Talk:Cold fusion

IMPORTANT: This is not the place to discuss your personal opinions of the merits of cold fusion research. This page is for discussing improvements to the article, which is about cold fusion and the associated scientific controversy surrounding it. See Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines. If you wish to discuss or debate the status of cold fusion please do so at the VORTEX-L mailing list..

This article was the subject of mediation during 2009 at User_talk:Cryptic C62/Cold fusion.

Helium

(comment continued from the previous section)

...Finally, the helium section seems, to me, to be unwarranted yet. A sentence that cold fusioneers believe they have measured helium might be appropriate, but the evidence is selective. The meta-analysis threw out non-detections but accepted all detections, as far as I can tell. Again, secondary source evaluation would be best.

ScienceApologist (talk) 14:18, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

There's a meta-analysis on helium? Reference, please? I've been working from the recently highly-vaunted 2010 Storms "review," and looking at the research summarized there, trying to determine for my own understanding how strong the evidence is for the claim of a strong correlation between heat and helium, and have so far not found the strength of this "correlation" or Storms' selective description of it very convincing. He defines a correlation this way: "A correlation can be said to exist if helium is detected when extra energy is produced and helium is absent when energy is not produced" and then lists twelve bodies of research in which he claims that such a correlation has been reported. But if you look at those research reports that's not what most of them are actually reporting. One of the reports didn't report or measure energy output at all, which eliminates it entirely as potential support for the statement made. Others, as SA suggests above, ignored cases where there was reported heat but no excess helium, rendering them unsuitable as support for the statement. I found especially interesting a graph which had six helium measurements (all from heat-producing cells) three of which showed excess helium and three of which didn't; the line drawn to fit the data (and to show how "close" it was to a line generated by a theoretical prediction) obviously excluded the non-helium points and only fitted the three points where helium was above background; if the other points had been included, as they should have been, the line would have approached horizontal.) Another study, that involved mass spectrometry, had the calibration peaks in the right place, the helium peak (4.0026) to the left of the D2 peak (4.028), but when they presented the "evidence" for helium (a single observation of helium in an unspecified number of runs) the "helium" peak is inexplicably to the right of the D2 peak, and so small that you have to take their word for it that the "after" peak is 25% higher than the "before" peak. None of the reports that I've looked at has shown unequivocally that "where there's heat there's helium; where there's not heat there's not helium." In some cases the authors admit the problem; for example, the author with the misleading graph freely admitted in the text that "A more significant problem is that three He samples, taken at times of non-zero excess power, exhibited helium concentrations only at the level of analytical uncertainty...." and that only in some samples from power-producing cells did helium levels exceed that of the ambient background. Another report comments, "However the circumstances of having a significant [helium] background even before the immission is somehow disturbing." So the assertion in Storms' "review" that the twelve studies consistently reported a solid "heat>helium, no heat>no helium" association, is simply not an accurate representation of the data reported in those studies. The review is too new to have attracted secondary criticism, if it ever will, and of course my informal analysis is useless for our purpose here, but I don't believe we'd be serving our readers well if we used this review to support any assertion about a correlation between heat and helium, even if Wikipedia rules, broadly interpreted, would allow it.

Then, yesterday, I looked at the article to see what we are saying about heat and helium, and was relieved to find that our article doesn't actually assert a correlation between heat and helium and that what the article says about helium appears to summarize the currently-available data accurately, so I was putting the stuff all away and going back to what I was doing before I was distracted by this recent discussion, when this thread caught my eye. If I'm reading the comments above correctly it appears that an editor wishes to include statements asserting this correlation (although I thought Hagelstein was a theorist not a researcher; has Hagelstein actually produced research supporting this correlation?); if so, I agree with SA that to make any encyclopedic statement about this research is "unwarranted yet." Woonpton (talk) 16:53, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

The Hagelstein (2010) review reports on the correlation between measured helium and excess heat, as do the Storms (2010) review and most of the Biberian reviews, all of which have been published in peer reviewed academic journals. Have you had the opportunity to read the Hagelstein and Biberian reviews? Also, which graph are you referring to in the work cited by Storms (2010)? Ura Ursa (talk) 01:50, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

By "Hagelstein review" I do hope you don't mean the 2010 Naturwissenschaften article titled "Constraints on energetic particles in the Fleischmann-Pons experiment," which is not a review but a bit of theoretical speculation. There are reports of scientific observations (primary research reports) and then there are reviews that provide critical analysis of the primary research in a field, set aside flawed studies, and summarize what's left; that's the kind of secondary independent source we need to support statements made in this article. The Storms and Biberian reviews, while ostensibly "reviews of the literature" are not reviews in this customary sense; they are simply recitations of claims.

I've already commented on problems I see with the Storms review; as for Biberian, the section on helium (in the 2007 review) begins with a bit of bizarre revisionist history: "At the initial press conference, Pons and Fleischmann claimed that they had measured helium-4, thereby proving that the reaction was D + D > He4 + gamma 24 MeV." This account is fiction. Nowhere in that press conference, in the press release that announced the conference, or in the original paper, did Pons or Fleischmann mention He4. He3 is mentioned in a speculative way in the introduction to the paper, with a question suggesting that the governing fusion reaction might be one that leads to the formation of He3, but nowhere in the experimental, results, or discussion sections is He3 mentioned again, let alone He4. Credibility in science depends to some extent on factual accuracy in research writing. I found all of these documents and read them in about five minutes, so it wouldn't have been hard for him to check his facts.

I mentioned two graphs; the one where only the cases where both heat and helium were present were used in fitting the line and the points where there was heat but no helium were ignored is Figure 1 in McKubre et al 2000, "The Emergence of a Coherent Explanation for Anomalies Observed in D/Pd and H/Pd Systems: Evidence for 4He and 3He" which was cited in Storms 2010 as evidence for his claim (where there is heat there is helium, where there is no heat there is no helium). Obviously this was not the case in that experiment. The other graph, with the "helium" peak in the wrong place, is Figure 6 in Botta et al 1995, "Search for 4He Production from Pd/D2 Systems in Gas Phase," also cited by Storms as evidence for the claim. I would caution against getting hung up on specific graphs or sub-issues; my point was and is a general one, that the claim made in the review is not well supported by the research cited as evidence for it. This is true throughout the body of research; the two graphs I mentioned were just two obvious examples that illustrate the problem very nicely. I don't have the time or interest to list the problems in the interpretation and presentation of the data in each of these studies (someone should write a good independent review of this literature, but it won't be me) and even if I went to the trouble, my analysis wouldn't be useful to us here. The question that concerns editors here is, should the in-universe claims that haven't been verified by independent confirmation be included in the article, or do we wait for independent verification of those claims? The latter course seems wiser, more encyclopedic, and more respectful of readers' desire for accurate, reliable information.Woonpton (talk) 09:11, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I apologize for my comments on the merits of the research, since my opinions about the research are irrelevant here; lest my point be lost, it's that having seen the evidence for a heat/helium correlation, I concur with the statement we have in our article about helium, sourced to a 1999 Scientific American article; this is an accurate representation of the state of the research to this point IMO. (Most of this research was presented or published in the 90s, so there's not new information since 1999).

