to peer-reviewed publications. What we usually look at is the summary, and we don't even know who the author of that summary is. We have access to the individual review papers, and those, of course, aren't peer-reviewed, they are individual expert opinions and they widely differ from each other. But the 2004 DOE review is one of the best gauges we have as to "mainstream" opinion on cold fusion, among mainstream scientists in related fields who actually look at the evidence. My position is that "mainstream scientists" who aren't familiar with the research aren't any better informed than much of the public, and they get their opinions either from the media, or from a look at very old data, twenty years old, in fact. --Abd (talk) 18:03, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Criticism of hydrino theory

Hipocrite, in adding criticism of hydrino theory to balance the proposed explanation of cold fusion, has pointed to some very interesting work. First of all, here is the text he added:

Mills' explanation of Classical Quantum Mechanics and hydrinos has been doubted in the literature[116] and is not accepted by most experts in the field nor by mainstream science,[117][118][119] His critics say that, although he has published theory papers in peer-reviewed journals, he has published only in those dealing with speculative work.[117] They also say that he hasn't addressed several deep flaws in his theory.[117]

Sources:

116. Rathke, A critical analysis of the hydrino model, New Journal of Physics, 2005, 7:127.

117. Erico Guizzo, Loser: Hot or Not?, IEEE Spectrum, January 2009.

118. Morrison, Chris, Blacklight Power bolsters its impossible claims of a new renewable energy source, New York Times, October 21, 2008.

Rathke's paper begins with:

Recently, experimental results have been published in respectable physics journals that have been interpreted as support for a new model of the hydrogen atom [1]-[4]. This model predicts the existence of new orbital states for the electron of a hydrogen atom with enhanced binding energy compared to the known hydrogen ground state. These new states have been named hydrinos. Applications of these alleged states have already been considered. In particular, the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts has funded a study to investigate new propulsion concepts based on the transition of conventional hydrogen states to hydrino states [5].

Although the hydrino model has received considerable public attention, the discussion of the underlying theory has mainly been restricted to the sweeping statement that the hydrino model is in contradiction to quantum mechanics and hence dubious (cf e.g. [6]). This lack of theoretical consideration is particularly unfortunate in view of the wealth of experimental evidence that has been published in peer reviewed journals in favour of the hydrino model [1]-[4], [7]-[22]. In this paper, we attempt to fill this gap by giving a brief review of the theory underlying the hydrino model. We investigate its internal consistency and comment on the possibility that hydrino-like states exist in standard quantum mechanics.

This is quite remarkable. First of all, it treats seriously the experimental evidence for the existence of hydrino (I had no idea there was a "wealth of experimental evidence that has been published in peer reviewed journals in favor of the hydrino model), whereas editors here, including Hipocrite, have treated it as ridiculous pseudoscience, perhaps fraud. I sincerely congratulate Hipocrite for bringing this to our attention, and the wonder here is that he referred to this theory as "garbage,"[31] and his comments as "truth." But I presume that by now he's actually read the paper and may have a different opinion.

Rathke is not actually criticizing so much hydrino theory, as it would apply to Cold fusion, as much as the deterministic model that predicted other hydrino behavior, Mills' Grand unified theory of classical quantum mechanics. Rathke concludes, however, that hydrinos are incompatible with standard quantum mechanics, which is certainly no surprise; however, in his more detailed text, he leaves wiggle room: a state of the hydrogen atom that is less energetic than the ground state cannot be ruled out completely under some exotic conditions at our current level of understanding. Such conditions are however not likely to be fulfilled in the relatively low-energy, low electromagnetic field environment of the plasmas studied by Mills et al. And he regrets that there hasn't been, at least as of his writing, independent reproduction of Mills' results by other experimental groups. That's something we see all the time with cold fusion. Remarkable experimental results, theoretically verifiable (or refutable). Nobody bothers. So many mysteries, so little time!

The IEEE Spectrum article is also quite interesting. It's highly skeptical, "This is part of IEEE Spectrum's SPECIAL REPORT: WINNERS & LOSERS 2009, The Year's Best and Worst of Technology," perhaps this is why Hipocrite cited it three times in three sentences.

The New York Times article has this: Its “hydrino” theory isn’t put forth by a single crackpot; instead, the company employs a good handful of high-level scientists who would presumably rebel if the idea was totally false. It has also taken over $60 million in venture funding. Despite a hearty rejection by the scientific mainstream, and being ignored for years on end, its founder, Randell Mills, has plugged on. We covered the company extensively back in May, when it started saying it had a prototype 50 kilowatt reactor. And then, As I noted in May, it would be odd, if Blacklight were a complete sham, for Mills to place himself in an end game in which he would be definitively proven wrong within just a year or two. So there does seem to be something deeper here. Physicists will deny the hydrino theory, and they may be right; perhaps that’s why there was a distinct note of smugness in Mills’ voice as he said, “The controversy and academic debate won’t stop commercialization.”

For our purposes here, we don't need to know -- at all -- if hydrino theory is correct, compatible with standard quantum mechanics, accepted or rejected. What we need to know is that it is notable as a theory, advanced to explain the phenomena called cold fusion, and that is certainly true. But I personally wonder that there is a science writer at the New York Times who says, "there does seem to be something deeper here," as he postpones judgment, but we have Wikipedia editors who are dead certain that this is all bogus. What I'll say is, "I don't know." I can only report what is in the sources, and think about it a little. --Abd (talk) 20:02, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Just because someone writes an article about it doesn't make it notable. Any time someone makes sweeping claims in their opening, you need to be dubious. Titanium Dragon (talk) 00:12, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, that's a subjective standard. "Dubious" isn't part of our reliable source guidelines. In any case, there is plenty of source showing notability for hydrino theory: publication in peer-reviewed journals, criticism of it published in a peer-reviewed journal, notice in major media, etc. I'll note Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Randell Mills, which decided on a redirect to hydrino theory, which was later moved to Blacklight Power. Titanium Dragon, how would you propose we determine notability? --Abd (talk) 01:49, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Review of Storms' book by Eric Sheldon

The book of Storms received a four page review by Eric Sheldon here in Contemporary Physics in 2008 (vol 49, pages 375–378). Sheldon is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Massachusetts. This article describes hydrino theory as "nowadays widely-discredited". The article of Rathke, cited above, is also damning in its conclusions. Because it is regarded as pseudophysics, at odds with conventional quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, hydrino theory rightly has no WP article of its own. It's not clear why Abd, who gives every appearance of having had no formal training in quantum theory, should be actively advocating hydrino theory here. It is exactly for that reason that the summarising and evaluation of books on WP is through reviews by professional academics like Sheldon, i.e. secondary sources. Pushing crackpot pseudoscience in this way, ignoring secondary sources (such as Sheldon's review), cherry-picking quotes from negative reviews to create a positive spin — this style of editing seems to run counter to all of wikipedia's core policies. I have no interest in editing the namespace article but have watched with consternation as Abd has attempted to generate pseudoscience fatigue on this talk page by his screeds of endless prose on the subject: why is he unduly pushing pseudophysics? Mathsci (talk) 02:54, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

For the record, the Contemporary Physics journal had an impact factor of 4.651 in 2007 in category "physics" [32], Naturwissenschaften had 1.955 in category "multidisciplinary sciences" [33], and Frontiers of Physics in China didn't have an impact factor. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:17, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Mathsci, calm down. I'm not "advocating hydrino theory." I'm reporting, as a Wikipedia editor should, what is in reliable sources. Hydrino theory is fringe. It certainly is at odds with standard quantum mechanics, that's the whole point, in fact. As to formal training, well, I did sit with Richard P. Feynman through his lectures on quantum theory, but that was a long time ago. I'm not "ignoring Sheldon's review," this is the first time it's been brought to my attention. Thanks for pointing it out. As to hydrino theory, it's not clear from the literature that it is actually "discredited." Certainly it's not accepted. But publication continues in peer-reviewed journals, it appears, none of which is particularly relevant here. Hydrino theory is notable as a possible explanation for cold fusion, and we have adequate source for that. It isn't necessary for a "proposed explanation" to be true, or accepted, and, in fact, were one accepted, cold fusion would no longer be fringe, would it? It's enough that it is notably proposed, which is the case. As to core policies, I'm hewing closely to ArbComm's interpretation of them, with respect to fringe science, whereas, Matchsci, you are quite out on a limb, busy sawing it off. --Abd (talk) 03:28, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

One problem. The URL given for the PDF for Sheldon's review doesn't work. I found the article, [34], but I'd have to pay to read it. --Abd (talk) 03:41, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Then perhaps you might have to abandon editing the article? Mathsci (talk) 03:56, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

<Immediate response suppressed>. I have to buy every source that some pseudoskeptic suggests? No, Mathsci, you are quite welcome to use sources that you have access to in order to balance the article, should that be required. I will also read the article when I have the opportunity. You provided, above, nothing of interest, nothing that I didn't already know, except for a presently useless reference to a review, though the first words, which I did find in Google scholar, were quite interesting, it looked like they were lauding the book (Storms). Hipocrite added balancing material, and, you might notice, I didn't attempt to take it out. I accepted it. At least in substance. I simply found it interesting to review, you can call that "cherry-picking" if you like, but ... your POV is showing. As it has been for some time. --Abd (talk) 04:02, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Abd, I think it's you that needs to calm down. You know the secondary source exists now, so it would be intellectually dishonest of you to ignore it. Anyway, if you had checked your email, you would have noticed that I had made a copy of the article available to you a little while back. Mathsci (talk) 04:20, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh and by the way, WP:NPA. I have no point of view on cold fusion, just on your use of sources. My namespace editing record speaks for itself. Mathsci (talk) 04:24, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I would be dishonest, indeed. Thanks, very much, for the email, which was mailed at Mon, 25 May 2009 04:01:13 +0000. I'd say that the claim about "you would have noticed" was a tad overheated! I don't check my email every minute. I've downloaded the paper and it's quite interesting. As to POV, it's quite apparently a strong "anti-fringe" POV which has, above, identified hydrino theory as "crackpot pseudoscience." That's polemic, not NPOV. Further, the characterization of my reference to hydrino theory, which, it appears, has been accepted by consensus here, and which was rooted in reliable sources, plenty of them, as "pushing crackpot science," is highly offensive and, really, Mathsci, properly, you should apologize. I have no POV on hydrino theory other than an opinion that it is notable. If I needed to decide if it was worthy of the Nobel Prize or of prosecution for fraud, I'd have to toss a coin. We will almost certainly know the difference within a year or two, Mills has been playing what's been called, in the New York Times, an "end game." For all I know, Mills will disappear with a few million dollars, having worked the idea to the limit. On the other hand, there are reasons to be skeptical of this view, as well. --Abd (talk) 14:50, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Abd, a simple "thank you" would have sufficed. Please stop using this talk page as a forum. On this page you seem to be suggesting pseudoscientific theories like hydrino theory should not be dismissed. The problem is that you argue this directly: you never provide any kind of secondary source. In the case of hydrino theory, it has been discredited by several secondary sources. To paraphrase your favourite physics lecturer, "Surely you're joking, Mr Abd." Mathsci (talk) 22:15, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm using this talk page to explore the topic with the goal of producing a better article. You seem to be using it to explore how you can accuse me of POV-pushing. I've been researching the field, intensely, and started editing the article. You haven't done either and don't seem to care to do so. It is not our job to accept or dismiss theories. We can discuss them for background, and the belief that one can approach a topic like this without such discussion, and still end up with a good article and consensus, is a fantasy. I "never provide any kind of secondary source"? Really?

