Talk:Cold fusion: Difference between revisions

; Archives
	November 2003 – November 2003; December 2003 – July 2004; July 2004 – January 2005; February 2005 – December 2005; January 2006 – January 2006; January 2006 – April 2006 (E. Storms article, ObsidianOrder article, Powerpedia, Atomic temperature, F&P Press Conference, Jones and Rafelski); April 2006 (POV issues); April - May 2006 (POV issues); June 2006 (Lead section); August 2006 (Nuclear Transmutation and length of article); October 2006 (revert to FA version); December 2006 ;

Browse history interactively

← Previous edit Next edit →

Content deleted Content added

VisualWikitext

Inline

Revision as of 19:15, 9 January 2007

Physics Unassessed

	Physics portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Physics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Physics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PhysicsWikipedia:WikiProject PhysicsTemplate:WikiProject Physicsphysics articles
???	This article has not yet received a rating on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale.

Cold fusion received a peer review by Wikipedia editors, which is now archived. It may contain ideas you can use to improve this article.

Template:FormerFA

Cold fusion was nominated as a good article, but it did not meet the good article criteria at the time (December 26, 2006). There are suggestions below for improving the article. If you can improve it, please do; it may then be renominated.

Template:Mainpage date

Template:Conclusion

GA on hold

Hello!, sorry for the long wait since your GA request. I will put it on hold since its taken so long and give you a chance to fix the problems.

References aren't formatted properly, please see {{cite web}} on how to
A lot of external links throughout the article first ones are found near reference 5, Japanese Journal of Applied Physics and the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry
Cold fusion is a nuclear fusion reaction that has been reported to occur near , "reported" reword that
two nuclei are forced to join together to form a heavier nucleus. During the process, energy is released. sounds better
By the mid-1990s, most governments and scientists had dismissed the concept as illusion. remove 'most'
In 2003, about 200 scientists were contributing to the field or participating in , remove 'about'
Still, its report said, many experiments were poorly documented,, poorly worded

That's jsut the lead so this article needs a good copy-edit. References are in the right spot, images are fine. I suggest you get another peer review or ask someone interested on the subject to perform a copy-edit. Please also read Tony's redudancy excersises as this article has a lot. M3tal H3ad 12:42, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Failed, no action taken. Feel-free to renominate for GA when issues are addressed but i strongly advise a peer review first. M3tal H3ad 01:45, 26 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguation hatnote

Hi, folks. A little disambiguation question: there's a Doctor Who novel called Cold Fusion (page at Cold Fusion (Doctor Who)). It's pretty insignificant, but there should be some pointer here towards it, for general disambiguation purposes. Do you think it's better to add it to the existing hatnote, like this: Template:Two other uses Or should we create a disambiguation page and just have a standard {{otheruses}} or {{otheruses1}} hatnote? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 18:46, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone here have a preference about this? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 19:37, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would suggest to add it to the "Cold fusion in fiction" section of the article. My second choice would be to use the "two other uses" tag. I would certainly not go for a disambiguation page.Pcarbonn 19:45, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I put the "two other uses" tag on, since the novel isn't really about the scientific concept of cold fusion: although there are "fusion bombs" in the story, the title is really more of a play on words with the story's themes. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 22:50, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

DOE Panel conclusions

Note: this discussion is summarized at the top of the talk:Cold fusion page.

ScienceApologist, after your edits, the summary of the DOE Panel's conclusions does not correlate with the description at 2004 DoE panel on cold fusion. Only the negative aspects are reported. For instance, there is no mention of positive evidence of excess heat, production of ⁴He, transmutation and other unexplained effects. I'm going to reword to bring this in line with the detailed article. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ronnotel (talk • contribs) 15:50, 3 January 2007 (UTC).[reply]

The so-called "positive evidence" spin on the DOE report is not well-considered and definitely does not belong in the WP:LEAD. If you read the DOE's own summary of the report they are highly negative. Revising the sense of this negative report into a positive spin is definitely a violation of WP:NPOV as well as WP:OR. --15:52, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm just bringing it into line with 2004 DoE panel on cold fusion. If you disagree with that page, then you should correct it first. Ronnotel 15:57, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And I question the need to 'caution' me. Is that a threat? Ronnotel 15:59, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The page itself describes the summary of the report well. It's highly negative of the prospsects for Cold Fusion. --ScienceApologist 16:08, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The report concluded that cold fusion is as it was when the original report came out. While sympathetic to continuing efforts to figure out what's being measured, it's by no means an endorsement. Hasn't changed in over 10 years is the key finding. –M^T 07:39, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please choose your words more carefully. You have been reminded more than once about WP:CIV. I have done nothing that requires being 'caution'ed. I believe the first paragraph of the 'Main conclusions' section is not addressed in your summary of the DOE Panel and is highly relevant to the debate. Is there some compromise that can be found? Ronnotel 16:17, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

ScienceApologist says "the positive evidence spin on the DOE report is not well-considered". I'm not sure where the spin is. The DOE report contains both positive and negative comments. Why would it be NPOV or OR to report them both ? The conclusion recommends further careful scientific study : why would it recommend that if it was negative on CF? In any case, trying to decide if the report is "negative" or not is too vague to help us write the lead section correctly.

