Talk:Cold fusion

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This notice was posted by Tznkai (talk) 22:07, 15 December 2008 (UTC) on behalf of the Arbitration Committee.

Is a non-quantitative summary of DOE 2004 really better for the last paragraph of the intro than more reliable sources?

It is remarkable that those who wish to report only the majority opinion of the 2004 DOE panel in the introduction are so steadfastly opposed the stating the size of that majority, or the experiments that the 2004 DOE panel proposed to resolve the controversy, some of which were performed and have been reported in the peer-reviewed literature. No matter how you look at it, that is an attack on WP:NPOV, giving WP:UNDUE weight to the deniers in the introduction, and it's opposed to the vast majority of the experimental results published in the past decade. We already explain how Dr. Shanahan's opinion about the recombination volumes he has apparently never observed are contradicted outright by authors who have measured them first-hand. Are we going to do the same for Kowalski's complaints about the CR-39 pits or not? Shouldn't we be doing that instead of "summarizing" in absolute terms the majority-only opinion of the DOE panel which everyone agrees didn't even consider the SPAWAR results, wasn't an anonymous review, and wasn't even intended to produce anything more reliable than a government technical report? Why aren't we using the more reliable peer-reviewed sources instead?

http://www.chem.au.dk/~db/fusion/Papers has 313 peer-reviewed papers with "res+" (meaning positive research results, case insensitive) on lines beginning "**" that do not contain "theor", meaning experimental results, and 234 similarly but with "res-" instead. How high does the ratio need to go before it is accurately reflected by the introduction? 69.228.81.16 (talk) 05:17, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Orangemarlin reverted my attempt to correct these problems as "POV commentary"[1] -- even though I had only removed, not added anything, so I am making the same changes and inviting discussion here. 69.228.81.16 (talk) 06:54, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Your edit makes a big deal out of a few inconclusive reports, while ignoring the conclusions of a panel of reputable scientists who discount the phenomenon. That is POV commentary. Nevard (talk) 07:10, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Which is more biased, acting as if the DOE 2004 panel was unanimous and making no attempt to say that it wasn't in the intro, or meticulously counting the reports in the journals that a professional electrochemist by the name of Dieter Britz considers reputable enough to include in his bibliography? 69.228.81.16 (talk) 09:20, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

You can't just consider a count, it's about the reliability of sources, and even the most ardent proponent has to admit that most of the res+ were published in joke journals. I'm pretty sure that you could find a majority of res+ for homeopathic case studies, remote viewing, and a number of fringe topics, simply because the cranks are doing all the research and getting it published. It's called publishing bias. Simply reporting numbers is at best misleading, especially for a field the mainstream catagorically rejects. In that sense cold fusion is no different to "scientific" investigation of paranormal phenomenon (such as Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research). Phil153 (talk) 07:36, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

If you have a problem with the quality of the journals which Britz considers peer-reviewed, why don't you ask him to weigh in on the subject? 69.228.81.16 (talk) 09:20, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

As for the DOE, it's the last and most prominent independent review of the field, so it's important. Phil153 (talk) 07:37, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Independent? The DOE has been heavily invested in hot-fusion and Shanahan's work. The DOE controls Shanahan's copyrights under a "non-standard copyright agreement", and neither of the reviews were ever submitted for peer review. If it's important, why isn't it important enough to say how non-unanimous it is? 69.228.81.16 (talk) 09:10, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

They've also been heavily invested in coal and nuclear (which hasn't stopped hot fusion or geothermal research). Your suggestion of bias is unfounded. If you can suggest a better or higher profile mainstream review (perhaps Nature's commentary? (lol)), I'm all ears.

I think your 2/3 comment is unecessary since the language of the DOE news report itself says (under conclusions):

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

If the source itself says this without 2/3 qualifiers, then it stays in the article. Phil153 (talk) 09:41, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

You are the one who claimed they were independent. I gave you multiple reasons why they don't meet Wikipedia's reliable source criteria for science articles, and still you want to obscure the extent to which they were not unanimous. Why? Do you have any evidence that the DOE reviews ever met the reliable source criteria? The recent Biberian literature survey was peer reviewed, why not use it instead? 69.228.81.16 (talk) 11:34, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

This isn't about whether it was unanimous. The sentence in question is pulled directly from the conclusion of the report itself and only speaks to the findings being similar to the 1989 review. It does not mislead in any way.

As for the DOE review being reliable, I assume this has been discussed ad naseum in the past. The review itself, as well as the findings were widely reported by reliable news organizations including NYT, WP, Physics Today, etc and considered extremely important by those in the field (see Washington Post article, for example, on the importance that cold fusion researchers place on this review). It's entirely appropriate that it be given such prominence. Phil153 (talk) 11:55, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I suppose it's a lot easier to avoid the questions I asked than to address them, for obvious reasons. Do you have any familiarity with Wikipedia:Reliable source examples#Physical sciences, mathematics and medicine? The fact is that the 2004 report was not unanimous, a full third of the panel was somewhat convinced of anomalous effects. To obscure that fact is misleading; why do you say it is not? 69.228.81.16 (talk) 12:32, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I read it. Did you? In your comment below, you rubbish my comments about the reliability of Biberian's journal by calling it "quibbling about impact factors", yet the policy you linked talks about reliable journals, and says: The vast majority of well-regarded journals are indexed in the ISI Web of Science, which I pointed out Biberian's journal did not make. But wikilawyer away.

As for the DOE report, there is no obscuring - it is a direct quoting from the conclusion from the very report. I believe I have answered your questions. If you believe there are questions I have not answered, please state them clearly. Phil153 (talk) 13:17, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

1. Why do you believe a direct quote which avoids all mention of the panel's minority views is superior to informing the reader about the proportion of dissent on the panel?
2. Why do you believe that a non-peer reviewed source which was never submitted for peer review, was not anonymous, did not attempt to survey the entire field, was not blinded, and was conducted by an agency which was already heavily invested in projects and authors who had taken a stand on the subject matter is superior to the peer reviewed sources reporting on experimental results which run 313-to-234 opposed to your favored source? 69.228.81.16 (talk) 14:49, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

<unindented> 1. Because it introduces needless complexity. The review conclusion sums it up perfectly well. The DOE's position has not changed substantially since 1989 and anything else merely obscures this fact.

2. a)Re: peer review: 18 reviewers is peer review. Perhaps you think we should review the reviewers of the reviewers?

b)Re: scope: indeed, the reviewers only took submissions from cold fusion advocates.

c)Re: blinding: I don't understand why this is relevant in the context of a meta review.

d)Re: agency bias: I contend that it's obvious that DOE bias is far less than any review by a heavily invested cold fusion advocate, particular people like Biberian and Storms. And as I pointed out above, DOE is incredibly heavily invested in nuclear and coal, yet continues to fund hot fusion, solar and geothermal research, among others. Your claim of bias makes no sense to me.

e)Re: author bias: Mainstream scientists nearly universally reject cold fusion. Any mainstream, independent review will have this problem, just as all the pro cold fusion reviews are done by heavily invested pro cold fusioners. DOE is as good as we get. Do you plan to reject all mainstream reviews on this basis?

f)Re: Comparison with peer reviewed counts...I have already addressed this.

Phil153 (talk) 15:18, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Why do you believe that presenting a non-unanimous source with the proportion of dissent involved introduces needless complexity? Do you think that accurately informing the reader is needlessly complex? 69.228.220.30 (talk) 19:20, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I see Phil regarded the Washington Post as reliable. OK, I'm repeating a quote from higher on this page, that was published in the WP:

"To [Michael] McKubre, the main reason cold fusion has been belittled all these years is that the mainstream scientists who dug in their heels long ago can't change their minds now: "If it turns out these people are wrong, they're dead. They're scientifically dead."

So I mentioned that this can explain the majority of "reputable" journals continuing to denounce CF and to only publish anti-CF articles. Which is clearly Opinion, not Science, and equally clearly is not reputable. Which makes them not-much better than the publications of fanatic believers (they ARE publications of believers-of-something-else).

I'd also like to remind you-all that when the Supreme Court renders a Decision, both the majority view and the dissenting view (when said Decision is not unanimous) get described in the Press. In this particular case, Phil and others seem to think that the DOE Decision needs to be reported as if it was the ONLY view. WHY?? V (talk) 15:50, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Phil.

I will fight tooth and nail against anyone who attempts to once again create spin in this article by inserting POV-pushing tidbits and caveats into the middles of and between sentences other people have written. Such edits destroy clarity and earn the weasel words flag, which I pulled just a few days ago.

The issue you have is with the reliability of the DOE report and the way we use it in the article. Instead of adding words to neutralize and combat what is already written, please suggest an alternate conclusion for the introduction, perhaps one that makes no reference to the DOE report. Accompany your suggestion with a persusive argument that using your version would make the article better.

Please read the content under WP:NPOV and make suggestions consistent with those guidelines. You need to be realistic about the constraints that policy places on this article. It would be disengeneous to pretend that cold fusion does not remain rejected by the mainsteam or that its acceptance is anything more than a minority point of view. ~Paul V. Keller 11:30, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

For what reason do you consider the 2004 non-peer reviewed DOE panel more reliable than the peer-reviewed 2007 Biberian literature survey? As far as I'm concerned, shielding the description of the DOE panels from information about the extent to which they were non-unanimous is an abuse of weasel words and so I am replacing the dispute tag. Please do not remove it until the dispute is resolved. If you think WP:MAINSTREAM has been accepted by the community over WP:UNDUE, then you should read Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia is a mainstream encyclopedia. 69.228.81.16 (talk) 11:41, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm sure Dr. Keller has his own response, but I want to point out that Biberian 2007 was published in the International Journal of Nuclear Energy Science and Technology which began publication in 2004. The journal is not listed in lists or reputable journals, such as the Web of Science index. It's not a high quality source, especially when contrasted to the editorials, res- publications and rejections of the highest quality journals such Nature and Physical Review X'. This has been discussed before. Phil153 (talk) 12:04, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Are you really trying to promote a non-peer reviewed ad-hoc source which stands in stark opposition to the last ten years of peer-reviewed publications by quibbling about impact factors? Why don't you just critique the credentials of the IJNEST editorial board? 69.228.81.16 (talk) 12:32, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Not, I am not trying to do what you suggest. See my comment above. Phil153 (talk) 13:19, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

In response to 69.228.81.16 asking if the "ad-hoc" 2004 DOE panel should be given more weight than recent pro-CF publications, my response is that it should definitely be given a lot of weight. DOE has a mandate from Congress to advance the field of energy research, and they responded to this very unusual situation with a significant investment of money. The report they produced was intended to synthesize all of the available information in the field, and was the product of many experts. Of course it should be given a lot of weight! Olorinish (talk) 13:36, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

There is no mention of congressional mandates or how much money was spent in any of the reliable source criteria. How much money do you think the DOE 2004 panel spent, anyway? 69.228.81.16 (talk) 14:53, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

In response to 69.228.81.16 asking "How high does the ratio (of pro and con articles) need to go before it is accurately reflected by the introduction?", the answer is that the introduction should be changed after those articles have produced a change in the views of mainstream physicists, and there are quotable sources which describe that change. Olorinish (talk) 13:46, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Is that something that follows from Wikipedia policies or something you just made up? 69.228.81.16 (talk) 14:53, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes. We report hte mainstream view, per Wikipedia:Verifiability—he threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth.--Patton123 15:25, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Biberian qas chairman of the 11th International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science. It is kind of silly to offer him as an unbiased source to weigh against a committee of 18 reviewers from multiple disciplines.

Biberian states "the scientific community does not acknowledge this field as a genuine scientific research theme", which is actually a more negative point than the article or the DOE report makes.

Biberian asserts the evidence for excess heat is compelling, which is not the same as evidence for an unknown nuclear process. And of course, it is a disputed point.

The data concerning helium production in connection with excess heat is far from compelling. From Storms 2007, it looks like there is one report in a reviewed journal and a few more in non-reviewed reports. That data has its place in the article, but does not change everything.

Some of the nuclear ash data belongs in the article too, although it is far from convincing and apparantly unrelated to the production of excess heat except in the sense of a theory that does not exist yet. ~Paul V. Keller 14:23, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

The title of this section is misleading, because the DOE report is from a reliable source. So comparing it to a reliable source is comparing it to itself, which is meaningless. Now the reason it is better than just any reliable source (esp. for an intro) should be obvious: because it is a compendium of multiple sources; a "summary" if you will, which is exactly what the intro is supposed to be. I believe this was made clear in earlier discussion. Kevin Baas^talk 15:55, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Changed to "more reliable sources". 69.228.220.30 (talk) 20:27, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

dead horse is dead

Can you start ignoring this IP? The "is DOE a reliable source?" topic has been beaten to death on this page, and the answer has always been "yes" --Enric Naval (talk) 16:42, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

WP:CCC. Would you please limit your talk page comments to discussion of improvements to the article? 69.228.220.30 (talk) 19:32, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

In the last months it has been argued to death here and on the arbitration case, and the last discussion ended like 13 days ago here. Consensus isn't going to change that fast after so much discussion. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:40, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

If you agree with what you see as consensus that summarizing a non-unanimous source without any indication of the proportion of dissent involved is fair, would you please say why that is? I, for one, dissent. You can see from V's comment above that I am not the only one. Further, your hyperlink "here" contains no discussion of proportion of dissent on the 2004 DOE panel. 69.228.220.30 (talk) 19:53, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Here's a link to a copy of the original 1989 review: http://www.ncas.org/erab/index.html (Considering the place where I found it, I might wonder how accurate the copy is.) I was wondering how many panelists were on it (haven't had time to closely inspect it after finally finding it, but various web pages examined during the hunt indicate 20-22 panel members). I was also wondering how many of the panelists thought CF research was worth pursuing (if any, obviously they were in the minority). It would be nice to compare that data with the numbers from the 2004 review, especially to see if the percentage had gone up any, regarding the number of panelists who thought CF research was worth pursuing. V (talk) 20:35, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I am all for placing less reliance on the DOES report. I previously suggested that we include it under a section about government funding (or not funding) CF research. But if we move the DOE report, it will just be replaced by something else that clearly states the mainstream view. The reality, readily conceded by everyone, including cold fusion researchers, is that cold fusion has been dismissed by the mainstream. They are not interested in seeing the latest CR-39 pits. ~Paul V. Keller 01:41, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Ah, you hit the real problem here: the DOE reviews (1989 and 2004) are the best secondary sources that we have to measure the scientific consensus on cold fusion. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:35, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I've had some time to examine a bit of the 1989 report. This page http://www.ncas.org/erab/cfpanel.htm indicates there were 23 panelists, plus a technical advisor and a secretary. This page http://www.ncas.org/erab/landis.htm indicate bureauracracy at its finest; the "Panel" reported to a "Board", and the "Board" unanimously approved the recommendations of the "Panel". It is of course how the Panel voted that we are interested in, here. 7 of the Board members were also on the Panel, so from the preceding we may deduce that we know how they voted within the Panel (as part of the majority), leaving us with 16 panelist-votes to still discover. This page http://www.ncas.org/erab/execsumm.htm has a MOST interesting statement in it: "The Panel also concludes that some observations attributed to cold fusion are not yet invalidated." --which, coming from expert analysts, implies that even though the evidence was not convincing, it wasn't all as worthless as some of the detractors here have been claiming. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Objectivist (talk • contribs) 21:11, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Kowalski and Mosier-Boss et al (2008)

Summary of U.S. Navy SPAWAR's CR-39 nuclear track
detector Pd/D co-deposition control experiments:

Experiment	Pits?	Conclusions
PdCl2–LiCl co-deposition in D2O	Yes	Pits are observed where Pd deposit was in contact with CR-39. The Pd deposit is the source of the pits.
Cathodes, plating solution, PdCl2 in contact with CR-39 – No electrolysis	No	Pits are not due to radioactive contamination of the cell components
LiCl electrolysis in D2O	No	D2 gas impinging on the surface is not responsible for the pits
CuCl2–LiCl electroplating in D2O	No	Electrochemically generated D2, O2, and Cl2 gases do not cause pits. Metal dendrites piercing into CR-39 not responsible for the pits.
PdCl2–LiCl co-deposition in H2O	Yes	More than four orders of magnitude fewer pits are observed than for D2O. Observed pits could be due to Pd/D interactions.
Table 1 from Mosier-Boss et al (2008) "Reply to comment on 'The use of CR-39 in Pd/D co-deposition experiments': a response to Kowalski" Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. 44: 291–5, p. 292.