Storms is a secondary source. He Jing-Tang is a secondary source. The Guardian is a secondary source. The New York Times is a secondary source, and now Sheldon, thanks to you, is a secondary source, a very useful one. Feynman wasn't just my "favorite physics lecturer," he was my favorite person. Because of him, I can beat cross-rhythms, 5:4 easily, maybe 6:5 at my peak, he could do 7:6, as I recall. And I can think in a way that integrates various points of view, a capacity that seems to be blatantly missing from what you report above.

Mathsci, You say that I'm "suggesting pseudoscientific theories like hydrino theory should not be dismissed." It seems you think that they should be dismissed, presumably by us, which is a POV, and, as applied to our work here, would represent POV-pushing. Above, I look at the balancing sources provided by Hipocrite. Did you think that this meant that I think those sources and criticisms should be "dismissed"? I was not objecting and did not object to that material, I didn't revert it when I had the chance. What I noticed was that the critical material acknowledges the notability of hydrino theory. This, apparently, disturbs you, but it is of importance to our work, it underscores why hydrino theory must be covered. Not "promoted" or "dismissed." Covered. --Abd (talk) 23:55, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Proposal to move "non-nuclear" section to the "Discussion" section

To keep the article structure consistent, we should move the "Non-nuclear explanations for excess heat" section to just after the "experimental error" section. Does anyone object? Olorinish (talk) 13:14, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

We should remove significant redundancies, aside from the natural redundancy in the lead. I do think it is a bit much to be saying, over and over, "this is rejected by the mainstream." What's accurate is that it was rejected, twenty years ago. Current status is far more ambiguous, with plenty of source that the field is being given more respect and appropriate skepticism, i.e., "show me!" instead of "don't bother!" --Abd (talk) 14:29, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Let's organize our thoughts

Apparently there are currently two big points of disagreement: Whether the article should have a hydrino section, and whether the article should have a Be8 section. I personally think the article would be fine with or without them, which is why I haven't been commenting much lately. I do, however, think the hydrino section should be smaller (about half of its current size) considering the current level of support for hydrino existence. Perhaps people could use this space for brief, productive discussion of what we should do about these two issues. Olorinish (talk) 13:27, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Hydrino theory is notable. Storms gives it several pages. The general theory itself is highly controversial, with continued publication in peer-reviewed journals and a relative paucity of specific criticism; Rathke is the best criticism to date, but doesn't appear to have been confirmed; Blacklight Power hosts a recent refutation of Rathke, citing math errors, but that's not usable unless we simply want to to note that the authors have replied. I think it's been submitted, we'll see if it gets published.

If you can present hydrino theory in fewer words, fine. What's there now is quite short, and if you want to trim it, the most obvious place is trimming the criticism, which is quite redundant, summarized by what we already know: just as cold fusion is not generally accepted, neither is any theory that proposes an explanation; if such a theory were, in fact, accepted, it would be all over, cold fusion would be accepted. Controversy over Mills' theories is covered at Blacklight Power and only the briefest summary should be in our article; Hipocrite was quite correct to add the reference to the Blacklight Power article.

By the way, I don't see a controversy over the hydrino section, it looks like it's been accepted. Be8 wasn't accepted by Hipocrite and he edit warred to keep it out, as I did to assert it, though usually with compromise, but I'm not seeing any objection to it now beyond Noren's comment, which simply asked a question about it. --Abd (talk) 14:38, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't like how the current version dedicates all that space to explain all that theory. I would reduce it to say that it started as an attempt to explain CF as a non-nuclear phenomena, that it theorizes a lower state of the electron in the deuterium molecule, how this is used to try to explain the occasional radiation, and then that it's widely discredited among scientifics (specially theorical physicists?), mainly because the theory goes against known quantum mechanics and doesn't offer experimental evidence.

That covers the relationship to CF, makes enough explanation to understand the concept, and makes clear where the Hydrino theory stands from the point of current mainstream science and why. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:55, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, your explanation is inaccurate, for starters. We really should have the full explanation somewhere, what I put in isn't full, at all, it's drastically cut down. The following isn't full either, it's cut down, but it's exact quote from Storms:

Mills proposes that the electron in a hydrogen isotope can occupy energy levels below those associated with normal Bohr orbits. For an electron to enter these fractional quantum states, a special catalyst atom is required.... This process is exothermic.... [but so far, not nuclear]. Once the electron has reached a sufficiently collapsed state, the nuclear charge would be shielded and the deuteron could fuse or enter another nucleus, thus providing a solution to the Coulomb barrier problem as first proposed by Mills. During fusion, the Mills electron might be ejected as a prompt beta particle, thus providing a solution to the single-product problem [i.e., conservation of momentum].

Normally, most deuterons are not close enough to a Mills catalyst to react. However, when deuterons are forced to diffuse through the lattice they have a much greater probability of contacting a rare catalyst atom....

There is much more. Note that none of this is proposed by Storms as "established fact," he is reporting a theory.

This is what we have now:

Main article: Blacklight Power

Mills (2006) has suggested that electrons can occupy energy levels lower than previously understood, but that under normal conditions, a barrier exists to prevent transitions to such a reduced energy state. Mills postulates that some atoms with an appropriate available energy level can catalyze the transition of electrons to this state. If an electron has reached a sufficiently collapsed state, this electron may then shield two deuterons similarly to muon-catalyzed fusion, allowing the nuclei to approach and fuse, and the electron could then be emitted as a prompt beta particle, thus explaining the lack of gamma radiation and conserving momentum.

Plus the critical material Hipocrite added.

I can boil it down more, I think:

Mills (2006) has suggested that electrons can occupy energy levels lower than previously understood. If an electron has reached a sufficiently collapsed state, this electron may shield the nuclear charge and allow the nuclei to approach and fuse, and the electron could then be ejected, explaining the lack of gamma radiation and conserving momentum.

Together with the link to Blacklight Power, where there could be more detail on hydrino theory and its application to cold fusion, this should cover it. On the other hand, some of the same editors have been working on Blacklight Power and I suspect that there might be resistance to inclusion of cold fusion theory there; Blacklight Power's project does not appear to involve cold fusion at all, it allegedly generates energy simply from the collapse of the electron. --Abd (talk) 17:35, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Notability of Storms (2007)

Mathsci kindly provided me a way to read a review of Storms, The Science of LOw Energy Nuclear Reaction, World Scientific, 2007.

E. Sheldon, An overview of almost 20 years’ research on cold fusion, Contemporary Physics, Vol. 49, No. 5, September–October 2008, 375–378.

Some editors, above, had been claiming that Storms had attracted no attention from the mainstream. The review shows otherwise. From the review:

... this timely ‘compilation of evidence and explanations about cold fusion’ as the first such detailed synopsis of nearly 20 years’ intensive experimental and theoretical research worldwide to provide a comprehensive up-to-date overview. Within its 312 pages the book features, among its 16 tables, a nine-page summary of experiments (up to 2004) as Table 2 on pp. 53–61 that lists some 181 studies reporting anomalous power production on various systems; the text concludes with a 77-page bibliography which cites more than 1060 publications, followed by a fairly detailed seven-page index, to make this a worthwhile, informative acquisition.

[...]

Storms writes in an informal style devoid of polemics or gullible advocacy, although a degree of caution is advisable in regard to uncritical acceptance of some results and hypotheses in his compilation.

[...]

Whatever is to be the outcome of objective professional consideration by protagonists and antagonists of ‘cold fusion’ phenomena there is no doubt that the latest descriptive accounts, including especially Storms’ book and the Web site, offer an inducement to re-examine the extensive experimental and theoretical writings with an open mind. As for myself, I remain sceptical: I cannot accept the notion of the process to be any form of true ‘fusion’ and am even unable yet to accede to its being dubbed a ‘nuclear reaction’ – I’d be much more at ease to designate this as an ‘unclear reaction’.

Yes, Sheldon writes what was stated about hydrino theory, and this merely establishes more notability for it. The reference was not to Storm's citation of the theory, but was Sheldon's own recounting of his history with cold fusion, and was in reference to Mills' 1991 paper, with only a passing reference to the 2007 theoretical tome written by Mills, with no detail at all on the latter.

So, once again, thanks, Mathsci, this source establishes, clearly, notability for Storms, which was already reliable source, usable with appropriate caution. (As Sheldon notes in what I quoted above.)

As to Sheldon's expressed skeptical position, it's quite understandable, but many physicists started to revise their opinions this year, as the Mosier-Boss neutron results came to be widely known. I'll see if I can contact Sheldon, I live in Massachusetts. --Abd (talk) 15:19, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

By the way, the "web site" mentioned is lenr-canr.org, currently blacklisted at meta. Real physicists who have taken the trouble of becoming a bit more knowledgeable than the norm, on this topic, seem to have a different opinion of that web site than non-physicist editors and pseudoskeptics, ready to shout "crackpot!" and "kook!" at the appearance of something they don't understand. --Abd (talk) 15:23, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

The review is actually an essay by a retired physicist, trying to be impartial and keep an open mind, but neverthless concluding that the explanations for lenr involving physics are unconvincing. Instead of "nuclear physics", Sheldon suggests "unclear physics". The article dismisses hydrino theory completely, as stated before. It's interesting that Abd is planning to contact Eric Sheldon to see whether he has changed his mind. I had no idea that was how wikipedia articles on science are written. Mathsci (talk) 22:45, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Mathsci, you haven't a clue about this field and what's been happening over the last couple of years. I'm not personally interested in hydrino theory, and Sheldon's mention of it in the review -- which had nothing to do with Storms -- didn't add anything that we didn't already know from other sources. Sheldon's objections to LENR probably have a basis which has recently been undermined, and I'm interested in contacting him for personal reasons, though I would indeed, like to hear his reaction to certain recent work, particularly the Mosier-Boss neutron findings. Interesting about how Wikipedia articles are written. Maybe this is part of the problem. Used to be, writers and editors at encyclopedias would talk to experts in the field. Now, apparently we don't. I know what happens when newspaper writers don't discuss a topic adequately with those who know it: garbage. Certain facts may be right, but it gets put together in a way that shows a lack of understanding, and which simply confuses the reader, if the reader doesn't know enough to take it apart and put it together. Come to think of it, I have noticed this in some articles. Such as this one. I've still been unable to get Cold_fusion#Reports_of_nuclear_products_in_association_with_excess_heat to show "association." The picked example doesn't show association of any strength. (That is a blatant error in the DoE report, the result of a misunderstanding of the McKubre report they considered. I'll examine this in its own section, since I just figured out what happened, where the error came from.)