And before someone portrays me as anti-cold fusion, this has nothing to do with cold fusion for me. It could be any data in any field. My only interest is in the accurate interpretation and presentation of data and the drawing of appropriate conclusions from it, whatever the topic. I wouldn't even have looked at this if Abd hadn't gone on at such length about how strong this correlation is; finally I decided I had to see for myself. Even Storms' descriptions of the research aren't very persuasive, eg what he says about Takahashi's research: "Four successful runs gave values between 8.8 x 10^14 to 7.0 x 10^16 atoms, with a background of 5.5 x 10^15 atoms," and about Apicella: "The largest value reported is 1.05 x 10^16 atoms, compared to a background of 0.75 x 10^16 atoms. The background is from helium initially present in the spectrometer." Statements like these give a statistician pause, and certainly don't provide support for Storms' claim that all these studies show that where there's heat there's helium, where there's not heat there's not helium, so then I had to go to the original sources and look at the actual data and see how big the sampling error is (it's huge, and another unfortunate blunder is that Miles mistakes measurement error for sampling variability--experimental error-- and crows that the difference between the largest and smallest values they measured in the presence of heat was 37 sigma! What he was really inadvertently pointing out was how huge the variance in the heat-helium measurements is, which is entirely a different issue than the accuracy of each of those measurements, and the implication is that most if not all of these measurements are almost certainly not statistically different from background). But even after drawing the conclusion for my own information that the data don't provide convincing support for the claimed correlation (I'm not saying there couldn't be such a correlation; there well could be, I'm just saying that the present body of research hasn't established it) I would have put it away without commenting on it here, except that just that morning someone suggested that our article should mention the correlation between heat and helium. I'm sorry I commented, and will take this article off my watchlist so it won't happen again. Woonpton (talk) 17:16, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I, for one, found your comments very valuable, Woonpton. Please consider continuing here. ScienceApologist (talk) 17:18, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Do you endorse Woonpton's assertion that Hagelstein (2010) is not a review, even though it says "REVIEW" across the top and summarizes more than 1,000 papers? Ura Ursa (talk) 05:32, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes. Calling something a review doesn't necessarily make it a review. Claiming that it summarized 1000 papers doesn't make it so. ScienceApologist (talk) 16:07, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

By that logic, if a cold-fusion detractor publishes a claim of having conducted an experiment that debunks the idea, then we don't have to believe that the paper is valid, right (the detractor could just be lying)? Since such assumptions are not how Science works (especially when a paper is published after peer-review!); you cannot arbitrarily claim that the claims made in that Review paper are faulty --you have to repeat the work to be able to make such a claim! V (talk) 15:26, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

This argument makes no sense; whether a paper is a research study or a review doesn't depend on what it's called, but what it is. A scientist doesn't "claim" to have conducted an experiment; the published account speaks for itself, for better or worse.

I was not claiming, arbitrarily or otherwise, that the "claims" made in the Hagelstein paper are faulty. I was simply saying that the Hagelstein paper is not a review, regardless of the banner heading Naturwissenschaften gave it. They appear to have only a few categories for articles: Original Paper, Review, Short Commentary and Editorial are the only ones I've seen. The Hagelstein paper by most objective standards would be considered an original paper, but the journal didn't give it the "Original Paper" label for whatever reason. I'd guess they get so few theoretical papers they didn't know what to call it, but decided it was closer to a review than an original paper, since it is an attempt to explain some older findings rather than a research report offering new observations. But as ScienceApologist rightly says, calling it a review doesn't make it a review. And claiming that it summarizes 1000 papers is, don't you think, a bit exaggerated, when it actually mentions only about 20 studies. The paper proposes a theoretical framework related to cold fusion, but it is in no sense of the word a review of cold fusion research, and by the title Hagelstein gave it, it seems unlikely that the author himself considered it a review; in my experience writing and reading research and reviews of research, a paper that sets out to review the literature on a topic customarily states in the title or subtitle that it is a review. Woonpton (talk) 16:30, 25 October 2010 (UTC) (signature added later to assign authorship, since post was broken up with inserted comment below)

I can certainly accept the idea that an article might not actually be a review, if the author does not say it is a review (despite others saying it is). Regarding 1000 papers, though, if the author says that that much experimental data was examined, I don't know why it can't be true (especially for Hagelstein, who has been active in the field since the original announcement by P&F). Also, I would think that the particular experiments/papers focussed on are those the author considers to be the most representative of the 1000 total. The only question I now have concerns the papers that are referenced, and Wikipedia's policies regarding primary and secondary sources. There are some recent experiments (about 2008 onward) that have not been allowed mention in the main article here, because all we had were the primary-source (albeit mainstream) publications. To the extent that some of those papers have now been referenced in this Hagelstein paper, then it seems to me that this secondary source now qualifies those earlier papers for use in this Wikipedia article. What say you? V (talk) 15:26, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Hagelstein isn't independent enough. Wait for acknowledgment from someone who isn't a documented cold fusion advocate. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:31, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Bad answer. That's like saying some new paper on Newtonian Mechanics can't be used by Wikipedia even after it get referenced by some pro-Newtonian-Mechanics author, and if we accepted such horrible "logic", then the original Storms review likely would have to be discarded, too. That's why the more important data item is "mainstream publication", which this Hagelstein paper most certainly is (along with the Storms publication). V (talk) 20:13, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

It is not instructive to compare cold fusion with Newtonian Mechanics. See WP:FRINGE. ScienceApologist (talk) 12:25, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

It is always instructive to point out double-standards and other forms of hypocrisy. By definition, articles published in mainstream journals are not "fringe". And I was talking only about such articles, above (although I just added a bit of text in an earlier post to make it more obvious). V (talk) 02:58, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Funny, the definition of fringe science in Wikipedia says nothing about publications defining it. I think you missed the excellent summary of what publication (esp. peer-reviewed) means offered below by Woonpton. Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:18, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't see anything at the WP:FRINGE page that requires everything about CF to be called "fringe", and that's partly because there are two significant issues here, not just one. The first issue consists of the reports of energy being produced in "CF experiments". So far as I know, this has never been called "fringe"; both DOE panels, for example, were relatively encouraging of more experimentation to get more and better data about that. The second issue involves the proposed explanation for that energy, which we all here know consists of claims and counterclaims about deuterium fusion. Personally, I've just about reached the point where I don't care what the arguments are; I just want to see more experimental data. Should it happen someday that the energy measurments become reliable (and positive, of course), then it will be time to argue about where that energy is coming from. Anyway, I agree that the mainstream has basically frowned upon "fusion" as being the right explanation for the detected energy, and so non-mainstream publications that focus on fusion can generally-correctly be called "fringe". However! The mainstream publications of experiments that I was talking about involve data more than theory. They are basically in line with what the DOE panels favored, and so are hardly "fringe". Remember, one of them was a pressurized-gas experiment (approximate replication of Arata's work) that was published in Physics Letters A, and was all about the detection of anomalous energy. That's about as non-fringe as you can get! And as for the new Hagelstein paper, while it may focus on theory, the Question I've been asking involves the references in that paper, to other articles. So, if it happens to discuss/reference the Physics Letters A paper, then it would be a mainstream/secondary source about that article, and, to the best of my knowledge, would allow us to start using the referenced paper as a source of data for this Wikipedia article. IF the PLA paper is referenced, of course! V (talk) 06:51, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

{unindent}“I don't see anything at the WP:FRINGE page that requires…” - Of course not. Do you think all fringe topics are called out by name?