The article's photograph of the CR-39 pits gives practically no information, it's poorly cited, and the text next to it doesn't talk about it at all. I recommend that it be replaced or supplemented with this table.

I further recommend that the 2004 DOE Report's conclusion stating that, "reviewers identified a number of basic science research areas that could be helpful in resolving some of the controversies in the field, [including] the study of particles reportedly emitted from deuterated foils using state-of-the-art apparatus and methods,"[2] be summarized along with a description of the CR-39 detector and SPAWAR experiments using it. 69.228.220.30 (talk) 19:46, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I for one appreciate your efforts. However, I don't understand what the case is for including primary, non repeated, challenged research. The image makes sense as a curiosity but that's very different to what you're proposing.

I mean, when Kowalski first debunked the research some months ago, should the article have reported that "Claims of CR-39 pits have been shown to be unconvincing"? Is it really the job of Wikipedia to follow the comments and counter comments in a single journal for an unreplicated experiment? Sounds like a mess to me, and far too much weight on unverified primary research. Phil153 (talk) 20:13, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

The chronology and authorship of the many challenges to the nuclear interpretation of the CR-39 pits may be different than what you seem to think it was. All of the challenges to CR-39 pit interpretation including Kowalski's more recent have been addressed by the Navy, and the original challengers have made no attempt to claim that the Navy's response was insufficient (unlike Shanahan, who still relies on his "calibration constant shift" method of designing an argument around the conclusion he wishes to reach, according to his own words in the most recent archive.) In both of the most recent back-to-back academic journal publications, the editors have given the pro side the last word, but only Shanahan claims the response was insufficient. Could it be any more conclusive than that? 69.228.220.30 (talk) 20:20, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Re: "method of designing an argument around the conclusion he wishes to reach" -

I'm sorry "69" but you don't seem to have a clue here. I did NOT design an argument around the conclusion I wished to reach, I tested the impact of variability in the experiment on the conclusions drawn from it. That's known as 'error analysis', which consists of two parts, numerically defining the error (in this case the variation in the calibration constant) and computing whether the claimed observation falls within the 3 sigma error bounds. That is scientific SOP, except for CFers. The upshot is that the observed peaks in the excess heat curves are explainable by 'error', thus no one has to conclude a nuclear reaction is ongoing based on such claims.

Also, in my case, the 'anti' claims got the 'last word', as if that was important. What is important is that I answered all charges against me in my last rebuttal. No outstanding issues, and none of Storms' comments were found substantive. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:55, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

That table is very large. Maybe someone could add a sentence summarizing it instead. Combined with the blue-green image, that would probably give the Cr-39 work the proper weight. Olorinish (talk) 20:28, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

What I vaguely understand is that the original paper was presented, there were challenge(s), and the original authors followed up a couple of months ago. I don't work in this particular field but academic journals generally have significant times between comment and reply. The person who has the last word has little bearing on who's right, either, and frankly I'm bemused that you would call something conclusive without replication or sufficient time for reply. In short, the current state of this particular debate has little bearing on most of my objections to the inclusion of this comment, which are: single result (not independently replicated), primary research (which is discouraged, for a host of obvious reasons), and the work has not stood without challenge for long enough (doubly so given the extraordinary burden of proof). Exactly the kind of stuff that doesn't belong in an encyclopedia with such weight as you're giving it. It probably deserves mention, similar to how Shanahan's work is mentioned in passing (note that I argued against the inclusion of Shanahan's work on the same grounds, so it's not a pro or anti cold fusion thing). Phil153 (talk) 20:41, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Not including my work is an omission of fact that leaves the reader presuming CF has been significantly substantiated by experimental evidence. It has not. Thus, your edits have skewed this article back to a proCF POV.

I also note in passing that the secondary page PCarbonn set up to isolate the impact of my work has now diasppeared as I predicted, it was just someone else besides P who did it. Wiki is far too transient for me. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:59, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Journals don't usually publish replies to critiques along with the submitted critiques unless they think they are merited. The various challenges date back as far as April, 2007 as far as CR-39 goes. If you read that, you will see that there is already a series of independent replications since the original publication. 69.228.220.30 (talk) 21:17, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the challenges go much further back than that. I was negatively commenting on the Oriani and Fisher report of CR39 pits in 2002. See:

Newsgroups: sci.physics.fusion

From: kirk.shana...@srs.gov (Kirk L. Shanahan)

Date: 13 Nov 2002 09:15:34 -0800

Local: Wed, Nov 13 2002 12:15 pm

Subject: Re: Oriani & Fisher in JJAP

where I begin the discussion of the claims by pointing out some errors in the paper (later found to be due to typesetting problems) and by showing how my challenged chemical mechanism for CF can also explain CR39 pits. I added another possibility in a later post. I suggest you read the whole thread. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:08, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

And, at least in the journals I publish in, when an author critiques some prior paper, the authors of the prior paper are informed and given the opportunity to respond. This is what happened with the 2006 rebuttal to Storms' comments. The SMMF publication of 2005 apparently didn't have enough of a comment to warrent that however, as I was not informed such a paper had been published by the Editor. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:08, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Noone can "isolate the impact of [your] work", nor does anybody need to. Your work - that i have seen you present here - is very specific in scope. For instance, it deals specifically w/conventional electrolysis cells. Aspects of electrolysis cells that by their very nature do not apply to gas-loading experiments. They also do not speak at all to claimed transmutations, pits on cr-39 present in significant quantity only when heavy water is used, or things like structural anomalies on the cathode in co-deposition experiments (craters, etc). But this specificity is all very natural for science (and reason), and i don't see you disputing any of it so i don't see the problem.

Actually you're wrong Kevin. When I added my first contributions to the article back in the May/June timeframe, I added several comments to the existing article. PCarbon was about the only editor there contributing regularly at the time. He deleted almost everything I wrote. What he couldn't delete were the comments regarding He detection and the Clarke work on that, and my work on the CCS. He did however, spin off a subpage to 'isolate' the comments on my work, a page by the way that is not lost somewhere in the Great Wiki Void (pretty well isolated I'd say). I commented negatively on all positive claims in the article at the time, thinking Wiki would be reasonable about this, but they weren't. Today, the article has a brief mention of my work, mixed in with other stuff, which misrepresents its significance greatly, and the Clarke work is no longer discussed. There is no mention of the problems with the transmutation claims or the CR39 pits, even though I have tried valiantly to explain them to the editors in this Talk page (go check the archives). Your claim as to 'structural anomalies' is not correct, conventional explanations exist for those too. So, do you see me disputing it Kevin? Let me be clear: For any body of related results that is large enough to be considered to have some level of reproduction in it, conventional explanations are available and preferred. How's that? But, as noted by others, since the mainstream all think CF died somewhere in 1990-1994, no one is publishing anything negative, because they aren't even aware 'research' continued! So you are not going to find specific articles now or anytime soon. So how do you fairly represent this to the Wiki reader? You get an expert to explain the problems to you and include them in the article. But this Wiki article has gone exactly the opposite, with a reduction and removal of all negative criticism of the supposed evidence for CF. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:06, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Kirk, a couple of points. First, you are one person who sought flaws in the experiments. You found many. However, to the extent you think a group of people seeking flaws can do better, then you need to be reminded that the 1989 DOE panel consisted of 23 people who at least partly had the job of finding flaws in experiments, because they knew just as we do, about the theoretical difficulties for CF. Neverthless, in the "Executive Summary" of the conclusions of that panel, http://www.ncas.org/erab/execsumm.htm , the group stated: "The Panel also concludes that some observations attributed to cold fusion are not yet invalidated." YOU are talking as if every single experiment in this field can always be invalidated, yet the evidence is, and you even agreed with this, that a small percentage of experiments has defied and continues to defy the flaw-finders. In my opinion this leaves everyone with three paths to take (some of which you yourself wrote about on this page, and so the rest of this is not directed mostly at you, Kirk). (1) We focus on replicating those experiments so they no longer are a small percentage of the total. (2) We assume they are all flawed, regardless, and strive to explain them that way. (3) We accept that CF is real, if rarer than originally thought, and strive to explain it. I'm fully aware that Path 1 can eventually indicate which of the other paths would be the better choice to pursue. However, not everyone is a good-enough experimentalist for Path 1 (as evidenced by so many flawed experiments!!!), which would leave a lot of interested parties with nothing but Path 2 or Path 3 to take, blindly. It would not hurt this Article if people taking those paths exhibit some simple respect for each other's work. This means that hypothesized explanations for flaws deserve the the same treatment as hypothesized explanations for CF. The Article would be richer if it had both instead of neither, and "standards" for the technical parts of the Article don't necessarily have to be the same as the standards for hypotheses. Finally, that richness may be historically valuable even after Path 1 eventually/finally leads to a "winner". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Objectivist (talk • contribs) 14:59, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Speculations and unpublished material do not belong in wikipedia articles, quite irrespective of who writes it. If your description is accurate, Pcarbonn was correct in removing the material in question. My claims as to "structural anomalies" are correct: there are "structural anomalies" that have been found in co-deposition and they have been published. And -- on a side note -- i'm not aware of any conventional explanations for those craters, other than a concentrated and high-heat reaction, and this is corroborated by the thermal output. i.e. The conventional explanation is pretty simple and straightforward. So back to the subject - no, i don't see you disputing the existence of these structures, nor the fact that your published work (that i'm aware of) doesn't even mention them, nonetheless speak to them. In fact, the only thing I've heard from you is speculation and unsupported claims - both of which are worthless to me, and neither of which is very scientific.

It seems to me like you are twisting my argument to make it sound like you have a rebuttle. This to me is all straw man and non-sequitor. It's specious. It may sound persuasive but it's really deceptive. It's not an ethical way to argue. Once should try to avoid logical fallacies like those and respond to the strongest interpretation of your opponents argument (by strongest i don't mean boldest, I mean most difficult to attack), not the weakest. etc. etc. FWIW, I develop a strong distaste for people very quickly when I see them discuss things in an unfair manner. Kevin Baas^talk 19:48, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

As to the Arbcom ruling - it appears I am not the only who found it to be a complete farce (double standard in comparision to ScienceApologist). Though you seem to be the only one taking joy in another's suffering and using what many see as an injustice as a premise for a (fallacious) argument, thus adding insult to injury. Kevin Baas^talk 16:47, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Your insult is noted. I challenge you to support that by citing where I have 'taken joy' in the ban. Make sure you realize that PCarbon was a hindrance to the Wiki article development once there was someone other than CF afficianados editing it. He opposed everything negative regarding CF, and that led to an unbalanced article. His persistance in this was recognized as POV-pushing and he was banned for it. If you check the pages on this, I suggested there that PCarbon not be banned but be restricted from editing the 'anti' section of the article (which is now gone as well). Your comments betray your position, and I'm not going to be responding to you further on this. I had a great time while away, and I think I shall probably just leave you all to it. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:06, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

My insult?!? -- Opps, I looked back for reference and found that I had just misread something you read -- sorry about that. You are correct, there is nothing you said that would support that notion. I will say, however, that your most recent reply certainly "betray"s a sense of relief and a very low opinion of his work. "Make sure you realize" that PCarbonn is almost solely responsible for getting this article up to good article status (which if i'm not mistaken it has since lost on a request for reevaluation). He has contributed a lot of material on both sides. That's right, he has written for "the enemy". If we're making neutrality comparisons here, that puts him a step above you.

My comments betray what position? I said I thought the arbitration ruling was unjust because it punished Pcarbonn for violations less severe and numerous than that of ScienceApologist, as elucidated by the evidence presented to arbcom, yet SA didn't get any sanction for his actions. That is my position. I state it plainly and intend it to be known so there is nothing "betrayed"; in speaking plainly on the matter i have been perfectly loyal to my intentions. And I am glad you're not responding further because if you did I wouldn't expect it to be very productive. Kevin Baas^talk 19:48, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I have my own question here; I thought the codeposition/particle-track experiments were done after the 2004 DOE review, so that data was not available to them? On the other hand, I've also heard (yes! hearsay!) that those experiments were highly repeatable. Have any of the doubters (a group that doesn't include rabid detractors) tried it yet? If any of them get positive results, then I have another Question for the detractors: "With evidence of more-ordinary fusions occurring in very thin deuterium-saturated palladium (because of the particle tracks), what could be the CAUSE of those fusions?" Note this is essentially the same question that has to be asked regarding deuterium-saturated bulk palladium; if fusion is the culprit for the claimed/observed heat, then how could have been Caused? We can ignore for the moment the mechanism that carries away the energy in the latter case (no ordinary high-energy fusion-byproduct particles), because the KEY is the first Question. If deuterium is fusing in a thin layer of metal, why couldn't the same mechanism cause it to happen in bulk metal? AFTER the common Cause has been figured out, THEN the differences can be examined, regarding how the fusion energy is released. V (talk) 21:46, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Could you please stop saying "high energy fusion byproducts"? It's a red herring and we discussed it above. Both low and high energy fusion byproducts are observed to be the same, which is one thing that make CF so unlikely. And you can see why "high energy" is irrelevant if you look at the energies - between 0.01 and 0.1 MeV are required to overcome repulsive forces (depending on the nuclei), compared to 24 MeV coming out. It's like flying a toy aeroplane into a tornado - it doesn't really matter how fast the plane is going, the tornado takes over and decides how everything turns out. Anyway, sorry for the aside, that bit of nonsense spread by CF advocates (not you) annoys me. Phil153 (talk) 21:54, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

It is my understanding that ordinarily the 50/50 split of protons and neutrons released as a result of D+D fusions are indeed "high energy" particles (although nowhere near 24MeV due to the particular reactions involved). I could agree that "byproducts" may be inaccurate word-choice, since that word typically is associated with unwanted stuff like pollutants. Nevertheless, my prior paragraph was more about "If we have repeatable evidence for CF in thin-film metal, then detecting vs not detecting [them, the "semi-products"] in bulk metal is irrelevant, until after we understand how CF can happen at all". Do you have a disagreement with that logic, Phil? V (talk) 22:05, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