We had a long discussion on how best to report on the DOE panel with user "M": see here. For example, we agreed that the evidences of excess heat was a key question to address in the Lead and that the position of the DOE needed to be reported on this question. ScienceApologist, please let us know if you disagree on that.

We decided with M that the DOE report was fairly represented by saying "The sophistication of calorimeters had made significant progress, a DOE panel observed in 2004, and evidence of power that cannot be attributed to ordinary sources was more compelling than in 1989. " Do you consider this presentation OK ? Please read paragraph 3 on page 3 of the report before replying. Pcarbonn 16:19, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The point is that the review of the report provided by the DOE is negative. Choosing to summarize it differently from the way the DOE summarized it is an example of original research. You may not like how negative the DOE's own review of its report was, but that's not a reason to change the description. The "evidence of excessive heat" is really a question of energy generation. A neutral summary of the review of the DOE report is that they did not see evidence for energy generation from nuclear processes. The fairness of the presentation is not the issue. It is the fact that the lead is supposed to summarize the ideas quickly and with general strokes. Including the gloss related to the few panel members who were more accomodating is really a violation of undue weight. The lead summarizes rather than promotes. --ScienceApologist 16:23, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As half the panel was in favor of excess heat, I believe a fairer description is that the panel "was split on the issue of excess heat" or "did not reject evidence of excess heat". Ronnotel 16:28, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Excess heat has nothing to do with "cold fusion" itself. That's not a good summary for the lead. --ScienceApologist 16:41, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Then why is it mentioned as the panel's first conclusion? Ronnotel 16:43, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Because it's relevant to the panel (not to this article, per se). --ScienceApologist 17:14, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I find your logic argumentative. The panel's sole purpose was to investigate Cold fusion, the exact topic of this article. Please see WP:AN/I, you may wish to respond to my complaint. Ronnotel 17:31, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think that while it is important to report on the existence of the DOE report, the summary of the report clearly is negative towards prospects of cold fusion. The "excess energy" points are iteratively argumentative and are only included to further the POV of cold fusion supporters rather than give a balanced summary of what the report was about. Such a summary can be taken directly from the DOE's own summary of the report. Since they themselves describe the report as being negative toward cold fusion, describing it otherwise is misleading. --ScienceApologist 19:53, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My only interest is in aligning this page with 2004 DoE panel on cold fusion. You state that the DoE Panel's report was 'negative'. However, I can't find the word 'negative' on that page. Quite the opposite, not having read the original report, 2004 DoE panel on cold fusion seems neutral at worst and slightly positive. You are now claiming that descriptions of 'excess energy' in 2004 DoE panel on cold fusion is due to POV. Yet just a couple of hours ago you seemed satisified with that page's content. Which is it? I think you should be a little more careful throwing around claims of WP:OR. Ronnotel 20:24, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is the conclusion of the report:

While significant progress has been made in the sophistication of calorimeters since the review of this subject in 1989, the conclusions reached by the reviewers today are similar to those found in the 1989 review.

The current reviewers identified a number of basic science research areas that could be helpful in resolving some of the controversies in the field, two of which were: 1) material science aspects of deuterated metals using modern characterization techniques, and 2) the study of particles reportedly emitted from deuterated foils using state-of-the-art apparatus and methods. The reviewers believed that this field would benefit from the peer-review processes associated with proposal submission to agencies and paper submission to archival journals.

As such, it is fairly clear that the conclusion is negative towards cold fusion (which was the finding of the 1989 report). To try to spin it any other way is original research. --ScienceApologist 20:28, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That very well may be, however this material must integrated into 2004 DoE panel on cold fusion first. It's unhelpful and unencyclopedic to reinterpret orginal documents in summary form in a way that is different from that document's main WP article. Ronnotel 20:38, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, there is not requirement to edit the daughter article before the parent. We can fix problems wherever we find them (this being a wiki and all). --ScienceApologist 22:23, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, among the many reasons to avoid what you propose is your apparent assumption of bad faith on the part of the authors of what you term the 'daughter' article. I think it distinctly non-WP to unilaterally assume that your interpretation of a document supercedes the collective contribution that resulted in the detail page. Ronnotel 22:57, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm with Ron on this one SA. After reading the article here on the wiki, I agree with Ron's statement that the article is "neutral at worst and slightly positive". The quote you posted above doesn't seem to change that conclusion, and appears to be a call for further research. That doesn't strike me as very "negative".