That's not what I meant; I was talking about the definition there, of "fringe". That is, just because you claim that CF qualifies as fringe, per Wikipedia definition on the [WP:FRINGE] page, that does not mean it actually qualifies as fringe. Read the descriptions there more carefully V (talk) 07:42, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

“…, this has never been called "fringe"…” – Please stop mixing apples and oranges. For Wikipedia purposes, cold fusion has always been, and still is, ‘fringe’. Whether some reporter or scientist chooses to use that term or not is irrelevant. What is required to change that is clearly stated in reverse with: “Mainstream scientists typically regard fringe concepts as highly speculative or even strongly refuted.” Get the mainstream to view them as strongly supported and non-speculative, and you’re not ‘fringe’.

There you go, agreeing with what I wrote about the proposed explanation of the data; fringe concepts are indeed often highly speculative. The data itself, however, which led to those speculations, and especially recent data from the CF field, is most certainly not being strongly refuted. So, the mainstream is provably shifting away from that viewpoint that all CF stuff is fringe, and the proof is the fact of mainstream publishing of CF-related data in recent years, including even a whole sourcebook by the American Chemical Society. In other words, no matter how much you think CF used to qualify as "fringe", it qualifies less-so as fringe today. I don't know where the dividing line is, that something once considered fringe becomes something more than that (example: "continental drift" was definitely once "fringe", but isn't any more); historically, it usually happens after enough die-hard detractors die off. I'd be interested in knowing why we should have to wait for that to happen again, if the data holds up to replication (and some of it already has held up; remember that the Physics Letters A paper is about an approximate replication of an earlier experiment by Arata). 07:42, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

“both DOE panels, … were relatively encouraging” – You mistake professional courtesy for approval.

I don't care what you call it; the DOE panels did not strongly refute the data that led to speculations that cold fusion could explain that data. And therefore, by definition, they did not thereby give any indication that that data qualified as "fringe". V (talk) 07:42, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

“The second issue involves the proposed explanation…” – No, the underlying issue here is whether inordinate coverage of all the various CF claims in the Wiki article gives it undue notoriety per Wiki policy not to be used to promote fringe ideas. We have agreed that issues discussed by non-CFers in RS is justification for inclusion here. The primary non-CF RS is the two DOE reports. Newspaper articles don’t count for this. Also, the nature of the conversion from “speculative or refuted” to “ accepted” requires some time to pass and some widepread discussion to occur. So far, that has not happened, so the idea of ‘recentism’ is applicable.

As I've previously pointed out, it is because the article here does not make a distinction between the data and the proposed explanations, that you and other detractors can lump all of it together under the label of "fringe". And it looks to me like the gang of you desperately want to keep it all mixed up (avoide making the aforementioned distinction), just so you can continue to mis-label recent data as "fringe", despite it being published in mainstream journals. Tsk, tsk. V (talk) 07:42, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

“I've just about reached the point where I don't care…” – I started that way in ‘95. All I wanted to see was the compelling data. Never found it.

Yes, we've seen the extraordinary excuses you concocted to try to convince others that real heat that can melt palladium was actually only an illusion. I think the relevant quote is, "None are so blind as those who refuse to see". Which reminds me that there is a kind of "silent" large group of scientists out there, such as Robert Duncan (university chancellor) originally was, who simply haven't been paying attention to the arguments. I wonder just how large that group is, compared to the group (known to consist mostly of hot-fusion researchers) that insists CF is impossible. That is, what is the real mainstream view of this subject, eh? V (talk) 07:42, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

“They are basically in line with what the DOE panels favored, and so are hardly "fringe".” - No, they have not resulted in any significant change in the mainstream position and thus the field _remains_ fringe.

And that statement is utter nonsense, since mainstream journals have been publishing rather more CF papers recently than they did ten years ago --a very significant change in the mainstream position! V (talk) 07:42, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

“…Physics Letters A, and was all about the detection of anomalous energy. That's about as non-fringe as you can get!” – You failed to understand again what is going on. Junk gets published, everywhere. Peer review is the lowest level of QC possible. Again, getting published does not mean you are non-fringe, it just means you got lucky. The Kitamura paper is one of those garbage papers that got published in spite of how bad it is. Kirk shanahan (talk) 19:17, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Just because you say a paper is garbage, that does not make it so. Where is your evidence that it is a garbage paper? Have you performed the experiment and discovered different results? And, have you forgotten that that paper is about an attempt to basically replicate an earlier experiment (which, according to the authors, it succeeded)? Where are any papers about deuterium gas pressurized into palladium, with anomalous heat not being noticed? (Per one in-house document linked here some months ago, even NASA found anomalous heat, long before Arata.) V (talk) 07:42, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

First, please don't post in the middle of others' posts; it breaks up the discussion and leaves paragraphs appearing to be unauthored. I've signed the orphaned paragraph but for future reference, please don't break up posts by commenting in the middle of them.. Second, the assertion in the paper is that "we searched more than a thousand papers for results we could use to develop estimates for upper limits of particle emission for unit energy;" he was just looking for papers he could use for developing his theory, not examining all thousand papers. Woonpton (talk) 16:30, 25 October 2010 (UTC)Woonpton (talk) 16:38, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

There are papers that purport to be reviews (Storms 2010, Biberian) but they don't have the characteristics generally associated with a review. A review looks at all the research on a topic (not just favorable research) and rather than simply mentioning each study with its key findings (that would be an annotated bibliography) a review examines the research closely, pointing out problems in experimental design, analysis, whether the conclusions follow naturally from the the data, whether there could be other possible explanations for the findings, and so forth. Then the review summarizes the evidence taken altogether, weighing the evidence for and against, taking into account the questions that may have been raised about the reproducibility, reliability and validity of individual studies, and arriving at a tentative conclusion about what findings have been conclusively demonstrated by the body of research taken as a whole. As far as I can see, there has been no such review conducted wrt the recent cold fusion research; the only thing that even resembles an independent review is the 2004 DOE report which doesn't really qualify, since rather than asking reviewers to read and weigh all the original literature, reviewers were only asked to review and respond to a fairly short and selective report prepared by cold fusion researchers. Woonpton (talk) 15:05, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