You know, I think I misread what you were saying. Shouldn't edit from work when distracted. Sorry. As for your logic, it seems premature to me. I think most scientists would like to see something unequivocally demonstrated first before they go chasing theory fairies. Surely that's not too much to ask after monstrosities like polywater and N-rays. And make no mistake, the CR39 stuff is full of holes. Read the critiques or even the attempted replications that IP editor posted above. Phil153 (talk) 22:18, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Phil, I used the initial word "if" for a good reason. You do not have to accept-as-fact anything preceded with "if" in order to analyze the logic of a statement. I could write, "If God exists in accordance with certain claims, then it must be possible to build a perpetual-motion machine." The statement is either logical or illogical, and whether or not its premise is factual is irrelevant. Therefore I ask that you not avoid answering the question I asked in my prior paragraph. "IS it logical to ignore where the energy goes in bulk metal, if fusions are happening in thin-film metal, until after the initiation mechanism has been understood?" Thank you! V (talk) 22:37, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

i'd just like to comment because i find this discussion interesting. I have to say when i read the "logic ... seems premature" phrase I was a bit confused - logic is not temporal so it can't be mature or premature. But from the next sentence I see that Phil wasn't actually talking about the logic. I actually still don't know what he was talking about there so I still don't know what that phrase was supposed to mean. As to "most scientists...chasing theory fairies", the scientific process is essentially that you do a lot of experiments and then from the results you try to form theories that tie the results together in a simple way and allows you to predict, then you try to find ways to test those theories. But ofcourse you can't really develop a tenable theory until you've done enough experiments to have a fair idea of what's going on. Which is exactly what I believe Objectivist is saying. And in that, I perfectly agree with him. I would say that, yes, if you have consistent empirical results that contradict your working model, then clearly your working model needs to be refined somehow, but it would be premature to refine it before you have a fair idea of what's causing those results. I'm not sure if, technically speaking, that's a logical conclusion, but it certainly is consistent with the canons of science. The working model is a logical system and the physical world is - for purposes of evaluation - a logical system. The goal is to make the working model approximate the physical world, and one does that by bayesian updates, Bayesian model comparison and all that jazz. And bayesian inference works best (is most robust) with a lot of orthogonal information, hence one gathers various types of data from various sources. And hence a "good" theory is supported by many strands of evidence. Gathering data means doing experiments to figure out what's going on. So I suppose from all that that one comes to a pretty solid logical-mathematical proof that if your goal is a good predictive model, then when you encounter a consistent discrepancy between your model and that which it models, the thing to do is to do experiments on that which is modeled to try to figure out what's going on. (But I imagine that to most scientifically-minded people this just comes as common sense.) In any case, i think Objectivist is simply trying to ask if this seems unreasonable to you, or more precisely if this "math" is wrong, and if so, how. Kevin Baas^talk 16:29, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I actually do need to add a little more, cause the question is a bit more complex than that - he is also asking if it's really prudent to rely on certain parts of a working model that apparently contradict the empirical results in order to refine that very same model. Or to put it another way, if it's more productive to use a descriptive model to predict the outcome of a process that, when it comes down to it, doesn't fit the description, or whether it's better to try to construct , by way of hypothesis, experiment, etc., a (revised) model that _does_ fit the description. Though I will say that knowing HOW the results differ from what's predicted by the current working model may certainly be helpful in revising it. I.e. particle emmisions, radiation, products, etc. is useful data for figuring out what's going on. It's simply that if after considering them you still don't know what's going on, then obviously you still have some more investigating to do. Kevin Baas^talk 17:03, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, I don't think I was being quite that complicated, in asking what I asked. There are several intertwined problems. (1) Excess heat in electrolysis experiments, sometimes replicated and sometimes not. (2) Well-accepted theories regarding fusion, which do not offer much in the way of allowing either (A) fusion to happen in that environment or (B) fusion to produce heat without lots of radiation. (3) People who act as if the theories of Item 2 encompasses all possibilities, so therefore the excess heat must always be an erroneous measurement. (4) New co-deposition experiments indicating fusions could have happened, after all, in the electrolysis experiments --and these experiments don't need to pay any attention to the excess-heat question. (5) The continuing lack of a widely accepted plausible explanation for how fusions could happen (what is the hole in Item 2A?). (6) People who have committed themselves to a particular scientific position, and in order to not look like fools, need to grasp Item 5 to claim that Item 4 cannot be valid, either, except that if they are wrong they will look even more foolish! This could explain the lack of a reply to my question --simple "ignore it and maybe it will go away" philosophy-- which was about "Why not save Item 2B for later, and focus the theorizing on Item 2A for now?" See, to the extent that the co-deposition experiments produce more and more valid data (it is claimed this is highly reproducible, remember), the people of Items 3 and 6 will find their position less and less tenable. Which sort-of means those who lack the courage to recant can be ignored, and we need an answer to Item 2A more than ever! V (talk) 18:54, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Mosier-Boss et al (2009) "Triple tracks in CR-39 as the result of Pd–D Co-deposition: evidence of energetic neutrons" Naturwissenschaften 96: 135–142 is particularly helpful in resolving the question of the particles detected. I would point out that Naturwissenschaften, Thermochimica Acta, and Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys., are the highest impact factor journals in which the subject has been covered since the 1989-90 articles in Nature and Science, and they are all recent, since 2002. There is absolutely no reason to ignore the recent publications in Naturwissenschaften, Thermochimica Acta, and Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys., because Wikipedia's reliable source criteria requires that they be given a higher priority than work in journals with a lower impact factor. 69.228.220.30 (talk) 22:21, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

It's still primary research which has to be weighed up against what the more reliable secondary sources say, regardless of where or when it's published. This is something I intend to bring up in the latest arbcom because it's a source of dispute in fringe science - mainstream science ignores something (such as N-Rays or polywater or homeopathy or cold fusion) and (rightly) requires a higher burden of proof to un-ignore it, so the only sources available become advocate material. I think careful editorial judgment in this case requires acknowledging the burden of proof placed on the field, although that's open to opinion of course. Phil153 (talk) 22:27, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Please correct me if there are any reasons that I'm wrong, but a primary source which has been peer-reviewed, challenged by critique, and a reply published back-to-back after the critique by editors who have had the opportunity to see the reviewers' comments on both the critique and the reply rises to the level of a secondary, juried source. 69.228.220.30 (talk) 22:39, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

You are wrong. Published in a seconday source means published in a secondary source. Additionally, can you confirm that you are not logging out to avoid scrutiny? This page has been the subject of arbitration and one editor was banned from participating here. Jehochman ^Talk 22:51, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

According to WP:SECONDARY, what is and what is not a secondary source is currently the subject of discussion. I am not logging out to avoid scrutiny. I saw the arbitration case and I think it is a shame that a respectable editor was banned here for no other reason than that he was resisting the deletion of all non-mainstream points of view, even though those points of view are held by the overwhelming number of experimenters who have published in the academic literature over the past decade. It seems that sort of thing has happened here before. I know that all of the incumbents on the arbitration committee who ran for re-election were soundly defeated, and I hope the banned users appeal to the new committee at their earliest possibility. 69.228.220.30 (talk) 23:05, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

{unindenting} Quoting from earlier in this section, " there is already a series of independent replications since the original publication" --if that is true, then are not those replications secondary sources? (I suppose it depends on whether or not any made it into print yet.) V (talk) 23:05, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

This is little better than raw data. No way. ~Paul V. Keller 01:37, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

How about Mosier-Boss et al (2009)? 69.228.207.247 (talk) 01:39, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I think what makes this technique attractive is its rife possibilities for misinterpretation. ~Paul V. Keller 02:54, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Does Szpak & Mosier-Boss (2007) "Further evidence of nuclear reactions in the Pd/D lattice: emission of charged particles" Naturwissenschaften 94: 511–4 leave any room for misinterpretation? 69.228.201.125 (talk) 13:50, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Please be more specific. If someone other than the original experimenters do a codeposition experiment and replicate the apparent particle tracks in the plastic, AND publishes it in a reasonably reputable place (which is the part I "supposed" about above), then why is that "little better than raw data"? Isn't "replication" and "reputable publication" the things the detractors here have been insisting on??? I agree that there might still be an "interpretation" issue, regarding whether or not the particle tracks were caused by fusion products, but I would hope you are not planning on insisting that the replicated tracks don't exist at all, or are not similar enough to tracks that appeared in the original codeposition experiment! V (talk) 04:55, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

What it means is saying you have seen tracks in CR-39 does not confirm that you have seen neutrons, or alpha particles, or energetic ions, or whatever else they are claiming. It is not something that even the most knowledgeable people who make it to this web site can look at and draw a conclusion about. All it shows is a disconnected observation. Saying that the tracks are "not inconsistent with . . ." or "look like tracks from . . ." does not give a conclusion reportable here. ~Paul V. Keller 05:32, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Ah, but it is the job of Wikipedia to say what the researchers said, who got their data peer-reviewed and published. There is also the other published data tabulated at the start of this Section of the Discussion, indicating the tracks appear in a manner that is distinct from background noise and other sources than deuterium-saturated palladium. To the extent this data can-be/has-been replicated, then (A) a description of it belongs in the main article, and (B) the tracks require an explanation. I'd like to know if anyone has put a piece of CR-39 into a Farnsworth-Hirsch Fusor (briefly!) to get some data on tracks made by known-fusion events, for comparison with the co-deposition data-pits. I recognize some compensation-analysis may be necessary, since a Fusor operates in a vacuum and electrolysis doesn't. But if CR-39 is such potentially important stuff, then I'm all for including a decent description of it and its usual place in particle-detection physics --and I'm also for including a published picture of CR-39 that has been through a Fusor, just so the readers can see how similar (or different) the pits are, to the other picture, and they could maybe also see why the CF researchers claim their pits are caused by fusions (or why they shouldn't make those claims!). (Yes, I know about the OR rules. But I bet a CR-39 picture could be added to the Farnsworth fusor article, and then this article would only need to mention that the other picture exists... or both pictures could be added to the CR-39 article!) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Objectivist (talk • contribs) 06:37, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Apparently, the professionals editing the article have decided that skeptical sources need not be peer reviewed or meet any of the other reliable source criteria for physical science articles, but opposing sources from recent high-impact peer reviewed journals must not be included even when they are supported by back-to-back replies to peer reviewed critiques. Because, they are not WP:SECONDARY sources, meaning that even though they include their own background literature surveys approved by the reviewers, they were originally authored by experimenters who have actually made the measurements in question instead of theoreticians who only measure things with their word processor as they contribute to perpetuation of the "mainstream." Welcome to the wonderful world of controversial Wikipedia articles! 69.228.207.247 (talk) 02:36, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Calorimetry arguments against closed cells?

Are there any arguments against the calorimetry of closed cells, in which the evolved gases are expected to recombine? 69.228.220.30 (talk) 20:23, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Shanahan argues that recombination changes the heat profile, which changes the calibration. That argument applies mostly to the isoperibolic case, where they use the flow as nothing but a constant temperature bath. Flow calorimetry makes the calibration error small. I think Dr. Shanahan is wrong, it is not recombination but a simple matter of spurious occurrences of resistence in the cathode and then Joule heating. The nuclear data is all garbage. McKurbe et al. probably did the most careful, well designed, CF experiments of all time (Joule heating should not have bothered them), but it looks to me like they made a math error. ~Paul V. Keller 01:34, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Also, as the SRI work has shown, closed cells can be fatally dangerous if the recombining catalysts get moist. 69.228.207.247 (talk) 01:37, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

You need to stop blaming the world for its not believing in cold fusion. ~Paul V. Keller 02:51, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

The world you describe as preferring to accept the mainstream over the experimental evidence in the highest impact factor journals? What makes you think I'm blaming anyone other than myself for not trying to make it clearer? GetLinkPrimitiveParams (talk) 02:58, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Why was reference to Szpak et al (2004) and (2005) removed?

Reviewing the article, I see that we no longer cite Szpak, Mosier-Boss, Miles, and Fleischmann (2004) "Thermal behavior of polarized Pd/D electrodes prepared by co-deposition" Thermochimica Acta 410: 101- in-line. So now our readers have no way of knowing that Szpak et al disagree with Shanahan's claim that they can't measure the volume of their own recombined evolved output gases. Even though the editors of Thermochimica Acta chose to publish their most recent paper of Shanahan's immediately followed by Storms' paper pointing this out back-to-back along with Shanahan's submission. Why? 69.228.220.30 (talk) 21:17, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

It was cited as part of a talk page discussion that ended up in the article:

"Cold fusion proponents say that such speculations are not supported by experimental results (in particular, that the measured volume of recombined output evolved gases does not allow for recombination within the cell)"

The statement is argumentative, not informative. Nobody can prove there was never a recombination error in any experiment. The best Szpak can do is explain the steps he has taken to eliminate the possibility of such an error in his experiments.

I am pretty sure I have a source admitting that outgas flows have rarely been measured accurately, so it seems to me you are trying to prove a point that is not true. I say that without relying on the fact that in some cases, e.g. Pons & Fleischman, the increased vapour pressure at the elevated temperature would mask most of the effect, making a very careful measurement necessary to draw any conclusion.

We can agree that the article should be explaining closed cell systems and that they eliminate recombination as a source or error, except for the issue of calibration. We can further explain flow calorimeters that make the potential calibration error very small. I think your best paper is McKurbe et al. The difference between this approaches and the one I destroyed, was that the old approach sought to introduce a second sentence to undermine the one that came before it. Here we are making an organized presentation of both sides of the case and not putting the reader into the middle of an argument. ~Paul V. Keller 01:25, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Are you proposing that we include Shanahan's claims that the calibration might be wrong because of recombination, but not the experimenters' claims that they measured the volumes and found them inconsistent with Shanahan's prediction? Doesn't WP:NPOV require exactly the opposite? 69.228.207.247 (talk) 02:15, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

According to email from Pam Boss today, Melvin Miles made the measurements of recombined volumes from the SPAWAR cells. The problem with closed cells is that they can explode if the recombining catalysts get wet. I suppose that counts as an argument against them with a body count of one in twenty years. 69.228.207.247 (talk) 01:36, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I see that Szpak et al (2005) "Evidence of nuclear reactions in the Pd lattice" Naturwissenschaften 92: 394–397 has also been removed from the articles cited in-line, and also remains unused in the Bibliography. This is particularly troubling because of the emphasis on easy reproducibility in that article. Who is going through the text and removing citations to high impact factor journal articles by experimenters? 69.228.220.30 (talk) 22:53, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

This article is not intended to become a literature review. If there is a point in the article that would be better supported by this paper that, you can insert the cite there, perhaps replacing an older cite it will make redundant. If a point is missing, and I know quite a few are, your could make the point and cite your best source for supporting that point. However, it is not an objective to find a place in the article for every source, and there in no need to find a home for orphaned sources. ~Paul V. Keller 22:57, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Is it not, hands down, both the most reliable source according to Wikipedia's criteria for physical science articles and most recent peer-reviewed source we have for the "Evidence for nuclear transmutations" section? That section is currently supported by an unreviewed monograph, a 2002 journal paper in Japanese, and a column from Scientific American. That is so far from depending primarily on the latest papers from journals with the highest impact factors, that there's no other way to say it: as far as Wikipedia's physical science article criteria go, it's just plain shoddy sourcing. 69.228.207.247 (talk) 02:15, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Jed Rothwell

Just a short note, Jed Rothwell is considered banned and any commentary from him should be subject to revert, block, ignore. Guy (Help!) 10:52, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

I am not Jed Rothwell, who according to Talk:Cold fusion/Archive 19#Jed's travelling IP roadshow has been editing only from DSL providers with geolocations in New York, Georgia, and Florida. I have been in California at IP 69.228.* exclusively for the past several months. When you deleted the section above, you didn't just revert me, you deleted several paragraphs by Paul V. Keller as well. 69.228.201.125 (talk) 13:46, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

"considered banned"? Could you kindly provide a link the exact conditions of his ban? Thanks. --Art Carlson (talk) 17:56, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

here.

Note: if you are unsure how this is a ban, then take WP:BAN and translate "no uninvolved administrator is willing to unblock" as "no uninvolved administrator is willing to lift topic ban" (if he hadn't got a dynamic IP, he would have been simply blocked. The only reason his account is not indef-blocked is that he hasn't edited again from it). If you disagree, then please don't complain here about lack of consensus or something. Go directly to AN, point to the discussion I linked, and ask for Jed's topic ban to be lifted. Be prepared to explain how Jed's contributions help improve the cold fusion article, and how they obviously contribute to enrich the talk page with non-soapboxing, non-POV-pushing and policy-compliant discussions --Enric Naval (talk) 01:55, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Got it. I see where your choice of words came from, and the consensus in the discussion you cite looks solid. --Art Carlson (talk) 09:20, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Jed Rothwell is not blocked, as far as I can see. I haven't looked at all the IPs involved, but the AN report linked by Enric Naval doesn't mention that any of the IPs are blocked. Like many such discussions on AN, What has happened is that Guy used his admin tools to place lenr-canr.org on the spam blacklist for en Wikipedia. When he encountered objections, he went to the global blacklist and requested that it be globally blocked. There being no contrary argument, his claims -- which were misleading or downright false -- were accepted and it's been added. So we have an administrator who edited this and related articles on December 18, then added the site to the spam blacklist so nobody could revert his edits, except for an administrator -- who would have to first remove the site from the spamlist. And now a local admin can't do that, unless he or she has admin access on the meta wiki.

