Talk:Cold fusion

The Cold fusion article was the subject of formal mediation from the Mediation Committee in 2008. Please visit its talk page before making significant changes.

Mediation

Pace Seicer's edit summary, the reason SA didn't participation in the (excellent) mediation may have been that he was banned. Itsmejudith (talk) 14:28, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

SA agreed to mediation, but was not blocked for the entire duration. There were numerous, small blocks for various infractions, though. Or is this related to a topic ban? (Sorry, I don't keep up on SA's activities so I may be out of the loop a bit here.) seicer | talk | contribs 14:36, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

You can see the log of his blocks here. I don't think that the has been blocked for a long period of time, even specifically on the cold fusion topic. Pcarbonn (talk) 14:40, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

ScienceApologist, you use the same tactics that were used against Fleischmann and Pons. In March 1990, D. Lindley, editor at Nature, wrote: "All cold fusion theories can be demolished one way or another, but it takes some effort.... Would a measure of unrestrained mockery, even a little unqualified vituperation have speeded cold fusion's demise?" (Lindley, D., The Embarrassment of Cold Fusion. Nature (London), 1990. 344: p. 375). This is a parody of the scientific method. You may be an apologist, but not of Science. Science has never needed such tactics, and never will. Truth will prevail, sooner or later, and your side is not helped by your behavior. Pcarbonn (talk) 13:31, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Herein lies the problem. Wikipedia is not the place to right great wrongs. You are trying to use Wikipedia for that purpose. ScienceApologist (talk) 14:59, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

SA - the only wrong Pcarbonn is trying to correct is your behaviour, and Pc is using the most direct method, by bringing it up in the talk page where it occurred. Don't hide behind a WP principle. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.180.6.212 (talk) 23:33, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

New Energy Times reported that mediation does work :) A short blurb but pretty cool nevertheless (caught this on SA's talk page). seicer | talk | contribs 13:45, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

It's generally good to get attention for Wikipedia in the press, but I don't think we should be happy about this article. It's not a good thing that Pcarbonn is publishing criticisms of his opponents here---justified or not, it probably tends to de-level the playing field, as it may intimidate SA or others who may argue with PC.

Even more disturbing is PC's published celebration of his success in causing this article to frame cold fusion as "a continuing controversy, not as an example of pathological science." It is especially revealing that he considers this success "a major step forward in the recognition of the new field of ... [LENR]" because it lays bare an extreme conflict of interest in his editing here. Editors here need to be interested in reaching an accurate, neutral portrayal of the topic, not in advancing their own agendas. Gnixon (talk) 14:16, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree totally. Thank you Gnixon. This was beginning to feel like I was in some sort of alternative reality Wikipedia talk page. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:11, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Seicer - I note that Pcarbonn has specifically thanked you, the supposed mediator, for helping him to win "the battle for cold fusion". I don't agree that that is "pretty cool". Cardamon (talk) 21:47, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Didn't know who the author was, but now knowing that (I hardly keep up on the drama that is Cold Fusion), I am remaining neutral on this subject. SA's on one fringe, PC is on the other, and there are very few in the middle. seicer | talk | contribs 22:33, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

You're not planning to make any more edits pushing a credulous point of view, such as this one? --Noren (talk) 05:34, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

And that was a result of incivil tactics that were brought up at WQA. Edit warring is never acceptable, no matter who is at fault; and violating 3RR will result in the page being reverted and the user blocked. That was the case there, if I'm not mistaken. seicer | talk | contribs 15:38, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Don't worry Seicer. A lot of folks were duped. What's really funny is that an article published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics called "Heretical Science - Beyond the boundaries of pathological science" actually mentions the New Energy Times as unreliable![1] (Edit note: it's possible they're not the exact same publication, COI still applies). Pcarbonn shouldn't have been been bragging, especially by some weird coincidence at this exact point in time. I had just used that source on a totally different article and a spark of recognition came when I saw his link on SA's talk page. There's an uncanny six degrees of separation on fringe topics. --Nealparr ^{(talk to me)} 05:37, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Seicer - I would say that SA's opinion about Cold Fusion is pretty in the middle of the mainstream scientific opinion, and not at any sort of fringe. Cardamon (talk) 07:41, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

And others have disagreed. There is very few in the middle of this, unfortunately. seicer | talk | contribs 15:38, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm glad that we are talking again about the article, not about editors. Editors should be judged on their edits, not their intent. I have always played by the wikipedia rules. I have never been blocked. I have always supported my edits with appropriate sources. If I have conducted a battle with the help of others, it is against the promotion of unsourced opinions, or incivility, or both, on wikipedia. Pcarbonn (talk) 05:14, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Should the article be placed in the category of "pseudoscience"

;Note: This is not a properly filed Request for comment. Until it is filed as such, the opinions below should be considered in isolation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by ScienceApologist (talk • contribs) 23:17, 6 July 2008

This question has been debated many times in the past, but it seems that this question is not settled yet.

• No. Guidelines for categorisation say: "An article should normally possess all the referenced information necessary to demonstrate that it belongs in each of its categories.". As far as I know, among all the recent sources on cold fusion, none presents cold fusion as "pseudoscience", using that exact word. Why should wikipedia call it so ? Also, we should be wary of original research: we cannot combine 2 reliable sources in a new deductive reasoning to support the "pseudoscience" categorisation, unless that specific reasoning has been presented in a relevant article. So, we cannot say "it is pseudoscience because it satisfies one (of the many) definition of pseudoscience". Pcarbonn (talk) 07:44, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
• Yes, though Wikipedia:Categorization#Some general guidelines indicates that the subcategory Category:Pseudophysics is to be preferred. Even postulating a sudden reversal by the physics community regarding recent investigations, the article covers a history that is well-described in reliable sources by the term. The purpose of this article is to inform not promote. - Eldereft (cont.) 15:49, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Clarification and expansion: This case is problematic, as cold fusion grew out of the scientific community rather than invading or mimicking it. Let us suppose for a moment that the body of research since 2004 is somehow fundamentally different from that dismissed by the DOE panel and that physicists everywhere suddenly change their minds and state in reliable publications that it all makes sense now. In that case, we would have two halves to this article - one part for the old discredited (yes, discredited - this fiasco represents more than just another observation which failed to pan out in more rigorous experiments) work, and one part for the shiny new work. Of course, a more likely outcome for my little scenario would be splitting the article along those lines to avoid this problem, but bear with me here. People surfing Pseudophysics would legitimately expect to find an article on the history and impact of the discredited part listed; this work is not merely "obsolete" or "superseded", it cut to the heart of the scientific community with lies and pathological failure to perform due diligence. The fact that this fanciful article would also treat science would be irrelevant; c.f. boron, which is in Category:Neutron poisons despite the fact that the dominant isotope has a poor neutron cross section. In the case which actually obtains, wherein the CF community has not managed to separate itself from its origins, the case for categorization is even more clear cut; until mainstream reliable sources indicate a shift in attitude from regarding modern CF work as just more of the same old same old, such a separation should not be reported here. I will not claim policy-wonk status, and remain open to rebuttal of this line of reasoning. - Eldereft (cont.) 09:15, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Haven't you missed what the 2004 DOE said ? "Evaluations by the reviewers ranged from: 1) evidence for excess power is compelling, to 2) there is no convincing evidence that excess power is produced when integrated over the life of an experiment. The reviewers were split approximately evenly on this topic." "When asked about evidence of low energy nuclear reactions, twelve of the eighteen members of the 2004 DOE panel did not feel that there was any conclusive evidence, five found the evidence "somewhat convincing", and one was entirely convinced."

Would you call this "dismissed by the DOE" ? Would you see these statements as compatible with pseudoscience ? Please look at the evidence honestly. (I would agree that, if the article is split, the history one would be categorized in pseudophysics. Without a split, it would be misleading.) Pcarbonn (talk) 09:53, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

The 2004 DOE report says "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." That sounds pretty consistent with "fringe science" to me. I think the term psuedoscience is not as well defined, so it is not clear whether that label is correct. 209.253.120.158 (talk) 14:33, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

• No. Following the ArbCom decision that established four useful categories it is clear that cold fusion does not fall into the category "obvious pseudoscience". It is either "questionable science" or an "alternative theoretical formulation". It is very unhelpful to use categorisation to make points that cannot be made in mainspace due to a shortage of sources. Itsmejudith (talk) 20:13, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

For the sake of clarity, I believe you are referring to this decision of the Arbitration Committee. Pcarbonn (talk) 20:33, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, thank you. Itsmejudith (talk) 20:40, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

• No. Follow the sources, of course, but they probably reflect "Questionable science" from WP:PSCI, as in some critics may allege that it is pseudoscience, and the article may contain information to that effect, but the topic should not be characterized as such. --Nealparr ^{(talk to me)} 20:45, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
• Yes. It has generally been considered pseudoscience by reputable sources outside of the Cold Fusion community of believers. ScienceApologist (talk) 22:14, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
• Yes. Per Arbcom, "Theories which have a following, such as astrology, but which are generally considered pseudoscience by the scientific community may properly contain that information and may be categorized as pseudoscience.". Per Biberian 2007 from the article's references, "...the scientific community does not acknowledge this field as a genuine scientific research theme." It is clear that the scientific community generally considers this pseudoscience. --Noren (talk) 00:53, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

As has been said before, this is a non sequitur and Original research. This source does not say : "the scientific community says the field is pseudoscience". It just says that it remains uncommitted and skeptical. Pcarbonn (talk) 05:18, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

• No. By the way, it might be best to move the "Most scientists are skeptical..." to the first paragraph, where it will be more easily noticed. The lead is well-balanced, but the criticism starts at the third paragraph. Some may be concerned that fast readers might miss the criticism; in addition, "pathological science" does not imply for the lay reader dubious science. Just throwing that out there. II 05:41, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
• No. Cold fusion is pathological science or fringe science, not pseudoscience. --Itub (talk) 15:12, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
• No. per WP:Category. Kevin Baas^talk 15:17, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
• No. It has generally been considered science (good or bad is not the question as both are covered) with reputable sources.Vufors (talk) 15:26, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
• No. I agree with Itub, it's somewhere in the realm of fringe science, pathological science, and mediocre science. Calling it pseudoscience seems a bit off the mark to me. After all, you can open up any issue of PRL, and you'll see people proposing stupid theories that contradict known physical principles, doing poorly-controlled experiments, and misinterpreting their experimental results. --Steve (talk) 16:04, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
• No - I see a difference between the utterly ludicrous and something that can be studied under the legitimate scientific methods. LonelyBeacon (talk) 06:10, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
• No, I don't think so. There are certainly pseudoscientific aspects of the entirety of the field: many non-scientists and scammers are heavily involved in "research" and promotion, conspiracy theories abound, media releases prior to peer review & replication, etc. But while the periphery is packed with the dregs of anti-science, the core of the issue involves distinctly scientific questions ideas that, have been, and continue to be, addressed by relevant professionals and organizations. Relatedly, I'm surprised there's nothing regarding Sonoluminescence on this page; even if the results have yet to be independently replicated and aren't aimed at cheap energy, it seems relevant as there have been a few real publication with secondary coverage.[2][3] — Scientizzle 16:24, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
• No - The quantity and quality of the published reports, as well as the qualifications of the individuals pursing this work, establish this topic well beyond the boundary of 'pseudoscience'. Ronnotel (talk) 17:36, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
• No At the time of the announcement by Fleischmann-Pons it could have been labelled safely as such, but ever since there has been too much sound science and too little pseudoscientifics claims by proponents. --Enric Naval (talk) 01:02, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
• Just a comment The way this article projects cold fusion, it does sound like pseudoscience, but I have another issue, that's not what I had heard and read about cold fusion. From what I know cold fusion is a type of nuclear fusion that occurs at temperature lower than usual (usual being 1 million celcius or kelvin)— something like 100 000 celcius, one to two orders of magnitude lower, but not at "room temperature" as described in the article. Why this is attractive is because usual temperatures and the rate at which fusion reactions occur make them very violent, and the energy produced cannot be harnessed for productive purposes like electricity production. Hence, these reactions are also known as thermonuclear—initiating the fusion reaction by increasing temperature (achieved by a fission reaction). But, if the same reaction could be achieved at somewhat lower temperature and the rate of reaction could be slowed down, it can be "tamed" to extract useful heat, and more importantly in a closed reactor. How this could be achieved is not known, but may be through the use of adsorption surfaces like platinum, etc. And, this concept was to be employed to make fusion reactors. Do correct my misunderstanding. —KetanPanchal^taLK 07:56, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Moving On with NPOV

The article is much improved over the last time it was reverted to the Aug 2004 version. The only way this article is going to be fair and honest is that it presents both the skeptic and experimenter point of view in adequate detail. The experimenters are using the scientific method, so looking for nuclear reactions in hydrogen-metal systems is science and not fringe science or any other of the terms that are basically just an insult. Wikipedia is supposed to be neutral point of view. Unless both sides are presented it is never going to be NPOV. The problem for years has been that many skeptics have tried to get away with presenting only the skeptics point of view. Skeptics should try to improve their POV or sources as presented in the article and stop trying to nit pick to death the experimenters POV or sources. It also needs to be recognized that the skeptic’s POV is almost static and the experimenter’s POV is dynamic, evolving with new experiments.Ron Marshall (talk) 16:23, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree with representing the CF researchers' perspective without squashing it at every turn, but the fact that experimenters are trying to do good science doesn't falsify the fringe science label. Every source I've seen is consistent with the view that most scientists remain unconvinced that there are any "low energy nuclear reactions." We should be able to keep that clear without stepping on the throat of CF researchers. Gnixon (talk) 17:06, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

The only critic I am currently aware of who has, IMO, sufficient recognition, expertise and is sufficiently informed to have an qualified alternative viewpoint on this subject is Kirk Shanahan at SRS. I will send a copy of this brief note to him and invite him to consider watching this page.