And while I'm here, a word about peer review. Peer review is not a stamp of approval on behalf of mainstream science, nor does it offer much assurance that a paper has been checked for errors or vetted for validity by checking for flaws in experimental design, analysis, and so forth. The standards of peer review vary from publisher to publisher, so one can have more confidence in the peer review process of some journals than others, but as a whole, the peer review process isn't any guarantee that the work is scientifically sound, only that it meets the minimum standard for publication for that journal, whatever it is (and for some, that bar is set very low indeed). It's also worth noting that scientists don't put as much stock in peer review as non-scientists. (David Friedman, in his excellent 2010 book "Wrong," notes that "It is typically science journalists and other outside observers who imagine peer review to be an assurance of study reliability" and that scientists themselves understand that the public idea of peer review as a stamp of authentication is not accurate. When the British Journal of Medicine tested its peer review system by sending out to a pool of 221 reviewers, a test article deliberately salted with 8 obvious errors, the reviewers caught an average of two errors each. In other words, while many people believe that the peer review system puts an article through something like the literature review process I described above, in most cases research papers don't get that kind of scrutiny before publication. And as a person whose career consisted of teaching, reading, writing, evaluating and summarizing research literature, I can attest that many papers that pass peer review shouldn't have, if peer review served any useful purpose in terms of weeding out or improving flawed research reports before publication. Woonpton (talk) 15:42, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Would it be best at this juncture to request mediation concerning whether the several secondary sources reporting correlation between heat and helium production are appropriate to include? I am not convinced by the people who insist on saying that the Hagelstein (2010) review, which is plainly labeled a review by the academic journal it appears in and indicates that it summarizes more than 1,000 other papers, is somehow not a review. Ura Ursa (talk) 18:14, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

In particular, I would like to ask Woonpton some questions. Firstly, what is "the statement we have in our article about helium, sourced to a 1999 Scientific American article"? Do you mean, "great care must be used to avoid contamination by trace amounts of helium normally present in the air"[1]? Are you aware that contamination with air produces both argon and helium, both of which have unique sharp spectra?

Secondly, on one hand, you say that a bona fide review "set[s] aside flawed studies" but later you say that a real review "looks at all the research on a topic (not just favorable research)". Are you aware of the work which has been done on deuterium loading ratio achievements? Ura Ursa (talk) 15:23, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Goodness. I haven't been watching this page and just came across this quite by accident, trying to work out a problem with my browser. I believe I've already said everything I have to say about Hagelstein and Storms and won't go around that circle again. If you want to take it to mediation, be my guest, but I have no interest in participating, and as I said, I'm not watching this page so I won't know and won't care what's decided in the mediation about it, if one occurs. I personally think it would be a disservice to the reader to use these inside-universe"reviews" as sources for statements about a correlation between helium and heat, but I don't care enough about it to be involved in dispute resolution about it.

I'm puzzled by the question about what I mean by "the statement in our article about helium sourced to a 1999 Scientific American article;" I should think it's clear that the statement I mean is " However, the reported levels were very near to the background, so there is the possibility of contamination by trace amounts of helium which are normally present in the air. The lack of detection of gamma radiation seen in the fusion of hydrogen or deuterium to 4He has caused critics to attribute the helium detections to experimental error.[" That's the only statement about helium in our article that's sourced to the 1999 Scientific American article (in which a panel of experts were asked to read the recent research on cold fusion and respond) and as I remarked, after reading all the research that's cited in Storms 2010 on the subject, I believe that this reliably-sourced statement in our article is a fair summary of the recent research on helium. And yes, I'm aware of all the research.

As for the last question, those two statements are not at all contradictory. The first one refers to the body of literature that is analyzed for the review; a review should include ALL the literature available, not just the literature that offers favorable conclusions, as Storms' review does for example, leaving out research which refutes the favorable research. The second statement was taken completely out of context, for reasons inexplicable to me, but refers to a later phase in the review process, as can easily be seen in its context, above. Having amassed all the research literature available on a topic, the reviewer then analyzes each of the studies, evaluating their research methods, data analysis and presentation, and whether the conclusions follow logically from the data. An example of what that would look like in a review can be seen in my brief remarks about a couple of the helium studies above in this thread. In other words, the fact that a study claims a correlation, and draws a graph showing a correlation, by using only the three points where there is a correlation and leaves out the three points where there is no correlation, should be prominently mentioned in any review that includes that study. The review does this evaluation explicitly for each of the studies in the body of literature that is reviewed. Once flawed studies have been identified and "set aside," the studies that are left (in other words the data that still remain standing when the review is finished) are used to summarize the findings in the field. The flawed studies are included in the analysis of all the studies in the field, but are not included in the summary of findings, since by definition they don't represent valid findings.Woonpton (talk) 00:37, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Theory

At what point would it be appropriate to include theoretical explanations such as Widom-Larsen proton+electron->neutron synthesis, Bose-Einstein condensates (and any others with secondary peer reviewed sources discussing them?) What is the standard for inclusion of proposed explanations of still-controversial observations? Ura Ursa (talk) 20:43, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Excellent question. We need independent evaluation and citation outside of the cold fusion community. Widom-Larsen is just the latest in a long series of theories that have alternatively been favored and fallen out of favor with cold fusioneers. What we need are sources that describe the ideas broadly and summarily without going into the details of primary sources and original research. ScienceApologist (talk) 00:32, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

How do you define the boundaries of the cold fusion community? Just out of curiosity, how familiar are you with this subject? E.g, which theories in the "long series" to which you refer can you cite? I've seen plenty of theory papers, but few which have gained much traction in subsequent theory papers. If by "favored" you mean cited or referred to favorably in subsequent peer reviewed papers, I wonder how many you can name. I think there may be fewer than you seem to think. Ura Ursa (talk) 04:45, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

There's a veritable cascade of these ideas available at any of the major cold fusion sites. I think the questions you ask of me are better answered by you as I don't think them relevant to this issue. Outside notice is not forthcoming of any of these points and so we're stuck evaluating the noise as a signal. ScienceApologist (talk) 14:21, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree with your assessment, because I would not use the words long series or veritable cascade to describe less than a handful of theory papers which have obtained favorable traction in subsequent peer reviewed works by other authors. Ura Ursa (talk) 22:43, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

The questions he asked are more properly answered by you, SA, because they represent evidence needed to back up the claims you made. And if you cannot answer them then one has at least to acknowledge that in the other parties' mind you have failed to satisfy burden of proof and thus it would be futile to continue any line of reasoning premised on those claims. (If you can, on the other hand, then go right ahead.) That is the main point of asking questions like that. Kevin Baas^talk 15:56, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I explicitly reject the applicability of the questions about what my opinions are about cold fusion and what my familiarity is with the subject. The specific theories are themselves, in my opinion, irrelevant. Since Ura Ursa seems to agree with my assessment, I'm unclear as to what more is needed here. Maybe I missed something. ScienceApologist (talk) 17:54, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

look at what he actually said. i believe the word "agree" was a typo. meant to be "disagree" or "don't agree". the gist of what he said, as well as the details, are definitely in contradiction to it. As to your "explicitly reject the applicability of the questions...", fine, go right ahead. It doesn't matter in the slightest whether you reject it or not. since, as you say, you're not familiar, then you essentially admit that your supposition was presumptious and that you can't provide the evidence to back it up. so like i said, you have not met the burden of proof requirement in the other person's minds. and lacking some kind of active telepathy, simply rejecting a notion isn't going to change that. Kevin Baas^talk 20:34, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

We'll have to wait for him to clarify. I read his agreement with critique as a common ground attempt. I never said I was "not familiar". I cannot help what is in other people's minds since, as you indicated, telepathy is not part of the discourse. ScienceApologist (talk) 20:41, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