As to whether or not Jed's contributions here help, or not, that would depend on one's POV. He's clearly not, shall we say, skillful at collaborating; but that's common with experts, in fact. He's highly knowledgeable in the field. He has explicitly rejected editing the article directly, and, in fact, this is what policy would ask of him, because of an apparent COI. So, then, when he says he's not editing the article, he's condemned for not wanting to improve the project, even though he clearly wants to see us improve the article, and he provides information and leads and sources. It seems to me that he's doing exactly what policy requires of him, and that the only problem is that he has an unpopular POV.

In any case, if he's disruptive, he can be warned and blocked. If he contributes off-topic or uncivil posts, they can be removed. If he's blocked and he block-evades, he can then be pretty much reverted on sight. I'm much more concerned at what I discover here, with editors writing things like: I will fight tooth and nail against anyone who attempts to once again create spin in this article by inserting POV-pushing tidbits and caveats into the middles of and between sentences other people have written. What is spin and what is not spin is dependent on one's POV, and fighting tooth and nail isn't going to prevent spin; it's more likely to create or maintain it. What eliminates spin is consensus editing, editing that considers the various POVs, what can be placed in the article due to policy restrictions; but, ultimately, policy is interpreted by us, collectively, and only rarely -- and unfortunately -- under outside constraints. If we can find consensus, including editors with various POVs, it is probably spin-free, or close. --Abd (talk) 15:42, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

The effect of WP:RBI is similar to a block except for the history. Jed knows his way around here very well, going back to 2005. If he wishes to reestablish his account, he's perfectly capable of doing so. Meanwhile, his ongoing use of dynamic IPs to edit this talk page has only limited possibility of causing problems. The blacklist of the website he promotes here is another matter. I for one am not willing to take it on blind faith that the journal articles there are free of copyvio - if in fact that site has the original publishers' releases to host them all online, it should provide the releases for others to see. LeadSongDog (talk) 16:29, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

The blocklist policies or guidelines are very clear that the blacklists aren't to be used to control content except in the face of substantial linkspam, and that blocking should be attempted first. Not to mention warning! Now, JzG blacklisted lenr-canr.org after removing a link to the site from Martin Fleischmann. JzG has presented evidence on here and meta that would lead a naive reader to think that Rothwell had been inserting the links. No, he wasn't. Who inserted that link? You did, LeadSongDog. If lenr-canr.org isn't to be used, why did you use it? I think I can guess. The link was to a paper by Fleischmann giving his history of the cold fusion affair, a paper presented at a conference in China, the publisher is the Chinese government. Lenr-canr.org claims to have obtained permission to host a copy, and we have no evidence otherwise, but we also don't know where else the paper could be seen. It serves our readers if they can look at the source, and, contrary to some claims, verification isn't the sole reason to provide links to copies of papers; they are very valuable for further research by a reader and, in fact, academia tends to use Wikipedia for that: as a place to quickly find sources, *never* as a place to directly cite.

Wikipedia refers to countless copies of documents, and insisting on specific proof for each one of them is excessive. JzG has asserted that there could be legal hazard from linking, but that seems to be his unsupported opinion, the case he cites was not one of inadvertent linking to a violating copy. Given that lenr-canr.org pops up on google as the first location to host these docuements, typically, they'd be astoundingly foolish to be lying about the permissions. The IP issue is a total red herring. He identifies himself, so there isn't sock puppetry, as such. When the spamming guidelines refer to IP editors, they clearly are assuming *anonymous* editors. Sure, Rothwell should use his account. Or should recover it. But that's irrelevant.

So you are saying, LeadSongDog, that lenr-canr.org should provide on-line copies of all the permissions? What's to prevent them from forging those, after all, if they would lie about the permissions, why not lie a little more deeply? What's adequate? Copies of e-mails (my guess is that a lot of permissions came by e-mail). Scans of documents with signatures? Notarized? And where is the policy or even guideline requiring this? Without such, it starts to look like a "rule" invented to harass a particular set of editors.

Now, LeadSongDog, you've suggested that we whitelist the bibliography, given that it seems to be the most complete one out there. But, wait a minute. Who owns the copyright on that? How do we know?

In any case, pending a settled outcome for this sordid affair (which now has at least four administrators a bit involved who seem to understand the issues, plus some blacklist admins, who, I'd say, have become a tad too involved with the blacklist and don't seem to see any problem with the blacklist becoming, shall we say, more powerful), could we agree on whitelisting the lenr-canr bibliography? If so, I'm sure it can be easily done. --Abd (talk) 16:35, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps this link will give some insight into why JzG considers lenr-camr.org a bad site: he caught them altering the 2004 DOE report. Additionally there is the problem that they post copyrighted material without permission. By the way, this is at least the 4th time this discussion of lenr-camr.org has come around. On another note, I believe it would be a mistake to consider Jed Rothwell an expert.Cardamon (talk) 08:45, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely agreed. We decided a long time ago that lenr-canr was far too problematic for us to have anything to do with. Of course Rothwell is not an expert. I would say that experts on this topic include only physicists who are publishing in the field but it is slightly more complex than that. An article by a science journalist might be RS for news of a development. We previously considered work by a sociologist of science and my view at the time was that it was out of date, but perhaps the discussion could be re-opened. And there may be experts in other fields whose work is reliable for statements about aspects of the debate. The barrier for who is qualified to speak on what should be set high. Itsmejudith (talk) 10:36, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) I've carefully reviewed that document and some of the history around it. There was no "alteration" of the report itself, and if you think so, you've been had, you've believed a thing because it's been repeated over and over. It's common, in publishing a public domain document -- which that is, I believe -- to provide an introduction. That introduction, if biased, could well be a reason to not link directly to the lenr-canr.org page. But it doesn't impeach lenr-canr.org's "reliability" at all.

No evidence has been offered that lenr-canr.org has any copyvio material at all; however, even if it did have an occasional document, our policies don't suggest blacklisting a site because it contains isolated vios; blacklisting is to be used only, in that case, for massive violations. There exists only a legal hazard if there is deliberate linking to copyvio, or serious neglect. Given that an admin whom I consider quite knowledgeable on this subject has reviewed this specific case and opined that lenr-canr.org wasn't, on the face, violating copyrights, there is no reason to use copyvio policy against lenr-canr.org

Now, you stated, Itsmejudith, that "we" decided that lenr-canr as "far too problematic," but that raises for me several questions. Who's "we," and "too problematic" for what? Lenr-canr.org isn't a reliable source, in itself, whether Rothwell is a fringe lunatic or even a sober and qualified scientist expert in the field. It's "self-published." However, it's, as Rothwell keeps saying, a "library." Libraries aren't "reliable sources," they are collections of documents, some of which may be reliable sources. The question here is whether or not we can, as a service to the reader which could save the reader quite a bit of trouble, link to a library so that they can easily find a copy of the document. It's commonly done, i.e., there is some reliable source, a published document, but the original publisher doesn't make it available on-line, but *with or without permission* someone else does, and an editor finds it and simply provides the URL in the place provided for that in a citation template. The document host isn't the publisher.

Nobody has suggested that writing by Rothwell is usable as reliable source. That you responded this way shows that you have missed the point. Fleischmann presented a paper at a conference in China, it was published there. Pcarbonn added a reference to that paper to this article. Nobody challenged it, it wasn't controversial. He didn't provide a URL. Later, though, LeadSongDog added the URL, to a copy of the document posted at lenr-canr.org. This was later copied to Martin Fleischmann by yet another editor, not Pcarbonn and certainly not Rothwell, who doesn't generally edit articles. It was this link that JzG removed as having been linkspammed, plus a link to newenergytimes.com. And then JzG went to the local blacklist and added these. He had made edits to the articles, so he was an involved editor; in any case, he didn't follow the normal procedure of proposing and letting someone uninvolved make the decision; he proposed simultaneously with listing it himself. He didn't log the listing, and he didn't give the site names in the edit summaries, it was a real pain to find the edits. By using his admin tools to directly add the sites, he made his own edits not undoable. There was no controversy over these links, here.

A number of uninvolved admins have now looked at this, or aspects of this, and what I've been saying is certainly not my isolated opinion. I'm proceeding step-by-step. On the metablacklist, lenr-canr.org remains blacklisted, but the ball is now back in our court. Watch this space.... --Abd (talk) 16:57, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Adding a review section

I recently added more info on the DOE review, but I think it's important that we have a section of reviews of the field. Both DOE reports can go in there, the Indian government review, as well as Storms 2007. I'm not sure about Biberian since it's a highly uncritical study published in an unreliable source.

Wanted to canvass opinion on this and check if Paul V. Keller wasn't already working on it since reading Storms. Phil153 (talk) 19:47, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

It will take a little longer for me to get around to the remaining edits I have planned. Those edits will pertain to summarizing the experiments and data that are at the heart of what cold fusioners claim to be their support.

Some details from the DOE report have been quoted in an inaccurate and misleading fashion. I particularly take issue with misrepresenting the report as a panel vote. Only nine of the reviewers ever met. Nine were outside. They had diverse areas of expertise: some were better able to comment on certain issues than others. There was no expectation that each should independently recognize every hole in the data. Look at these quotes:

"However, the results were not convincing to some reviewers in regard to the occurrence of low energy nuclear reactions. Experts noted many deficiencies in the techniques, methods, and interpretation of the data presented."

"Many reviewers noted that poor experiment design, documentation, background control and other similar issues hampered the understanding and interpretation of the results presented."

"The reviewers who did not find the production of excess power convincing cite a number of issues including: excess power in the short term is not the same as net energy production over the entire of time of an experiment; all possible chemical and solid state causes of excess heat have not been investigated and eliminated as an explanation; and production of power over a period of time is a few percent of the external power applied and hence calibration and systematic effects could account for the purported net effect."

What these show is that some reviewers identified some problems, and other reviewers others or none. This was to be expected as they were chosen from diverse fields to get various points of view. The fact that some reviewers did not see certain problems is a far cry from saying that some reviewers denied that such problems existed. Nine of the eighteen submitted their evaluations without seeing any other reviewers notes.

The crux of the matter is that the basis for accepting data as evidence for LENR is that all other interpretations of the data, including experimental error, alternate explanations, and flawed analysis, have been excluded. The DOE report shows that has not happened.

What the report says most strongly is that nothing changed since 1989:

Most reviewers, including those who accepted the evidence and those who did not, stated that the effects are not repeatable, the magnitude of the effect has not increased in over a decade of work, and that many of the reported experiments were not well documented.

Several reviewers specifically stated that more experiments similar in nature to those that have been carried out for the past fifteen years are unlikely to advance knowledge in this area.

That can't be true, IF they are just dissimilar enough to begin obtaining, reliably, repeatable excess heat. That's the crux. Mere claims that excess heat is present, or not, should be replaced by reliability. It should be obvious that "more experiments similar in nature" should give similar-to-past results, which INCLUDES occasional claimed observations of excess heat. So, only a slight dissimilarity should be all that is needed, to observe it reliably.

Personally, at the moment I'd rather see some more focus on the newer co-deposition experiments with the pitted plastic. This mostly started being done after the 2004 review, and certainly falls outside the "similar in nature" experiments that were deemed insufficiently worthy of pursuit, but if these can be repeated often enough, then DOE might be encouraged to do another review before waiting another 15 years. V (talk) 20:05, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

In other words, same old same old. As before, there was no objection to funding well designed experiments that might shed new light on the subject. ~Paul V. Keller 23:06, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Do we get to editorialize that much though? I mean, if the review was limited to the most competent nuclear physicists, there could be an objection of systemic bias. Ultimately, we have to write what was given in the most impartial reviews. This was my attempt at summarizing it.

I'm avoiding editing the article until you're done with your work (which is much appreciated btw). Phil153 (talk) 23:19, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

Hubler (2007) is a secondary source review. Why not use it to balance the DOE panels? The Navy, unlike the DOE, has actual experience in the field. There is a courtesy copy at www.newenergytimes.com/Library/2007HublerG-AnomalousEffects.pdf but that domain is blacklisted on Wikipedia so you will have to copy/paste to read it. 69.228.81.109 (talk) 12:45, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

Sure, but it's one man's opinion (who doesn't even appear to be a notable academic) published in journal that isn't related to nuclear physics. Many of his references are of primary research published at the Nth International Conference on Cold Fusion. Part of his presentation makes the same reference that McKubre does to Energetics Research Ltd, a private company founded and run by a medical doctor (not a physicist) found guilty of defrauding his patients[3]. In addition, the reviewer is NOT independent of the field in question, but a hardcore advocate. Exactly how much weight should be put on this one review?

Also, there is no need to "balance" anything, we're here to create an article that is NPOV and uses the best sources possible with appropriate weight. Phil153 (talk) 13:45, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

"Dr. Hubler received his B.S. degree in physics from Union College and his Ph.D. in physics from Rutgers University. He held an NRC-NRL Post-Doctoral Fellowship from 1972 to 1974. Dr. Hubler received NRL Publication Awards in 1980, 1980, 1991, and 1994; an NRL Invention Award in 1983, 1988, 1989, 1991, and 1992; an NRL 75th Anniversary Tech Transfer Award in 1998; a Navy Meritorious Civilian Service Award in 1999; an NRL Technology Transfer Award in 1994, and 2000; and an NRL Special Act Award in 2004. His publications include 82 journal articles, 47 proceedings articles, and 20 reports. He has edited four books and written three book chapters. He holds six patents. Dr. Hubler is a member of the American Physical Society, Sigma Xi, Materials Research Society, and the Böhmische Physical Society."[4] It doesn't seem odd to me that a secondary review would cite primary research, even if some of it has been authored by discredited people. 69.228.81.109 (talk) 14:44, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

He's obviously a credentialed researcher within the Navy, I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. But he's not Hagelstein or McKubre. BTW, APS membership is meaningless [5]. Phil153 (talk) 15:25, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

How meaningful is 82 journal articles? It would seem that, along with his awards, establishes notability to Wikipedia's standards per WP:ACADEMIC. 69.228.81.109 (talk) 15:53, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think anyone is arguing the's not notable enough for a biographical article. The question to address whether his expertise is relevant to the topic: is the work a reliable source on the topic. The publication was in a low impact conference proceedings on surface chemistry, both of which mitigate against treating it as reliable.LeadSongDog (talk) 21:13, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

In this case, the topic of the conference ("Surface Modification of Materials by Ion Beams") directly corresponds to one of the lines of inquiry recommended by the DOE 2004 research suggestions. In any other article, this kind of a secondary review from an established academic with an industrial technology transfer background would be treated as very authoritative. The only reason it isn't here is because the ArbCom, incumbents from which were soundly defeated at the polls, has decided to impose WP:MAINSTREAM as their method of dealing with death threats "made in jest" by an editor who I can only imagine must be frustrated coming to terms with the emotional investment made in choosing sides early on. 69.228.206.231 (talk) 07:09, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Are there any reasons that Hubler's NRL review should not be given as much weight as the DoE reviews? GetLinkPrimitiveParams (talk) 13:19, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Are you the same IP that asked the question above? The reason I asked is because you previously responded to a question to that IP as if it was to you, here.

Anyway, I thought that was explained above. I'll reiterate the points:

• It's the opinion of a single reviewer, (who's not even an academic, just a navy labs researcher).
• It's published in a journal called Surface & Coatings Technology. While that may be a fine journal for surface and coatings technology, the peer review process of such a journal is totally indequate to look at claims of nuclear fusion, nuclear products, and probably even excess heat. It's like posting proof of a disputed organic layering technology in the Journal of Nuclear Fusion It's totally absurd.
• It's hardly an impartial review given his involvement with the field. The DOE had 18 reviewers, some of them clearly impartial.
• What the mainstream thinks about the truth of a fringe topic is more important than what the fringe advocates thinks about the truth of a fringe topic. DOE (although flawed) is the best representation we have of the mainstream view since most ignore it.