StevenBKrivit (talk) 18:02, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea. Thanks Steve. I had already cited his critique, but it's even better if he can watch the page ! Pcarbonn (talk) 19:32, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

SK, what do you mean by "alternative viewpoint"? I'm sure it would be great to have an expert's help on the article, but I don't understand why it's necessary. Our task in writing the article is to summarize the preferably-secondary reliable sources on the subject, not to judge the experiments ourselves. If an expert showed up here and said "LENR is bogus" or "LENR is proven," we still wouldn't be able to reflect that in the article unless it could be reliably sourced. Gnixon (talk) 21:27, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I apologize if I misunderstood the context, I admit I am not reading this whole thing closely. I saw that "Nealparr" wrote "I want outside opinion on this. I think that's a reasonable request." up above. I probably won't be checking back to this page for a while. If you have any questions, please PM me. Thanks

StevenBKrivit (talk) 00:00, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. I think Neal just meant getting outside Wikipedia folk who haven't been involved in these discussions yet. Gnixon (talk) 15:40, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

To begin, I have only read bits and pieces of the main and Talk page here. I did however note Pcarbonn and Dank55 claiming early on that there are no skeptical positions to be found. This only demonstrates their lack of effort. My work is referenced in the main Wiki article. What isn't is my other two publications. Armed with this knowledge, one can go to Yahoo and do a searh on "Shanahan cold fusion" and come up with numerous hits. Most illustrate the ongoing debate between myself and Ed Storms. If one follows up on this, one will eventually be led to the nearly defunct Usenet newsgroup sci.physics.fusion archives, where I again have numerous posts detailing standrard objections/explanations to just about every piece of evidence offered up as proof of CF. I even give leading references in the currently active phyicsworld blog on the issue.

Further, one could look back into the archives of this issue on Wikipedia and see my frustrated attempts to bring balance to the prior CF pages. All of my additions were reverted away. I had email discussions with the reverters, and came to the conclusion it was a hopeless cause to get them to relent and let the skeptical viewpoint be included. I also note that there was some sort of mediation regarding this article this year. Apparently, the principal cold fusion supporters were involved, but no skeptics like me. Clearly an unbiased approach. I suggest you all go back to those versions in your archives and cut out my comments from then and add them back in.

In summary, I have published three papers on a conventional explanation of apparent excess heat (which means no nuclear reactions are needed)in the scientific journal Thermochimica Acta. This was in 2002, 2005, and 2006, clearly 'new' news. This explanation boils down to an analytical method problem, and I see no evidence of excess heat. The specific criticism dealt with one calorimetric method, but the problem is generic to any type of calibrated method, which includes of course any other type of calorimetry. The third of these was a response to an attempt to rebutt my explanation. No answer to that has been presented, so the conclusion is that my rebuttal was sucessful and my explanation stands. Thus in order to claim true excess heat is present, one has to eliminate the 'conventional' explanation I present. That has not been done, therefore there is no clear claim to have observed true excess heat.

Once you accept that there is no excess heat, there only remains claims for various types of nuclear ash. I have commented _extensively_ on those 'CF' evidences in the Usenet newsgroup sci.physics.fusion (spf), and I find no body of evidence that can't be explained by bad analytical chemistry or trace contamination. That implies there is considerable work left to be done to substantiate a claim of a new low energy nuclear reaction occuring in any of the experimental set-ups that are promoted as 'proving' CF (or LENR, or CANR, or...) is real. Of course the CFers violently disagree, but they haven't been able to refute my points because they won't do the work required to do so. Simply saying I can't be right doesn't make it true.

I expect they will react strongly to my comments here, but I am not going to repeat the seemingly endless discussions that occurred in spf here. If some relevant technical point is raised I may respond. Otherwise I will not.

Kirk Shanahan Template:My opinions...noone else's Kirk shanahan (talk) 15:49, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much for posting. Please, please do not respond to any technical point. We are not here to discuss the substantive issues. You have mentioned three papers and we can cite them in the article. If you would like to summarise them and make the sourced additions then that would be great. Otherwise someone else can do it and you can check that it has been done accurately. If you need a hand with the technical side of editing an article then anyone would be pleased to help. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:00, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm glad that Steven Krivit has contacted Shanahan, and that he has replied. I also welcome well-sourced addition to our article. It's a pity that we cannot use sci.physics.fusion as a source, but we can certainly use the other papers. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:10, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

"do not respond to any technical point" and "We are not here to discuss the substantive issues." I don't understand, you want to discuss non-technical, insubstantial issues? Not me.

"well-sourced addition[s]"

I see my revisions of Mar. 2005 have been deleted.

My papers concerning why no true excess heat has ever been detected:

A Systematic Error in Mass Flow Calorimetry Demonstrated Kirk L. Shanahan Thermochimica Acta, 387(2) (2002) 95-110

Comments on "Thermal behavior of polarized Pd/D electrodes prepared by co- deposition" Kirk L. Shanahan Thermochimica Acta, 428(1-2), (2005), 207

Reply to "Comments on papers by K. Shanahan that propose to explain anomalous heat generated by cold fusion", E. Storms, Thermochim. Acta, 2006 Kirk L. Shanahan Thermochimica Acta, 441 (2006) 210

Some papers by Clarke and Oliver illustrating that the CFers don't know how to exclude air from their apparati. This means He in-leakage will occur. That means any CFer publication must conclusively show the mass spec results come from an uncontaminated sample. None do, ergo, all CFer claims to have detected He are suspect.

Search for 3He and 4He in Arata-Style Palladium Cathodes II: Evidence for Tritium Production Clarke, W. Brian ; Oliver, Brian M. ; McKubre, Michael C. H. ; Tanzella, Francis L. ; Tripodi, Paolo Publication Date 2001 Sep 15 Fusion Science and Technology; Journal Volume: 40(2) (2001) 152-167

Response toComments on 'Search for He-3 and He-4 in Arata-Style Palladium Cathodes I: A Negative Result' and 'Search for He-3 and He-4 in Arata-Style Palladium Cathodes II: Evidence for Tritium Production' Clarke, W B.; Oliver, Brian M. Publication Date 2003 Jan 01 Fusion Science and Technology ; VOL. 43(1) (2003) 135-136

Production of 4He in D2-LOADED palladium-carbon catalyst II CLARKE W. Brian; BOS Stanley J.; OLIVER Brian M.; Fusion Science and Technology 2003, vol. 43(2), 250-255

Response to Comments on Search for He-3 and 4He in Arata-style palladium cathodes II: Evidence for tritium production? Clarke, W B.; Oliver, Brian M. Publication Date 2002 Mar 01 Fusion Science and Technology; VOL. 41(2) (2002) 153-154

More are probably available from those authors.

'Isotopic anomalies' are claimed by SIMS, but the CFers don't interpret their SIMS data correctly. They ignore multi-atom ions, esp. hydrides. An example of where these species are detected:

International Journal of Mass Spectrometry Volume 189, Issues 2-3, 11 August 1999, Pages 173-179

Anomalous signal formation in secondary ion mass spectrometry of palladium

F. Okuyama, , a, M. Kanekob, S. Sendaa, Y. Katadaa and M. Tanemuraa

Received 9 June 1998; accepted 23 April 1999. Available online 4 August 1999.

Abstract Cesium ions bombarding a high-purity palladium (Pd) target are shown to sputter out negative ions incompatible with stable isotopes of Pd. These unusual ions possess a mass of (Pd + 1), and they may possibly arise from the Pd–H reaction occurring in the ion-bombarded area. It is also shown that dimers of Pd are emitted exclusively as negative ions, with positive dimers virtually undetectable. The process whereby the dimer emission occurs in such a selective manner is still unclear. --- The point of this paper is to illustrate that the mailstream science community knows about dimers, trimers, etc. Why don't the CFers?

I have no intention of editing the Wiki article again. If you all want a fair and unbiased article, you need to point out that all claims of CFers can be explained conventionally, and cite the refs above as answers. In your "Further Reading" you need to note there are 11 years (1995-2006) of extended technical discussions of the issues in the spf Newsgroup.

Kirk Shanahan {[{My opinions...noone else's}]} —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.33.240.30 (talk) 19:58, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Excellent. Thanks for adding to the discussion, Kirk. Many of your sources definitely belong in this article. It is too bad that people have been removing them. ScienceApologist (talk) 22:26, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Indeed, people should not have removed them. For the record, I'm the one who has added them back, here (or at least the ones that were referred to elsewhere, i.e. with notability). Pcarbonn (talk) 07:42, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

That's news to me. Agreed that this shouldn't have been removed. Kevin Baas^talk 15:47, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Say what? I don't see any changes. The correct way to do it it to change the ref. to my work in the "Precision of Calorimetry" secion to a triple ref, and add the refs to the reference list. While you're at it, please correct my name in the one that is already there. Ed Storms did that in his Web page papers and it seems to have propagated to Wiki. You also should add a section to the 'Criticisms' subsection to deal with the bad analytical chemistry issues. These include: inability to correctly measure He concentrations (Oliver and Clarke refs.), inability to correctly interpret SIMS data which leads to erroneous claims of isotopic shifts, misassignment of XPS peaks from copper to praesodymium, and general unwillingness to track down sources of contamination as Scott Little did with the RIFEX kit (I have a pdf of his unpublished report detailing this that I could supply). Kirk Shanahan {[{My opinions...noone else's}]} Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:34, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

The article cannot be changed for the moment because it is "protected". I just showed that I added some of your work recently. We would add your other references if it was not blocked because of a dispute. Please note that there are reliability requirements for the inclusion of sources on wikipedia: unpublished material cannot be included. Would you mind providing published sources for the critique of analytical chemistry issues in cold fusion ? Thanks in advance. Pcarbonn (talk) 11:49, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Because there are several critiques of calorimetry in cold fusion experiments, I would suggest to start a new article "calorimetry in cold fusion experiments". It would briefly explain the different types of calorimeters that are used, and then develop their critique. Any comments ? Pcarbonn (talk) 10:32, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Typically this is a canard to try discredit my conventional explanation of apparent excess heat. It goes kinda like this: 'Gee, there are a lot of calorimeter types. Shanahan only studied one type. We have others that don't show the problem he brings up.' That last conclusion is the false one of course. My analysis was conducted on data from one specific calorimeter yes, but the method is general, and applies to all the calorimeters in use by CFers (as long as they are calibrated that is). There IS a real chemical effect happening, which I like to refer to as the Fleischmann-Pons-Hawkins Effect, that leads to the calibration constant shifts, which in turn lead to apparent excess heat signals. The only impact of the calorimeter design is in how much wiggle room they allow for the calibration constant shift problem. Fully integrating calorimeters like Storms' mass flow one, or Seebeck types, are the best, they tend to minimize the problem. But it cannot be completely removed. (Note that this is consistent with one of Langmuir's characteristics of pathological science.) So as far as a new section in this article, I vote no, as it will just add unecessary technical detail. Have a page on electochemical calorimeters elsewhere if you like. Kirk Shanahan {[{My opinions...noone else's}]} Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:34, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your input. We are not here to discredit any point of view, only to present them from a neutral point of view. We'll present your arguments, in proportion to the notability they've obtained. The 2004 DOE was evenly split on the evidence of excess heat, and that's what we'll represent in the article. Pcarbonn (talk) 11:49, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome. Of course the point of my comment in the subsequent section of this discussion is to note that it is likely had my work been included in the review, the split wouldn't have been so even. I do note that the one person I knew in the written part did know of my work independently, and included in his/her review comments that my work should be considered. Kirk Shanahan {[{My opinions...noone else's}]} 192.33.240.30 (talk) 14:09, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I have now started an article on Calorimetry in cold fusion experiments. We'll link it from the cold fusion article once it is unprotected. Pcarbonn (talk) 15:38, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

A little birdie and a mole

There are some real problems here. Notice how when the discussion started to turn against cf-proponents, a group of cf-proponents showed up seemingly out of nowhere? Why is that? Is someone alerting them to these discussions? The short answer is yes. Never mind how I know, let's just say there is a birdie and a mole who are sharing information with me. However, this is very problematic. Many cf-proponents seem to think that Wikipedia has the potential to open up a new front for them to get their ideas accepted without the headaches of academic peer-review and the scorn that has been heaped upon their ideas by the people who are so singularly obsessed with the idea that temperatures that correspond to lower than the activation energy of nuclear fusion reactions can somehow be environments conducive to nuclear fusion. Anyway, I think some administrator oversight is desperately needed here. The WP:COI and WP:SOAP and WP:ADVERT agendas are almost out-of-control to the point of absurdity.