"Unclear physics" is a reference to what we've been saying: there is no clear, coherent theory that explains all the experimental work.

In any case, the Sheldon review shows nothing but respect for Storms and his book, and validates this as a reliable secondary source, something that other editors here were objecting to. In other words, Mathsci, your generosity in providing that source sped up the process of acceptance of Storms here. --Abd (talk) 00:49, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

The book of Storms is not a secondary source. It contains highly speculative material on possible theoretical physics explanations of experimental observations that are not properly understood. Sheldon dismisses some of these physical explanations, including hydrino theory. I understand that your stance is to rebrand lenr as an "emerging science". At present, much of it is misunderstood and speculative science that is not ripe for inclusion in an encyclopedia. At some stage Krivit's OUP book should be reviewed in the mainstream literature by heavyweight academics. It might be worth waiting until then to add further content, while secondary sources are so thin on the ground. BTW Sheldon used "unclear physics" to describe the current state of the subject: I don't believe he was referring to me. Please look for further secondary sources. Mathsci (talk) 09:17, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

This is the relevant policy: Wikipedia:No_original_research#Primary.2C_secondary_and_tertiary_sources. Secondary sources may contain "highly speculative material." To quote the policy:

Secondary sources are at least one step removed from an event. They rely for their facts and opinions on primary sources, often to make analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims.

Storms, The science of low energy nuclear reaction, World Scientific, 2007, is almost entirely secondary source. An exception could be Storms' autobiographical details, one chapter, which aren't relevant here at this point. There is no requirement that reliable secondary sources be reviewed to be usable, this has been made up by Mathsci in pursuit of an obvious agenda. We are not competent to judge, here, who is "heavyweight" and who is not, and to require this would make the editing of articles so cumbersome and contentious as to be impossible. We should, quite simply, follow WP:RS.

As to "emerging science," it is clear that from the beginning, there never was a scientific closure, but only a very successful political campaign to make it appear closed. Scientific RS in the fields of physics and chemistry never showed the topic as closed, nor did the DoE reviews in 1989 and 2004; but they have been widely framed as having done so. It's impossible to read the individual reviews in 2004, and the summary report, and still hold a rational opinion that this is a closed topic by scientific consensus (as distinct from individual opinion), as would be the case with pseudoscience, and the level of respect shown in the 2004 report is such that, yes, it is probably more reasonable to consider this emerging science. However, we face the fact that there is still wide opinion among "scientists" -- not necessarily those informed about the current research -- that cold fusion was debunked twenty years ago, hence it is still necessary to report research in this field maintaining that context.

Mathsci seems to look for reasons to disagree. Yes, Sheldon used "unclear physics" to "describe the current state of the subject." That's what I said, writing, "There is no clear, coherent theory that explains all the experimental work." "Unclear" doesn't mean "rejected." It means, "Not understood." That's characteristic of emerging science, and the solution, as recommended by the DOE both in 1989 and in 2004, is more research. Because there is no clear evidence that cold fusion will ever be a practical power source, even if what is happening is actually fusion, there has been no recommendation of a massive program, only work to clarify the science; but that recommendation makes no sense with fringe science or pseudoscience. --Abd (talk) 14:04, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that Mathsci wanted to mean something like "is not a reliable secondary source (so it shouldn't be used as a secondary source in the article)". --Enric Naval (talk) 15:35, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

You can gloss it that way, but that's not what he said. How do we determine what is "reliable secondary source," such that we can use it in articles? I'd say we follow WP:RS! We use the existence of independent publication from a standard publisher (as distinct from a publisher who can be alleged to be fringe, such as Beaudette's publisher). Storms meets that. If sources are to be rejected on simple allegations of "fringe content," we have a circular definition, because it's fringe if there is a paucity of reliable source, but we have excluded the reliable source because it's allegedly fringe. Further, there is a middle ground between "not usable" and "fully reliable." That is, use with attribution, and that is what would be suggested in this situation. Attribution should be an easy solution to much of this, but some editors seem hell-bent on total exclusion, which clearly violates WP:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science. The fact is that material even from fringe publishers can be used with attribution, if there is some evidence of notability. --Abd (talk) 16:19, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Abd's contributions here seem to be extremely skewed. Any source that is actively promoting a universally rejected pseudophysics theory, like hydrino theory, is primary and questionable. In view of his poor namespace editing record, my advice to Abd is to attempt to edit a non-controversial article on science in order to get more experience in handling scientific sourcing in a completely neutral context. That might be a valuable eye-opener. Mathsci (talk) 21:34, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Eye-opening is definitely something you need, Mathsci. Hydrino theory is not "universally rejected," and if you can't write sound text on ordinary subjects, where the facts are easily and plainly verifiable, how in the world would you be expected to write on complex subjects? WTF are you doing here? I haven't noticed any article writing.

Storms does not "promote" hydrino theory. However, have you noticed that the section that was kept by Hipocrite was the one on hydrino theory? Have you wondered why? Could it have to do with the fact that there is plenty of reliable source on it? It strikes me that you are searching for criticisms to make. It's transparent.

Enough. --Abd (talk) 04:00, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Would you please provide a source for the document that purports to be the individual reviewers' DOE 2004 comments? It is inconsistent with the official report, and the only source it of which I am aware is the personal website of banned user JedRothwell. --Noren (talk) 01:25, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

You are right that it is inconsistent with the official report, but that's actually not the core of this. The official report is inconsistent with the document that was reviewed, and that document was published by the DoE together with the report, so we don't actually need to see the intermediate documents. The individual reviewer documents were, however, made available to McKubre et al, and that's how we came to have copies available. At least that's what I recall reading. There is a comment that they were published on a DoE site that doesn't have them any more, you can find it in the lenr-canr.org document linked below. Basically, we have Summary <> Reviewer <> McKubre paper. You can take the middle out of that, it's still the same inequality.

That isn't a mere "personal website," it's actually a reputable document repository, its entire reputation, which is considerable in the field, is based on its reliability. We don't use it as reliable source, itself, because it has an associated POV, but there is no evidence at all for document forgery. But I think there is a corroborating source. First of all, the lenr-canr overall page: http://www.lenr-canr.org/Collections/DoeReview.htm and then there is, cited from there, http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEtheusgover.pdf published in 21st Century Sci. & Technol., 2005, by Storms. Which refers to lenr-canr.org for copies of the individual reviews, thus validating that those copies are there, in a published source. You are welcome to challenge the reliability of that source, but do consider this: if lenr-canr.org was hosting altered copies or forgeries, don't you think it would have been noticed by now?

The documents are also available at http://www.newenergytimes.com/v2/government/DOE/DOE.shtml . That's not the "personal website of a banned user."

Speaking of banned user, do you really want to get into that here? I'd be happy, but this isn't the place. That has nothing to do with this information and its reliability --Abd (talk) 04:00, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

The pdf with the individual reviewers was put in the DOE website at the same time as the final report. Someone should ask Jed about the original URL of the document so that we can retrieve it from archive.org --Enric Naval (talk) 20:41, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

How about you ask him, Enric? Look, I've taken a lot of flak, and do I remember correctly that some of it was from you, over communicating with Rothwell and Krivit? So I'm tempted to let you be the one to convince him that he should respond to your request. I think you have a long history of insulting him and working to exclude his simple comments from this Talk page. You could try apologizing. It might work.

I'll ask him if we need it. We don't. You can read them if you want, or not if you don't want. I believe that they are accurate, there is no evidence ever of lenr-canr.org altering a document in any fraudulent way. You know this, we've discussed this at great length. I will say this: I looked at the last archive.com scrape of the DOE site before the whole thing disappeared. The panel report was there and the Hagelstein paper and some other documents were there (the charge letter, in particular, maybe something else). The individual reviewer comments were not linked there. --Abd (talk) 23:17, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

drastic rewrite

moved from Talk:Cold_fusion/to_do, this needs consensus and sources before going into the TODO list --Enric Naval (talk) 20:23, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

The entire article needs a drastic rewrite. The Widom-Larsen theory now satisfactorily explains LENR as a weak interaction phenomenon, not a strong force phenomenon. There is no longer much theoretical mystery. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.73.189.162 (talk • contribs) 18:22, 25 May 2009

We probably should cover Widom-Larsen theory. Storms gives it a little space, not much, but here are some references from Storms:

Widom, A. and Laarsen, L., ULtra low momentum neutron catalyzed nuclear reactions on metallic hydride surfaces, Eur. Phys. J., C46, 107, 2006.

Widom, A. and Larsen, L., Nuclear abundances in metallic hydride electrodes of electrolytic chemical cells, arXiv:cond-mat/062472 v1, 2006

Widom, A. and Larsen. L., Absorption of nuclear gamma radiation by heavy electrons on metallic hydride surfaces, arXiv:cond-mat, 2006.

Note that Storms was, above, alleged to have a conflict of interest due to his relationship with Lattice Energy, but he gives short shrift to the theory. I'll note, though, that W-L, as described in the second paper below, also proposes a Be-8 intermediary, it simply gets there in a different way.

Here is an article on W-L theory by Larsen: [35] (4 Dec 2008). See also [36] for another account (23 Oct 2007)

Steve Krivit of New Energy Times gave a talk at the 2007 ACS conference, video at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1944189360430905288&hl=en; covering the field and reporting on W-L theory a bit, but there is much more depth in the documents above. Point to take home from the Krivit lecture: we don't know WTF is happening. There are theories that might explain cold fusion, but as the introduction to the "Proposed explanations" section said, According to Storms (2007), no published theory has been able to meet all the requirements of basic physical principles, while adequately explaining the experimental results he considers established or otherwise worthy of theoretical consideration.