It's obvious to me that Hubler's review is not worth mentioning. On the other hand, I certainly think Storms has a place in the article, at least on par with the DOE review. I've been waiting for Keller to add it since he spent much time reviewing it. That's not stopping anyone else from doing it though. Phil153 (talk) 13:50, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

A couple of other points as well. The DOE review has a very notable event in and of itself; it attracted in depth coverage both before and after by major newspapers, and was widely seen as the last mainstream review of the field. So the reason for inclusion and weight of the DOE is on other grounds as well (that Hubler does not meet). Phil153 (talk) 14:22, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

You are making a number of distinctions which I don't see the basis for. Firstly, what do you mean by Hubler's involvement with the field? Do you mean that people in his organization actually have experience with empirical study of the questions, unlike anyone in the DoE? And why do you say he isn't an academic? Is it impossible for someone to be an academic and be employed by the Naval Research Laboratory? He has 82 academic journal publications. How many academic journal publications does it take to be an academic, in your view? And yes, I often edit without logging in, for a variety of good reasons. 69.228.197.195 (talk) 15:21, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Researchers do research, and get it published. It's what they're paid to do. An academic is someone like Hagelstein who is employed for broad subject knowledge and has standing in the academic community to authoritatively review the field. Read the definition at academic carefully for what it means. I'm just using standard English language. I don't really care though since they're side issues. What about the more important points, about the journal it's published in, and the fact that it's one reviewer vs 18? How much weight should we put on a review of nuclear fusion detections in Surface & Coatings Technology. Is the peer review process of such a journal sufficient to vet the opinion of a single person in an unrelated field? Can it be considered a reliable source for these claims? Does it compare in notability to a major mainstream review widely cited by the top newspapers in the world? Phil153 (talk) 16:08, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Balance in the 2004 DOE report

As it was notably missing, I added the comment in the 2004 DOE report about further research, as an exact quote. It was reverted.[6] We have consensus, apparently, that the DOE report is to be treated as RS. Certainly it's newsworthy and is reliable on it's own content! In the edit summary, Enric wrote: rv good faith edits, was discussed on the talk page that this is just a standard recommendation.

Now, normally, if text that is reliably sourced is inserted, it's improper to simply remove it unless:

• It's not notable, i.e., irrelevant.
• It's redundant.
• It is better placed in another article.

None of these apply here. There are two arguments which are -- commonly and improperly -- advanced for such removals:

• The edit creates an improper spin.
• It's too much detail, it will confuse the reader.

And these are precisely arguments that will be used by those who want to preserve spin in an article. Rather, there are far better responses which guidelines suggest:

• Counter spin with improved wording or additional balancing fact.
• If there is indeed too much detail, consider creating a specialized article, then summarize this article back in the original.

And in all of this, civil and persistent seeking of broad consensus is essential.

Enric's revert was done in good faith, I'm sure. However, the article as it stands is clearly imbalanced. The 2004 DOE report was not a simple, clear rejection of LENR, it's more complicated. I see in discussion history that the text had, at one time, the proportion of members of the panel who supported the various recommendations. That's been removed. Particularly with a field which has been asserted to be junk science or fringe science, the existence of notable dissent among experts is crucial; otherwise there is no way to distinguish true fringe from what is merely minority opinion in a shifting field. With true fringe science, there will be almost no neutral expert opinion supporting it. I see, in this article, strong evidence that a group of editors has decided that the topic is fringe, and that readers need to be protected from fringe science. The first view seems, to me, to not be supported by the latest material in reliable sources, and that includes the DOE report, with a continuing shift after that, plus readers don't need to be protected from anything except unreliable text and spin.

If it's true that the report recommendation for further research was a "standard recommendation," then this could be stated, if there is reliable source for it. However, it doesn't look like that to me, at least it is not that simple. The recommendation was "almost" unanimous, which means it was controversial, that is, there was dissent. That would be unusual for a "standard recommendation." Rather, it seems to me, the recommendation reflects the substantial minority of panel participants who thought there was something worthy of investigation here. At the very least, the cause of so many reports of excess heat should be investigated, otherwise the world would continue to be plagued with contentious argument over this. There is an obvious possible cause: hundreds of researchers look for excess heat; most of them don't publish. If there is a publication bias, it could be that only reports of excess heat are published. However, this would only happen with minor excess heat, within range of experimental error. I suspect that we will see a fairly dramatic shift in this field within the next year or two, because it seems that it's been discovered how to get excess heat quickly and reliably and that evidence of nuclear reactions, the smoking gun, has been found by the SPAWAR researchers, whose work is not easily dismissed, and which has started to see confirmation.

However, of course, we must be very careful with the article, and my personal crystal ball isn't a reliable source.

I ask that another editor review my edit and restore it if proper. Obviously, if there is no support for that, it would be useless for me to revert simply based on my own opinion. And please, and I am here writing to "cold fusion supporters," don't edit war, and I will also ask IP editors to refrain from reversion as well. Let's begin seeking consensus here, all of us. It takes time, but it can be done, even with highly contentious topics, such that editors with various POVs can agree, "this is fair and balanced." There may be exceptions, but they will stand out and be relatively harmless if the rest of us truly work together. --Abd (talk) 16:25, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

That statement doesn't really add useful information since it is well known that the adminstration has a duty to entertain proposals related to nuclear physics. It doesn't really matter whether it is in this article or not, so I lean toward keeping it out to keep the article concise. I do object to phrasing that way using the word "however" since that implies that the 2004 panel's view of the cold fusion field is significantly different from the 1989 panel. A phrase such as "It also states..." could be used instead. Olorinish (talk) 16:41, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind making an edit somewhere along the lines proposed by Abd/Olorinish, but I would like to see the actual quote in the 2004 DOE report. I didn't happen to see it in the article at this link: http://web.archive.org/web/20070114122346/http://www.science.doe.gov/Sub/Newsroom/News_Releases/DOE-SC/2004/low_energy/CF_Final_120104.pdf I think I did see something like it in the 1989 DOE report, but since Abd was talking about the 2004 report, that's where I wanted to see it. Also, possibly of equal importance for those against "spin", is this quote from http://www.ncas.org/erab/execsumm.htm in the the 1989 report: "The Panel also concludes that some observations attributed to cold fusion are not yet invalidated." Does this not plainly imply that this CF article should not excessively describe all the presumed faults with the experiments, because the 1989 analysts already did that, and some of the experiments passed, with results-yet-to-be-explained? V (talk) 17:00, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

The sentence I quoted is on page 5, at the top, in the document you found, V. Yes, V, that's pretty much the situation. There were "unexplained results." Those are where science grows; many "unexplained results" simply remain that way, maybe the janitor spat in the soup, but others lead to new science. Experiments are performed, sometimes, to confirm what is known or suspected, but it's the unexpected that leads to growth in science. "Keeping an article concise" is valuable, if NPOV is preserved. It's often impossible with a complex subject. In any case, I have no attachment to specific wording, Olorinish's suggestion would be fine with me. Objections to restoration with the changed wording? --Abd (talk) 03:22, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you.

I disagree with the policy you're citing, that if text that is reliably sourced is inserted, it's improper to simply remove it. Writing an article is about editorial judgment. I could easily add 20+ pages of reliably sourced material that adds more information to the article, and claim the same policy you are when you try to remove it. The policy you cite, blindly applied, would create articles tens of megabytes long for some topics.

The panel's funding recommendation seems like needless extra information to me. The current version accurately describes the view of the panel on the two main issues, heat and evidence of nuclear reactions, and makes it very clear that some think it actually exists, while some think it may exist. Whether they include standard text related to funding is irrelevant. The fact that none of them recommended a focussed funding program (which the report notes), is very pertinent information however. If there was any kind of reasonable possiblity that cold fusion could ever be a viable energy source, then a focussed funding it would seem a no brainer. The fact that even the "convinced" panel members didn't recommend it is very telling. However, when I added the DOE report section I left that out as well, as the current version covers what needs to be covered related to a review of the evidence. Phil153 (talk) 04:34, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Oh, come on, Phil153, any policy, blindly applied, leads to nonsense. If you'd like, I'll find and quote the actual policy or guideline. You are free to disagree with any policy or guideline, after all, WP:IAR and all that, but ... the wikihighway is littered with the remnants of editors who insisted on ignoring that level of community consensus that's reflected in the policies. No danger from me! I'm not an administrator and I don't call them in except when vandalism or blatant edit warring is involved. Nobody around here would even dream of doing that, right?

Little experiment, here. I had never read the 1989 DOE report. From the article here, I assumed it was really, really negative. Because I'm asking to get lenr-canr.org unblocked, over on meta, and because JzG asserted a problem with lenr-canr.org was a page they host where Rothwell added a prefatory comment to the 1989 report -- he shouldn't have done that!, but it's irrelevant, just don't link to that page! -- I did finally read the recommendations of the report. While it appears there were quite a few errors in the report, the conclusions were not nearly as negative as has been presented. They actually seem to have been more in favor of further research than the 2004 DOE report, except that the 2004 effectively incorporates the conclusions of the 1989 report, which *don't* depend on the errors. I'd urge reading it, if by chance you have not, and see if it matches what you expected. The report on lenr-canr.org can't be linked here because of the blacklist, but they had taken it from, and referenced, another copy, and the recommendations and conclusions section is at http://www.ncas.org/erab/sec5.htm. I think it's about time we got some balance on this. What I see above is "reading between the lines." I.e., "if they had thought.... then they would have said ...," instead of looking at what they did say and taking it straight, without synthesis.

I agree with almost every word of the recommendations given the evidence they had at the time. The matter had shifted to some degree by 2004, but not enough for them to recommend a focused program of research. SPAWAR, essentially, finally did what the 1989 panel had recommended: A shortcoming of most experiments reporting excess heat is that they are not accompanied in the same cell by simultaneous monitoring for the production of fusion products. If the excess heat is to be attributed to fusion, such a claim should be supported by measurements of fusion products at commensurate levels. Other researchers have also addressed this, but the SPAWAR work claims (1) reliable excess heat, quickly produced, and (2) alpha particle detection; alpha particles are, of course, helium nuclei and thus are fusion products (though they are also produced by radioactive decay, but that's not what's happening in the SPAWAR cells unless someone spiked the electrodes! If SPAWAR's work is extensively confirmed, it's all over. Given that they figured out how to do it cheaply, they are either going to be confirmed or they are going to be laughed off the planet, and DOE funding isn't necessary for this. I'd say, personally, that the evidence is now strong enough to merit a focused program, but ....

Actually, I had acquired the impression that some of the older measurements DID find fusion products at commensurate levels ... PROVIDED we define "products" as "helium-4 and thermal energy". That is, the amount of excess heat measured seemed to be in line with the amount of 4He detected, ASSUMING that D-D fusions managed to reliably release 23.8Mev as heat instead of gammas. So that would qualify as a semi-sensible "what", even if the "how" remains unexplained. Alas, those who think we know all the possibilties for "how" have insisted that that particular "what" is impossible. But can they prove we know all the possibilities? Hah! V (talk) 13:08, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Even if fusion has been shown, that doesn't necessarily mean practical energy production. In 1989, the DOE saw that practical energy production wasn't an immediate prospect, the evidence wasn't there yet. And that was their main concern, quite short-term. Given how much work has been done in the last twenty years, they were right. And I know what CF advocates will say: but the billions in hot fusion research! Come on, folks, people have to make a living! Lighten up!--Abd (talk) 06:13, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I would appreciate the link to that policy, I know it exists but I haven't been able to find it to figure out how much consensus it truly has. It's obviously a stupid idea, useful in preventing certain kinds of edit war but not useful in building a serious reference work using good editorial judgment. And it's rife for abuse. As for highways, the highway of human achievement is littered with the remnants of people who conformed to bad policies.

What makes you say the article gives the impression that the 1989 report is negative? I can't find anything that suggests that. As for your 2004 comments, the DOE's own report says that the conclusions are similar to the 1989 report. In other words, not much real progress on the proof of nuclear fusion, which is all that matters as far as our article is concerned. Phil153 (talk) 11:45, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Phil, we must keep in mind that the SPAWAR experiments were basically done after the 2004 DOE report. Sure, as an encyclopedia article, it is important to say things that are in the DOE reports, but they are not the Last Word on research in this field, mostly because the SPAWAR results are much stronger evidence for fusion than had previously been available. I see on the Front Page of Wikipedia that there is a "News" section. I wonder about how that, in an encyclopedia, can be required to come from reliable peer-reviewed sources...do you see what I'm getting at? This medium allows for articles to be easily updatable with News. Why not have a section in the main article here, indicating that there are recent results that are "making a splash" so to speak, and which are awaiting significant confirmation? If they turn out to be erroneous, then that can be reported, too, in due course. If they turn out to be correct, then no detractor will feel like an idiot for having tried to keep it out of the article altogether. V (talk) 12:50, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Are the results "making a splash" though? Can you find reliable independent sources that document this? Can you find reliable independent sources that document that these are considered to be "much stronger evidence" by people other than advocates? If so, and if we have some kind of reliable replication, then by all means it should go in the article.

As discussed on this page some time ago, there have been thousands of "breakthroughs" and new evidence in this field over the last 20 years. If we constantly included them, there'd be a new sentence documenting the latest "promising" research in cold fusion 3 times a week for 20 years, which is obviously ridiculous. So I think we should at least insist on something significant that's attracting attention from reliable independent sources before putting it in the article. An extraordinary claim is being made here (evidence of fusion reactions in an electrolytic cell at room temperature), we need something more than a single published report IMO. Phil153 (talk) 13:23, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

This is a Talk page discussion, where we may consider news and new research. Nothing that I wrote above about SPAWAR should be construed as a claim that we should include this in the article at this time. Consider it a "heads up!" On the face, though, SPAWAR peer-reviewed published articles are RS; the only problem is that we must maintain balance. We will discuss that issue, I'm sure, much more in the coming weeks and months. I should say that I intensively followed the original Pons-Fleischmann announcement and early work, but generally concluded that it was probably all a mistake; certainly I'd agree with the general conclusions of the DOE report, now that I've actually read it. It was at the time presented in the media as much more negative than it was. Phil, the SPAWAR work stands out because (1) it was a very simple experiment, and if their claims hold up, it should be very reproducible at low expense; (2) they found the smoking gun in a way that isn't nearly as easy to impeach or at least cast doubt on as instrumental error, contamination and all the other common objections made to other findings of nuclear reaction products. An inexpensive piece of plastic! It was the combination of these two that led to their results, the plastic alone wasn't enough; the rapid generation of heat, though, is remarkable on its own. If nothing else, the body of researchers should not be much better able to identify the cause of that heat! -- even if it isn't fusion. --Abd (talk) 15:37, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Phil, in one sense the SPAWAR results are making a splash, as evidenced by what Abd wrote. That is, someone (among how many others?) who wasn't impressed by the original idea that fusion was occurring, is now thinking again about the chance that fusion was occurring, that that chance has gone up considerably. Also, regarding "thousands of breakthroughs" over the years, don't be silly. How many DIFFERENT experiments have really been done over the years with deuterium-stuffed metal? I only know of about three basic types: electrolysis into bulk metal, pressurized gas into bulk metal, and now electrolytic co-deposition with thin metal. And the recently published hypothesis I've mentioned in other places on this page suggests a pure-metallic-deuterium experiment (extreme pressure required). How many others do you know about? V (talk) 16:25, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

I should make something clear. I was originally impressed by the idea that fusion was occurring at levels sufficient to generate measurable heat. So impressed that I put practically all of my available cash into palladium (I was a little late getting there, the price had already started to rise). The palladium sat in a Swiss bank for about a year, when it was sold. I forget, I think I broke even, more or less. By that time it was pretty clear that spectacular confirmations were not coming quickly, and that it was very, very possible that Pons and Fleischmann had simply erred, and that the excitement of many others had led to a proliferation of experiments; given the difficulty of doing accurate calorimetry and dealing with all the confounding factors, the existence of scattered reports of confirmation wasn't at all conclusive, it was weak. It now appears that the DOE report may have been premature, that confirmations were neglected, and there were other problems, but, still, even with all that, the DOE report wasn't very far off; I'm sure they were under pressure to come up with quick answers. With hindsight, this much is clear: it's taken the better part of two decades to find what may be a clear smoking gun, reproducible, with very strong evidence of nuclear ash -- and that is under active challenge; contrary to what some seem to think, LENR researchers, at least many of them, are quite actively skeptical, which is a good thing. The best confirmations come from skeptics who decide to test the damn thing anyway, who are actively looking for what's wrong with a thing. However, that approach can also go too far, and did go too far in 1989. ("We didn't find it, we are smart, so they must be stupid!") Experimenters made errors that showed excess heat, and then proclaimed that these were also Pons and Fleischmann's errors. A reasonable hypothesis, to be sure, but very dangerous to science as an assumption. Basically, because there could have been error in their work, and because the results didn't make sense with established theory, the jump was made that there must be some error, hence any possible error was seized upon. And it appears that Pons and Fleischmann did make errors, but it also seems that they did see real excess heat. (We should know soon. If it turns out that palladium-catalyzed fusion does occur, it becomes, by Occam's razor, the probably cause of the original apparent excess heat. What a coincidence it would be if there was no excess heat, but ... palladium catalyzed deuterium fusion does occur! That could be the case, of course. They had reasons to suspect it might occur, in spite of contrary theory, and they simply got excited too soon.)