I was agreeing with your assessment that it would be worse for you than me to answer questions about the literature, because you are apparently unable to characterize it accurately or make common sense judgements about whether or not peer reviewed statements about x-rays and helium appearing in several literature reviews should be included in the article. Is it safe to assume that you took a strong position on the issue early on, and have shunned those who pay any attention to the topic since? Ura Ursa (talk) 05:37, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

I will suggest that the wikiversity cold fusion page ( http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Cold_fusion ) --or, perhaps, a special page there created for this purpose-- could be a good place to post all sorts of stuff about Theory. Then this article only needs a link to that one, and not much else. V (talk) 04:50, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

That's not acceptable for Wikipedia which does not allow original research. ScienceApologist (talk) 13:23, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Widom Larsen theory is getting traction in papers by other authors in fields distant from cold fusion (e.g. [2].) At what point is it appropriate to include? Ura Ursa (talk) 18:21, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Dufor is an active cold fusion researcher. It will be appropriate to include when non-cold fusion researchers start noticing. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:26, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

So he is; my mistake. Is [3] satisfactory? Ura Ursa (talk) 21:18, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

People started using the term "third-rate" to describe something that wasn't even worthy of second-rate research. Well, this guy isn't even third-rate. This shows his general approach to physics is way way way out on a limb. He's also somewhat famous on the interwebs for his past forays into attempting to "verify" Blacklight Power's nonsense claims: with a paper which plagiarizes heavily from an introductory quantum mechanics text. It's fairly clear that he's not only a cold fusion proponent, he's an all around pseudophysics proponent whose academic affiliation with the community college is Cordinator of Evening Programs. Please do better. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:48, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Interesting points; some are certainly valid. Why do you think the editorial board of the journal decided to publish the article? What is the basis for the plagiarism charge? Ura Ursa (talk) 15:35, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

<sarcasm>Obviously plagiarism occurs when you do something like take an equation by Max Planck and describe it in terms similar to those used in an 2010 Undergraduate textbook on Quantum Physics. That would be plagiarism of the 2010 textbook. That Max Planck died in 1947 and deserves credit for the equation, and not the 2010 textbook, does not matter. It's the similarity that counts.</sarcasm> But seriously though, either you invent a new way to describe an equation, or add citations giving you the right to paraphrase the description. The number of ways you can describe a mathematical equation is not impressive, unless you decide to find more obtuse, inefficient, and other garbage ways of explaining the same thing.Kmarinas86 (Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia) ^{19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk = 86} 19:28, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Do Polish Physics Journals get many submissions from outside of Poland? He plaigarized a basic QM textbook. I thumbed through a half dozen of the treatments of the hydrogen atom until I found one he was following line-by-line. jps (talk) 16:33, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Which treatment was being followed line by line? Ura Ursa (talk) 02:47, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

The one I linked to which claimed to explain hydrinos. jps (talk) 18:28, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Ura Ursa has asked you which treatment in which textbook has R. Bourgoin plagiarized. You said you thumbed through various treatments and found one that is exactly from a textbook. Do you think the odds are greater than 50% that Ura Ursa will have that textbook? Also, what is with you people always forgetting to name the textbook that people say was plagiarized?Kmarinas86 (Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia) ^{19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk = 86} 19:28, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

ARL

Should we include Army Research Lab presentations from June? Ura Ursa (talk) 03:39, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Not sure that a workshop is relevant enough for the article, even if it's hosted by the United States Army Research, Development and Engineering Command. As always, are there secondary sources covering the event? --Enric Naval (talk) 16:41, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I think we can get almost all of the presentations, and/or abstracts of them, but I'm not sure what a secondary source would be for a workshop like that. The opinions of the attendees after the fact? I do know that the ARL workshop had a presentation from K.S. Grabowski, who works with D.L. Knies, D.A. Kidwell, D.D. Dominguez, C.A. Carosella, V.K. Nguyen, A.E. Rogers, and G.K. Hubler at NRL. They tried very hard to disprove the excess heat but have been unable to do so. Ura Ursa (talk) 16:12, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

An ARL presentation is nothing to crow about. The DoD has enough money that they tend to be very generous in their investigations into any claims that have no chance of ever being beneficial. There are still indications that things like the Stargate Project are being funded (c.f. The Men Who Stare at Goats). jps (talk) 17:48, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

The results reported are more important than the fact the workshop was held. The results have been uniformly positive from the empiricists, for the meaning of "uniformly" which contemplates effect magnitude in proportion to the metal lattice's hydrogen isotope loading. Ura Ursa (talk) 08:07, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

"Explain the difference"?

Ura Ursa, I do not understand this edit. Are you claiming that there is more than one type of fusion? What does "explain the difference" mean? Olorinish (talk) 01:13, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

How about this explanation: With plasma fusion (i.e. "hot fusion") you start off with high temperatures, gain net energy through fusion reactions, and, predictably, give off gamma radiation. So the gamma radiation can be thought of as due to these two conditions, with the former presumably necessary to generate the latter. Normal physics would characterize the source of the gamma ray energy due to the net energy gained from the fusion reaction only. However, what if the higher temperatures determine which form of energy the output energy will take? For million-degree temperatures, you could postulate that energy already present in the form of million-degree temperatures, when mixed with non-canonical, immediate fusion products (EM waves with wavelengths longer than gamma rays), is what leads to the canonical fusion byproducts (gamma rays).Kmarinas86 (Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia) ^{19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk = 86} 02:20, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's the idea. The difference between plasmas and solids is like fire and ice. It is good to be able to compare the two, as long as you know which is which. We need to be able to calculate the electron capture cross sections of protons and deuterons in order to figure out the numeric solutions from the underlying particle physics. When the particles in question are constrained by their position within a metal lattice, the effective cross sections are probably larger. Ura Ursa (talk) 08:10, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Ura Ursa, do you know of a good reference that supports the claim that there is more than one type of fusion? Keep in mind that cold fusion has not been accepted by mainstream fusion experts. Olorinish (talk) 13:07, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, in Muon-catalyzed fusion the lower energy makes d-t fusion proportionally more likely than d-d fusion compared to plasma fusion, for one thing. The resulting output product branching ratios for each kind are different in muon catalyzed fusion, too. Ura Ursa (talk) 19:22, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Do you know a good source about that difference? Olorinish (talk) 21:22, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

You can see a graph of the plasma fusion reaction rates at Fusion power#Fuel cycle. Our articles cite [4] but [5] is much more recent. Ura Ursa (talk) 04:07, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't see how those sources support the above edit. The article needs to make the point that solid-state fusion is extremely unlikely considering what is known about all types of conventional fusion, but that point is weakened by that edit. Olorinish (talk) 14:40, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

"The article needs to make the point that solid-state fusion is extremely unlikely considering what is known about all types of conventional fusion" Actually the article should quote sources which make that point. To try to make the article make that point would be a violation of WP:OR.Kmarinas86 (Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia) ^{19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk = 86} 15:12, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Unacceptable revert in the Cold Fusion article

[6].