ScienceApologist (talk) 20:30, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Dear "ScienceApologist,"

If you think any Wikirules have been broken, you should definitely report them at once. By the way, many of the papers here http://newenergytimes.com/Reports/SelectedPapers.htm and here http://newenergytimes.com/Reports/PublishedPapers.htm have been peer-reviewed, as have many of the papers referenced in the July 10, 2008 issue of New Energy Times. I strongly encourage you to read my editorial; it has a lot to do with your concerns about the claim of fusion.

Best regards,

StevenBKrivit (talk) 00:00, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

For information, a notice of conflict of interest has been open a couple of days ago by ScienceApologist here. Should I open a COI notice because he is defending the views of the "average scientific laboratory", on the ground that he may be working in one of them ? Pcarbonn (talk) 07:12, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

It won't get you anywhere. I have no vested interest one way or another as to how this subject is presented. You have stated in articles published elsewhere that you do. That's the difference. That's why you shouldn't be editing this article at all. ScienceApologist (talk) 13:47, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't see any incompatibility between the aim of Wikipedia, which is to produce a neutral, reliably sourced encyclopedia, and my aim, which is the same. I have demonstrated that in all my edits, for which I have provided the proper source, defending both the skeptical and proponent side of the issue by the way. That I have also other aims, which are not incompatible with wikipedia's as you suggest, is not relevant to the content dispute we have. On the other hand, I see a lot of issues with your behavior here. But I won't elaborate on them, because we should be talking about the article, not its editors. Pcarbonn (talk) 14:15, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

They are totally relevant because they cloud your view of what is "neutral" slanting it away from WP:REDFLAG consideration of bad sources. You appreciate cf-proponent sources too much and work to unduly include them in ways that defy WP:WEIGHT. ScienceApologist (talk) 22:24, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

The bad source in this case are the "average scientific laboratory", and the good source is the 2004 DOE Report. I'm afraid your view is slanted incorrectly. Your statements apply to you, not me. You depreciate cf-proponent sources too much and work to unduly exclude them in ways that defy WP:WEIGHT. Pcarbonn (talk) 07:40, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

For the record, when I heard of the 2004 review, I submitted some materials to a member of the DOE Office running the review. However those materials never made it into the review. I know this because I personally know two of the reviewers, one from the written part, one from the oral, and neither ever saw my stuff. I believe if my explanation had been presented to the review Committee, the conclusions would have been radically different, because the CF presenters gave the impression that there was no critics of the field except the outdated fanatics like Robert Park. So, I don't call the DOE 2004 Review a 'good' one, since critical information was not considered. Kirk Shanahan {[{My opinions...noone else's}]} Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:43, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for this clarification. It is unfortunate that you were not heard. Pcarbonn (talk) 12:46, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

What ScienceApologist is talking about above is that subsequent to this article from two months ago[4] and now this article[5], at a online magazine that claims "thousands of subscribers", and both articles essentially saying that a particular point of view needs to be protected at Wikipedia, one can't help but feel that the dice are loaded and we may not be getting an accurate view here since the deck is stacked.

I agree somewhat. This article is slanted quite a bit. There's a lot of talk about cf-proponent sources and cf-skeptic sources, expertise, etc., but let me give you an example that doesn't have anything to do with balancing sources and one that any layman can readily see. We have a section called "Fleischmann-Pons announcement" that goes on for 6 paragraphs in great detail about the project. That in itself isn't so bad except that it was almost universally rejected and its the original one that gave cold fusion a bad name, and when we get to reporting that, in "Reaction to the announcement", we're proportionately unbalanced.

Here we have a significantly shorter section. 5 shorter paragraphs. The first plays up how there was a rush to repeat -- because it was so awesome. The second briefly mentions accusations of fraud and then explains it away as hasty innocent mistake -- because it was so awesome. The third paragraph, no big deal, simple reporting of other attempts to duplicate -- because it was so awesome. The fourth paragraph (from a story arc standpoint) is the big climax with a standing ovation among OMG 7,000 chemists! $25 million bucks in funding! and an invitation from the President!

When we get to how it was actually received, the real impact it had, we have a brief fifth paragraph that tosses out vague references to sessions and reports and very little elaboration. No real content. The most telling example is that it says Nature published papers critical of cold fusion in July and November, but mentions nothing at all about the contents of those papers, what was said, what points they raised, anything. It's severly disproportional to the preceeding paragraphs that talk about how wonderful the announcement was in great detail. Mere mention of critical sources and tucking them away in footnotes is not really neutral, especially on this particular announcement. "Fleischmann-Pons", my understanding, is what gave cold fusion a bad name. It was heavily rejected, with prejudice. I know this from reading off-wiki articles, not from reading our article. It glosses over all that. --Nealparr ^{(talk to me)} 17:35, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

It seems to my reading that you are right. I like the chronological approach, as it helps us to explain for readers either favourably or unfavourably predisposed to CF how and why it became such a controversial topic. Would you or someone be able to summarise the two Nature papers in a sentence or two each. By summarise I mean to produce something in the framework "X, Y and Z set up an experiment to .... . They concluded that there was no..... " It would be great to think that the article is fairly well structured and that incremental improvements will reach consensus and move it back to GA/FA. Itsmejudith (talk) 20:26, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

There's a bunch of edits I would be making if the article were not locked : ) I think even a layman can write something based on the summaries provided here [6] and here [7]. The APS session was written about in New York Times.[8]. In our article it's reduced to sound bites, like "dead" "incompetence and delusion" "pathological science", which are fine because they show the extent of rejection, but they're also without the substance of the original article. When I read our article it comes off as grumblings of irrational old science unwilling to accept anything new (easy to dismiss). The NYTimes, however, reported very specific rational reasons why they rejected it (harder to dismiss).

Example, here it reads:

• Caltech described the Utah report as a result of "the incompetence and delusion of Pons and Fleischmann."

That's not a detailed or accurate summary because there it reads:

• The most thoroughgoing of the attempts to validate the Pons-Fleischmann experiment was conducted at the California Institute of Technology.[...]Using equipment far more sensitive than any available to the Utah group, Caltech failed to find any symptoms of fusion. The scientists found no emitted neutrons, gamma rays, tritium or helium, although the Utah group reported all these emissions at high levels. And all the cells consumed energy rather than produced it, the Caltech team said.

That's extremely notable stuff left out of our article. --Nealparr ^{(talk to me)} 20:58, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

That doesn't look notable to me. the first example just shows that some guy in caltech is very opinionated and not afraid of publicly insulting people that they know little about. Big whoop. There are too many of those.

Now the second example is very rhetorical - to the point of being misleading. so it's a failed experiment - many experiments failed. that's nothing new and the article already mentions it. the quoted text just happens to have a lot of misleading spin on it that has no actual informational value. Why is it the "most thoroughgoing"? as of when? what does that even mean? what special value would that givn, were it true? What's the significance of using sensitive equipment? why would more sensitive equipment be needed if the excess heat measured by the utah group was already well beyond the sensitivity of their instruments? Kevin Baas^talk 01:51, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

And yes, I understand the irony in using rhetorical questions to expose rhetoric. Kevin Baas^talk 02:13, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Short answer: The New York Times thinks it's notable and in our article we think it's notable because it's cited here, just not accurately represented. It's not a question of notability, it's a question of whether we're saying what the source is saying, and we're not. Our article leaves out the actual point of what NYT was saying, and leaves out what it felt was most notable. It's NYT that says it was the most thorough analysis. This is what I mean about feeling like the dice is loaded. If you can't even have a conversation about accurate representation of the sources, something's wrong. --Nealparr ^{(talk to me)} 02:09, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Well I'd be for replacing what it currently reads w/the part you suggested. I just which it were worded a little less rhetorically and more objectively. I agree that the article needs more balance in the direction of letting the reader know that the mainstream view is skeptical of CF. I just don't know how. This here that you suggest seems like a reasonable way to do it. (and FWIW, i've already done some considerable work on the article and I don't plan on doing much more anytime soon - i'm probably just going to sit back and give my two cents once in a while for a while.) Kevin Baas^talk 02:22, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

And I see that I was overly critical of the wording - for instance, the part on sensitivity is there to pre-empt the argument "well maybe their equipment just wasn't sensitive enough to pick any of it up." So whatever, I'll shutup now. Kevin Baas^talk 02:39, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

It's OK. You don't have to agree with the sources or like the style they write in. Many sources won't be objective and some of them may be even be rhetorical. We're just here to accurately report what they said, no more and no less. If a reader wants to dismiss the source for whatever reason (oh, it's just those wacky Caltech guys! for example), that's not our thing. The reader just needs to be fully informed. That part is our responsibility. --Nealparr ^{(talk to me)} 05:15, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Back to this, I looked at where the "Caltech described..." content was and it's in a small section called "reaction to the announcement". replacting it with "The most thoroughgoing of the attempts..." would introduce two problems: 1. the content is not about a "reaction" (in the appropriate sense), it's about an experiment performed, and 2. the content would give undue weight to caltech, since no other university is given nearly that much space in that section. - indeed it would take up a substantial amount of space in the section for what had previously been one sentence, which roughly matches the weight given to everything else in the section. Kevin Baas^talk 14:46, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I think it has to do with watchlists; I often turn up when there's a bunch of posts because, well, its on the top of my watchlist and that makes me come here. But yes, I agree that it is a problem that this page gives undue weight to CF being real, but I don't know that accusing CF people of meatpuppetry is the best way of solving it. If you DO have evidence of meatpuppetry and them canvassing, present the evidence such that we can deal with it. Simply accusing them of it without evidence will get us nowhere. Titanium Dragon (talk) 22:51, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

While I say it's unintentional meatpuppetry, assuming good faith and having spoken with the publishers, I think it more than meets the definition of accidental meatpuppetry to have published to thousands of readers that an article you're working on at Wikipedia is in peril. From my perspective, let's just fix it (I make specific recommended changes). But I'll also say let's not pretend it's not broken either. --Nealparr ^{(talk to me)} 23:04, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I fully support the suggestion of Nealparr to improve our representation of the NYT article, and I thank him for doing it. The way to adjust the balance of the article is to add well-sourced, notable statements from skeptics. There is no justification to remove well-sourced, notable statements from the proponents. Pcarbonn (talk) 07:26, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm confused by the suspicion of meatpuppet. What's the point of a request for comment if it's not to get comments from others, Shanahan included. Since wikipedia is not a democracy, what is the issue ? I have no doubt that all editors above did talk freely, and not under the direction of anybody. (I have not recruited any editors, by the way). Pcarbonn (talk) 17:55, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Suspicions of meatpuppetry aside, the policy describes the harm of meatpuppetry despite Wikipedia not being a democracy. The one I think is relevant is the "to give the appearance of consensus", because that's not vote-related. Above when I asked is there a consensus to weed out links to NET, what I got was a few established editors commenting (who may or may not be readers or supporters of NET) and a couple of new editors and IP addresses saying "I don't see a problem". It's hard to judge that there's not a consensus when the dissenting voice may just be one voice, that of NET. As I said above, let's just focus on what's good and bad about the content with reasoned, policy based arguments, fix anything that needs fixing, leave anything that doesn't need fixing alone, and the problem that may or may not exist regarding meatpuppetry is resolved. Seems practical. --Nealparr ^{(talk to me)} 18:37, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

That sounds very reasonable to me. Thanks for the clarification. Pcarbonn (talk) 19:05, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

New Scientist

Here is what New Scientist says about "13 things that do not make sense" : "After 16 years, [cold fusion] is back". Pcarbonn (talk) 05:31, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