It's beyond me why this statement was taken out.

The most complete and tightly organized source of information on W-L theory is on the New Energy Times web site: http://www.newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/WL/WLTheory.shtml. Reading this material should convey some sense of the level of controversy in the field over theory. Krivit is in communication with all the major players. On that page there are many references to peer-reviewed publications, but I haven't gone over it to see if there is enough for us to report this in the article yet. There is a listing of "all" of the W-L papers, with links, at [37]. Certainly Storms thought W-L theory was bogus at the beginning of 2008. A detailed critique from Storms is available at [38].

While New Energy Times is problematic as a source, Krivit is, indeed, a full-time investigative journalist who is paid to research and report on the field, and he appears to do so with energy and accuracy. He's also quite opinionated, sometimes, so care should be exercised with regard to presenting science from NET as "fact" without corroboration. But if Krivit says that so-and-so said such-and-such, he seems to be as reliable or more reliable than an ordinary newspaper. This is now the place I go to find news on the field. I've never found an error in it, but sometimes he's making some point. His whole conversation with Garwin, in the issue cited above, left me with "So?" I.e., he seems to have been extrapolating from a non-conversation, a few words, to some conclusion, basically that Garwin hadn't specifically criticized W-L theory, but only made an off-hand comment implying some criticism, which would be expected from Garwin anyway. Garwin needs a cup of tea, apparently, in order to get started. --Abd (talk) 23:25, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Reports of nuclear products in association with excess heat

I've discussed this before, but the source of the problem just became apparent to me. There is a paragraph in the 2004 DoE report,[39]:

The hypothesis that excess energy production in electrolytic cells is due to low energy nuclear reactions was tested in some experiments by looking for D + D fusion reaction products, in particular 4He, normally produced in about 1 in 10^7 in hot D + D fusion reactions. Results reported in the review document purported to show that 4He was detected in five out of sixteen cases where electrolytic cells were reported to be producing excess heat. 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.

In our article, we have, "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." I'd looked before to find the material in the McKubre report on which this was based, since there is much stronger evidence in the McKubre report than that on the correlation of excess heat and helium: the phrase above, if correct, would actually be strong evidence against correlation.

I found the source. It's a description of the Case experiments, and one reviewer considers it with this language:

Another class of experiments are referenced for the production of “excess heat” which do not involve electrolysis. The first of these is the Case experiments. Platinum group metals are loaded onto carbon substrates, 0.5 - 1.0 %. The excess heat is only observed with this low loading of platinum metals. This implies that carbon is involved in the effect. Six of 16 cells show excess heat. Four or five show helium excess as well. The most conventional explanation is that the carbon has adsorbed gases from the air, oxygen and helium. Oxygen combines with the deuterium to produce heat and helium is released on heating. The authors attempted to discredit this explanation by asserting that the container was helium leak tight. Presumably this was based on the ability to hold hydrogen. I don't see how the apparatus could be guaranteed leak-tight without a helium leak check. [the individual reviewer comments are accessible at http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/DOEusdepartme.pdf )

These were not electrolytic cells, for starters, as the reviewer notes. They are gas-loaded cells, which produce excess heat with no power input, similar to Arata's work. There were not sixteen cells producing excess heat, at least not as shown in the report. The report actually doesn't state how many produced excess heat. McKubre's interest in this part of the report is behavior of He4 over time, the temporal correlation, not the quantitative one, which is covered in the earlier part of the report, this is Appendix B. One cell only, cell SC2 has excess heat and He4 data reported by time. So not only did the DoE bureaucrat summarizing the reviewer comments get this one wrong, based on misreading the reviewer's report, the reviewer apparently got it wrong as well, misreading the McKubre paper. The reviewer also seems to have ignored chunks of the report, raising questions which are answered in it, but that's a separate problem, and this kind of obtuse response seems common in this field. I just saw a blog by a physicist on the CBS special and it was totally derisive, with him asking why they weren't looking for helium. The CBS special was twenty minutes and that physicist could easily have done his own research and would have found that, indeed, "they" have been looking for, and have found, helium, in just the right quantities to explain the excess heat from d-d fusion, which doesn't prove that the reaction is d-d fusion, but it makes it rather look like it! Note that with these Case cells, the helium level rose as high as double background, so "leakage" starts to look a tad weak.

Meanwhile, we should be reporting secondary source review of these experiments, setting aside obvious errors like that above, and both Storms and He Jing-tang, if nothing else, do look at correlation, and the correlation is very strong. (Both He Jing-tang and Storms reproduce McKubre's single-cell plot of Case energy vs He4.) Storms gives, however, much more information than that. He Jing-tang presents some astonishing results from Arata, if I read them right. I'd want to confirm this with the original Arata report. Yes. ( http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ArataYdevelopmena.pdf ). Arata claimed 100 ppm helium generation from D2 gas-loading nanoparticle palladium, stimulated by "laser welding." Air background is 5.2 ppm. "The data for a corresponding study using pure H2 with a Pd sample powder showed no generated 4He." This was presented at ICCF10, August, 2003. Arata's work has been published in peer-reviewed journals in Japan, it may be tricky to find the papers. "Close to background," my eye.) --Abd (talk) 02:22, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Based on what I read from Kirk, I have three quick comments. The first is that correlation is only valid (given that it is unable to show a causal relationship, anyway) if you can show that the two data sets being correlated are accurate. Kirk has raised strong objections to the measurements of excess heat. Therefore if there is reason to doubt that heat was generated (or, indeed, that helium was produced) then any claims of correlation are effectively meaningless until the doubts can be removed. The second is that background levels of helium are, or so I gather, 5.2 parts per million. If that's the case, double that level would seem to be within standard variance, as per Kirk. At least the Arata findings are a tad under 20 times the background level, which still may not be convincing, but may be more interesting. But my third point is what are you trying to say? That you believe the DOE made an error based on your reading of McKubre's report? So we should ...? I'm not sure how this relates to the article, given that excess heat and helium production are both mentioned. - Bilby (talk) 03:32, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Correlation doesn't exactly show causal relationship (for starters, which of two effects is cause and which is effect?). However, what it shows, done properly, is common cause. The analysis Bilby gives is dead wrong. No, double the level isn't within standard variance. The charts involved show standard error bars. Measurement accuracy is well below the background level.

The errors in the DoE summary are blatant. Unless there is something I've missed! (i.e., some other helium result that was 5 out of 16.) These were not electrolysis experiments, period, the reviewer got that absolutely right, this error was only in the summary.

Mention of excess heat and helium isn't mention of a correlation. Correlation is, in fact, the strongest evidence for cold fusion. The big complaint in 1989 was lack of evidence for nuclear ash. That complaint was echoed in 2004, even though they had evidence in front of them; the summary shows that the evidence wasn't clearly seen and understood, though some reviewers did understand it (this is the evidence the summary calls "somewhat convincing," a view reportedly held by one-third of the panel). Our article, on helium "associated" with excess heat, is clearly wrong, the supposed results aren't in the McKubre paper that the panel was considering. I'd like to look at the other Case work published by SRI elsewhere to verify details, though. So the immediate relevance is that our article needs to be fixed to make it true to source, the ultimate source that is being cited by the anonymous summary of the DoE review. We are not condemned to repeat errors found in a secondary source.

Now, as to correlation. The Case experiments weren't presented to show correlation in multiple experiments, only one experiment was shown to show time correlation of excess heat and helium level. Note that these cells were studied in pairs, a cell with presumed active material and one without. But the presentation of data on this in the McKubre paper is scanty, I'd certainly want to know more.

Storms has a better presentation of the heat/helium data, from the more extensive Miles work. For thinking about this, in a way that is, at least, similar to the actual data, suppose there are 33 cold fusion Pd/D electrolysis cells. They are all operated in the same way. At the conclusion of the electrolysis, the cells are sent to an independent lab for helium analysis. 15 of them show no helium, 18 do. Also of the 33 cells, 21 show excess heat, 12 do not.

That's uncorrelated data, and it certainly does not look convincing. The helium could be due to leaks. The excess heat could be due to calorimetry error.

Now the correlation: the 12 cells that showed no excess heat also showed no helium. Of the 21 cells that showed excess heat, 18 showed helium. Storms notes reasons to suspect the remaining three cells as being different, one he ascribes to an error in heat measurement, the other two were a different alloy electrode, and there are always little mysteries like this.

The absence of helium from the cells showing no excess heat is stunning. Now, if the excess heat were at a level that it could compromise the integrity of the cells, that could cause leakage, but it wasn't. Absent a reasonably hypothesis for common cause, this is strong evidence, and it is evidence that the calorimetry is at least qualitatively accurate, and that the helium measurements are likewise.

However, there is more. The correlation is also quantitative. In other experiments, as well as with those Miles experiments, the quantity of helium detected correlates with the amount of excess heat determined from the calorimetry. So, again, what we have is evidence that whatever is causing excess heat is also causing helium to be found. Storms gives the figure of 25 +/- 5 MeV/He4. McKubre gives a more direct estimate of a bit over 30 MeV/He4, I forget the figure, but Storms has apparently done more analysis on the issue of missing helium (helium absorbed by the palladium and not recovered for measurement, and helium lost in other ways. (Note that any lost helium will raise the calculated energy/He4. Likewise any other pathways or causes of excess heat findings.)

So: We have strong evidence for excess heat, and we have strong evidence for helium associated with it. There is controversy about the exact level of energy/He4, Krivit, in particular, challenges the McKubre and Storms estimates, but Krivit, I'll note, is a journalist, not a scientist. He's quite good on reporting what the people have been doing, the best available. On the science, he's more knowledgeable than your average Wikipedia editor, for sure, but not necessarily than the scientists involved. But, at this point, for those who haven't followed all this, the figure of excess energy/He4 is significant because d+d fusion would generate He4 at 23.8 MeV/He4. That doesn't prove that the reaction is d+d fusion, and simple d+d fusion would be expected, for reasons our article should clearly show, to involve gamma emission to conserve momentum, but 4d fusion to form Be8 -> 2 He4, same energy figure, solves that problem, there is no need for gammas and they wouldn't be expected. What would, in fact, be expected is X-radiation from deacceleration of the alpha particles in the electrolyte or in the electrode, and that radiation has been amply reported. Classic technique: piece of protected X-ray film that, when developed, shows an outline of the electrode.