Why did I show up here? Well, I watch User talk:Jehochman He and I had some conflict at one time, quite well resolved by following the first step of dispute resolution with some diligence and cautious persistence, so sometimes I notice activity there. Questions were raised there about User:JzG's removal of links to lenr-canr.org and newenergytimes.com from here. My concern was apparent administrative conflict of interest: JzG made some edits, then locked them up by using his admin tools to add the site to the spam blacklist. Now, as linkspamming goes, there doesn't seem to have been anything like the level necessary for blacklisting, according to the blacklist description. However, JzG had apparently come to conclusions about fringe science, alleged distortion of sources, etc., and therefore made the edits and did the rest. It's a fairly clear abuse of admin tools, these are content questions, to be resolved by consensus of editors. Sure, admins can do whatever they like, even in apparent conflict, but if it becomes apparent that there isn't consensus behind it, they should withdraw. JzG didn't, when it was questioned. So my interest here wasn't content-related. I had no opinion about lenr-canr.org, for all I knew it was total fringe, looney-tunes advocacy, or the opposite. Same with newnergytimes.com. What I saw was an admin making a content decision and stonewalling it.

I'll no longer consider myself neutral on the topic though, I've become a bit too convinced. But, definitely, I started out as a skeptic here, but had to do some research in order to understand what was going on, which caused me to read some of the crucial sources..... etc. --Abd (talk) 23:36, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

The funny thing is that I had the exact opposite reaction. I started off thinking there might be something to it (lots of smoke for no fire), and every bit of research I read from CF researchers caused me to become more and more skeptical due to the quality and nature of the "evidence". It has all the hallmarks of error and pathological science. As for SPAWAR, http://www.earthtech.org/CR39/index.html is very telling. Phil153 (talk) 00:35, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Exactly how telling is that personal web page when in fact every single one of the issues it raises is addressed by the peer-reviewed Mosier-Boss et al (2008) "Reply to comment on 'The use of CR-39 in Pd/D co-deposition experiments': a response to Kowalski" Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. 44: 291–5, p. 292? Where is the intellectual honesty? 69.228.206.231 (talk) 07:19, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Now, kids, be nice! The web page is interesting, and not conclusive in itself. I don't see that Mosier-Boss et al responded to the issues raised there. They addressed the issues raised by Kowalski. Look, this is the point. If it's fusion, it's extraordinary. Because of the magnitude of the claim, extraordinary evidence is required. CR-39 gets close, so too does reliable extra heat, if it really is that reliable and fast. But with the CR-39, there are obvious possible errors, and chemical damage is one of them. Mosier-Boss claims that chemical damage was ruled out, but nothing can be ruled out in this field, unless it's totally conclusive. Too many variables. It's going to take experiments with tiny changes in variables; my guess is that this work is going on now. How about varying the distance of the material from the electrode and seeing the effect on track density and depth? How about doing the same in the same solution with an americium source? How about a lot of things that I'm sure clever experimenters would think of. Editors and others are right to be skeptical. *Very* skeptical. My only point here is that we shouldn't pretend that skepticism is knowledge, nor that someone coming up with a hypothesis as to how the experimental results could be deceptive means that it has been debunked. One of the results from the web page is quite telling. They were finding SPAWAR-like pits; when they substituted normal water for heavy water, they also got the pits. "In several cases, we also substituted light water for heavy water in the electrolyte. These tests showed no discernible difference in the quantity of SPAWAR pits produced. This seems quite significant as the nuclear behavior of deuterium, at least in high energy experiments, is significantly different than that of protium." Indeed. Anyone know of a secondary source that reliably reviews the work? --Abd (talk) 19:17, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

[undent] Kowalski incorporated the complaints in that 2007 web page into his critique. The editors of Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. sent his paper to their reviewers. The reviewers contacted SPAWAR with questions. SPAWAR submitted their reply to the editors, who forwarded it to the reviewers, who agreed that it should be published back-to-back as a response to Kowalski's critique. SPAWAR got pits from light water, too -- in the same proportion that deuterium exists in natural light water. The 2007 earthtech.org web page authors repeatedly assume that the pits are alpha particles and compare the pits to those from known alpha particle sources, but Mosier-Boss et al (2009) "Triple tracks in CR-39 as the result of Pd–D Co-deposition: evidence of energetic neutrons" Naturwissenschaften 96: 135–142 suggests pretty convincingly that alpha particles are not the source of the pits. 69.228.206.231 (talk) 15:33, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

If there is going to be so much fuss raised about CR-39 pits, then perhaps an alternate way to detect fusion products should be attempted. I'm thinking about the Super-Kamiokande detector as an example to imitate, heh. V (talk) 18:42, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Szpak & Mosier-Boss (2007) "Further evidence of nuclear reactions in the Pd/D lattice: emission of charged particles" Naturwissenschaften 94: 511–4 shows one of the methods of detecting protons. 69.228.197.195 (talk) 08:57, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

arbitrary section break

The core policy is WP:NPOV which should be carefully read. In the lead to the policy, Wikipedia should be "representing fairly, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources. This is non-negotiable and expected of all articles, and of all article editors." We also have issues to address about reliable sources. I don't want to re-invent the wheel and am new to this article; but a source shouldn't be considered unreliable merely because it focuses on the field of low energy nuclear reactions; that is a legitimate research field; the issue would be more complex than that. Further, the usage of a source affects the meaning of "reliable." Cold fusion is both a science topic and a social history topic. For the science, the standard would be peer-reviewed publication. For the social history, and such, ordinary publications may be allowed. For opinion, attributed, even fringe publications might be allowed; the key is whether or not the opinion or the one giving it is notable. --Abd (talk) 19:39, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

That's different to what you quoted though, and I don't think it supports if text that is reliably sourced is inserted, it's improper to simply remove it. I've had that quoted at me before so I wonder if that's actually written somewhere.

I see you've reinserted the text. I think the current version is misleading - for example it doesn't mention, as the report does, that no reviewer (even the convinced ones) recommended a focussed federally funded program. And with the quote immediately following the bit about the recommendations being similar, it looks like that's the way in which in the recommendation are similar. And of course I still think it's unnecessary. But I'm not reverting it. Phil153 (talk) 00:35, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, there seemed to be no sustained objection here. Thanks for not reverting, but if you had reverted, we'd simply have continued to discuss it. The text you suggest should be there *should* be there. Why not put it there. As to the policy I gave the sense of earlier, it's interesting that others have said this to you. It may be in another document; or it may have been an old revision, these documents wash back and forth sometimes like the rest of wikipedia. That statement about impropriety, taken as if it were rigid policy, would be blatantly false, that was intended as a general advice.

As written, the edit seemed to imply that the sentence cherry picked from the body of the report (in charge element 3) was part of the report's conclusions. Carefully selecting the one slightly positive sentence from the entire report and presenting it as if it were part of the conclusion of the report is not appropriate. --Noren (talk) 02:11, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

No, the sentence isn't "cherry picked," and it is part of the conclusions. This is the document: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/DOEreportofth.pdf. Notice: no "alteration." There is either another copy hosted elsewhere on the site or the copy with the introduction has been removed and replaced. The sentence quoted is a specific response to Charge element 3, in the section of the report called "Detailed Summary of Reviewer Response to Charge Elements," just before the final "Conclusions." These are the final words of the DOE report:

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

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

That is, the final conclusion repeats the recommendation for further research, and this was, indeed, similar to the recommendations of the 1989 report. Note that these recommendations can't be fulfilled if "archival journals" refuse to publish research! But, apparently, some are publishing research. --Abd (talk) 17:21, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I see that Noren reverted. Sigh. Look, the use of reversion to improve content is not recommended. There is a purpose to the edit, which is to restore balance. I'm not reverting, at least not today; anyone who does work on this, please try to come up with a consensus before barging ahead. I made that edit in expectation of consensus, and we had that, close enough, from everyone participating here. I hope Noren will reconsider, I'd ping the editor on user talk if I had time..... --Abd (talk) 17:27, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

The quote you gave is completely different from the one Noren reverted ([7]. The one that was inserted was unbalanced and misleading given its placement and lack of mention that no one recommended focussed funding, whereas your selection above is from the same position in the report's conclusion and is more balanced imo. Phil153 (talk) 17:48, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Of course, this is what I stated above: the quote in the article was from the "Summary response," which just precedes the conclusion I quoted here. If there is imbalance in the lack of mention that no one recommended focused funding, the fix is obvious: mention it! However, the significance of that isn't quite clear; it simply means, to me, that as of 2004 the situation was the same, roughly, as in 1989 as to conclusions: no focused federal program, but individually considered proposals and funding as considered appropriate under existing programs or procedures. I'd recommend the same thing, probably. I don't see a focused program as appropriate yet. There is prior work to be done that doesn't require something so drastic. Just a little research, just as the report recommends, to determine more clearly WTF is going on in those excess heat experiments and is there or is there not the presence of fusion products that aren't simply background, calibration errors, or experimental error -- or possibly those. The even-handedness of the 2004 report was concealed, essentially, by how it was only partially reported. However, the 1989 report, if I've got it right, is more fully reported. I'll look again later and see what's happened here and maybe make more edits.

However, this much is clear. The report is not treating cold fusion as "fringe science." They are taking it seriously; something unexplained is going on, the explanation as fusion is unlikely as hell from established theories, but the road to that place is paved with established ideas that were taken as if they were clear facts. So a balanced response is to leave the door open to finding out what's happening in the reaction vessels. "Fringe science" dismisses it. --Abd (talk) 01:26, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

I added the funding recommendations bit using as neutral and non wordy language as I could muster. Let me know if this is adequate (or feel free to edit it, of course). Phil153 (talk) 18:03, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Ah, that wording is much better and sums it up well :) --Enric Naval (talk) 19:02, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

No offence Phil, but I've replaced it with a direct quote. There's no need for an interpretation that's nearly as long as the original, even a well written one like yours, will require ongoing defense against the introduction of POV, whereas a quote is straightforward and needs no counterspin.LeadSongDog (talk) 19:23, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

*grumble* I was going to complain that we should be using the part that appears under "conclusion" and not that one, but, reading them again, they say almost the same thing:

(under "charge 3", page 4) The nearly unanimous opinion of the reviewers was that funding agencies should entertain individual, well-designed proposals for experiments that address specific scientific issues relevant to the question of whether or not there is anomalous energy production in Pd/D systems, or whether or not D-D fusion reactions occur at energies on the order of a few eV. These proposals should meet accepted scientific standards, and undergo the rigors of peer review. No reviewer recommended a focused federally funded program for low energy nuclear reactions.

(under "conclusion" on page 5) The current reviewers identified a number of basic science research areas that could be helpful in resolving some of the controversies in the field, two of which were: 1) material science aspects of deuterated metals using modern characterization techniques, and 2) the study of particles reportedly emitted from deuterated foils using state-of-the-art apparatus and methods. The reviewers believed that this field would benefit from the peer-review processes associated with proposal submission to agencies and paper submission to archival journals.

Indeed, the part about federal funding is probably the most important and cited part of the text. The original addition quoted the text on the left, but it stopped at "a few eV", this made it look like the reports was recommending research, but two sentences later it was denying CF access to the big milk cow of federal subventions. I'm sure that it was an involuntary error. --Enric Naval (talk) 00:57, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I'd disagree. Why "most important"? What is required to get that "big milk cow" is pretty substantial. Just for starters, suppose that there are nuclear reactions taking place. That doesn't mean that this could be practically scaled. It would mean that it might be. But until the evidence for LENR is conclusive, which in 2004 it was reasonable to conclude that it wasn't, a massive federal program would be premature. If or when the balance tips, to where the consensus is that it is not only a mystery, it's LENR, then massive investment starts to become more reasonable. There are, I'd say, still too many unknowns. We should cover the 1989 and 2004 DOE reports more thoroughly. The lead, right now, says The majority of a review panel organized by the US Department of Energy (DOE) in 1989 found that the evidence for the discovery of a new nuclear process was not persuasive. In 2004, the DOE convened a second cold fusion review panel which reached conclusions that were similar to those of the 1989 panel. There is no doubt that this statement is true. However, that doesn't mean that it's balanced. What does "not persuasive" mean? Is that a polite phrase for "rejected?" It seems it's been treated that way. What we had in 1989, and really continue to have, are experimental results that haven't been explained satisfactorily, given how widespread they are. Does this equal "cold fusion"? Certainly not. The experimenters in the field don't think so! They think it's something else, indeed a new process, but they really don't know what it is. The DOE reports recommended further research under existing programs. As I keep saying again and again, they wouldn't say that if this were "fringe science." However, there certainly is a lot of fringe science going on, various quacks promoting various forms of "cold fusion" or whatever. It's a serious mistake to lump the serious research in with that. In any case, the apparent "error" Enric sees isn't there. There is no contradiction. --Abd (talk) 05:34, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

This is more or less how it went down:

CF Researchers: Please put together a funding program for cold fusion. We've proven that LENR occurs beyond any doubt.

DOE: No. Your evidence is unconvincing and most of your studies are poorly done. We'll fund individually, well designed experiments to hone on in some of the anomalies you're reporting on a case by case basis, just like we always have in speculative research. But we're not creating a funding program based on what you've shown us. Phil153 (talk) 07:14, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

(unindent)Phil153 just gave us a very good demonstration of why we don't do synthesis except with consensus. There was substantial opinion among the consulted experts (majority, I think,) that something anomalous is going on, and some opinion that it was or could be nuclear in nature (strong majority that this wasn't yet "conclusive"). The big problem has been, of course, replicability. As an, at best, poorly understood phenomenon, and obviously something that doesn't happen easily -- or else we'd see much less stability of nuclei -- , that it has been difficult to replicate is the precise reason why it hasn't been accepted. Now, the judgment of an independent panel of experts, probably not intimately familiar with the large body of work, and especially not the most recent work, isn't the same as the judgment of experts active within the field. New fields create new journals, precisely for this reason. Your summary, Phil, is a reasonable one, but not a neutral one in terms of balance. Other reliable sources are developing, more recently than the 2004 DOE report, and I expect we will be increasingly relying on them. --Abd (talk) 15:08, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

You are mistaken, there was no majority on the question of anomolous heat- the panel was 'evenly split' according to the report, with one of the eighteen panelists fully convinced that fusion was occurring. Thankfully, we do have a mainstream, reliable source to summarize the findings of the panel - Physics Today. The reporting from Physics Today was that "Cold Fusion Gets Chilly Encore." Shouldn't we should use it, a mainstream secondary source, rather than quoting directly? --Noren (talk) 02:57, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Ref broken down

The reference <ref>{{harvnb|US DOE|2004|Ref=DOE2004r}}</ref> used in the article can not be accessed. Kaiwhakahaere (talk) 02:45, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Fixed now Phil153 (talk) 03:05, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

long sentences in the intro

These two sentences:

• "In common usage, "cold fusion" refers more narrowly to a postulated fusion process of unknown mechanism offered to explain a group of experimental results first reported by electrochemists Stanley Pons of the University of Utah and Martin Fleischmann of the University of Southampton."