The New Scientist isn't a peer-reviewed scientific journal, and several things in that article (tetraneutrons, for instance) have failed to be replicated. I wonder what that reminds me of... HM. In short, the article varies wildly in effects, from things which are well known but unexplained (Dark Energy) to homeopathy, and several of them (the Wow! signal, cold fusion and tetraneutrons) cannot be replicated, and several others are simply things which haven't been (the Pioneer anamoly). Mixing in things which are seen as legitimate with garbage is misleading, but very popular in stuff which popularizes such things. More to the point, they're talking about the 2004 DoE report, which, as noted by this article, is not exactly supportive of Cold Fusion as a real phenomenon. Titanium Dragon (talk) 04:25, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Worth noting, in another article they talk about "4. 2001, A more rigorous estimate of the "Drake equation" suggests that our galaxy may contain hundreds of thousands of life-bearing planets". Acting as though this is so is silly; as most people familiar with the equation know, many of the variables are completely unknown. Titanium Dragon (talk) 05:04, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

And what is meant by "more rigorous estimate"? I would imagine estimating more of said unknown variables based on available data (however sparse) - if you use a reasonable probability model for the unknown variables, use the available empirical data to better estimate the parameters, and take an ensemble average, you get a good guess at the results - what one might call a "more rigorous estimate". Kevin Baas^talk 14:25, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Agreed that the NS is not a peer-reviewed journal. It can emphatically not be used to source claims about whether CF is a real effect or not. The status of the magazine is as trade journal for scientists in the UK, carrying most of the job adverts for scientific posts. Trade journals can be good sources. I would say that this article - by no means the NS at its best - could perhaps be used as part of a balanced description of how CF is currently regarded in the scientific community. Itsmejudith (talk) 10:39, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd be careful even with that approach. NewScientist has a tendency to lean towards a lunatic fringe at times. Jefffire (talk) 10:47, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

I just added this link to show that cold fusion is an ongoing controversy. We should not present cold fusion as an issue that has been resolved, one way or another, and the NS article supports that view, just as the 2004 DOE does. We don't need to add the NS reference to the article, in my view. Pcarbonn (talk) 11:37, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

A doubt

The way this article projects cold fusion, it does sound like pseudoscience, but I have another issue, that's not what I had heard and read about cold fusion. From what I know cold fusion is a type of nuclear fusion that occurs at temperature lower than usual (usual being 1 million celcius or kelvin)— something like 100 000 celcius, one to two orders of magnitude lower, but not at "room temperature" as described in the article. Why this is attractive is because usual temperatures and the rate at which fusion reactions occur make them very violent, and the energy produced cannot be harnessed for productive purposes like electricity production. Hence, these reactions are also known as thermonuclear—initiating the fusion reaction by increasing temperature (achieved by a fission reaction). But, if the same reaction could be achieved at somewhat lower temperature and the rate of reaction could be slowed down, it can be "tamed" to extract useful heat, and more importantly in a closed reactor. How this could be achieved is not known, but may be through the use of adsorption surfaces like platinum, etc. And, this concept was to be employed to make fusion reactors. Do correct my misunderstanding. (I have posted the same message in the Request for comment above.) —KetanPanchal^taLK 07:59, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Arara and Zhang claim of 80 watts

The current article states that "Arata and Zhang said that, in one typical run, they observed excess heat power averaging 80 watts and output heat energy equal to 1.8 times input energy over 12 days." and gives as a reference a review paper. This is not appropriate for a major claim of the article since it should point directly to the key document. Here is the direct link to the paper identified by the review paper as including the 80 watts claim:[9].

However, the article should not include this claim at all for several reasons. Firstly, nowhere are values of "80 watts" or a "1.8" ratio reported in the Arata and Zhang paper. Secondly, the authors never claim that cold fusion is occurring in their equipment. Thirdly, the paper is very difficult to read and it is not clear what temperature increase is attributed to possible cold fusion effects. My best guess is that the (Tc-Ts) value mentioned at the bottom of page 108 is attributed to cold fusion effects. However, that seems strange since the authors state that it is only 0.3 degrees C, which is laughably small if that is intended to be a demonstration of cold fusion. Fourthly, the authors do not describe any attempts to measure expected fusion products (helium, tritium, gamma radiation, or neutron radiation). Dank55 has implied that installing a mass spectrometer to confirm fusion products is very easy, which implies that the absence of any detection efforts makes the paper's conclusions suspiciously incomplete.

As a side note, I want to point out that this paper demonstrates an important aspect of cold fusion research which has always troubled me: The authors do not describe any safety precautions to protect researchers from fusion-induced radiation. They imply that they are attempting to generate fusion, which means that it is irresponsible to do so without first installing radiation detectors and shielding. This could be important if later researchers tried to duplicate their results and were successful, since they could be injured by radiation. Any cold fusion experiment which does not have radiation detectors present is clearly irresponsible and "dysfunctional."

Of course, if I have analyzed the wrong paper here, please correct me. 209.253.120.158 (talk) 16:09, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. I have removed that claim and many of the other numerical claims which are not strictly verifiable since they must be attributed to specific reports by cold fusion researchers and are not independently verified (see WP:REDFLAG). These claims have been removed now three times. Please provide an independent source that is not associated with cold fusion which corroborates these claims before reinserting them. Thank you. Also, please refrain from using misleading edit summaries such as "per talk" which was used to justify reverting to a version of the article that used a lot of unsubstantiated cold fusion claims as statements of fact. ScienceApologist (talk) 16:54, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Each disputed point, one by one

See this diff.

Here are the points. Cheers. ScienceApologist (talk) 17:10, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Controversial nature

The first change adds a sentence which reports on the controversial nature of cold fusion. This is necessary to establish a context for the claims that are going to be documented.

Number of reports

The number of reports is not something that is strictly verifiable. A cold fusion proponents believes that this is the number of reports, but here's the key point: What qualifies as a valid report? Is it something reported in a journal? How do you decide what journal reports to include and what journal reports to ignore? Some of the reports are not published, it appears as well. It is obviously an opinion and not a fact as to how many reports were made, and I doubt we can establish a consensus on how to properly figure out a number. Barring that, just remove the number and let readers find out for themselves what they believe. Wikipedia should not be endorsing a number like "60" just because there is some cold fusion researcher who thinks that's a good number.

This is an important point. The current article states

"Over 3,000 cold fusion papers have been published including about 1,000 in peer-reviewed journals (see indices in further reading, below). In March 1995, Dr. Edmund Storms compiled a list of 21 papers and articles reporting excess heat published in peer reviewed journals such as Naturwissenschaften, European Physical Journal A, European Physical Journal C, Journal of Solid State Phenomena, Physical Review A, Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, and Journal of Fusion Energy."

There should be direct links to the values of 3,000 and 1,000 so readers do not need to scan through all of the further reading to see how they were determined. Also, considering the controversial nature of the field, the article should point directly to the source documents, not just list the names of the relevant journals. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.253.120.158 (talk) 17:34, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

WP:NOT: wikipedia is not a collection of links. especially not thousands of them. Kevin Baas^talk 18:28, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

True, but it is also not a place to make claims that cannot be directly verified. ScienceApologist (talk) 20:34, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Which might be relevant if we were talking about claims that could not be directly verified. Kevin Baas^talk 02:20, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Or, alternatively, we should try to reposition the claims so that a reader can more easily verify them. Using a number like 3000 or 1000 is very difficult to verify and since the source is suspect, we should perhaps aim for a more reasonable statement that can be verified without collecting 1000 links of varying quality. ScienceApologist (talk) 03:41, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Here is a verifiable, notable source for the statement "Proponents say that there are 3000 papers..." : Wired. Please note that we should not say "there are 3000 reports". Pcarbonn (talk) 09:53, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I added the Wired source [10] --Enric Naval (talk) 12:26, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Focusing excessively on the Hubler review

As much as the Navy's research is exciting, Graham Hubler is hardly a neutral reporter on the subject of cold fusion. The article's previous version leans heavily on his "review" which is obviously slanted in one particular direction. A sentence that says "It says that most of the research groups have occasionally seen 50-200% excess heat for hours to days, that observed excess heat events have not diminished in frequency or magnitude, and they have improved their methods." is excessive when we already report what Hubler claims "a third of the experiments reported excess heat." We haven't adequately attributed that point as an opinion, but at least it is just saying that it is a "report" rather than a measurement that has been independently verified. The other sentence is too detailed for us to be using per WP:WEIGHT.

Your interpretation of WP:weight is wrong. Here is what the ArbComm unanimously said about WP:Weight for significant alternative to scientific orthodoxies : "Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, a fundamental policy, requires fair representation of significant alternatives to scientific orthodoxy. Significant alternatives, in this case, refers to legitimate scientific disagreement, as opposed to pseudoscience." Fairly reporting on the Hubler review, as we do, is perfectly in line with this ruling. This also applies to most of the issues your raised below. Pcarbonn (talk) 09:53, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Actually, you are unfairly reporting the Hubler review as a neutral source when it is, in fact, biased. You seem to think because you hold cold fusion reports in high regard that Wikipedia must hold these reports in high regard. In fact, Wikipedia must look at third party evaluations. Are there people outside of the cold fusion proponent community who take cold fusion seriously? Very few. We have plenty of mainstream reporting to that effect including wording from the 2004 DOE report which explicitly recognizes that this is the marginalized situation in which cold fusion research finds itself. Until you recognize that, there can be no constructive movement forward. ScienceApologist (talk) 14:48, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I totally disagree. Hubler's paper has everything of a reliable source, since it is published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Whether it is neutral or not does not matter, as long as it is reliable and we properly attribute it. What does a neutral source means in wikitalk anyway ? Nothing. Your argument only reflects your opinion, and is not based on any wikipedia policy. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:29, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

ScienceApologist, have you ever written for the enemy ? I have. I suggest you should. This will help you understand wikipedia policies better. Pcarbonn (talk) 10:41, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Believe you me, if I was writing what I really thought of cold fusion, you would be very upset. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:49, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

C'mon, any of us could write your statement for you. Let me see .... pseudoscience, load of old rubbish, astrology, homeopathy, mumbo-jumbo, disgrace to science, appalling waste of public money, dumbing down, what future for science education, was this the country that got to the Moon .... Have I got any of it? You can still write for the enemy. Imagine you are doing a literature review for a paper on the subject. X set up this experiment, found this, didn't find that. Y set up another experiment, replicated X's method, but didn't find this, found that. Boring but necessary. Give it a go. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:01, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Which would be rejected here as it would be somewhere between a synthesis of primary sources and a collection of trivia..... On wikipedia you need to find secondary sources that assess the relative importance of the studies and do that work for you. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:16, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I think you misunderstand WP:SYNTH and WP:RELIABLE. They do not contradict Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/FAQ#Writing_for_the_.22enemy.22. Nor do they reject attributed opinion from a significant POV. Kevin Baas^talk 18:04, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

It depends what attitude we take to papers. In my mind they are secondary sources, but then I am always in a social science rather than a natural science frame of mind. Even if they are regarded as primary they can be cited alongside the reliable reviews of the literature that we have. Of course no one editing on this site would condone including "trivia". When we were discussing with Dr Shanahan we were talking as if we would cite his papers directly. Itsmejudith (talk) 19:13, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

(unindent)Yeah, in social science it's different. Clinical trials on medicine and laboratory experiments on physics normally count as primary sources. I have already seen this discussion on Talk:Homeopathy: there are so many contradictory clinical trials on that topic that choosing some of them over the rest is an exercise on OR, so you need to rely on reviews that tell you which studies are significant and which aren't, and why. Ídem here, how do we know that we are choosing the "right" papers, or that we are not missing an important replication (or lack of it)? Use WP:RELIABLE to find reliable reviews of studies on the field, please, and use the conclusions from the review and cite the studies and replications that the review considers significant. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:51, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Umh. I think that's what we are doing. Hubler's review is, well, a review. By the way, I have put less emphasis on it in the article, moving its summary to the "excess heat" section. Pcarbonn (talk) 20:02, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

(note: I was talking of studies and reviews on general, not specifically about Hubler's source) --Enric Naval (talk) 20:54, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

50 excess power experiments

That cold fusion researchers claim 50 experiments is not a good point to include in our article. There was no third-party of review of this claim, and like the number 60 above there is unlikely to be any in the near future. So removed.

Arata and Zhang report on excess heat

See the above section for more on why this should be removed.

three independent studies

If cold fusion researchers say that there are independent studies, that's already suspect. Claiming "three" independent studies though begs the question of how the number was obtained (what qualifies as an "independent study"?) We need some outside vetting of this point: it's not sufficiently positioned as a questionable claim.