Storms covers all this, I believe, and is a reliable secondary source, we need look for no more, the Sheldon review confirms the reliability, and we aren't likely to find better in the near future, aside from possible magazine coverage here and there, nothing with the depth of Storms. We have no reliable source on the "scientific consensus" at this time that isn't passing mention based on no stated evidence, but I do assume that the general opinion of rejection is still more or less accurate. I've been talking to a lot of scientists on this, and the normal first reaction is rejection based on 1989. However, when they hear about the recent results, that changes rather easily. "I'll have to look that up. If that's true, there definitely is something there." (This is usually regarding the neutron findings of Mosier-Boss.) The ACS Sourcebook will be useful, but is actually, for the most part, a compendium of primary sources; the effect of it is to show notability of those sources, for they were selected for importance, and inclusion decisions there are a form of peer review. There is, however, some summary review there, though, in particular one written by Krivit that I'm looking forward to seeing in print. Storms, for this field, right now, is the gold standard for secondary source, much better and deeper than the McKubre report presented to the DoE. --Abd (talk) 15:04, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I must admit, I do wish that you would try and keep your replies to a manageable length, given that most of this has been said, by you, multiple times in your comments. But that aside:

• First, "Correlation doesn't exactly show causal relationship" - no. Correlation doesn't show causal relationship. At most, it provides evidence, or hints - nothing more. This is a basic rule in any stats, and to suggest otherwise is problematic. If it didn't then I'd gladly join the Pastafarians in blaming global warming on the decrease in the pirate population.
• Second, you're using very poor evidence to base these claims. If we can't regard the amount of energy produced as reliable (per Kirk), and if we can't trust the amount of helium (as a result of potential leakage) then we have no basis to claim correlation. It is irrelevant if the two values are in keeping with fusion if we can't trust the values in the first place.
• Third, I care little if you agree with the second point, as I suspect the answer is no. What I do care about is that you still haven't addressed the core issue: what are you trying to say in terms of this article? Is it that you have decided that the DOE report was wrong, and can't be considered reliable? That Storms is better than the DOE, so one should be replaced with the other? Or are you just trying to argue that cold fusion really happens? Based on your comments, what is it that you want done? - Bilby (talk) 15:40, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

At this point, I'd prefer to be either making edits to the article, or rewriting it. Correlation, when strong, shows common cause. When weak, it might be chance. That's why statistical analysis is used with correlation, but, in fact, we don't know bleep about cause except through correlation analysis. If there were correlation between the decrease in pirate population and global warming, such that there were 33 experiments -- intervals without cherry-picking -- showing what has been shown with excess heat and helium, I'd be moving for the health of pirates. Or preparing for global warming. But there isn't. Further, there is no even preposterous causal connection, such that we might expect that increasing pirate population would reduce global warming ... no, strike that. If pirate activity became so high that global commerce would decline, global warming might! With excess heat and helium, there is a reasonable explanation, a causal connection, a theorized common cause, one that has not been rejected out of hand by major theorists (such as Edward Teller, but considered possible even if unlikely.

Second, it's not necessary for the measurements in correlation analysis to be reliable in an absolute sense. We use correlation analysis, in fact, to judge measurement reliability! Note that the measurement error in the calorimetry experiments is way below the detected levels, the calorimetry is accurate enough to discover some level of apparent excess heat from Pons-Fleischmann cells using ordinary water, probably due to the presence of deuterium in ordinary water, the levels are about right for that. Shanahan proposes that there is some heat distribution effect that causes a systematic error, which is a reasonable hypothesis deserving of test, though it's difficult to imagine that this affects all kinds of calorimetry. For example, it's hard to see how this would affect the Case results, which involve no electrolysis, so no energy input, only the very limited heat of formation of palladium deuteride. (Same with Arata). If the calorimetry were all over the map, varying wildly regardless of the existence or non-existence of the P-F effect, then we'd expect that this would not correlate with helium measurements, unless there is some common cause. As an extreme example of common cause, a lab assistant adds helium to the cells secretly, in an amount proportional to the heat that has been observed, and only to those cells. If the cells with no helium were only operated for a short time because no excess heat was being observed, then we could theorize that there was more helium in the excess heat cells because they were operated for longer. I don't think that's the case with these experiments.

Plus, leakage as a hypothesis doesn't cut it when the helium has gone above background, as it often has in this work.

What I've been saying is that we come to trust experimental values when they are correlated. Lots of scientific work is done, conclusions drawn, and huge amounts of money spent, with correlations far below what is seen with excess heat and helium. Mills estimates the possibility that the correlation between excess heat and helium in his experiments was one in 750,000. I could do the math, so could many other editors. But we have reliable source on it, folks. Storms. He's reviewing Mills' work, and published by an independent, non-fringe publisher. In 1995, Hoffman, a skeptic, wrote (see the article bibliography), as a conclusion on the issue of cold fusion calorimetry: In general, these heat measurements are being done by very knowledgeable experimenters who know how to avoid artifacts. As to the helium, the helium for Mills was measured by an independent laboratory, blind. In other words, it was measured by experts who knew how to measure helium and who had no idea of which cells were "supposed to" contain helium, no idea which cells had produced excess heat.

As to the third question, yes, we will change the article, because the statement we are citing from the DoE as if it were fact is blatantly, from the primary or secondary source (it's some of both) that the DoE used, false. That was inserted there by an editor who was removing text from a reliable secondary source who understands the issues and the evidence, and who, quite obviously (from extensive discussion) has no understanding of what "association" means.

I am not trying to argue that cold fusion happens. That's not my business, nor is it our business. Our business, or, more accurately, our technique, is to report what's in reliable sources. However, we might indeed ask what the purpose of knowledge is. Is all knowledge secondary and relative? Does truth matter? I think sometimes we put the cart before the horse. Consensus is the most reliable guide to truth that we have, and, in particular, the consensus of the knowledgeable. But that's circular, if we don't have objective standards for "knowledgeable." We use technically reliable source because we have no choice, we have nothing more reliable, our own original research and our own individual thinking being inadequate and too much subject to error, unless we can find consensus on it after full deliberation. But if our goal isn't truth, i.e., knowledge that we can stand on, that will carry our weight and guide us, and not deceive us and our readers and set us up for a fall, we've lost our way and we end up wikilawyering trivia. --Abd (talk) 16:56, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

We're not going to agree in regard to the correlation, but that's fine. Now that I know where you're heading it is probably irrelevant anyway. To refer to the general principle first, no, on Wikipedia truth does not matter. We rely on verifiability, not truth, and I would be inclined to argue that WP:V is the most important of Wikipedia's policies. I can't see how the project could function without this basic distinction. It is also worth noting that consensus isn't a guide to truth - at best, consensus leads to what people agree to be true, not what actually is (unless you wish to take a constructivist stance, which wouldn't be in keeping with your other comments).

But as I understand it, you, based on your reading, believe that the DOE report is unreliable and should be discarded in favour of Storms. That sounds a tad like WP:OR, but I think OR is bandied around a bit too easily here, so I'm not inclined to assume it is. However, the DOE report does seem to have a higher standard of reliability than Storms, so I suspect you'll have trouble getting much traction with this. Perhaps there is a reliable source that draws the same conclusion as you do about the DOE? - Bilby (talk) 17:46, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

First point: I would rather have no text than misleading text based on reliable source error. You are incorrect about consensus. First of all, I didn't state that consensus was truth. It isn't. Rather, it is our guide to collective truth, more reliable than individual opinion. It can be wrong. Look, this is a question that is well over a thousand years old, it's the issue of ijma in Islam. We have no way of judging NPOV other than consensus, there is no way to guarantee NPOV by following the letter of the law, it's a matter of individual judgment, applied collectively. The question of what to do if one has special knowledge that leads to an opinion at variance with general consensus or even universal consensus (except for oneself) was also faced: properly, you act in matters that only affect yourself according to your own best understanding, and you act in matters of social concern according to the consensus. Practically speaking, when push comes to shove, it comes down to sovereignty and what can be done without disruption (fitna).

To bring it home, what matters it if I improve an article, if everyone ends up arguing endlessly about it? It better be good!

The point is that it is more likely that the consensus is right, generally, than that I'm right, and I should be very sure of my own special knowledge before I would sensibly dare to step outside the consensus. I can know this by looking at others who are very sure of themselves, and I can see how they went astray -- but they can't. Since I'm also human, it's probably true of me as well.

Here, you may find me sometimes opposing majorities, but only when I expect, from knowledge and experience and perhaps even intuition, that, with sufficient attention, the consensus, or at least the majority, will support me, or will find some compromise that I can accept. I saw this happen at ArbComm recently.

Second point: I do not favor discarding the DoE report. It's highly notable. It also contains at least one blatant error, I pointed it out above. Compared to an ordinary peer-reviewed secondary source, however, it is flawed. The nine individual reviews written on the basis of study of the sources provided are quite important, but they aren't edited or reviewed, themselves. The nine reviews written on the basis of a one-day seminar seem to be of varying quality and depth, and nobody familiar with this field is likely to expect that a one-day seminar is going to drastically change anyone's mind, ideas are way too deeply entrenched. Then there is the summary, which was written by someone anonymous, and some editors here have placed great weight on what may have been mere obitur dictum in it, a gross summarisation meaning one thing and being given another meaning by us, by implication. Given all that, nevertheless, it is an historic event in itself, it would be totally silly to discard it. Storms is, quite simply, different. Storms has probably been fact-checked more thoroughly. I think that what must be realized is that Storms, as a secondary source, acts like a filter. The citation in Storms of a paper, including conference papers and even private communications, is prima facie evidence of notability, it isn't merely about verifiability. V doesn't appear to understand this well. That such and such an experimental result is reported by so-and-so meets WP:V from being published in conference proceedings, and we can sometimes use such a source with consensus. But those are primary sources, and inclusion in the proceedings is weak evidence of notability. That's what we need secondary sources for, some source that judges the importance of primary information.