• "Enthusiasm turned to skepticism and scorn[5] as a long series of failed replication attempts were weighed in view of several theoretical reasons cold fusion should not be possible, the discovery of possible sources of experimental error, and finally the discovery that Fleischmann and Pons had not actually detected nuclear reaction byproducts.[6] "

are pretty long. I recall hearing somewhere that you should only have a few ideas in each sentence. I think these sentences should be cut up or at least shortened. This would make the intro easier to read. Kevin Baas^talk 19:17, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

And perhaps as a general rule, any sentence over two full lines on 1280x1024(or 800) screen might be a candidate for some slicing. Kevin Baas^talk 19:21, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I've tried giving it a go:

In common usage, "cold fusion" refers to a hypothesis offered to explain why certain electrochemical experiments sometimes seem to produce significantly more heat than predicted by theory. Electrochemists Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann publicly claimed that these results were due to a nuclear fusion process of unknown mechanism.

Enthusiasm turned to skepticism and scorn as a long series of failed replication attempts were weighed in view of several theoretical reasons cold fusion should not be possible. This, coupled with the apparent lack of nuclear reaction byproducts and the possibility of experimental error, was enough to extinguish most of the excitement.

Kevin Baas^talk 17:04, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

The first sentence a bit verbose, I personally don't see a problem with the second. Your revision of the first sentence is ok but it has some problems - it narrows the scope to "electrochemical experiments", "sometimes seem" is kind of weasely, it narrows to scope to heat instead of a range of reported effects, and there's no introduction to who Pons and Fleischmann actually are or why they matter. You're just kind of hit with the names without context. So it needs a bit of revision before it replaces what we have I think. Phil153 (talk) 17:28, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Surrealistic discussion of LENR-CANR.org and Jed Rothwell

I do not know if I am allowed to contribute here, but someone informed me there is a surrealistic conversation underway here about me. So perhaps you will allow me the liberty to straighten out a few things.

Several issues have been raised here, but perhaps the two most important ones are:

1. Am I stealing papers without permission and uploading them LENR-CANR.org?

2. If I am not, how can I prove my innocence? (Conversely, if I am, how can you prove I am guilty?)

I think it is easy to show that I am not stealing anything, and you can confirm this independently without asking me for proof, and without depending upon my word. I recommend the old fashioned, commonsense approach. First, let’s look at some evidence, including evidence you can find in a bookstore or university library, off the internet, away from LENR-CANR, where I could not have had a hand in creating it or faking it. Then, let us draw some conclusions from this evidence. First:

There are a number of books in English and Japanese that mention LENR-CANR.org, and include acknowledgments to me, as the operator of the site and also as someone who helped write the book itself. See, for example, the books about cold fusion by Beaudette, Storms, and A. C. Clarke (“Profiles of the Future Millennium Edition”), Mizuno and Takahashi.

There are number of cold fusion papers in journals and conference proceedings that include hyperlinks to papers at LENR-CANR.org. Several papers mention me, in footnotes or acknowledgments. Two of the proceedings list me as an editor.

Several of the proceedings list me in the back as a participant, and they include me in the group photo.

So, what does this tell you? It tells you that the authors of these books and papers are aware of LENR-CANR.org. It tells you they know who I am. They know how to reach me. Anyone does: my e-mail address, phone number and mailing address is on the front page at LENR-CANR.org. It is proof that these authors have no objection to my uploading their papers. Some of them, such as Miles and Storms, have their own web sites, with pointers to LENR-CANR.org, so clearly they have no objection to the content there.

You can safely conclude that I am widely known to many researchers in the field, and that if I were uploading papers without the author and publisher’s permission, they would quickly hear about it. They would know where to find me, and they would tell me to stop.

You can also independently confirm, by various methods, that people download thousands of papers per week from LENR-CANR.org, as shown in our News section.

In other words, I am not uploading papers secretly, without anyone noticing. If I were doing it illicitly, without permission, I would soon be caught. It is also obvious that I have the cooperation of authors and publishers, because I have several original manuscripts in Word format converted to Acrobat. (Not the final journal format.) Obviously, I could only have acquired them from the authors themselves, and it is not likely that I am a cat burglar or master Internet hacker who has acquired them without permission.

In point of fact I have more than a thousand other papers in scanned format plus a few thousand others on paper that authors and publishers have NOT granted me permission to upload, and thus are not available at LENR-CANR.org. You can see the list of them. Several of these are critically important to the field and it is shame I cannot present them.

Let me address one other issue that has arisen here, which is: How do you know that the copies of the papers at LENR-CANR.org are correct? How do you know I am not changing the content, as at least one person here alleges? This sort of question would only be asked by someone who is totally dependent on the Internet and never knew the world as it was before 1995. You can confirm the accuracy of my copies by comparing them to other copies in libraries. All of the journal papers at LENR-CANR.org came from the libraries at Los Alamos, Georgia Tech., the University of Utah and Aarhus Univ, and the proceedings were published by the Italian Physical Soc. and other organizations listed at LENR-CANR.org. So anyone who wants can read original sources and find out whether I have copied them correctly or not. And by the way, if you find I have not copied one correctly because of an OCR error for example, or because I have preprint manuscript from the author, please let me know.

That also applies to the official documents published by the DoE that people here accuse me of faking or changing, such as the ERAB report. Did it not occur to these people to go to the DoE, get the original document, and compare it to my version? Did they imagine I am betting that no one, anywhere, will have enough sense to do that? Such accusations are mind-boggling. Anyone with an ounce of sense can catch me or prove that I am innocent.

Anyway, carry on! No doubt you will come up with some other reason to censor LENR-CANR.org.

- Jed Rothwell Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.89.102.50 (talk) 02:36, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Look, there were some valid concerns. Not valid enough for blacklisting, in my personal opinion, but let's not pretend that all is sweet with the presentation of your site on Wikipedia. Not least of which is you claiming that you're a Librarian, when you're more accurately described as a webmaster. (Librarian does sound nice and neutral and formal though, doesn't it? Not at like webmaster and site owner, which is what you are). And there are definitely spammy elements with your constant self posting of the name of a website you own, which would be deleted under just about any other circumstances. "Jed Rothwell" or an account works just fine to identify you without needing to appened "Librarian, LENR-CANR.org" at the end of every single post (except for this one, obviously).

Anyway, blacklisting aside, I think the point being made is that if the sources are available from other, non COI advocate sites, then we should be linking there instead. As an example, I'd much rather link the same study hosted at pubmed than at homeopathycurescancer.com, even given the rationale you've provided above. Phil153 (talk) 02:53, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Phil153 wrote:

Look, there were some valid concerns. Not valid enough for blacklisting,

Valid concerns? Just out of curiosity, what are they? I thought I disposed of the big two. Not that I care whether you censor me or not. Any organization that would ban Pierre Carbonnelle is a disgrace, and I consider it a badge of honor to be censored along with him.

(Librarian does sound nice and neutral and formal though, doesn't it? Not at like webmaster and site owner, which is what you are)

Now you presume to tell me what I do all day! You are amazing. Maintaining the web site takes a few hours a year. It is written in rudimentary HTML using Namo Web editor, a program with attitude. I spend nearly all my time editing, translating and OCRing papers, and trying to persuade authors to hand in papers they were supposed to hand in months ago. It is like pulling teeth.

Anyway, blacklisting aside, I think the point being made is that if the sources are available from other, non COI advocate sites

And if they are not available elsewhere? What about conference papers that are only available on line at LENR-CANR.org? What about DoE papers that are no longer available on line. (You have have ask for them.) When papers are not available elsewhere, you cut your readers off from original sources. I expect that is your real purpose, and the rest is making excuses to do what you want to do, which is to drive away people like Carbonnelle, and to create a biased document that no cold fusion researcher thinks is fair or accurate. It is entirely YOUR POV and yet you accuse Carbonnelle of POV violations. You are blind to your own faults.

And by the way, you may not care for the fact that I sign all of my messages with contact information and what I do -- librarian -- but I think even less of you people when you sign messages with nicknames and fake names, leaving the reader no way of knowing who you are or where you get your information. My activities and my sources are an open book. Anyone who doubts my expertise can read hundreds of pages of papers and books that I authored about cold fusion, and you can judge for yourself whether I know the subject or not. You people are hiding behind Internet anonymity. Have any of you published a paper on cold fusion? Do you have any knowledge of the subject? Any expertise or standing in this or some related field? Nobody knows! If you had any guts or professional responsibility you would use your real, full name.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.89.102.50 (talk) 03:37, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi Jed,

I have no problem with you signing your name, it's your constant posting of LENR-CANR.org (a site that you run) which would fall afoul of our spam guidelines just about anywhere else. As for me, I have zero expertise in nuclear physics and zero standing as an academic. But I work in optics, and have a BSc in physics. I understand that you have a BA in Japanese. While commendable, I fail to see how this gives you expertise in either chemistry or physics. Not that I think it matters in what is largely an attempt to write a NPOV editorial summary of secondary sources, but you brought it up.

As for my POV, I suggest you review my edit history. I have been strictly NPOV and in fact have moved the article away from POV against CF on many occassions. [8][9][10][11]. Claiming suppression, especially when supposed suppressions are backed up by uninvolved parties, is the hallmark of crackpots. It doesn't do you or your field justice.

As for the issues surrounding your site, your point on checking the sources doesn't really cut it. It is simply too time consuming to check every one against paper sources for evidence of changes. In this regard, this needs some comment. You say above: Did it not occur to these people to go to the DoE, get the original document, and compare it to my version?. Well, apparently someone did, and in the link above, JzG (Guy) claims that In one case I found that a purported link to a major paper started with an editorial by the site's "librarian", [[user:JedRothwell], spinning the content to promote the fringe view that he promotes. Are you categorically denying having ever added a lead or other commentary to a source paper? Phil153 (talk) 04:41, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Phil153 wrote:

I understand that you have a BA in Japanese. While commendable, I fail to see how this gives you expertise in either chemistry or physics.

Again I suggest that you read the papers and books I have written about cold fusion, and judge whether I understand the subject -- and whether I know my own limitations. I have edited over 200 papers in this field. Do you think the authors would trust me to do that if I accidentally changed their meaning or messed up the documents? Please, use your common sense and your judgment to evaluate my work.

As for the issues surrounding your site, your point on checking the sources doesn't really cut it. It is simply too time consuming to check every one against paper sources for evidence of changes.

As I said, you can easily establish that the authors trust LENR-CANR.org. They would not give me their papers or add links to the site in their papers and books otherwise. They always check my version for errors -- I tell them to.

Wikipedia points to millions of documents. You do not go around checking every one of them. Once it is established that a site has credibility, you assume that all documents there are legitimate. It is much easier for you to check the bona fides and establish credibility for LENR-CANR than for other sites, because every one of our documents lists the original source at the top.

Are you categorically denying having ever added a lead or other commentary to a source paper?

Oh for crying out loud! This is ridiculous. Read the document and see for yourself. It is here: lenr-canr.org PLUS /acrobat/ERABreportofth.pdf

As you see, I wrote a two-page introduction, in a different font, signed by me. No, I do not "categorically deny" writing something and signing it. The document begins:

"ERAB, Report of the Cold Fusion Panel to the Energy Research Advisory Board. 1989: Washington, DC.

A copy of the ERAB report has been prepared by the National Capital Area Skeptics (NCAS) organization (www.ncas.org). It is available here in HTML format: http://www.ncas.org/erab/. It is converted to Acrobat format in this document, below.

This organization has not posted any other papers about cold fusion.

Cold fusion researchers consider the ERAB report highly prejudiced for many reasons. It was concluded in a rush long before there was time to perform and publish serious replications. . ."

The LENR-CANR index for the document says:

"A copy of the ERAB report has been prepared by the National Capital Area Skeptics (NCAS) organization (www.ncas.org). It is available here:

http://www.ncas.org/erab/

This library contains a brief introduction to the report and a copy of the NCAS version of the ERAB report."

We have similar short introductions to many other documents, listing -- for example -- where the document came from, who translated it, or noting that different versions have been published.

Now let us look at the statement by Guy:

"In one case I found that a purported link to a major paper started with an editorial by the site's "librarian", (JedRothwell), spinning the content . . ."

A purported link? You can click on the link and see in an instant whether this is a good copy or not. What is "purported" about that?

An editorial? I told the reader where the document came from, where to get the original, and what the researchers think of it. Is the reader so vulnerable and suggestible he cannot survive reading my introduction and still judge the ERAB document?

"In one case" Guy found a document with an introduction? He did not look very hard. There are dozens of others, as I said. In all cases the introduction is clearly marked and signed.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org

The following comment from Noren was made in the archive, not here. I'm moving it here, since I'm deleting the archived copy and this comment should have been made here in any case. --Abd (talk) 05:00, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

You have not addressed the relevant question. Having the permission of the authors is not sufficient (in fact, in many cases it is legally irrelevant.) For example, authors submitting to Elsevier journals are required to transfer their copyright to Elsevier. The legally relevant question is whether you have permission from the copyright holder (in many cases, Elsevier) to print the papers that they own the copyright to. Obtaining the permission of the authors is legally irrelevant for many of these papers. Do you have permission from Elsevier to publish their copyrighted material? --Noren (talk) 18:47, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

If an author of an accepted paper won't or can't transfer exclusive copyright (because, for example, their ethical stance is opposed to doing so, their institutional policy forbids it, or any other myriad reasons that they might not control the exclusive copyright to begin with) it would be highly irregular if that ever stopped publication of the paper. For Elsevier to be able to prevent a journal from publishing anything simply because they don't control exclusive copyright would be an impingement of the editorial board's academic freedom by a commercial interest, and would raise profound ethical concerns. That doesn't stop them from slapping a "(c)" notation indistinguishable from an exclusive copyright notice on everything they publish and charging the same as for anything they do have exclusive copyright control over, of course. And permission to do that is granted at the time the paper is submitted, not with a separate form after it's been accepted for publication. 69.228.197.195 (talk) 12:59, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I'm puzzled. Jed's argument above speaks directly to that point. However, he has also, in many places, in response to this question, replied that he has permission from the editors and the publishers for every paper he hosts. It says this on the web site, at the top of the home page, which, of course, I can't link to because of the blacklist, but I can give the URL using nowiki. http://lenr-canr.org/ . He also answered specifically about Elsevier on User talk: Phil153. --Abd (talk) 05:12, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Jed's response about Elsevier that you quote was made after I asked the question above, in response to my asking about it. I asked because Jed's argument above was primarily about authors, mentioning the relevant party (publishers) only in passing. --Noren (talk) 07:28, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Jed, let me suggest that you begin using your account. That account is not blocked. If you need help recovering the password, it can be done. It's been claimed that you are banned, but I've seen no evidence of that. I highly recommend that you back off and confine yourself here to comments helping the rest of us improve the article. You have a probable conflict of interest but it is totally proper for you to make suggestions here, though brevity would probably be appreciated. In addition to myself, there are several administrators working (glacially, but working nevertheless) to delist lenr-canr.org from the blacklist, as well as newenergytimes.com, or supporting that work. Your comments here were removed, I've restored them, and if I'm reverted, and if the editor doing that insists, I don't edit war, I call in help. If you need help recovering your account, ask. That you use IP edits vastly complicates helping delist your site (removing it from the blacklist), which is a shame. It isn't that it's wrong or against policy, it's that it looks like it is to some who are used to seeing IP socking and IP linkspamming. In any case, if you use your account, editors can then use your Talk page and you can reply there, etc. Don't argue or debate here, it will just irritate and cause disruption. Let others defend you. The errors of your critics have already been pointed out in delisting discussions on meta and for the Wikipedia local blacklist. There has been administrative misconduct in this affair, but those who are concerned are proceeding very carefully and hope to avoid major confrontation and disruption.