I presume the number was obtained via counting. I presume they can cite the studies, and everying can verify for themselves. I don't see how saying that the studies are independent makes things any more suspect - usually that's a good thing. And I think you should remember that what we put in the article needs to be verifiable, not true beyond faithless doubt. Our job is not to second guess and beg questions of everything said about a subject ("but is california really on the west coast? how do we know that for sure?") Kevin Baas^talk 18:23, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

It would be better to look at the studies individually and decide if they are editorially fit for us to cite. If we wouldn't cite them, we shouldn't cite someone else who is citing them. ScienceApologist (talk) 20:18, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

That would be WP:OR. Kevin Baas^talk 02:22, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

No... that would be writing an encyclopedia using sources. There is a very big difference. ScienceApologist (talk) 03:36, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Either way would be writing an encyclopedia using sources. Kevin Baas^talk 13:27, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Differing isotopic ratios

As far as I can tell, no one has been able to corroborate this point with any confidence. I want to see an independent review that the small number statistics that they quote are reliable. They did not do an error analysis and so regardless of whether cf proponents think this point is "important" it should not be included until verified by an outside expert.

You're making up unreasonable standards and applying them selectively. Kevin Baas^talk 18:25, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

If you have objections to other parts that you think do not rise to the standards that I'm outlining (and they're hardly "made up", they are all part-and-parcel to WP:FRINGE, WP:NPOV, WP:WEIGHT, WP:REDFLAG, etc.) then please let us know. However, snide wholesale rejection of my arguments like this is hardly constructive. ScienceApologist (talk) 20:20, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry you felt I was being snide. Or that you feel "You're making up unreasonable standards and applying them selectively." "wholesale rejection of arguments". It was only directed at one of your arguments, and thus the plural on "arguments" isn't appropriate. Likewise "wholesale" doesn't apply since there is only one argument under consideration here. "rejection" isn't quite correct either - rejection would be if i just merely ignored it, but i'm actually pointing out what's wrong with it. And there is nothing underhanded or indirect about what i said - it's straightforward and plain so i wouldn't call it "snide". And it is constructive because it helps determine the content of the article.

I think most everything in the article doesn't rise to the standards that you're proposing. (Or most everything in any wikipedia articles, for that matter.) But I don't have any objections to the rest of the article because, like I said, I think those standards are unreasonable.

And they have nothing to do with any of the policies you just linked to. If they did then I'd have a pretty big objection to that part of the policy. I imagine a whole lot of people would. And it would be removed pretty quickly on that account. Kevin Baas^talk 02:36, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Please don't apologize for my feelings. That itself is snide. You haven't really pointed anything out here, you've only made some vague accusation(s).

I admit that the article isn't up to the best of standards yet, but Wikipedia is a work in progress. We'll get there. If you think the standards I propose are unreasonable, I encourage you to ask around for third opinions. I am beginning to think that you may actually have some big problems with policies when it gets right down to it. It might help us all out if you tried to find out if that was the case or not. You're a bit too certain that it isn't the case. I'm thinking I have a bit more experience than you on such matters, however. ScienceApologist (talk) 03:39, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm not about to compare experience - i don't think that would be productive. I am quite familiar with the policies and I don't have any problems with them - I like them, in fact. I do not know of any source on wikipedia, scientifc or not, that includes the confidence levels ("error analysis"). And I've certainly (esp. by that token) never seen anything rejected on account of not having them. And likewise I'm not aware of any attributed opinion on wikipedia "verified by an outside expert". And never seen any rejected for lack thereof. I am quite certain of all this, yes. It strikes me as obvious. And I don't see why one should need a third opinion on the obvious. Kevin Baas^talk 13:44, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Check out Lambda-CDM model for an example of such reporting. ScienceApologist (talk) 14:45, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I am not arguing that there aren't any papers cited that have confidence intervals in them. That would be a ridiculous claim to make and there'd be no point to it. You seem to be arguing that it's policy to reject any paper that doesn't have confidence intervals in them. Now if you can show me a paper that's been rejected on that account, that would be impressive. There might be a few, I don't know - there are a lot of different articles and a lot of different contributors - but it certainly doesn't show that all are - or should be - rejected - which is pretty much the position you're taking. If you can show me where in policy it states that papers that do not have confidence intervals in them should not be cited by wikipedia, that would prove what you are saying, and refute what I am saying. Kevin Baas^talk 21:50, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

When a paper claims to make some accounting of a measurement "beyond the background" but doesn't include a confidence level for the detection, that's a WP:REDFLAG: it's an extraordinary claim from a source that is not good enough to make the claim. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:49, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) WP:REDFLAG, quoted verbatim:

Certain red flags should prompt editors to examine the sources for a given claim:

• surprising or apparently important claims not covered by mainstream sources;
• reports of a statement by someone that seems out of character, embarrassing, controversial, or against an interest they had previously defended;
• claims that are contradicted by the prevailing view within the relevant community, or which would significantly alter mainstream assumptions, especially in science, medicine, history, politics, and biographies of living persons. This is especially true when proponents consider that there is a conspiracy to silence them.

Exceptional claims in Wikipedia require high-quality reliable sources; if such sources are not available, the material should not be included. Also be sure to adhere to other policies, such as the policy for biographies of living persons and the undue weight provision of Wikipedia:Neutral point of view.

please point out the part in the policy, quoted verbatim above, that says measurements "beyond the background" that don't include a confidence level for the detection are red flags. Kevin Baas^talk 17:04, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

You know, I recall you taking precisely the opposite stance as you are taking now, but with the same goal of eliminating the content. I said to you "I haven't seen anything that justifies removing "In addition, the isotopic ratios of the observed elements differ from their natural isotopic ratio or natural abundance." - which is very significant and very important.", suggesting that it is highly unlikely for such isotopic ratios (and esp. for lanthanides) to occur by chance. To which you retorted, and I quote: "The claim that the isotopic ratios differ from natural ratios does not source any attempt to characterize the significance or the confidence level on this claim: in fact the claim itself is suspect due to low-number statistics. You might think it is very significant and very important due to you conflict of interest, Kevin, but there is no outside evaluator who has said as much." Now you are trying to argue that the claim that the isotopic ratios differ from natural ratios is an "Exceptional claim". Whereas before you were arguing that -- far from being extraordinary -- the claim was insignificant and unimportant. Kevin Baas^talk 17:18, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

That's a pretty ignorant comment. I have made my views clear here, but unfortunately, amateurs who aren't very well versed in scientific methodology might not really understand what I'm saying. That seems to be the case here. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:40, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

So if I am to understand what you are saying here,

• My comment is pretty ignorant
• I am an amateur and am not very well versed in scientific methodology (and you ostensibly are, for to be able to make such a judgement)
  • And therefore I am too stupid too understand what you're saying.

Did I get that right, or am not understanding what you're saying? Kevin Baas^talk 19:47, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Analysis and rejection of observational error

This is a subjective point included in the article. Whether the authors were able to analyze the possibility or not is an opinion not a fact. Whether they adequately rejected it is as well. Per WP:NPOV, we exclude this sentence.

So what you're saying is:

• There is no way to objectively assess or test claims of observational error.
• Nonetheless, it is okay to make claims that the phenomena is the result thereof
  • Even if you actually have no idea whether this is true or not, and absolutly no evidence to support your claim
  • And it is important and verifiable enough and all that to put in this article
• But not that it is not
  • Even if you have carefully assessed this possibility hands-on and have evidence to support your claim.
  • And it is neither important enough nor verifiable enough nor whatever to put in this article
• and when someone claims that the phenomena is not the result of observational error, we should put that POV in the article,
• but we should not present the other,balancing POV, that there the phenomena is not the result of observational error
• in accordance w/WP:NPOV.

Forgive me if i'm a little off on the subtleties here, but I'm pretty sure I get the jist of it. Suffice it to say, I don't buy it. Kevin Baas^talk 18:15, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

You are a little more than a "little off" on the subtleties. The point is that the opinions of whether the authors have adequately addressed possible counterarguments are irrelevant to the reporting of their finding. Negative results are not informative beyond the simple claim, "I think I'm right" which I'm pretty sure most readers believe anyway unless they're obsessed with unreliable narrators. You are free not to buy it, but I'm afraid Wikipedia is not a place to report promotionalism: it's the place to report notable, attributable opinions and substantiated facts. ScienceApologist (talk) 20:21, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

That sounds all non-sequitor to me; I don't see how it's related. In any case my point is that saying that the phenomena is due to observational errors is, to use your words precisely, "an opinion not a fact". And that opinion is in the article. I do not object to this - nobody is objecting to it. It is included because it is a major point of view and is relevant to the topic. We are also supposed to, per WP:NPOV, present opposing (significant) opinions, in balance. We are supposed to present all major POV's (attributed and described appropriately), and that is a major POV. Kevin Baas^talk 03:07, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

First of all, the existence of the "phenomena" is not a given, and secondly NPOV does not mean "balance". There is an issue of weight. Unfortunately, when one person makes one claim that is ignored by the rest of the scientific community, it is often the case that this one person's claim gets ignored by Wikipedia. It's not fair, but it's the way NPOV works. ScienceApologist (talk) 03:35, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

The existence of a "phenomena" is a given. A phenomena is "an observable fact or event". And this article is about a fact or event that is, in fact, observable. Recently, in fact, it has been observed en masse by a large audience in a live presentation. As to what the cause of it is, that is debatable. It could be caused by "observational error", but it is nonetheless "observed" and thus "observable".

The old philosopher's notion that "Our senses deceive us." is put to rest whenever one encounters "phenomena". For with "phenomena", it is always our brain that does the deceiving! Our eyes simply report on the light that hits them, and our ears on the vibrations that strike them. Even magic tricks are phenomena -- it is the explanation for these phenomena that is the cause of error. Kevin Baas^talk 14:17, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

NPOV does mean "Balance". read WP:NPOV, specifically the section labeled "balance". This and related policies clearly spell out the way wikipedia works. Kevin Baas^talk 13:31, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Your contention that there is an observable fact or event is nice, but it is your own opinion and, frankly, origina research that you support because you seem committed to the cold fusion cause. Balance does not mean equal tit-for-tat argumentation. In fact, WP:WEIGHT specifically recommends against doing this. You need to take that to heart. ScienceApologist (talk) 14:44, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I am just re-iterating the definition of "phenomena". It is not original research. It is how the word is defined in the english dictionary. And it is how I use the word. So when I use the word "phenomena" I want you to understand that this is what I mean. I have no intention of putting my little explanation of what the word "phenomena" means in the article. That would be ridiculous. If anyone wants to know what it means, they can look it up. I just want you to understand what I mean when I use the word so that we understand each other.

And I don't see how the definition of a word like "phenomena" that has been around for ages has any thing to do with cold fusion, and I certainly have no idea how its meaning could support or refute a position - save of an argument over the interpretation of a sentence that uses the word.

Now if I wanted to I could make accusations that you are hell-bent on eradicating any thing that makes cold fusion seem like anything more than an embarrassment -- but I haven't because I don't think going around accusing people of trying to advance a position is really constructive. And I don't appreciate it when it's done to me.

Now i am quite familiar with wp:weight and if you take a look at my user page you'll see that i've written an essay condemning the "tit-for-tat" interpretation of "balance". what i am saying is that the content represents a significant viewpoint on the subject and as such is appropriate. Kevin Baas^talk 21:34, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Rule #1423: Anyone who references a dictionary in their argument at Wikipedia is generally not doing too well. I didn't criticize your use of the word "phenomena", I criticized your claim that there is a phenomenon we are actually documenting (with apologies to pluralistic interpretations of Immanuel Kant). It's constructive to let people know when their obvious bias is hampering their ability to be good encyclopedia editors. I'm just letting you know. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:53, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Sometimes I think you're just trying to irritate me. If people do not apply the same (or reasonably similiar) meanings to the words that they use, then they won't be able to communicate with each other effectively. (And assuming your rules are numbered contiguously starting at one, I would say you have a few too many of them.) Definitions of words usually become a topic when two or more people don't have a shared interpretation of a word, and one of those people attempts to bridge that gap so that the two can communicate better. Usually this is helpful and appreciated. (And incidentally, that's exactly what a dictionary is for.)

phenomenon

plural phenomena

1 an observable fact or event

2

a: an object or aspect known through the senses rather than by thought or intuition

b: a temporal or spatiotemporal object of sensory experience as distinguished from a noumenon

c: a fact or event of scientific interest susceptible to scientific description and explanation

3

a: a rare or significant fact or event

b: an exceptional, unusual, or abnormal person, thing, or occurrence

I have here attempted to dissolve communication problems between us. Twice, arguably thrice. Quite clearly and obviously. And in return you insult me. You are not only talking about my character instead of the content of the article, you are patronizing me and insulting me. And I don't appreciate it. Kevin Baas^talk 16:18, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Might I politely suggest you take a wikibreak? You seem to be suffering here and I can't help you with your search for knowledge. You might want to take some physics classes in your time off. Just a friendly suggestion. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:39, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I am suffering from you patronizing and insulting me after I repeatedly asked you politely to stop. That is the only thing I am suffering from. And that is the only problem I am having here on this page. Kevin Baas^talk 19:19, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Kevin, I sympathise with you. Be strong. Don't become intimitated. Pcarbonn (talk) 19:25, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't think Kevin belongs on this page. ScienceApologist (talk) 22:10, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Gross incivility. Reporting this to WP:ANI. Itsmejudith (talk) 22:23, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

There is no reason for people who don't understand basic concepts to be commenting on the ideas. It's actually fairly uncivil to those who do understand the concepts to promote ignorance. ScienceApologist (talk) 23:26, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Warning to editors: do NOT use cold fusion conference proceedings

Please do not use conference proceedings as sources -- especially not conference proceedings from LENR-CANR or cold fusion conferences. Conference proceedings are very rarely subject to any kind of editorial scrutinty nor peer review. There is no way to verify what the authors who present at scientific conferences are saying beyond the point that they said it. I have removed one reference to a conference proceeding already and will be looking through the article for more.