And then there is the fact that relative reliability of sources doesn't come into play until and unless there is contradiction. Contradiction is much more rare than many of us might think. Where contradiction is commonly seen isn't in reliable sources, especially the peer-reviewed scientific kind of primary sources, but in interpretation of sources, and even more in the imaginations of editors. There is no contradiction between the negative replications of excess heat findings in 1989 and the positive replications from 1989-date. The experimental conditions were different. As I said, contradiction is rare. An example of alleged contradiction: MIT reported finding no excess heat. It was noticed by Eugene Mallove that the published chart had an offset that concealed the original data. For this reason you can find cold fusion researchers asserting that the MIT data was altered to present an appearance of negative replication. That's a contradiction that would require balancing the reliability of one source against that of another. Otherwise reliable source is reliable source. --Abd (talk) 19:22, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

About DOE 2004: since the error is blatant, it can be reasonably expected that other RS have noticed the error and talked about it. Where are those sources? I also expect to see other RS talking how DOE chose an unreliable way to analyze the evidence, or about how DOE is less reliable than X or Y. Where are those sources? --Enric Naval (talk) 00:36, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

You know, I'd read quite a bit about this review and hadn't noticed any mention of this. Cold fusion researchers have had a lot to say about the review, to be sure, but this particular error wasn't noticed, as far as I've seen. I didn't see it when I first looked, I remember being confused by aspects of the Case presentation in McKubre -- it was hard to read the graphs to get at what they were saying, and I misinterpreted it myself the first time -- so I don't know. The DoE review isn't a peer-reviewed paper, it is, rather a document with intrinsic notability. It had a purpose, which was not scientific accuracy, it was to make possible funding recommendations. Quite simply, it was what it was. Compare that with the IPCC documents on global warming, where great care was exercised with every aspect. No comparison at all! --Abd (talk) 04:06, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

So, no sources? no mainstream sources? The errors and unreliability of DOE 2004 can only be sourced from cold fusion researchers? --Enric Naval (talk) 16:10, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Read the summary below, Enric. It was already said above, and what is below was added before your edit, but .... the only sources necessary to show the error are available from the DoE archive. The DoE report was a comment, explicitly, on what was in the document submitted by "cold fusion researchers," yes. Isn't that the point? The DoE report includes that paper as Appendix 1. So the unreliability, if you want to call it that -- I didn't -- of DOE 2004 is shown by DOE 2004, very simply. It isn't necessary to see the individual reviewer papers, but if you want to understand what happened, you'd want to look at them. And this continual rejection of sources because they are associated with cold fusion researchers, in any way, even when simply providing convenient access to public documents, even if just for background, to help understand our more reliable sources, is characteristic of POV-pushing in this field. Stop it. --Abd (talk) 17:02, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

If the only sources saying that DOE 2004 has errors/ is unreliable are from cold fusion researchers, then it has to be attributed as a POV hold by them. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:32, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Enric, you present an impoverished idea of what Wikipedia editors can and should do. We do not report demonstrably false information as fact just because a reliable source says it, unless we balance it. We can and should balance secondary source error with primary source fact. The requirement is that the primary source facts reported should be directly verifiable without synthesis, by any ordinary person with ordinary skill applying reasonable effort. First of all, it's worth reading WP:OR over carefully. Then look at the essay linked from the WP:OR page, WP:NOTOR. See, specifically, this example:

A book, short story, film, or other work of fiction is a primary source for any article or topic regarding that work. Anything that can be observed by a reasonable person simply by reading the work itself, without interpretation, is not original research, but is reliance upon a primary source. This would include direct quotes or non interpretative summaries, publication dates, and any other patent information that can be observed from the work. For example, if there are multiple versions of a particular story, and one version does not have a particular character, or has extra characters, that is clear simply by reading or watching the work. The fact that one would have to read or watch the whole thing does not make the matter original research. The work is verifiable, even if it takes more time than flipping to a single page.

Notice that the example is quite on point here: After reporting what the DoE report says is claimed in the review document about the sixteen samples, 'blah blah.' we could say, "The Hagelstein paper, which was the review document, does not contain a report of 'blah blah.' However, it does contain 'bleep bleep.'" And there is probably more than we can say; there is some criticism of the 2004 report in reliable source, if I'm correct. This tidbit, however, requires no source other than the 2004 DoE material.

Notice also that we probably cannot report, for example, that "The 2004 DoE report erroneously interpreted the review document," unless we have secondary source on that. What we properly do is to present the elements of the (alleged) contradiction, without claiming contradiction, reliably sourced, and let the reader form his or her own conclusion. The elements are directly verifiable. The conclusion isn't. --Abd (talk) 22:55, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

To summarize, on "association."

Our article has, in Coldfusion#Reports of nuclear products in association with excess heat, no report of association of nuclear products in association with excess heat, except for this: 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.[78] The note cites the summary review, but the text attributes to the report itself, which is available. This, on the face, appears to show association, though a very weak one, without the information that would allow the association to be judged. I.e, with two variables (how much helium was detected and how much excess heat was detected), there are four gross categories of association: heat and excess helium, no heat and no excess helium, no heat and excess helium, and heat and no excess helium. What is implied in the sentence is 5 cases of heat and helium, and an implication of 11 cases of heat and no helium, and no indication of how many cases there were of the other two categories. (i.e., we don't know, from our text, how many cells were tested for heat and helium.) As presented, the information is singularly weak, reading this, I'd say, my conclusion would be that helium and excess heat were not related.

This is what is in the actual summary report: Results reported in the review document purported to show that 4He was detected in five out of sixteen cases where electrolytic cells were reported to be producing excess heat.[40] This is a citation or interpretation of the review document. Now, is that information actually in the review document? It is not. What we are quoting as fact (that the review document "purports to show" the information) is verifiably false.

What is in the review document?

Examining Figure 12 and surrounding text in the review document indicates that 5 out of 16 of the samples showed He signals. The reviewer, while not 'quoting' anything in text in the review, correctly interprets Figure 12. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:24, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I see that you have noted this, and that the reviewer has misidentified the Case-type cells as electrolytic. Personally, this is not really a significant error, as the question is whether there is conclusive proof of He being generated, wherever that might have been. As I have noted however, the plots are bogus because we can't trust the measurements. This is why I tried to get included in the 2004 DOE review, but the powers that be didn't see my point I guess. Also of note is the direct ommission of the Clarke paper I comment on in the next section. This is more CFer obsfucation. McK knew intimately what Clarke et al had written. He _choose_ to exclude it from the presentation to the reviewers. I wonder why? Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:33, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Page 7 of the review document has a section on Helium and Excess heat. There is a subsection titled "Correlation of Excess Heat and Helium." This section discusses the work of a number of experimental groups, and includes analysis of the "Q value," i.e, how much heat is associated with each atom of helium found. This is work that is fundamental to both evidence for cold fusion and to the consideration of theories. There is no mention in this section of "sixteen cases." The section does, however, refer to Appendix B for some further discussion of helium and excess heat.

There is a mention of sixteen cells that Appendix, page 18, a report of a study of Case cells in which 4He was found. Just to start with, these are not electrolytic cells. Secondly, the total number of cells was sixteen. The total number of cells for which helium measurements were reported was six. One of these is flat, at zero ppm, leaving five which show any helium at all. One of the five shows very low helium, not exceeding roughly 1 ppm. One shows a slow rise to about 4 ppm. Three show sharp rises of helium levels, crossing the background level of about 5.2 ppm with no sign of slowing down, until reaching, for one cell, almost 11 ppm. This is the only cell for which excess heat is reported, in a chart on figure 13 on page 21. As far as we know from this appendix, excess heat was only found in one cell, though that is unlikely to be true. I'll return to that later, I believe there is a more thorough report on this work.

This appendix was not a report showing heat/helium correlation in more than one cell. The only reports showing correlation of excess heat and helium over multiple experimental runs were in the earlier section described above. The correlation is quantitative, at a level consistent with d + d -> He4 (or with 4d -> Be8 -> 2 He4).

So: the summary report is almost completely erroneous.

1. These were not electrolytic cells.
2. The review document doesn't show "sixteen cases where ... cells were reported to be producing excess heat." Where there is a reported set of sixteen measurements of helium, excess heat was reported for only one. The document isn't clear, but the purpose of this section was to report time correlation of heat and helium, and that was only done for one run.
3. Helium was found in five cells, but one of the five was at a very low level easily ascribed to contamination. And one of the remaining showed a very slow rise that did not reach background, and the data isn't reported for sufficient time to see if it would slow down as it approched background (as would be expected for leaks). So, truly, anomalous helium was only found in three cells. Not five.

The correlation of helium and excess heat is crucial, and the submitters of the review document knew this, and that's why they had a section dedicated to this. It appears that whoever summarized the document was distracted by the information in Appendix B, and misread it and then reported that. There was one individual reviewer report that made some of the mistakes made by the summarizer, but this merely helps us to understand how the summarizer came to make the mistake, being led part of the way there by the reviewer.

Without the correlation, or somehow overlooking it, the wonder would be that even one-third of the reviewers thought that the evidence for a nuclear explanation for the excess heat (that half thought was convincing) was "somewhat persuasive." That is, the reviewers did not generally make the same mistake as the summarizer.

Now, what do we do with this? Well, we don't quote the DoE summarizer as being what was in the review document, unless we also note that the information allegedly there wasn't. Which I prefer, because that piece of information (the error) is important in understanding subsequent events. The reviewer was a DoE official, and was, I'm sure, singularly unimpressed with the evidence, because the official didn't understand it, read it incorrectly." I would never say this in the article, but readers can come to conclusions themselves, if we provide them with what's verifiable.

The statement in the summary report is notable, it's obvious that editors here have agreed on that. The actual review document is notable, for lots of reasons. This is all reliably sourced as released by the DoE. So we report both. And since the energy/helium ratio is considered the strongest evidence for fusion, with a specific mechanism, and we have Storms for that as well as other secondary sources, we present the real evidence that was shown to the DoE, the review of Miles' work as presented by them, or, better, by Storms.

I mention subsequent events. The DoE review recommended further research. So did the 1989 review. After 1989, the DoE rejected, apparently, all requests for funding of any research related to cold fusion, and this has been ascribed to the continued influence of Huizenga, who chaired the original panel and who has been a highly skeptical commentator on the field, putting out his own book that gives the most negative possible interpretation on every bit of the work. (But it is still a valuable resource, it is only his conclusions and framing that are problematic. It's like Taubes, which is a goldmine as well.) After 2004, a well-known cold fusion researcher submitted a request to do exactly the kind of work that the report recommended, a modest effort. It was denied without review, apparently. I think it's easy to see why this might have happened. The official who wrote the summary was asked about it, or is the one who made the decision. While in 1989 and 2004 the panels were reasonably neutral, the continued influence was entirely from the most skeptical side.

I have, above, refered to the report as the McKubre report. That was an error; McKubre was an author and was crucial in presenting it, but the paper is the Hagelstein paper, this theorist was the lead author, and that's how we have it in our bibliography. --Abd (talk) 16:00, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Some comments on the 'heat-He correlation'

Reference: “PRODUCTION OF 4He IN D2-LOADED PALLADIUM-CARBON CATALYST II”, W. BRIAN CLARKE, STANLEY J. BOS and BRIAN M. OLIVER FUSION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 43, MAR. 2003, 250

It is of interest to look at some quotes from the referenced article in light of the supposed He-excess heat correlation that Abd is pushing so much. In the following I have clipped out some sections, which is indicated by {deletion}, for brevity. This article is the one I attempted to get into the Wiki article, but which has been removed from discussion, even though it still remains in the Bibliography. Note that Dr. M. McKubre heads the SRI effort in this field.