This is unacceptable. Unless a decent rationale for this edit is made, I will be reverting in the near future.

(snipped material moved to section below)

jps (talk) 20:47, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

I was going to complain about Ura Ursa's POV whitewashing, but I see that jps already did it. The usual stuff, like pushing individual studies to give less relevance to reviews of the field, insisting that any non-independiently-replicated positive result is incontrovertible proof even if it contradicts relatively recent reviews of the field, WP:RECENTISM, replacing secondary sources (New Scientist) with primary sources (the 2010 ARL workshop) (oops, New Scientist was still there), etc. --Enric Naval (talk) 00:28, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

"....pushing individual studies to give less relevance to reviews of the field...." Obtaining relevance does not imply a zero-sum game.

"pushing individual studies to give less relevance to reviews of the field, insisting that any non-independiently-replicated positive result is incontrovertible proof even if it contradicts relatively recent reviews of the field" This is the opposite of WP:RECENTISM.

"replacing secondary sources (New Scientist) with primary sources (the 2010 ARL workshop), etc" Now this is WP:RECENTISM. See related New Scientist article at http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16820-neutron-tracks-revive-hopes-for-cold-fusion.html.Kmarinas86 (Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia) ^{19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk = 86} 19:31, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

What are the specific objections? I've been adding secondary peer reviewed sources, not individual primary studies, and I resent the accusation. Are there any positive results that contradict any of the peer reviewed literature reviews in the past five years? I don't know of any; if there are, please cite them. I did not delete any material from New Scientist (which is not a peer reviewed secondary source) and in fact I used the existing New Scientist reference to support addition of the redlink to and explanation of Widom-Larson theory. (snipped material moved to section below) Ura Ursa (talk) 03:44, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

For Widom-Larsen, there are very few paper in google scholar[7], I am not sure that this theory has much relevance in the real world, but it could be restored in the same place, since the New Scientist source does mention Widom & Larsen's theory (without calling it "Widom-Larsen"). (I'm not sure that a Widom-Larsen theory article could survive a AfD).

"In 2009, the US Navy SPAWAR research center reported" is wrong, it was "scientists who work at the US Navy SPAWAR".

"Subsequent proponents continue to insist that x-rays are detected from their cold fusion cells" was replaced with "X-rays have been reported in secondary peer reviewed literature published in China, Europe, and the United States", which is plain POV pushing to hide that it's only CF proponents who keep reporting that.

A {{fact}} tag added after "Their explanations are not accepted by the mainstream community", because the source is from 1989[8] (The sentence is now under Cold_fusion#Novel_physics). This is technically correct, the sentence is in the wrong tense and it needs a different source for later lack of acceptation, but I know that Nrcprm2026 holds the POV that cold fusion is now accepted by the scientific community (he has said it himself a few times here, me thinks). Also implies that the faulty explanations are no longer an obstacle for acceptance, which is incorrect (by the way, I see that the faulty explanations were discussed before, including Widom-Larsen). I tried to fix it with a more recent source. There are more sources that could be added there, sources saying that scientists don't want cold fusion because there is not a theory done before experiments and lack of predictions before experiments.

@Nrcprm2026, you are right, the New Scientist source is still there, at the end of the paragraph.

@Kmarinas, this is not what I meant, but I don't want to enter lengthy arguments that don't help improve the article. I don't want to enter the dynamic of picking apart each other's comments to exhaustively discover the meaning of every word. If you want to discuss specific objections, then let's look at how to "solve" the objections by editing the article. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:36, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

"to discuss specific objections...let's look at how to "solve" the objections" Actually, to "solve" the objections, we must first discuss them.Kmarinas86 (Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia) ^{19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk = 86} 21:11, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

I would suggest that the single example of POV pushing given above, a plain description of what the secondary sources say, is extremely mild--if it is even POV pushing at all--in comparison to this sentence recently added to the article: "All these attempts at theoretical explanation have either been explicitly rejected by mainstream physicists or completely lack independent review," which is cited to a source [9] that doesn't say anything even remotely similar. Moreover the strings "explicit", "reject", "mainstream", "independent", and "review" do not even appear in the cited source. Ura Ursa (talk) 12:32, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Does Ura Ursa have sock puppets?

(snipped material moved to section above)

I've also received information that Ura Ursa is banned User:Nrcprm2026.

I ask that User:Ura Ursa confirm or deny this allegation.

jps (talk) 20:47, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

"I've also received information that Ura Ursa is banned User:Nrcprm2026." Show us.Kmarinas86 (Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia) ^{19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk = 86} 18:55, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

(snipped material moved to section above) and I resent the accusation. (snipped material moved to section above) I have asked that my privacy concerning my edits on this topic be respected, and I don't intend to confirm or deny anything about my identity. Ura Ursa (talk) 03:44, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Are you related to User:Nrcprm2026, yes or not? --Enric Naval (talk) 09:35, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh, wait you created a new account because it's a hot topic? , but you already pulled this crap in other socks, didn't you? --Enric Naval (talk) 09:49, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Nrcprm2026. --Enric Naval (talk) 12:38, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

"What are the specific objections?" According to wikipedia policy [10], the use of deceptive acounts is a serious breach of trust and is forbidden. Please answer Enric Naval's question before making any more edits to article pages or discussion pages. Olorinish (talk) 15:28, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

And, reviewing past edits, I see that Nrcprm2026 had been POV pushing for days, making subtle changes one at a time. Sort of reminds me of Pcarbonn. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:09, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

Substance of content dispute?

Discussion about editors should happen on their user talk pages, please. I want to know (1) the reasons why http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cold_fusion&oldid=403929478#Experiments_and_reported_results is better or worse than the same section in the current article, and (2) whether anyone intends to address its citation needed tags? There was a long stretch of productive discussion about content, and it would be nice for that to continue, please. 208.54.5.75 (talk) 21:46, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

1) The current article is a better summary. 2) The citation needed tags were erroneous. A citation was proffered and a controversial contention sourced to NewScientist about Widom-Larsen theory was removed. jps (talk) 00:20, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

The oldid'9478 version has more chronological and even coverage to both sides. Can you propose a way to reconcile the two versions (and if so, how would you change and/or add to the article's introduction?) I think you may be right that there has been one article cited already for one of the citation requests, but are you saying more than one of the requested citations could be in error? Even the one about the mainstream should be updated if at all possible, right? 208.54.5.69 (talk) 02:30, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

"Even coverage" is not WP:VALID at Wikipedia. As for "chronology", the differences are in experiment and not in history. I'm saying that all of the citations are there already. There's nothing left to cite. jps (talk)

Much of the so-called "content disputes" are really disputes about reverts.Kmarinas86 (Expert Sectioneer of Wikipedia) ^{19+9+14 + karma = 19+9+14 + talk = 86} 21:33, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

It does not seem that the requested citations have been addressed, and there are other factual disputes which seem to be remaining. I've underlined the areas of such substantive and citation disputes I've been able to identify on the left side of this comparison:

Disputed version (23 Dec. 2010)

Current version (25 Dec. 2010)