Now it's entirely possible that the article about the 2004 review here on the wiki is misleading, and that the report in question really is much more "negative" that the article suggests. But if that is the case, Ron is absolutely right in suggesting that THAT article needs to be edited first, not this one. Maury 21:02, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps what you miss is the major conclusion that the 1989 report was correct. That's the report which made the negative assessment of cold fusion a reality. --ScienceApologist 22:23, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

ScienceApologist says "they themselves describe the report as being negative toward cold fusion". I could not find this in the summary of the 2004 report. Using "negative" is inappropriate unless we can find it quoted in the report. Saying that the 1989 report was negative is also inappropriate, as this is not sourced.

Furthermore, let's not be manichean nor see the story as black or white. Both DOE reports were not "black or white". Here are 2 sources to back this statement.

The 1989 report says: "The panel is sympathetic toward modest support for carefully focused and cooperative experiments within the present funding system". The 2004 report reaches the same conclusion, as you quote, and takes great pain to suggest some areas of research. If they were "negative", I would expect them to say: no funding for further research.
The 2004 report suggests, as you correctly quote above, "basic science research areas that could be helpful in resolving some of the controversies in the field". Their use of "resolving some controversies" clearly implies that the panel accepts the existence of controversies, something that they would not do if they were "black or white".

If the DOE reports were not "black or white", why should we be ? Or did I miss something ?

So, SA, please rephrase your argument without using the word "negative": what exactly in the previous version of the lead section do you want to change, and why? Please provide appropriate sources for your argument, so that we can move forward. Pcarbonn 21:32, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's silly, "negative" is a summary point I am using to point out that the panel did not find evidence for cold fusion. To avoid this point is to unduly push the POV of yourself and other cold fusion sympathizers that the DOE report somehow mitigated the criticism of cold fusion. --ScienceApologist 22:23, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You say: "the panel did not find evidence for cold fusion". Please quote your source for saying that. As said earlier, the summary report actually says the contrary (see page 3 of the report): you cannot say the contrary is POV or OR. So, until you source your statement, we have to consider that your statement is wrong, POV and OR. This applies also to your "that's silly" statement. Pcarbonn 07:07, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not ScienceApologist, but you are mistaken. The report summary clearly states in the final, concluding paragraph of the summary of "Charge Element 2: Determine whether the evidence is sufficiently conclusive to demonstrate that such nuclear reactions occur." that: "The preponderance of the reviewers’ evaluations indicated that Charge Element 2, the occurrence of low energy nuclear reactions, is not conclusively demonstrated by the evidence presented. One reviewer believed that the occurrence was demonstrated, and several reviewers did not address the question." The statement "the panel did not find evidence for cold fusion" is an honest, NPoV summary of that part of the report. --Noren 16:59, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Noren. Now we can make progress: your arguments are well sourced, and we have a basis for discussion. However, I still disagree with what you said, so let's try to resolve it.

Here is the problem we face: the last paragraphs of Charge 1 and of Charge 2 seem to say different things. The concluding remark of "Charge Element 1" says: "2/3 of the reviewers commenting on Charge Element 1 did not feel the evidence was convincing for low energy nuclear reactions, one found the evidence convincing, and the remainder indicated they were somewhat convinced." Clearly, this is not the same as "the panel did not find evidence for cold fusion", and so is a direct challenge to your argument. So, either the 2 concluding paragraphs are contradicting each other, or there is subtle difference between the 2. We need to resolve this to be able to agree on the lead section.

I'm open to your suggestion to resolve this contradiction. Here is my proposal. When I read the description of the charges again, I see the following difference: the first charge asks "are the evidences convincing ?", the second one asks "are the evidences convincing beyond doubt". Please tell me if you agree, or if you see another difference between the two that can resolve the apparent contradiction.

If we agree that this is the difference, then we would conclude that this is what the panel said about the evidences: 12 reviewers did not feel the evidence was convincing, 5 reviewers found the evidences somewhat convincing, and one reviewer found them convincing beyond doubt. The preponderence was not convinced beyond doubt; several reviewers did not say whether they were convinced beyond doubt. The 2 concluding paragraphs would then make sense again, without contradiction.