The Abstract

”Measurements of He, 3He/ 4He, Ne and 13 other components{deletion} in four samples of gas from SRI International (SRI) are reported. Three samples were collected from SRI Case-type stainless steel cells containing ~10 g of Pd/C catalyst initially loaded with ~3 atm D2 at ~200C, and the fourth sample (not identified) was stated to be a control. Case and the SRI researchers have claimed to observe 4He in concentrations of ~100 parts per million (ppm) and up to 11 ppm, respectively, produced in these cells via the fusion reaction D + D = 4He + 23.8 MeV. Others {note: ‘Others” being ‘these researchers’, i.e. Clarke, et al} found no evidence for 4He addition that cannot be readily explained by leaks from the atmosphere into the SRI cells. One sample appears to be identical in composition to air, and the other three have been seriously affected by leak(s) into and from the SRI cells. The rare gas “forensic” evidence includes 3He/ 4He ratios and He and Ne concentrations that are almost identical to air values. The samples also show high N2 (a primary indicator of air), low O2, and high CO and CO2 due to reaction of incoming atmospheric O2 with C in the catalyst. In two samples, the original D2 (or H2) has almost completely disappeared by outflow through the leak(s). These results have obvious implications concerning the validity of the excess 4He concentrations claimed by Case and the SRI researchers.”

Points made in the body:

He levels reported (ppm) 5.48, 6.52, 0.70, 5.30

N2 content of samples (mole %) 86.0, 89.1, 1.67, 78.4 (dry air = 78.1)

“1. All samples show high N2, which is a primary indicator of air.”

“2. Sample 46D is most probably room (or outside) air”

“After this technical note was submitted to Fusion Science and Technology, we received a communication from McKubre, who stated, inter alia, that sample 46D “was taken directly from a cylinder containing only deuterium gas with approximately 5 ppm helium-4 that we use to calibrate our mass spectrometer.” It is therefore very puzzling that this sample, except for slight additions of H2, D2, and CO2, was identical in composition to normal (dry) air.”

From the Summary:

“The results of our measurements show that after the Case-type cells at SRI were filled with hydrogen {deletion}, the following events probably occurred:

1. The hydrogen pressure in the cell decreased from ~3 to ~0.7 atm during the first few days. {deletion}

2. Incoming atmospheric O2 started to react with C in the Pd/C catalyst to produce CO and CO2, although the inflow rate of O2 was low during the first few days. Remaining hydrogen in the cell leaked outward and also reacted with O2 (aided by the catalyst) to form D2O and H2O. {deletion}”

“We note that two plots of helium concentrations versus time given by McKubre et al.(4) in fact show that the helium concentrations reach maximum values of 9 and 11 ppm at 20 and 27 days, respectively, and then appear to decrease slightly at later times. At the present time, we do not understand why the SRI maximum helium concentrations are a factor of ~2 higher than the atmospheric value of 5.2 ppm, although the observed increase must surely be due to unrecognized systematic error(s) in the SRI experiments.”

So, from the best CF researcher around we have four samples submitted that were all supposed to be primarily hydrogen with traces of helium in them, and experts in mass spectrometry instead find air. Yet, McKubre et al report He production via ‘cold fusion’.

Note also that a slow in-leak of air would provide O2 for the H2+O2 reaction, which produces heat. That heat would appear as excess heat.

Bottom line: If the He-heat correlation is to be placed in the Wiki article, then a summary of this information needs to be placed there as well, along with the commentary on the CCS, since the evidence is that the CFers don’t correctly measure either excess heat or He. If you can’t measure your X and Y properly, an accidental correlation arising from a plot cannot be considered real. Kirk shanahan (talk) 14:38, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

If you can’t measure your X and Y properly, an accidental correlation arising from a plot cannot be considered real.

Amen, hallelujah. I haven't read these sources and wouldn't have the physics background to evaluate where the consensus of reliable sources lies if I did read them; I leave it to more knowledgeable people to sort out the physics. But I do know statistics, and I've been reading the statistical assertions made in this discussion with increasing bemusement. Thanks for leaking some fresh air into the fog of obfuscating verbiage. Woonpton (talk) 16:05, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Of course. Woonpton, there are a number of scientists who have been following the events here, and you might do us the favor of disclosing the source of your bemusement regarding statistics, there are quite a few of us who likewise understand that field.

Shanahan is correct, this information belongs in the article, if the Case work is reported, because it may be the most cogent recent criticism of the helium work. However, the Case work is actually the weakest work on this point, and was used in only one correlation study, of a single cell, as reported to the DoE. (But I haven't reviewed the original Case article.) The Case effect is actually an open mystery, and I'm not convinced that it should be in our article: what was important here was that distorted Case effect results were presented by the DoE summary as if this was the strong evidence of helium correlation presented, when it wasn't. On the Case effect, Storms, p.46:

After McKubre and co-workers reproduced the Case effect at SRI, I undertook to do the same. Jed Rothwell provided funds to build a system needed to purify the Case catalyst ... About a year was spent on this effort without seeing any ambiguous energy.

As is common in this field, the ability to make active material was lost. In this case, the drum of charcoal used by United Catalyst as the substrate was thrown out during cleanup, perhaps explaining why the catalyst they made later did not work. Because the unique characteristics required to make the material nuclear-active were not determined at the time, it is impossible to manufacture more active material according to known specifications.

We are left with two alternate hypotheses, both reasonable if we only look at the Case effect. One, there was experimental error of an unknown kind (or as hypothesized by the researchers whose work is cited above), or the effect is fragile and sometimes associated with unknown factors. There is no controversy over the latter, and it is also quite likely that some of the positive results were due to artifact. Even careful researchers make mistakes. To me, energy/He4 quantitative correlation, found over many experiments by different groups, with blind testing of the Helium in a significant part of the work (Miles, at least), is perhaps the strongest piece of evidence that the excess heat is real and that it is nuclear in origin.

I will allow this out-of-sequence interjection breaking up my post, by Shanahan. See the next full-left small-text below for the resumption of my post --Abd (talk) 18:30, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

No, three. (3) it was leaks, and the latter attempts somehow were done better, i.e. without leaks. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:13, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Sure. As noted, causes of results may vary from experiment to experiment. Note that the "latter attempts" were earlier, and that they include work from several other research groups. Further, leaks don't explain correlation. --Abd (talk) 18:30, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

P.S., You do understand that Krivit had a whole article in a recent NET that critiqued the idea that anyone has shown the 23.8 MeV number in their experiments right? Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:13, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I do. Krivit is a bit obsessed about this, I've corresponded with him. I'd love to be able to use NET as a source, because it publishes material from all the major players, those discussions include comment from many well-known cold fusion researchers, and sometimes, critics.

Basically, nobody has found "23.8 MeV." That's the theoretical value for d-d fusion and would also be the same for 4d Be-8 intermediary fusion (i.e., you'd get, from the latter, two 23.8 MeV alpha particles). What has actually been claimed is that results are "consistent with" 23.8 MeV. I.e., 31-32 +/- 13 MeV/He-4 (McKubre), based on a single Case study, as far as I know, 24.8 +/- 2.5 MeV from a single SRI study reported by Hagelstein. Storms then claims that, by combining all measurements (he reports a lot of results using different units, i.e., He/watt-second, and I haven't done the conversion), he comes up with 25 +/- 5 MeV/He-4. His conclusion is "this value is consistent with d-d fusion being the source of energy and helium, other reactions may also be consistent...."

For detail, at [41] is a 2003 review of heat and He-4 papers by NET. [42] is the October 2008 issue of NET, with discussion of what Krivit titles the "24 MeV belief." --Abd (talk) 18:30, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Resumption of my original post below --Abd (talk) 18:30, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Criticism of cold fusion work has often been based on two claims: lack of "nuclear ash," i.e., reaction product, and lack of radiation expected to accompany fusion. Almost any radiation, though, would show a nuclear reaction, radiation doesn't ordinarily come from chemical reactions. Finding helium correlated with excess heat, however, validates both sets of measurements unless there is some reasonable hypothesis connecting both as errors with a common cause, it answers the nuclear ash objection, since it is the ash, and it also can answer the radiation question, since energetic alpha radiation transfers its energy to the environment as heat, and there are at least two proposed mechanisms which explain why the expected neutrons would be missing. (Contrary to the claims made about me, repeatedly, that I'm pushing hydrino theory, I prefer the Be8 hypothesis of Takahashi, which neatly predicts no neutrons but only alpha radiation at 23.8 MeV) Energetic alpha particles would be expected to generate X-radiation, and that is reported quite clearly and cleanly (X-ray film that forms an image of the electrode, an electrode that wasn't radioactive before the experiment). Further, there is direct evidence of energetic alphas, much of the SPAWAR work, peer-review published, is about that. In 2004, though, energy/helium correlation was the only widely-known clear evidence for nuclear origin, so that this evidence was missed by the review, to some degree, was of great historical importance.

Believe it or not, Woonpton, what I'm about here is writing an encyclopedia article, one which neutrally reports the whole story as found in sources meeting our standards. Doing that requires confronting certain common editorial assumptions based on widespread misinformation as to what is actually in the sources. Please remember that in January, when I came across some administrative abuse over related issues, I was skeptical about cold fusion, though dedicated to NPOV. My initial concern was pure process, administrators shouldn't be using their tools in the service of their POV, and it was quite clear to me that this had happened. It took months, but ArbComm validated this view and rejected or ignored claims that I was POV-pushing. I only developed a POV about cold fusion as a result of becoming familiar with what is in reliable sources, plus extensive discussions here. I've encountered, in the literature, many stories like my own: skeptics who, for some reason, were motivated to actually look at the sources instead of relying on knee-jerk assumptions. Robert Duncan (physicist) is only the most recent example.