Experiments and reported results A cold fusion experiment usually includes: a metal, such as palladium or nickel, in bulk, thin films or powder; deuterium and/or hydrogen, in the form of water, gas or plasma; and an excitation in the form of electricity, magnetism, temperature, pressure, laser beam(s), or of acoustic waves. Electrolysis cells can be either open cell or closed cell. In open cell systems, the electrolysis products, which are gaseous, are allowed to leave the cell. In closed cell experiments, the products are captured, for example by catalytically recombining the products in a separate part of the experimental system. These experiments generally strive for a steady state condition, with the electrolyte being replaced periodically. There are also "heat after death" experiments, where the evolution of heat is monitored after the electric current is turned off. The most basic setup of a cold fusion cell consists of two electrodes submerged in a solution of palladium and heavy water. The electrodes are then connected to a power source to transmit electricity from one electrode to the other through the solution. Even when anomalous heat is reported, it can take weeks for it to begin to appear - this is known as the "loading time." Excess heat production 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 to operating at a higher temperature with no increase in applied current. In other experiments, however, no excess heat was discovered. United States Naval Research Laboratory scientists have reported that the ability to confirm and replicate the unexpected experimental results has always been proportional to the extent to which experimenters have been able to achieve high metal loading ratios, defined as the number of hydrogen isotope (e.g. deuterium) atoms per metal atoms. 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. Subsequent researchers who advocate for cold fusion report similar results. In 1993, after the initial discrediting, Fleischmann reported "heat-after-death" experiments: where excess heat was measured after the electric current supplied to the electrolytic cell was turned off. This type of report also became part of subsequent cold fusion claims. Helium The Fleischmann and Pons early findings regarding helium, neutron radiation and tritium were later discredited. However, neutron radiation has been reported in cold fusion experiments using different kinds of detectors, but levels were too low to provide useful information about possible nuclear processes. Considerable attention has been given to measuring helium production. However, the reported levels are very near to the background, so contamination by trace amounts of helium which are normally present in the air cannot be ruled out. The lack of detection of gamma radiation seen in the plasma fusion of hydrogen or deuterium to 4He has convinced some researchers that helium detection was due to experimental error. In the report presented to the DOE in 2004, the reviewers' opinion was divided on the evidence for 4He; with the most negative reviews concluding that although the amounts detected were above background levels, they were very close to them and therefore could be caused by contamination from air. Researchers have since reported helium production correlated with excess heat in the secondary peer reviewed literature. Neutrons Known instances of nuclear reactions, aside from producing energy, also produce nucleons and particles on ballistic trajectories which are readily observable. In support of their claim that nuclear reactions took place in their electrolytic cells, Fleischmann and Pons reported a neutron flux of 4,000 neutrons per second, as well as detections of tritium. The classical branching ratio for previously known fusion reactions that produce tritium would predict, with 1 watt of power, the production of 1012 neutrons per second, levels that would have been fatal to the researchers. In 1999 several heavy elements were reported detected by Tadahiko Mizuno in Japan. Such heavy element transmutations are not expected products of nuclear fusion processes. The report presented to the DOE in 2004 indicated that deuterium loaded foils could be used to detect fusion reaction products and, although the reviewers found the evidence presented to them as inconclusive, they indicated that those experiments didn't use state of the art techniques. In 2009, the US Navy SPAWAR research center reported what they called the first scientific report of highly energetic neutrons, using CR-39 radiation detectors, but there has so far been no quantitative analysis of them. X-rays One of the main criticisms of cold fusion was that the predictions from deuteron-deuteron fusion into helium should have resulted in the production of gamma rays which have never been observed in cold fusion experiments. Though lacking gamma-ray detection, Fleishmann and Pons reported x-ray signals. X-rays have been reported in secondary peer reviewed literature published in China, Europe, and the United States. Explanations As Fleishmann and Pons at the behest of the press office of the University of Utah did, contemporary cold fusion proponents continue to advocate for novel physics to explain the results of their experiments. Their explanations are not accepted by the mainstream community and were one of the largest roadblocks for acceptance of the initial and subsequent claims of cold fusion proponents. Novel physics Since the 1920s, it has been known that hydrogen and its isotopes can dissolve in certain solids at high densities so that their separation can be relatively small, and that electron charge inside metals can partially cancel the repulsion between nuclei. These facts suggest to cold fusion proponents the possibility of higher cold fusion rates than those expected from a simple application of Coulomb's law. However, theoretical calculations showed that the effects should be too small to cause significant fusion rates. Many groups trying to replicate Fleischmann and Pons' results have reported alternative explanations for their original positive results, like problems in the neutron detector in the case of Georgia Tech or bad wiring in the thermometers at Texas A&M. These reports, combined with negative results from some famous laboratories, led most scientists to conclude that no positive result should be attributed to cold fusion, at least not on a significant scale. Cold fusion researchers have described possible cold fusion mechanisms (e.g., electron shielding of the nuclear Coulomb barrier) but they have not received mainstream acceptance. In 2002, Gregory Neil Derry described them as ad hoc explanations that didn't coherently explain the experimental results. Supporters of cold fusion pointed to experiments where bombarding metals with deuteron beams increased reaction rates, and suggested to the DOE commission in 2004 that electron screening could be one explanation for this enhanced reaction rate. The DOE found the theoretical explanations to be the weakest part of cold fusion claims. Since then, cold fusion researchers at the United States Army Research Laboratory have proposed Bose–Einstein condensates and Widom–Larsen theory which contemplates electron capture by protons forming neutrons.