Thanks.

ScienceApologist (talk) 17:19, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, minus the "warning" and the SHOUTING. Itsmejudith (talk) 23:27, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

No problem with that. Feel free to remove any if more are found. seicer | talk | contribs 00:23, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

California

Do we need a source to say it's on the West Coast? (per Kevin, above) Yes, actually. Luckily, we can find books that tell us a whole load more (the population, economics, history....), that also mention its location. So also here, source for everything please. Itsmejudith (talk) 23:31, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Kevin may be referencing an actual problem that I discussed a while back in WT:NOR and the general consensus was that the issue was something of common sense: that is, if editors agree that something is obvious, it is obvious. To that end, I admit that there are some reasonable "extrapolations" that can be made from reliable sources which do not violate WP:SYNTH. Let's imagine that literally no text says that California is on the West Coast of the United States. We can still make the claim simply by referencing a map of the United States that indicates the West Coast and indicates California. Though the sentence, "California is on the West Coast" does not appear, this extrapolation can be verified by all but the most problematically illiterate. In some sense, this is a "synthesis" just as any paraphrase or any other synonymous point that isn't exactly the same as what the source says is a "synthesis". It's simply an allowed synthesis. Of course, this line-of-reasoning can be taken too far and abused. We cannot say simply because a source has said a particular fact is true that this fact is necessarily true or that all the reasonable facts that can be extrapolated from it are necessarily true. This is especially the case if it has been flagged as possibly biased. No, it is our job to substantiate this fact with impeccable sources (and extrapolations if editorially necessary) that are wholly uncontroversial. ScienceApologist (talk) 00:39, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

In my example above what i meant was that if we have a source saying that california is on the west coast, we don't choose not to put that in the article on account that we haven't all walked over to the west coast and seen it for ourselves. We take the source's word for it. I'm not saying we have blind faith in everything - we use WP:RELIABLE and all that other stuff, and a little common sense. What I meant to say is that we don't arbitrate what's fact or fiction. We just report on the major beliefs and opinions. As verified by their sources. Kevin Baas^talk 03:40, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

There is a difference between a substantiated fact and an attributed opinion. This is a distinction we are empowered to utilize. ScienceApologist (talk) 03:43, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

When faced with the question of whether you should cite common knowledge, such as California is on the West Cost, consider how Wikipedia defines a "fact" as "a piece of information about which there is no serious dispute." The sky is blue except when the sky is anything but blue. You don't need to cite something not seriously in dispute, such as the location of California. However, if it is seriously disputed, you should have the citations ready. California, Ohio is not on the West Coast.

The actual question above was whether we should say there were three independent studies if cold fusion researchers say that there were three independent studies. That's a question of the reliability of the researchers to say "independent", which is something in dispute. To that, you simply resolve the dispute. Did the researchers list the studies? Do they seem reasonably independent? Can we simply say "three studies" instead of "three independent studies"? In other words, do we have to take their word for it? ScienceApologist is right. Instead of attributing a potentially biased statement, we can instead substantiate. Instead of saying "X says there were three independent studies", we can list those studies as "X says there were three studies. Study one was conducted at such and such by so and so. Study two was conducted at such and such..." --Nealparr ^{(talk to me)} 04:58, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I lean towards presenting it as attributed opinion as it's a balancing rebuttle to skeptics. I would think that assessing the studies individually for "independence" would border on WP:OR. Kevin Baas^talk 13:57, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

You seem to think that "balance" is somehow what we're aiming for. We aren't. We're aiming for proper WP:WEIGHT. ScienceApologist (talk) 14:42, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

We are calling the same thing two different things. "NPOV says that the article should fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by a reliable source, and should do so in proportion to the prominence of each." Kevin Baas^talk 21:14, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

WP:OR is making things up that are not sourced. Evaluating the reliability of sources that do exist is not OR. It's just WP:RS. I don't know if the source is reliable or not. Just explaining the difference. --Nealparr ^{(talk to me)} 16:09, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not publish original research or original thought. This includes unpublished facts, arguments, speculation, and ideas; and any unpublished analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position. -- WP:OR Kevin Baas^talk 21:09, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't publish original analysis or synthesis. It also doesn't publish unreliable information. Are you suggesting that any evaluation of the reliability of sources is original research? If so, how does that translate to publishing original research? Geeze. If an editor can't determine the reliability of sources, most of Wikipedia's sourcing policies are moot. --Nealparr ^{(talk to me)} 00:04, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

No. That's not what we're talking about (as I understand it). We're talking about evaluating sources within sources. A double indirection or recursion if you will. I'm suggesting that evaluation of the reliability of the sources used in a source that in itself meets the criteria for inclusion is original research - it's the research that the author of the source did, except now we're doing it, which makes it our research, which makes it original research. Kevin Baas^talk 00:55, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

You're going to have to give examples of what you're talking about, because I'm not sure we're on the same page or talking about the same things. Original research is all about not publishing things that aren't in sources. I don't think excluding things because they're not reliable (opposite of publishing), has anything to do with Wikipedia's original research policies. --Nealparr ^{(talk to me)} 02:36, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Example of what I'm talking about: In a section above titled "three independent studies", ScienceApologist wrote: "It would be better to look at the studies individually and decide if they are editorially fit for us to cite. If we wouldn't cite them, we shouldn't cite someone else who is citing them." Kevin Baas^talk 14:21, 21 July 2008 (UTC) ScienceApologist (talk) 20:18, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

My point is that although the sources we cite must meet certain standards depending on the context and how those sources are used in the article, the authors of those sources are free to cite whoever they like. Just as if a paper is published in a peer-reviewed journal, and some editor here has a problem with some of the peers that reviewed it (whether that problem is that they weren't one of the peers or that the peers didn't use wikipedia policies to evaluate the material, or what-have-you), that doesn't give us license to throw it out -- it was still published in a peer-reviewed journal. Kevin Baas^talk 14:43, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Although we have to use wikipedia policies to evaluate the article that we write and the reliability of the sources we use, the authors who write those sources do not. And as we are not peers, we do not -- can not -- peer-review their work. Kevin Baas^talk 15:04, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

...Though it has come to my attention that some of us here actually are peers. :-) Kevin Baas^talk 15:39, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Intro to "evidence for cold fusion"

The introduction to the "Summary for evidence for cold fusion" has these three sentences-

"No experiment has unequivocally produced a particle emission spectrum matching that predicted by observations in nuclear science and high-energy physics. There is still no satisfactory theory explaining condensed matter nuclear science but many explanations have been proposed, several of which do not require new physics. As of 2007, the scientific community did not acknowledge this field as a genuine scientific research theme.[8]"

All three sentences should be removed, first of all because they are not "evidence" for cold fusion. However, they wouldn't help the paper even if inserted elsewhere.

The first implies that particle emission spectrums have been produced in cold fusion experiments that are somewhat close to matching conventional nuclear science, which I do not believe is true.

The second has no supporting reference; also, the phrase "new physics" is so vague it is meaningless.

The third has the phrase "genuine scientific research theme" which is so vague it is meaningless; also it is redundant considering the labels of "pathological" and "fringe" elsewhere in the article.

Does anyone think these sentences should be kept in the article? If so, why? 209.253.120.158 (talk) 21:57, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes. As to any sentence not being evidence of c.f., that is perfectly fine. It would be very one-sided if every single sentence was evidence and no single sentence was lack of evidence or evidence against. The point of the section is to discuss c.f. matters related to/pertaining to evidence, not to be a collection of evidence. As I'm sure one can see by everything else in the section. the first sentence "No experiment has unequivocally produced a particle emission spectrum matching that predicted by..." points out a lack of evidence. although i agree that one really shouldn't expect a thermo-nuclear particle emission spectrum for what is clearly not a thermo-nuclear process. (That's kinda like shining green light on something and seeing that it reflects green, then shining blue light on it and being surprised that it doesn't reflect green.) Still, it's significant.

"There is still no satisfactory theory explaining condensed matter nuclear science..." obviously quite significant, and undoubtedly true. Also material to "evidence" because for one to have evidence that supports a theory, one needs the theory. "...but many explanations have been proposed" quite true and significant. "...several of which do not require new physics". "new physics" is not vague and meaningless. it's meaning is quite definite and obvious. let me give you a few examples: Newton's law of gravity was at it's time "new physics", so was quantum physics, so was einstien's general and special theories of relativity. "new physics" means essentially a new mathematical equation describing the laws of physics. when the standard model of the atom changed, that was new physics. when a new particle is discovered which doesn't fit with the current model, that's new physics (or rather the resulting revised model is). when the different electron shells of an atom were discovered, that was new physics. piezo-electric, mangetostriction, antimatter, the Josephson effect... all new physics in their time. if it's physics and it's new, its new physics.

The phrase "genuine scientific research theme" was taken directly from the the cited source and does not mean the same thing as "pathological" or "fringe". It is essential to express the mainstream view of scientist in a verifiable manner. If anything is missing in this article, it's the sense of the mainstream perception of c.f. and this is coming from someone who has been called an advocate of c.f. by another editor.

So every sentence has a reason for being there and gives the reader important, significant, meaningful, relevant, and accurate information. Kevin Baas^talk 14:41, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Though some of the sentences might fit better in another section. "There is still no satisfactory theory explaining condensed matter nuclear science but many explanations have been proposed, several of which do not require new physics." might fit better in a section on theory. "As of 2007, the scientific community did not acknowledge this field as a genuine scientific research theme.[8]" might fit better in a section on research and/or the (american) scientific community. and "No experiment has unequivocally produced a particle emission spectrum matching that predicted by observations in nuclear science and high-energy physics." might fit better in a section on nuclear products, criticisms, or comparisions with conventional thermo-nuclear physics/experiments. Kevin Baas^talk 14:57, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Lists of researchers and publications

In the "Further developments (1989-2004)" section there is a list of publications and a list of researchers who have reported excess heat. All of the publications and researchers are missing links to supporting documents, which should not be allowed to continue. However, even if links were present, these lists should be removed because they don't contribute to the article. The evidence for and against cold fusion should be presented in the evidence sections, while the history sections should give quick overviews of the field's developments. Also, this presentation appears to be advocating the pro-CF side because it includes only pro-CF lists, which is not appropriate since this section should be a "news" section. Does anybody disagree? If so, why?

Also, can anyone point to supporting documents for the "1000 papers in peer-reviewed journals" claim or the Ed Storms "21 papers and articles" claim? If not, they should be removed also. 209.253.120.158 (talk) 22:24, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Well I believe these are included in there because they are big names. The fact that any one of these scientists has done research in the field is notable in itself. One might ask: well who has really done research in the field? And at that we'd want to list the big names. Whether their research and experiments end up supporting the idea that there is an unexplained phenomena here (and hopeful help to explain it, in that case), or that it is merely observational error, is (hopefully; in an unbiased experiment) determined by nature, and not the scientists themselves. And nature, as we know, is indifferent to the whims of man's belief. So it's not really pro-CF or anti-CF to say that some well-known and respected scientists happened to be curious and investigated it. It is, however, notable. And material to the history. Kevin Baas^talk 15:15, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

I tend to agree with 209 on this one. It's looking a bit like someone is trying to give a snowjob list to make it appear like there's a huge group of people supporting cold fusion rather than a pathologically committed minority of fringe and pseudo-scientists. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:55, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't think Giuliano Preparata -- to name but one example -- , who made fundamental contributions to the construction of the Standard Model and advanced our understanding of interacting quantum fields, among other things, would appreciate being called "a pathologically committed minority of fringe and pseudo-scientists", but I must say, you do seem to have a knack for insulting people that you know nothing about. Kevin Baas^talk 17:47, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

That's a personal attack on me, Kevin. Keep it up and I'll report you. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:37, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

If it's a personal attack to tell someone that they are making personal attacks, well then you just personally attacked me. You clearly insulted people who you clearly did not know. I just pointed it out. Maybe you consider that a virtue, I don't know. But it's what you did and I just pointed it that out and now you're getting salty at me like it was my fault. I just think you should really be more careful and do more research before you going around calling people names. That's all I'm saying. I don't think I'm being unreasonable.