Can we agree that this is what the report says about the evidences ? Or do you have an other proposal to make ? Thanks in advance for your reply. Pcarbonn 21:38, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I, too, believe this is good path for progress. I'd like to request that we defer efforts to summarize the panel conclusions until there is a consensus on what they actually are. Otherwise we are putting the cart before the horse. Ronnotel 22:13, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see the two statements as being in conflict- and the 'beyond doubt' phrase seems an unnecessary editorial addition. A two-thirds majority finding in part 1 that the evidence of low-energy nuclear reactions was not convincing is consistent with the statement in part 2 that a preponderance of the panel found the the occurrence of low energy nuclear reactions not to have been demonstrated. Both parts mention that one of the 18 panelists did find the evidence full convincing. Where is the contradiction? "Beyond doubt" and "fully convincing" seem to allude to the same thing... and only one panelist was convinced to that level of confidence. The statement did not and should not claim the panel made a unanimous finding, but with 2/3 not at all convinced (a preponderance of the panel) and all but one of the rest only somewhat convinced it is fair to summarize this as a negative result. Going into detailed voting counts might be apropos for the body of the article but is excessive detail for the lead. In fact, I'm unconvinced that this review belongs in the lead at all. --Noren 23:16, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Great. I'm glad that the tone of the conversation has changed. I'm also glad that you say that the 2 statements do not conflict: both are thus true. As a consequence, it is neutral POV to say that a not-insignificant number of reputable scientists (6 out of 18 find) find the evidence of cold fusion somewhat convincing, although not beyond doubt. So, there is still a scientific controversy (otherwise only 1, maximum 2, would be somewhat convinced): hence the recommendation of the DOE panel to continue scientific research under strict scientific methodology, including peer-reviewed journals, to resolve the matter. Hence the prominent place given to this point in the final conclusion of the report. The DOE panel does not support the view that such research is misguided, or that there is no controversy. It actually says the contrary. At the same time, the evidences are not beyond doubt: hence, the DOE recommendation to not fund a major federally-funding program.

The purpose of the 2004 DOE panel was to review the state of the LENR field in order to decide funding level. In 1989, the recommendations were to not set-up a major program, but to tolerate further scientific studies. If you look carefully at them, the 2 charges of the 2004 panel are defined precisely to assess those 2 previous funding decisions. As the 2004 concludes, the panel reached similar conclusions to those of 1989 (but not identical). This seems to me the most logical and neutral way to read the 2004 report. Pcarbonn 12:01, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Did we reach a consensus ? Here is the summary of the discussion. Feel free to adapt to reflect what was said. We'll adapt the lead section afterwards. Pcarbonn 09:11, 7 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Summary now moved to the top of this page. Pcarbonn 12:06, 9 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

New Energy Times

Scienceapologist wrote: "New Energy times is not a reliable source for who is and isn't working on Cold Fusion. Sorry.)"

That's an unsubstantiated, libelous and POV statement. You should be informed of a few facts.

It's editor, Steven Krivit, has attended and reported from the last three international conferences in Cambridge, Marseilles and Yokohama, respectively. From what I read in the New Energy Times magazine, Krivit and the other reporters who have written for New Energy Times, Lietz and Daviss, seem to know just about everybody involved in the field. Krivit's book explains, on page 162, how he collected the data for that chart. His book also provides additional evidence that he knows who's who in cold fusion, through the many personal communications he has had with these researchers.

In addition, New Energy Times has copies of the most recent abstracts from most of the major conferences. If you look through them, you will see the names and affiliations of the researchers who are contributing papers. So you really needn't even rely on New Energy Times if you would care to take the time and the diligence to go through the abstracts yourself.

Krivit has participated in the scientific process - he has presented in multiple science conferences and will be speaking at the APS conference in March. So go ahead and demonstrate the foundation for your assertion that New Energy Times is not a reliable source.

STemplar 06:48, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Who the editor is of the magazine is irrelevant. What abstracts the magazine contains is irrelevant. New Energy Times is not a reliable source for reporting how many cold fusion researchers there are. Read the linked policy to see why. --ScienceApologist 15:39, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

For the clarity of the argument, please state which section of the WP:RS policy you believe is not satisfied by New Energy Times. Another good way to count how many researchers are working in a field is to look at the associations representing them. This is the rule that would be applied in any other field than CF, I believe. If you think otherwise, let me know what is a reliable source for counting researchers, whatever the field. The International Society of Low Energy cold fusion has 175 members. You can see the list here. Yet another alternative would be to say "Many researchers are contributing..."; however, this is not very informative to the reader, so I would recommend to be more precise. Pcarbonn 18:07, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Enumerating researchers is highly problematic and has been discussed in other articles on controversial subjects. In particular, it is impossible to determine the status of the researchers and most lists/membership roles are self-reporting. This is not reliable. --ScienceApologist 18:56, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To wit I cannot think of any reliable source for this kind of information. It would be ridiculous to estimate the number of biologists, for example. Jefffire 18:11, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I fully agree. --ScienceApologist 18:54, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I accept the arguments. After all, it is not the number of researchers that matters. It is the fact that replications have been reported in peer-reviewed journals, in accordance with the scientific method recommended by the 2004 DOE panel. I'll be happy when the lead section presents that point. Pcarbonn 09:19, 7 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]