Experiments and reported results A cold fusion experiment usually includes: a metal, such as palladium or nickel, in bulk, thin films or powder; deuterium and/or hydrogen, in the form of water, gas or plasma; and an excitation in the form of electricity, magnetism, temperature, pressure, laser beam(s), or of acoustic waves. Electrolysis cells can be either open cell or closed cell. In open cell systems, the electrolysis products, which are gaseous, are allowed to leave the cell. In closed cell experiments, the products are captured, for example by catalytically recombining the products in a separate part of the experimental system. These experiments generally strive for a steady state condition, with the electrolyte being replaced periodically. There are also "heat after death" experiments, where the evolution of heat is monitored after the electric current is turned off. The most basic setup of a cold fusion cell consists of two electrodes submerged in a solution of palladium and heavy water. The electrodes are then connected to a power source to transmit electricity from one electrode to the other through the solution. Even when anomalous heat is reported, it can take weeks for it to begin to appear - this is known as the "loading time." The Fleischmann and Pons early findings regarding helium, neutron radiation and tritium were later discredited. However, neutron radiation has been reported in cold fusion experiments at very low levels using different kinds of detectors, but levels were too low, close to background, and found too infrequently to provide useful information about possible nuclear processes. Excess heat and energy production 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 to operating at a higher temperature with no increase in applied current. 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. 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. Subsequent researchers who advocate for cold fusion report similar results. One of the main criticisms of cold fusion was that the predictions from deuteron-deuteron fusion into helium should have resulted in the production of gamma rays which were not observed and have never been observed in any subsequent cold fusion experiments. Though lacking gamma-ray detection, Fleishmann and Pons reported x-ray signals which failed to be independently replicated. Subsequent proponents continue to insist that x-rays are detected from their cold fusion cells. In 1993, after the initial discrediting, Fleischmann reported "heat-after-death" experiments: where excess heat was measured after the electric current supplied to the electrolytic cell was turned off. This type of report also became part of subsequent cold fusion claims. Helium and neutrons Known instances of nuclear reactions, aside from producing energy, also produce nucleons and particles on ballistic trajectories which are readily observable. In support of their claim that nuclear reactions took place in their electrolytic cells, Fleischmann and Pons reported a neutron flux of 4,000 neutrons per second, as well as detections of tritium. The classical branching ratio for previously known fusion reactions that produce tritium would predict, with 1 watt of power, the production of 1012 neutrons per second, levels that would have been fatal to the researchers. In 2009, Mosier-Boss et al. reported what they called the first scientific report of highly energetic neutrons, using CR-39 plastic radiation detectors, but the claims can not be validated without a quantitative analysis of neutrons. In 1999 several heavy elements were reported detected by Tadahiko Mizuno in Japan. Such heavy element transmutations are not expected products of nuclear fusion processes. The report presented to the DOE in 2004 indicated that deuterium loaded foils could be used to detect fusion reaction products and, although the reviewers found the evidence presented to them as inconclusive, they indicated that those experiments didn't use state of the art techniques. In response to skepticism about the lack of nuclear products, cold fusion researchers have tried to capture and measure nuclear products correlated with excess heat. Considerable attention has been given to measuring 4He production. However, the reported levels are very near to the background, so contamination by trace amounts of helium which are normally present in the air cannot be ruled out. The lack of detection of gamma radiation seen in the fusion of hydrogen or deuterium to 4He has further strengthened the explanation that the helium detections are due to experimental error. In the report presented to the DOE in 2004, the reviewers' opinion was divided on the evidence for 4He; with the most negative reviews concluding that although the amounts detected were above background levels, they were very close to them and therefore could be caused by contamination from air. The panel also expressed concerns about the poor-quality of the theoretical framework cold fusion proponents presented to account for the lack of gamma rays. Explanations Fleishmann and Pons' explanations for the phenomena were not accepted by the mainstream community and were one of the largest roadblocks for acceptance of the initial claims. Subsequent cold fusion proponents have proposed novel physics to explain the results of their experiments, but they are also plagued by "ad hoc" explanations that are not convincing for mainstream scientists. Many groups trying to replicate Fleischmann and Pons' results reported alternative explanations for their original positive results, like problems in the neutron detector in the case of Georgia Tech or bad wiring in the thermometers at Texas A&M. These reports, combined with negative results from some famous laboratories, led most scientists to conclude that no positive result should be attributed to cold fusion, at least not on a significant scale. Cold fusion researchers have described possible cold fusion mechanisms, but they have not received mainstream acceptance. The fact that hydrogen and its isotopes can dissolve in certain solids at high densities so that their separation can be relatively small, and that electron charge inside metals can partially cancel the repulsion between nuclei inspired cold fusion proponents to suggest the possibility of higher cold fusion rates than those expected from a simple application of Coulomb's law. However, theoretical calculations showed that the effects should be too small to cause significant fusion rates. Physicist Gregory Neil Derry described such theoretical attempts as ad hoc explanations that didn't coherently explain the experimental results. Still, cold fusion proponents continue to offer and promote these and other theoretical explanations including relatively new proposals involving Bose–Einstein condensates, special effects happening only in the surface of the electrode, and electron lattice responses. All these attempts at theoretical explanation have either been explicitly rejected by mainstream physicists or completely lack independent review. Supporters of cold fusion pointed to experiments where bombarding metals with deuteron beams increased reaction rates, and suggested to the DOE commission in 2004 that electron screening could be one explanation for this enhanced reaction rate. The DOE found the theoretical explanations to be the weakest part of cold fusion claims.

Is it fair to say that those eight underlined regions are the main areas of substantive factual disputes?

1. Is ability to replicate experiments proportional to ability to achieve high loading ratios, per Hubler et al?
2. What source says Fleischmann and Pons' experiments produced 10-20% excess heat?
3. Can helium from air contamination be ruled out (e.g. with atmospheric argon) and what source says it can't?
4. Do the peer reviewed literature reviews say helium production is correlated with excess heat?
5. Have X-rays been reported in secondary peer reviewed literature published in China, Europe, and the United States?
6. Which current sources say proponents' explanations are not accepted by mainstream scientists?
7. What source says that the DOE found theoretical explanations to be the weakest part of cold fusion claims?
8. Did cold fusion researchers at the United States Army Research Laboratory propose Bose–Einstein condensates and Widom–Larsen theory as theoretical explanations?

Can we go through these one by one and discuss, please? 208.54.5.55 (talk) 01:24, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

1. Irrelevant.
2. Already listed.
3. No. The one listed.
4. Only the ones done by cold fusion proponents.
5. "Secondary" as compared to the cold fusion community? No.
6. "Current" is irrelevant. Cold fusion is more relevant as a historical incident.
7. The DOE report.
8. No. That's not what is stated.

jps (talk) 05:17, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. For 2 and 3 could you please link to or write out those sources? There is no way to tell which they are. I am particularly interested to learn who thinks you can't detect air helium contamination from the air argon spectrum. How is that even remotely feasible?

Question 1 is highly relevant to the answers given to questions 4 and 5. The electrochemist Hubler at US Navy Research Laboratory has several dozen peer reviewed papers, patents, etc., but never did anything related cold fusion before his bosses asked him in 2006 to write up a review of the field, because Navy SPAWAR keeps publishing positive results (not "quietly" as the article says--they've been passing mainstream peer review on the subject since the early 1990s.) So Hubler does the review and reports that all the researchers with the capability to achieve high loading ratios get positive results, and everyone else can't replicate the experiments. There's the boundary of the "cold fusion community" right there: the technical ability to load hydrogen isotopes into metals; very difficult, time consuming if you aren't doing it right, and an obvious source of potential professional acrimony. Hubler's 2007 review has been cited by both the detractors' and proponents' publications, and it's been in the article for a few years. Can we agree and include in the article that the ability to achieve high loading ratios is what seperates the cold fusion community from those who've been unable to replicate the experiments?

And can we agree, therefore, to include the reports from secondary peer reviewed publications about the excess heat-helium correlation and x-rays? To do otherwise would mindlessly set the interests of those who never figured out how to achieve high loading ratios over those of the researchers who did.

Regarding question 8, it's a plain matter of fact that when the ARL held their cold fusion workshop this year, the explanations offered included W-L theory, which is summarized in the existing New Scientist report (by the way, that was cited incorrectly in a recent edit and is currently a big red "Cite Error" in the references list.) How could that be best phrased? 208.54.5.55 (talk) 11:21, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Gas loading

The gas phase experiments for which Arata and Zhang are known have much better replicability rates, and in a wider geographical distribution than electrochemistry cell experiments. The article currently covers the latter to the complete exclusion of the former. Should Arata, Zhang, et al's gas loading experiments be included in the article? 208.54.5.55 (talk) 11:21, 26 December 2010 (UTC)