Now things like "Keep it up and I'll report you. " are not the right way to handle things. If you're offended by something someone says, say what specifically offends you and why and why you think it's unfair. But if it's something fair like "You know, maybe you shouldn't call einstien a flake. I'm really not sure you have the credentials to back that up.", and you did call einstien a flake, than maybe you should take what was said into consideration rather than just being offended by it and attacking whoever said it. On the other hand, if someone really did say something that was directed at you and not your actions, and was just plain mean, and you've asked them to stop a few times and they just keep going, then you should report it. but don't say things like "Keep it up and I'll report you." to people who you're supposed to be treating as equals. Kevin Baas^talk 19:34, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Giuliano Preparata has been dead since 2000. Your claim that SA's comment was an insult of him is absurd. SA clearly did not insult Giuliano Preparata, as Preparata is clearly not a member of the set of "people supporting cold fusion." You are being unreasonable. --Noren (talk) 00:30, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Preparata WAS a prominent member of "people supporting cold fusion" (see what Miley said). Does this invalidate all your logic ? Pcarbonn (talk) 06:20, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Your statement has nothing to do with my logic. SA's statement made was in the present tense describing the current set of proponents. A strawman who had made a more sweeping statement about historical CF supporters might find historical figures such as Preparata relevant. --Noren (talk) 14:08, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

If the issue is about current proponents, would you say that Brian Josephson is part of a pathologically committed minority of fringe and pseudo-scientists ? Or Yoshiaki Arata ? Or Dr. M. R. Srinivasan, former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission of India ? Please provide a source for any of such opinion. Pcarbonn (talk) 14:14, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't matter because the issue is not about current proponents. The issue is about the list of researchers in the "Further developments (1989-2004)". Of which guiliania is a member.

So no, I am not being unreasonable. And even if the example i used was inappropriate, the point that i was making with the example would still be perfectly reasonable. You don't just go around calling people names like that. Esp. people who have probably accomplished way more than you. Which is going to happen if you don't know anything about the people you're insulting. Does any of that sound unreasonable? It sounds pretty simple to me. Kevin Baas^talk 17:49, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Unreliable source

Cold fusion proponents are giving this website as a source for the claim that over 1000 peer-reviewed papers have been written on cold fusion. A brief search through that archive finds hundreds of papers published as conference proceedings transactions and thus are not peer reviewed. This is an obvious WP:REDFLAG. Please advise. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:36, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

The author of that list say that it contains only papers. Furthermore, I could not find any conference proceedings in it. Could you elaborate ? Thanks. Pcarbonn (talk) 18:49, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

For example:

Botta E, Calvo D; Conference Proceedings, Common Problems and Trends of Modern Physics, Folgaria, Italy, 1992, 331--340 "Results of cold fusion experiments on Ti/D22 and Pd/D2 systems with gas loading"

• • Experimental, Ti, Pd, gas loading, neutrons, res+

An improved neutron detector was designed, and some statistically significant neutrons observed, especially for the Ti case, but not as much at Pd.

ScienceApologist (talk) 18:53, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

That's only one, not hundreds. Probably has slipped in somehow. Pcarbonn (talk) 18:56, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

If you want to do your own count, be my guest. I sampled 10 random articles and found three problems... one that was a conference proceeding and two that were from journals with lax peer-review standards. My extrapolation, obviously. I don't have time to read through all of them. Do you? ScienceApologist (talk) 19:06, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

You found only one problem out of 1385 articles. The 2 "lax peer-review standards" is your opinion, and does not disprove the "1000 peer-reviewed papers" statement. Pcarbonn (talk) 19:14, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

You know, that page says "Journal papers" and mentions nothing about "peer-reviewed journals".... where does the "peer-reviewed" claim comes from?

And if search for "Gieryn", you will find that his entry consists on two books. I see that his books have been cited and reviewed on journals, but they are not a journal paper themselves.

I can also 265 entries whose journal is labelled "Fusion Technol.", which probably refers to "Fusion Science and Technology", which doesn't appear to peer-reviewed [11], as it only says "Technical Papers and Notes and Critical Reviews are reviewed for technical content", but it doesn't say who reviews it (I assume it's reviewed by the editors or by members of the society editing the journal? There is no link to apply for being a reviewer) --Enric Naval (talk) 21:39, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

There's a lot of problems. Japanese Academy Transactions is listed too which is mainly conference proceedings for Japanese science conferences. This list is looking worse and worse. Perhaps we should remove it? ScienceApologist (talk) 22:07, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

The Hagelstein et al. 2004 includes some references to "Proc. Japan Acad.", wich is "Proceedings of the Japan Academy" [12] (search for latticequake on the list to find this reference). and, yeah, I picked this one because I find "latticequake" funny. --Enric Naval (talk) 02:28, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) Dunno, how about this? Removing "peer-reviewed" and adding "conference proceedings" and maybe "books". But now the sentence does not make clear the difference between the 3,000 figure and the 1,000 figure :( Anyways, where the heck does the original 1,000 peer-reviewed claim come from on the first place? Is it a quote from somewhere or some editor just counted the studies on a list and added it??? --Enric Naval (talk) 01:36, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree that the site owner does not say explicitly "peer-reviewed journals", but he explicitly says that proceedings are excluded from it here (second bullet points). I could not find any "Japanese Academy Transactions" in Britz' list: please clarify. The count of article is at the top of {http://www.chem.au.dk/~db/fusion/Papers this page], so no need to count them. Your inference from "Fusion Science and Technology" is original research, and likely wrong: nothing says that these are the same journal. The 3,000 count includes proceedings, not the 1,000 count. Pcarbonn (talk) 06:10, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

"Fusion Technol." It's trivial to check that "Fusion Technol." and "Fusion Science and Technology" are the same journal. Just search Britz's list for the first instance of "Fusion Technol." and you'll see an article called Heat and Helium Production During Exothermic Reactions Between Gases Through Palladium Geometrical Elements Loaded with Hydrogen. Search for it on scholar.google.com [13], and the very first hit is this entry on Energy Citations Database [14]. It has the exact same title, author, issue, volume and page numbers as the entry on Britz's list. The journal name is listed as "Fusion Science and Technology" and it lists American Nuclear Society (ANS) as the owner of copyright, with the link I cited naming that society as the publisher [15]. On my first comment I used the same method, but with a different paper whose title I no longer remember. This is not inference, this is fact-checking that they are clearly the same and one journal.

"Proc. Japan Acad." As for "Japanese Academy Transactions", I'm sure that SA refers to "Proc. Japan Acad.". On another comment above where I talk about the "Hagelstein et al. 2004" source, I show how the "latticequake" paper is actually a proceeding and it's listed as a proceeding [16]. That proceeding is also listed at Britz's list despite being a proceeding and not a paper. You can check the journal itself, looking at the "Japanese Academy for the series B" proceedings [17]. If you click on the first link for the content of the proceedings, you are sent to "Archive Issues", where you can search for the "Vol. 71 (1995)" header and click on "No. 3 (p.93-)", and you can see the "latticequake" paper as the second entry on the list. Again, the same title, author, volume, issue and page numbers as the entry labelled "Proc. Japan Acad." on the Britz's list, so they are clearly the same and one journal.... unless, of course, you can prove that there is a journal that has that same paper on the same volume, issue and pages,...... and whose name can be contracted to "Proc. Japan Acad.", too,..... and explain the statistical chance of two journals with similar names publishing the same paper with the same volume, issue and page numbers........

Sooooo, I think that Britz's list is an unreliable source for counting journal papers, as we have been able to check that it does list proceedings and at least one book on a list title "journal papers". It's true that his "general info" page says that no proceedings are listed, but we have proved how that statement is unreliable by pointing at 7 entries that have the name of a proceedings publication, and shown how one of them is clearly a proceeding, including a link to the archived issue on the original journal. So we shouldn't take the "1385 journal papers" at face value as it comes from an source shown to unreliable. (maybe it's using a more loose definition of "journal paper" than we are using here? Is he considering a proceedings publication to be a journal?) --Enric Naval (talk) 21:28, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I am the author of that bibliography, and have a few comments. As Pierre has pointed out, there are now 1385 entries in the main biblio. I try, as much as possible, to include only papers from journals. I don't know how well these papers are refereed, but I assume that regular journals, i.e. those that publish papers on a variety of subjects, all use referees to some degree. Clearly, some reviews are more lax that others. This is inevitable. Even within a high-profile journal, e.g. one that I publish in, J. Electroanal. Chem., there will appear papers where one thinks, how did this get past the referees? I wondered about this with all those Matsumoto papers in Fusion Technol. (later to become Fusion Sci. Technol.) and a lot of Russian papers. But if I choose on the basis of whether I am convinced by a paper or not, then I may as well not be doing this. OK, so there are seven entries from the Proc. Jap. Acad.; I looked up this journal and it seems to me to be just that, a journal, accepting submissions from anyone, which I assume get refereed. Anyone can google this journal. The name "Proceedings" does not imply that the papers are reprints of talks given at conferences; there are other examples of journals with "Proceedings" in the name, sometimes for historical reasons. There is supposed to be a book in the biblio; I can only assume that this must be a chapter in a bigger volume. These are also scientific papers, and get reviewed. I have a separate file for books on cold fusion, and have certainly not put any books into the main biblio, as such. How reliable is my biblio? I agree that I cannot guarantee that every single entry is a paper in a strictly refereed journal, but I do my best to exclude news sheets and what I now call enthusiast journals, such as Infinite Energy etc. Sometimes the choice is not easy, and I have probably erred on both sides of the divide. Enthusiasts accuse me of being too restrictive; it is interesting that I am now being accused of not being restrictive enough. I take this as indicating that I have about the right balance. I don't believe anyone can come up with a precise count of cold fusion papers in properly refereed journals; there will always be a gray area where you must decide. But I do believe that whatever that count might be, it is close to mine, 1385 (so far). By the way, I have not read the actual Wikipedia entry for "cold fusion". I don't wish to get into a discussion on this. Feelings run high, and I have had enough of violent arguments with enthusiasts. They now even violently argue with each other. Dieter Britz 130.225.22.254 (talk) 08:13, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you Dr. Britz. Here is the URL for Proc Japan Acad.

Please note that the article says :"Proponents estimate [there are] 1,000 journal papers and books". It does not say "There are 1,000 journals". I would think that this is properly supported by the sources we provided. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:21, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the reasoned and calm answer, Dr. Britz. I can accept that a journal can have "Proceedings" on the name due to historical reasons. I see that the japanese journal was started on 1912 to publish procedings and that it has changed its focus since then. My bad for not realizing that.

looking again at the "Gieryn TF" entry, I see that the first title "The Social Dimensions of Science" is a book, but the second title "The ballad of Pons and Fleischmann: Experiment and narrative in the

(un)making of cold fusion" gets called a paper in at least one source on google scholar [18] (page xviii), altough I'll be damned if I know if it has ever been published on a journal, and on which one. Journal papers and books is ok for me, since it seems that there are really no proceedings. --Enric Naval (talk) 09:38, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

and that most of the research groups have occasionally seen 50-200% excess heat for hours to days.

There are a number of problems with this:

1. "Most occassionally for hours to days have seen" as any parameter observer will tell you, if most of a minority (in this case a third) of people occasionally see something, it's not exactly a strong detection.
2. 50-200% what about other numbers? Higher? Lower? Why is this range chosen? If a different range is chosen, is the higher affected? What about 0-50%? This is an editorial comment: not a measurement to take solace from.
3. "for hours to days" --> which is it and how much fluctuation occurs? Is it always at 50% and then spikes to 200%? Is it at a weighted average of 50% because it is normally at 0% and then spikes briefly over this period for 10000%? What's the integration time? How is the calibration of the calorimeter achieved?