And what is my POV? It is that claims that low energy nuclear reactions sometimes take place in the palladium deuteride system are reasonable and worthy of further investigation. Given that it took almost twenty years to find experimental techniques that reliably show the excess energy production, at low levels, it's quite possible that this will never be commercially practical for energy generation, hence I would only recommend, at this time, modest funding. This is exactly the same conclusion as the 2004 DoE report. I am not out on a limb, if my agreement with the conclusions of the DoE report (errors aside) is any sign, I'm right in the mainstream. It just looks different, to some, until they have seen what I've seen. And that is why we discuss and why we don't edit war; exceptions, for me, are rare and confined to some specific need, where asserting edits and compromising through edits rather than through more tedious discussion that goes nowhere is more efficient. Watch: you will see the results. If they don't toss me out of here first! Seems unlikely, at this point, but you never know. I can't do a thing without consensus, and I wouldn't want to. --Abd (talk) 16:55, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Abd, you are not neutral. Your complete lack of understanding of the import of the Clarke work shows this. Let me be clear. At the same time McKubre was developing the data he presented to the 2004 DOE Review, he supplied 4 samples to Clarke, et al. McKubre expected and communicated that the samples were to be hydrogen with traces of He in them. Clarke, et al found air. This means McK had no idea what he was doing. And this is from 'the best' the field has to offer. That directly applies to the work presented at the 2004 DOE review. Net conclusion, we are in a fog of confusion, and the correct response to that is "we have no idea what is going on, but there's no compelling evidence for CF". However, you are unable to accept this because, somehow, you have transformed into a CF fanatic advocate, and anyone who reads what you write here can see that. Most of us don't like that. It leads to a POV'd article. Please stop. Go away if you have to. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:22, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm not neutral, I didn't claim to be neutral. I wrote that my goal is a neutral article. What I understand is largely irrelevant, the community will judge; however, I do understand the import, though I may interpret it differently. You should know, if you are a careful scientist, that a single report isn't proof of anything, least of all that a researcher you assert is "the best the field has to offer" (that's quite debatable, he's notable and he's respected, but "best" is a big word) had "no idea what he was doing." If I take your account as accurate, more likely, he received the results and had no time to make sense of them, if, indeed, any sense could be made. I wouldn't include last-minute news in a report to the DoE unless it was very, very solid. Sure, those results called into question the Case work, but how much they call it into question involves details that haven't been disclosed here. The Case work was very narrow, and not crucial to the DoE report (that's why it was in an appendix, not in the main body); indeed, in hindsight, that report might have been more effective if it hadn't been added, because it clearly confused at least one person involved. The Clarke results were so far from what he'd found that it was very reasonable for him to suspect something odd had happened. I'll see what reports and claims there are on the circumstances, what follow-up there is, and report in a separate section. --Abd (talk) 21:42, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

friendly warning for Shanahan from Abd

Now, Kirk, you are very definitely not neutral, and,having a conflict of interest, you are not expected to be. That's why you have been properly advised not to edit the article (which advice you have apparently respected). If Rothwell were here and behaving as you are behaving above, I'd be warning him, so so take this as a friendly warning; if it weren't friendly, it would not be here, it would be on your Talk page, where you could be held responsible for having seen it. I have no intention to act to cause sanctions for your incivility here, but someone else might, and there is a decent possibility that all of this will end up before the Arbitration Committee again, there are arbitratable issues being raised that we might not be unable to find consensus on. My goal is to avoid that if possible, but also understand that the last time I went very far to try to find a way to avoid going to ArbComm, and only went because it was forced, I was troutslapped by ArbComm, not for my complaints and claims and work on this article and related issues, which a majority of editors currently active here derided, and attempted to have me banned over, but for not escalating sooner. (One well-known administrator described this to me, privately, as being "blessed by faint criticism.") There are lots of people reading what happens here, Kirk, who wouldn't agree with you about "CF fanatic advocate," but they don't necessarily jump in when they don't see it as necessary. I get the comments by email. From regular, experienced editors. I also get comments from people in the field, and from skeptics, some of whom are actually civil. You would do better, Kirk, if you recognize the boundaries. ArbComm has a tendency, when the can of worms is opened, to go through it and toss out single-purpose COI accounts who haven't respected WP:NPA and WP:CIVIL. Sometimes even if they have! I would prefer to retain your expertise, but, obviously, we also need balance from other experts, and we banned the most available one. I'll work on that.

Kirk, what of the possibility that Clarke mishandled the samples? Or if the sample vials(?) were defective and leaked during transport? V (talk) 20:05, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Doesn't matter. May be entirely possible. However, data that was supposed to verify claims has contradicted them. Net result is "No conclusion can be drawn." But note however, that Clarke's work is an order of magnitude more thorough than McKubre's, AND represents what a scientist should do when conducting trace analysis. I have said the same thing about Little's work on 'transmutation products', and another example is Indian study on Bockris' carbon arc experiments. Bottom line, all the chemical measurements being made in this field are at trace level, and the CFers have never established they can and do (note, this means _every time_) do the job adequately. Therefore, the tendency is to trust Clarke over McKubre, but as I said that is not necessary, as the point was to 'prove' CF, and that didn't happen. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:33, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Kirk. I was thinking of saying something along the lines of what Abd wrote in his second paragraph below, but since he's already done it.... I WILL say that your 3rd sentence is a bit "off". A vial of gas is not "data", although data would be obtainable from it. V (talk) 22:08, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

It does matter. It's not an issue of trusting one researcher over another. Shanahan is stepping outside normal scientific protocol here, and his mention of this a sign of his attachment; the standard is to, by default, trust all the reports, which reflects the common-law principle that testimony is presumed true unless controverted. Experimental reports are just that, and we trust them. We assume that what they report is what was observed. So I assume that Clarke is reporting his expert analysis of what his techniques and instruments showed. You have done the same with calorimetry, by the way. You claim that excess heat is the result of an unknown surface effect that causes local heating, causing calibration constant shift. You claim that the experimental reports either show this or are consistent with this, which means that you are trusting the experimental results and are merely proposing an alternate explanation of them.

Researchers have limited resources. It's easy to say that a researcher should have done this or that, but this or that may be expensive, not allowed by the budget or not possible with the research time available. Researchers report what results they have, balancing the need for more data -- there is almost always a need for more data -- with the need to communicate, so that others can become involved with analysis and confirmation, and, as well, so that they can receive credit for what they have done.

Shanahan still does not seem to face the issue and power of correlation. We'll be examining that in more detail, it's a fundamental issue that bypasses the objections about measurement accuracy. In the meantime, however, we should note that the charts in the Hagelstein report do show error bars, and that the effects are not buried in the noise, and are confirmed with multiple measurements or experiments, and the heat/helium correlation is roughly confirmed by all the work that's been done on it. (We have no data, to my knowledge, on the heat generated from the cells from the Case report.) Note that Krivit, in what Kirk referred to about the 23.8 MeV/He-4 "myth," is claiming that one report, based on his own original analysis of it, shows 16 MeV/He-4, instead of the figures from other reports that were above the 24 MeV level (loss of helium, expected, will cause the measured and calculated MeV/He-4 to be above the actual reaction value). This is still quite close to the prediction for d-d fusion, when earlier criticism claimed that nuclear phenomena were many orders of magnitude -- very large numbers -- out of whack from theoretical predictions. Being within a factor of two is quite strong a result, in fact! --Abd (talk) 22:01, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Ummmm, Abd, the whole point of CCS is to extend the range of the error bars, so that data only a short distance outside them can instead be encompassed by them. Kirk is right in that the MATH is plausible, but as for the rationale for a mechanism...well, I want to see evidence for CCS in experiments designed to find it! And there is one other "tiny" thing...to the extent that a CF researcher was able to claim a tiny detection of excess heat, proportionate to natural deuterium level, using ordinary water in the electrolyte of a CF "control" experiment -- well, any calorimeter that can detect that, then when re-used in a heavy-water CF experiment (that's 6500 times as much deuterium as before)...that calorimeter's error bars SHOULD be far far below the level of measurable excess heat, such that not even CCS could expect to explain it away. V (talk) 22:17, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

The issue is complex. I remain quite skeptical that Kirk's explanation is anything more than a long shot, a stretch. That it would remain through so many different kinds of experiments, including those that a measuring net heat flow from a tightly closed system such as an Arata cell (or Case cell), seems quite remote a possibility to me, but, yes, it should be investigated. About the ordinary water results, yes. They are measuring an effect three orders of magnitude lower than what they claim to see with heavy water. Kirk seems to be proposing, though, a non-nuclear excess heat effect that perturbs calorimetry because of the particular way that it manifests, through very local heating. Don't confuse precision (i.e., the ability to detect a very small change in evolved heat) with accuracy (the determination of an absolute level of heat evolution). Very precise results might be very inaccurate, if there is some systemic error. Look, the big problem with Kirk's results is that they haven't made a big splash. They've made a little splash. Storms does comment on Shanahan, which makes it notable. How does it feel, Kirk, to be notable because of Storms' response? Other secondary source that comments on Shanahan? There may be a little, I'm not sure. Not much. To a degree, any peer-reviewed response or other independently published response to Shanahan shows notability. --Abd (talk) 23:09, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

American Chemistry Society Symposium Series: Low Energy Nuclear Reactions Sourcebook

Some of you may be consterned to read that Oxford University Press has given me a copy of this book. I could sell it for almost $150 less costs of sale, thus making a profit from my editing here. Perhaps as much as twenty cents an hour. I can see the report on the COI noticeboard now....

Be that as it may, there is a Foreword in the book that should be noticed, given what some have said about this source:

The ACS Symposium Series was first published in 1974 to provide a mechanism for publishing symposia quickly in book form. The purpose of the series is to publish timely, comprehensive books developed from ACS sponsored symposia based on current scientific research. Occasionally, books are developed from symposia sponsored by other organizations when the topic is of keen interest to the chemistry audience.

Before agreeing to publish a book, the proposed table of contents is reviewed for appropriate and comprehensive coverage and for interest to the audience. Some papers may be excluded to better focus the book; others may be added to provide comprehensiveness. When appropriate, overview or introductory chapters are added. Drafts of chapters are peer-reviewed prior to final acceptance or rejection, and manuscripts are prepared in camera-ready format.

As a rule, only original research papers and original review papers are included in the volumes. Verbatim reproductions of previously published papers are not accepted.

ACS Books Department.

The material is all copyright 2008 by the American Chemical Society. The title page says that it is "Sponsored by the ACS Division of Environmental Chemistry, Inc." Is that mainstream enough? The book is distributed by Oxford University Press, the well-known fringe publisher, and I'm grateful to them for sending me a copy, and to Steve Krivit for requesting it, when I asked for his help.

If anyone has questions about what's in the book, "Abd" means "servant" or "slave." Ask, if it pleases you. Otherwise, there will be, I suspect, some material sourced to this book appearing in an article near you. It might even survive more than a few minutes....

List of Papers

Contributing authors and papers

Any questions? --Abd (talk) 00:17, 28 May 2009 (UTC)