Note that WP:REDFLAG is explicit that if there are problems with the source we should be careful in how we use it. This is not a careful use of this source.=

ScienceApologist (talk) 19:12, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

This statement is sourced from a peer-reviewed journal. Your opinion on it is just that, an opinion. We are not here to pick the sentences that we like from an article, and reject the ones we don't like. Either the source is reliable, or it isn't: we don't have to judge the truth of every sentence, only to report the notable ones. The quoted statement is notable, being the second in the abstract. Pcarbonn (talk) 19:18, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Poorly vetted statements that propose remarkable advances can be excluded per WP:REDFLAG. That's what we're doing here. Don't worry, if it is truly an amazing point I'm sure you can find another source for the claim that isn't so equivocal. ScienceApologist (talk) 22:03, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

WP:REDFLAG says : "Exceptional claims in Wikipedia require high-quality reliable sources". The statement here is "the reviewer says that...". This is not an exceptional claim, and it is provided by a reliable source. WP:Redflag would support the rejection of the more direct statement "most of the research groups have occasionally seen 50-200% excess heat for hours to days", but that's not what we are saying.

Please remember what the ArbComm unanimously said about WP:NPOV : "Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, a fundamental policy, requires fair representation of significant alternatives to scientific orthodoxy. Significant alternatives, in this case, refers to legitimate scientific disagreement, as opposed to pseudoscience." This would be incompatible with your understanding of WP:REDFLAG, because one could defend the view that any statement by the proponents deserve a red flag.

Also, the 2004 DOE panel had a fair share of reviewers that found the evidence of excess heat convincing : so, the claim here is not an exceptional claim, only a controversial one. Pcarbonn (talk) 05:54, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I have now replaced "seen 50-200%" by "reported 50-200%". Pcarbonn (talk) 08:01, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Physical Review C article

Here are the arguments to include Physical Review C in the list of journals that have published papers in cold fusion:

• cold fusion = Low energy nuclear reactions. The article concludes : "the fusion of two nuclei at very low energies are not only of central importance for stellar energy production and nucleosynthesis, but also provide new insights into reaction dynamics and nuclear structure."
• its author has published many papers on cold fusion
• he has presented resonant tunneling at the cold fusion session of the APS 2007

Pcarbonn (talk) 21:14, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

This article should not be listed by wikipedia as supporting cold fusion.

-"Cold fusion" is not the same as "low energy nuclear reactions." According to wikipedia, cold fusion reactions are reported to occur at "ordinary temperatures and pressures." The article doesn't state anything about the temperatures and pressures relevant for their calculations.

-In other words, the article does not mention cold fusion at all. Keep in mind that the authors could easily have indicated that their calculations were relevant to cold fusion experiments, but chose not to.

-The abstract and the first paragraph indicate that the calculation is about deuterium-tritium interactions, not deuterium-deuterium interactions.

-Considering the immense difference between "cold fusion" energies and "stellar energy production and nucleosynthesis" energies, the phrase "very low energies" does not necessarily indicate that the authors are discussing cold fusion reactions at all.

-Whether the authors have presented other papers on cold fusion is totally irrelevant to whether this paper merits mention in this wikipedia article.

-Since this article is copyrighted by Physical Review C, a journal which does not post its articles for free, it may not be appropriate to link to newenergytimes.com in a way that points directly to an improperly posted article. I am not sure of wikipedia policy, but it doesn't seem right. Perhaps someone (Pierre?) should contact newenergytimes.com and suggest that they replace that link with "http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PRC/v61/i2/e024610" and replace other links where appropriate.

From "Wikipedia:Copyrights": "Knowingly and intentionally directing others to a site that violates copyright has been considered a form of contributory infringement in the United States (Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry [1]). Linking to a page that illegally distributes someone else's work sheds a bad light on Wikipedia and its editors." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.253.120.158 (talk) 21:42, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Here is what New Energy Times say at the top of the page: "In accordance with Title 17, Section 107, of the U.S. Code, (Fair Use) this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. New Energy Times has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of these papers; nor is New Energy Times endorsed or sponsored by the originator."

Maybe we need to check with a copyright specialist. Any idea of how we could do that ?

You have not addressed my argument that selective resonant tunneling has been presented to a cold fusion session at APS meeting. Any thoughts ? Pcarbonn (talk) 05:44, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

What the heck is "selective resonant tunneling" and why would it be relevant to whether this article is mentioned in the cold fusion article? If it existed, whether it was presented to a non-peer-reviewed forum like an APS meeting is ridiculously irrelevant. Pierre, are you kidding???

Regarding the copyright issue, can you send a message about that? 209.253.120.158 (talk) 06:49, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

"Selective resonant tunneling" is the subject of the Physical Review C article. Pcarbonn (talk) 07:07, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

On closer look of the article, I see that it deals with energies in the KeV. I agree that it is not directly relevant to cold fusion.

Feel free to contact the editors of New Energy Times if you believe they infringe copyright. Pcarbonn (talk) 07:13, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Administrator's Noticeboard discussion over JzG's revert to 2004 version

I took this page off my watchlist since it looked like people were working constructively, but recently came back when I saw JzG's rant on AN. JzG appears to have blanked this page, cutting it from the 64k 2008 version to 24k 2004 version, with no consensus or discussion that I can see. He should read through the article carefully and attempt to zero in on things he finds questionable, not revert back 4 years. I suggested that the people working on this article look for recent reviews which have negative results. I'm surprised that there don't seem to be any; is that from a lack of research? Given my past knowledge of how these things work, I would not be surprised if it was. I also suggested moving things around: for example, in the reproducibility section, the DOE panel's conclusion should go before the researchers' claim. I think it might also be better to put the History section below the Evidence and Criticism sections. II | (t - c) 11:50, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

• For values of constructive whihc equates to all the pro-mainstream people having gone, yes. I noticed that too. The 2004 versionw as featured, this version is the subject of a self-congratulatory article by Pcarbonn saying how successful he has been in getting Wikipedia to lead the way in rehabilitating the reputation of this field. It is wrong on so many levels that if I even have to start explaining it to you, you will never understand. Guy (Help!) 13:46, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

You are mistaken: the July 2008 version is the result of many contributors and reviewers, not just me. Pcarbonn (talk) 13:52, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah, but you have declared that you were the one who won the battle for cold fusion!--Noren (talk) 01:26, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

No, he said "with the help of many others..." and his link was to the mediation process. what i think he meant to say is that not a lot of progress was being made on the article for a long time, and the article was pretty bad at that time and there were some obvious improvements that weren't getting made (but not for lack of trying). and ppl weren't accepting mediation for whatever reason so everything was just in a sorry state of affairs. then suddenly everyone accepted mediation and things got done a lot faster and more smoothly -- it's like the disagreement and chaos disappeared -- and mediation finished with a much-improved article -- one that we all agree is much improved. so the battle -- and it was very much a battle before mediation began -- to bring this article up to standard had been won. Pcarbonn played a large roll in this and i think he deserved credit.

In any case, I don't see what that has to do with the validity of the statement "the July 2008 version is the result of many contributors and reviewers, not just me." That truth of that statement pretty much goes without saying. JzG could have leveled the same criticism at me and I'd come back with the same rebuttle and it would be just as valid.

And more importantly: we should be talking about the content, not contributors. (Except when it comes to policy violations or outright obstructive behavior like edit warring, ofcourse.) Kevin Baas^talk 03:25, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

That single out-of context-statement is going to haunt poor Pcarbonn for the rest of his life, I see :P How about we stop trying to read his mind to see what he exactly meant? There's that AGF bussiness and all.... --Enric Naval (talk) 04:29, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Don't worry, that statement won't haunt me. I'll stand by it anytime. The recent episode by Guy is the perfect illustration of what I meant. And it's not the first time he did it. The last time he reverted to the FA version, it started a dispute that resulted in the opening of the mediation process. Pcarbonn (talk) 07:15, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Lead

"two peer-reviewed literature reviews" is WP:UNDUE big time. On the one hand, paper sin Nature and one of the most heated scientific controversies in my lifetime. On the other, two literature reviews in low-impact journals by interested parties. This is a perfect example of the way this article has been biased by Pcarbonn to reflect the pro-LENR POV, as documented in his self-congratulatory article in New Energy Times. I tis time for all the NET POV-pushers, especially Pcarbonn, to be topic-banned. Guy (Help!) 13:45, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

The article in Nature was published almost 20 years ago. Since then, the researchers have progressed, as acknowledged by the 2004 DOE panel and the reviews published in peer reviewed journals. Please provide recent and reliable sources for your opinion on cold fusion's due weight. Pcarbonn (talk) 13:55, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

From WP:UNDUE : "Keep in mind that in determining proper weight we consider a viewpoint's prevalence in reliable sources, not its prevalence among Wikipedia editors." For scientific topics, reliable sources are peer-reviewed scientific papers. Pcarbonn (talk) 14:00, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Finally, here is what the ArbComm unanimously said about significant alternative to scientific orthodoxies : "Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, a fundamental policy, requires fair representation of significant alternatives to scientific orthodoxy. Significant alternatives, in this case, refers to legitimate scientific disagreement, as opposed to pseudoscience." Pcarbonn (talk) 14:08, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Here is what Nature India said in 2008 : "Cold fusion hot again". And Katharine Sanderson, journalist at Nature, on her blog in 2007: "As Frank Gordon, one of the cold fusion scientists said to me, 'this actually looks like real science' - and he's right. " And you say that there is no scientific controversy ? I would think that you need a pretty good source for that. Pcarbonn (talk) 14:33, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

I agree with JzG that putting those articles in the lead is not appropriate. But the lead should convey that things have changed since Fleischmann and Pons. And the scientific community is paying some attention, as evidenced by the 2007 American Chemical Society (ACS) conference on the topic[19], a similar APS conference, and the ACS's upcoming (or already published?) book on the subject.[20] Here is a 2008 publication from Nature Publishing Group (India division). One of these more accessible articles would be better than mentioning two very low impact journals. We shouldn't imply that matters are settled, but we should note that attention has picked up just in the past few years. II | (t - c) 14:41, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

That would be fine with me. Pcarbonn (talk) 14:52, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Please note that I was not the one to introduce these reviews in the lead. [21] Pcarbonn (talk) 15:27, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

on wikipedia guidelines

You may find this discussion interesting. I would suggest that someone has a closer look at the fringe guidelines : by pretending to represent the "mainstream view", these guidelines may be abusing the WP:verifiability and/or WP:Reliable policies. I would suggest to restate the parity of source principle to work both ways : if a theory is published in a scientific journal, it may be considered as fringe science, but not as pseudoscience until a superior source does say it is pseudoscience. By superior source, I mean another scientific journal or an official statement from a scientific body, but not an editorial elaborating on what most scientists think. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:54, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

For your information, HatlessAtless has started working on it. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:10, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Primary sources vs. review documents

The current version has many links to review documents (including review articles and the 2004 DOE documents), especially in the "Evidence for cold fusion" section. As an encyclopedia, wikipedia should point to the original sources when feasible, so readers can more easily evaluate the data for themselves. Perhaps we should change the article to reflect that, while keeping the links to notable and reliable review documents of course. In other words, instead of saying that "many groups" have seen something, the article should say that "john smith" has seen something. I haven't gone through all the documents, so I am not sure how it would look in the end. Does anyone have an opinion on this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.253.120.158 (talk) 23:35, 27 July 2008 (UTC)

That would be using scientific studies which are primary sources, while reviews are secondary sources. Please see Wikipedia:No_original_research#Primary.2C_secondary.2C_and_tertiary_sources for recommendations on what types of sources to use, and how to use primary sources.

You could use primary sources to show what a secondary source is asserting about those primary sources, for example. --Enric Naval (talk) 00:59, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

Please explain why we cant just look for some helium

Would someone please precede all the details on measurement and explanations of heat produced with a simple explananation as to why we can't just look for helium as a by-product. If you put in deuterium, and get out helium... its cold fusion. Surely it is as simple as that? Please do not say that its difficult to find the helium, I'm sure you could melt down the metal from the apparatus after an experiment and use some sort of spectroscopy to find the helium. Or if that isn't sensitive enough, there must be some other method that will find helium if fusion has occurred. If the amount of heat produced is even supposed to be vaguely measurable, surely enough helium will have been produced that we can detect that even more easily, especially seeing as helium is proof of fusion and will end this debate once and for all. What is the point of speculating about how much heat has been generated and other processes that may have generated that heat, when we can just test for helium, and answer the question? Now, obviously, I am missing something, there must be a reason why we can't just do what I've asked, because if we could, it wouldve been done. But, again, would someone pls explain why we can't test for helium, and put this explanation somewhere early in this article, because it seems to be a very obvious and conclusive test which we could be doing, but which noone seems to even mention! Thanks v. much. IbleSnover (talk) 09:04, 30 July 2008 (UTC)