If you use your account and you follow policies regarding civility and edit warring -- I've seen no recent edit warring from you -- and you are nevertheless blocked, we can help you. However, as you know, this is a minefield. Please be careful. --Abd (talk) 03:22, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

One more very strong suggestion. Watch out for any hint of incivility in your writing. Writing to an entire community as "you people" telling us what we are going to do, obviously claiming bias and bad faith, is the kind of thing that can get you blocked and truly banned and lenr-canr.org permanently blacklisted, if you keep it up. I recommend rereading what you wrote, most of which was on point and cogent about yourself and your web site, and then noticing the uncivil comments. Strike them. Use <s> before the comment to be struck and </s> after it.. Be professional. I've already pulled in a professional librarian who is also a Wikipedia administrator who opined that there was no reason to consider lenr-canr.org to be in violation of copyrights. But Wikipedia politics and procedures can be arcane and Byzantine, it will take some time to untangle this mess. --Abd (talk) 03:44, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Abd, he is not "banned", he is "topic banned from Cold fusion's talk page". See Talk:Cold_fusion#Jed_Rothwell and links there, my comment there (3rd comment) has the steps needed to lift the topic ban ---Enric Naval (talk) 13:52, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

The comments weren't deleted, they were correctly archived here as off topic chat from a constant off topic poster (I'm just as bad in replying, and my comments were removed to). This is totally in line with article talk page policy. We can easily discuss the topic at Jed's, my or your talk page if you want. Phil153 (talk) 03:32, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, this discussion isn't off-topic, in my opinion, which is why I brought it back. Yes, Phil, you did archive. I should take that out, since it's redundant. The blacklisting of lenr-canr.org impacts this article. I've been discussing with LeadSongDog the suggestion he made that the bibliography at lenr-canr.org be whitelisted, which I consider only a first step, there was no reason to blacklist it. Is it improper for Jed to sign with his website name? If it is, why don't we ask him to stop? The comments above are principally on the topic of whether or not lenr-canr.org hosts copyvios, which has been asserted by a number of editors with no evidence whatever other than "it's obvious." Which really doesn't cut it. If there is obvious copyvio, then *one* example would show it, and JzG's story that he somebody from Elsevier told him that they didn't give ever give permission to copy material they published is not an example of copyright violation, only of what someone told JzG about who knows what. Jed's points above are cogent; I essentially made the same argument on his behalf on meta and in the blacklist here; that the site wasn't delisted says more about how mission creep afflicts the blacklist, which was not intended for the kind of content control that it is now being used for, and we will have to address that. --Abd (talk) 03:44, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

I didn't archive, I had nothing to do with removing anything. Jed's points are fine and I agree with them, and I don't think there's a case for blacklisting based *only* on copyvio given his responses. Other thoughts are on my talk page. Phil153 (talk) 03:48, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, got confused by your comment. It was Verbal. --Abd (talk) 04:55, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Whitelist

You guys, the local blacklist removal was already done, and it was defered to the local whitelist. The meta discussion also defers to the local whitelist.

If you want the link unlisted then you need to go to the whitelist, show good links and where they you want to use them to provide valuable content to articles. If they are accepted, then those specific links will be whitelisted. When/if you have enough links whitelisted, then you can go to the blacklist and say how it is silly the website blacklisted when it has so many valuable links used on articles. Hint: it's not enough that you say here "but there are lots of valuable links, see this one for example", that will get you nowhere since whitelisters don't read this page, you need to go to MediaWiki_talk:Spam-whitelist and present specific links adequately. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:41, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

See MediaWiki_talk:Spam-whitelist#lenr-canr.org --Enric Naval (talk) 15:40, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

The local blacklist removal was done, yes, of course, but only because JzG went to meta and got it globally blacklisted, before those who might have argued against it became aware of that request. You can see the debate over removal at meta. Yes, we are quite aware of the whitelising, and I intend to request whitelisting of some sources. There was some substantial sentiment for whitelisting the bibliography at lenr-canr.org, for example, see discussion on User talk:Phil153. What say you? There is no sign that the bibliography is seriously biased, it seems to be the best around, etc.

However, newenergytimes.com is locally blacklisted only. There is discussion on the local blacklist talk page.[12]. Removal was just declined. Evidence of linkspamming is given. Evidence which is utterly inadequate to establish a present need for blacklisting, the last edit that added a link was in August of 2008 and doesn't seem to qualify as linkspam. It stood until it was removed by JzG as from an "unreliable source," as part of his blacklisting actions, though it was just to a copy of an article that had been published in a reliable source and which was hosted on NET. The link seems to have been added with helpful intent. The whole affair sucks, in a word. --Abd (talk) 15:22, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

well, I can only say that you (and other interesed on whitelisting lenr-canr.org) should watch the whitelist petition I made, note down the problems raised there, and try to address them when you make your own petition for some other link. I'm not sure of what "the bibliography at lenr-canr.org" is, but if it's a whole directory encompassing many pages then you'll need to prove that *all* material under that directory is a) reliable b) with no copyvio problems (copyright/permission/whatever) c) necessary to improve a certain article in a certain way. Good luck with that, I already have problems enough whitelisting two PDFs. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:53, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Ah. I see this discussion has popped into existence again.

I do not wish to take the trouble to contribute, because some person or robot erased my work previously, and they may do it again. However, I made some additional comments about this subject that may be of interest here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Phil153#My_response_to_your_message_at_Cold_Fusion_talk

I hope these other comments remain unmolested.

- Jed Rothwell, who dares not speak his name, but remains, Yours Truly, Your Humble Servant, etc., etc., Librarian, LENR-CANR.org. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.219.153.157 (talk) 17:31, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Jed, the link was helpful. But the rest wasn't. Please start to use discretion. It's the better part of valor. --Abd (talk) 15:24, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Citation Format

The template at the top of the article says: Its references would be clearer with a different or consistent style of citation, footnoting or external linking. Tagged since November 2008.

Is there consensus to change to a direct citation method like other articles? If so, I'd be happy to do it. If not, we should remove the tag. Phil153 (talk) 20:12, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

The Major Fallacies of Cold Fusion

To address many of the issues raised by my critics here, I have written a long explanation on my user page. Kirk shanahan (talk) 21:39, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

As far as I can tell all that is a long argument about how cold fusion can't be true. How exactly does that help improve the article?--Patton^t/c 23:20, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

It supplies the reasoning behind why one doesn't have to believe the CF claim. I think the Wiki article would be better if the reasoning was clearly stated as opposed to simply being assumed or implied. Kirk shanahan (talk) 14:05, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, I'd asked for critical comment. I'm not sure what Shanahan is talking about when he mentions "issues raised by [his] critics," but his explanation is background. It may be original research, or not, but, to my mind, it's welcome here. There was a page on Calorimetry in cold fusion experiments, but it was AfD'd by JzG on the grounds that it was a product of Pcarbonn's alleged POV pushing, in spite of the fact that a major contributor (the major contributor?) was Shanahan. Anyone else interested in getting that page back, and using it to address the calorimetry issues, in summary style here? --Abd (talk) 02:56, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

For an example of 'my critics' see my user talk page and the one comment I have received so far. In it, the author says I do bad science, when in fact he is clueless as to what is going on. There have been several others like this in my months-long interactions on this page. Kirk shanahan (talk) 14:05, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Now you are committing both bad science and intellectual dishonesty. If you were so confident that my remark on your talk page was nonsense, why did you delete it (as recorded in the page History) instead of explaining why you thought it was nonsense? It is the essence of hypocrisy to think you can spout criticism and also suppress the criticism of others. It is the hallmark of Religious Authoritarianism, not Science, to think that only one point of view should exist for others to see. And it is people who hold attitudes such as you have demonstrated, that cause edit wars in Wikipedia. Well, I've copied it to MY talk page. Feel free to try to trash my argument. V (talk) 14:53, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Please see the following section on my user page "Comments on 'the major...'" Please note that I completed that section BEFORE I posted the above response. You've got some anger issues dude. Kirk shanahan (talk) 15:19, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. I apologize for jumping to a conclusion regarding "deletion" instead of "moved". Perhaps next time you might reply in the same place as a comment, with a note that you intend to move it later? I do not apologize for my opinion regarding the intellectually dishonest hypocrites who often infest controversial Wikipedia articles. Perhaps Wikipedia itself needs a formal way to accommodate such controversies. How about a two-column page format (HTML frames?), with "pro" in one column and "con" in the other? Then each side can say what it wants, the way they want to say it. And the other side can quote and refute. And members can be banned for messing with the other side's writings. V (talk) 17:37, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

The deleted page was created by PCarbon in an attempt to take my comments out of the main article. He used silly reasoning like it was too long for the main article, when in fact the whole section on criticisms of CF was shorter than the sections he wrote promoting it. But instead of just disappearing it, it should have been put back in the article, but of course today the whole format has been changed to take all pro and con presentations out, so, oh well, that's the way it goes. Kirk shanahan (talk) 14:05, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

My comments are not OR, even though all my critics wish it were so. The CCS is published, as is the Clarke He work. The comments regarding XPS and SIMS, etc., are not explicitly published, but I can quote paragraphs from texts written long before the CF furor that explain how to do SIMS and XPS, and they will support the statements I make on heavy metal transmutation results, but that would make for an amazingly long article and should not be needed, since they do nothing but quote what is the accepted norm for surface science research. The CFers just don't do it right. Kirk shanahan (talk) 14:05, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Pcarbonn wasn't topic-banned for actual behavioral improprieties, only for assumed ones from evidence that established an "agenda" making Wikipedia a battleground. Most of his edits, however, sought balance. I understand, Kirk, that from your point of view, this was imbalance, but the removal of extensive discussion from this article into a subarticle is the standard response to a need for detailed discussion that is too much for a main article. Then, the theory goes, a consensus summary is brought back into the main article, so this extra information is not suppressed, it is merely sorted in a tidy and useful way. I didn't review the history of the removal of material from this article, but it could certainly be put back, and if there is complaint, we'd then have quite good cause to undelete Calorimetry in cold fusion experiments (assuming that the Calorimetry article is, at the time, balanced by consensus). You were a major editor of that article. That's probably in violation of WP:COI except that your intention was, I strongly assume, to help the project, and I don't see that there was objection. There is a copy of the article in my user space, anyone is welcome to edit it, however, as it is in my user space, I may exercise extra "control" over it, but I assure editors that my goal is consensus, not some POV, and any "extra" control is solely for efficiency. And if anyone seriously thinks that I'm abusing that effective trusteeship, I'll move it to any place that improves consensus. Consensus about text and process is more important to me than any single POV. Bad process, bad project.

[comment inserted here by User:Kirk shanahan moved below my signature.]

Meanwhile, my position has been that we need, very much, for all significant POVs, including fringe POVs, to be represented in our process by the best possible experts and advocates. What we don't need is incivility, edit warring, and truly tendentious debate, i.e., debate that isn't directed toward establishing consensus, but only toward strong assertion of a POV. Hence, Kirk, your participation is very welcome, if you remain within behavioral guidelines, and I even consider it crucial. Wherever you have a conflict of interest, you should refrain from actually editing an article. Don't worry, you get to make occasional mistakes. Just don't fight about them! (Just to make sure I'm not misinterpreted, I've seen no true misbehavior on Mr. Shanahan's part, though I certainly haven't reviewed the record in detail.) --Abd (talk) 14:42, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

The only problem with what you write is that the cold fusion field is abnormal, and the rules developed for normal issues don't work. This has already been discussed on these pages, and I don't feel like retyping it once again. PCarbon applied legalistic rules in the narrowest sense to block any contrary evidence I wanted to add, evidence that I added to try to point out to the Wiki reader that there were conventional explanations and problems with ALL of the CF claims. He really didn't like that at all. Kirk shanahan (talk) 15:19, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

The only problem with what you write is that the cold fusion field is abnormal, and the rules developed for normal issues don't work. This has already been discussed on these pages, and I don't feel like retyping it once again. PCarbon applied legalistic rules in the narrowest sense to block any contrary evidence I wanted to add, evidence that I added to try to point out to the Wiki reader that there were conventional explanations and problems with ALL of the CF claims. He really didn't like that at all. Kirk shanahan (talk) 15:19, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree it's an "abnormal field." However, you've missed something. Wikipedia doesn't have rules that "don't work." It doesn't have rules. While there are "policies," they are very, very flexible, being interpreted by editorial consensus. You disagreed with Pcarbonn's decisions, but those decisions wouldn't have been maintained if he'd not had substantial consensus behind them. I'd say, from reading what you've written so far, that you have difficulty distinguishing your own opinion from what is notably published in a field; this is a very common problem with experts, in fact. I'm expert in certain fields. If I assert my expertise here, facing controversy, violating sourcing policies, I'd be dead meat. Wikipedia doesn't rely on the opinion of experts, directly expressed here; the best you can do is, being familiar with the field, guide us to sources that we can use. Your unsupported opinion, here, not only has no more rights than those of any other editor, but it may actually, because of conflict of interest, have less. Where you are really useful is in advising us. See below about conflict of interest.

I want to assure you that my opinion is that whatever has been notably published in a reliable source, whether of criticism or enthusiasm or whatever, should be somehow, somewhere on Wikipedia, or within a single link, preferable. It should be very easy for someone wanting to learn about cold fusion to review the field, including "promotion," criticism, positive results, negative results, theories and even crackpot theories (if notable, sometimes they are).

When my interest in cold fusion was reawakened by seeing a complaint about the blacklisting of lenr-canr.org, I started researching the state of the field; it was easy to find, of course, the old rejections and failure to replicate, etc. But there has been a lot of work done since then, and some of this work is quite striking. I'm fully aware that there are possibilities of how the results have been misleading; however, some of this work is so clear and so apparently simple to reproduce, and it was coming, not from isolated fanatics, but from apparently respected and knowledgeable researchers, that I've been amazed at how difficult it is to find cogent criticism of the more recent work. There is science history here, comment in publications, and opinion about "fringe" is keeping us from simply being complete. That's why I'm interested, and that's why a number of administrators are interested. Wouldn't it have been great if I could simply have gone to the cold fusion article, and subarticles, and found a description of the state of the scientific inquiry, as reflected in sources of reasonable reliability? Plus, by following links to sources and to various web sites -- including "advocacy" sites, appropriately described -- I'd have found even more, the mixture of cutting edge and bullshit that I'd expect to find out there. We do our readers a disservice by "protecting" them from fringe. None of this denies the matter of undue weight, but that policy doesn't apply to the project as a whole. We can have an article on the Earth and another article on Flat earth and the relative length of the articles is irrelevant. This is why deletion of the article you helped to put together was a serious mistake, unless it were really true that the material there is covered here. I think we'd agree that it isn't. --Abd (talk) 18:16, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

You wrote: . . . some of this work is so clear and so apparently simple to reproduce . . ." Some of the work is clear, but all of it is VERY DIFFICULT to reproduce. I do not know any researcher who says it is simple. I have spent weeks watching people do experiments, and I sure couldn't do them! - Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.219.198.240 (talk) 16:21, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

You wrote: "I've been amazed at how difficult it is to find cogent criticism of the more recent work." Boy oh boy is there is there cogent criticism! But you do not see it. It comes during peer-review at journals, internally at National Labs, and by funding agencies such as DARPA. I happen to be sitting here this morning working with 13 pages of closely argued peer-review criticism from a journal, regarding a paper now in progress. (The authors are not native speakers of English so I am helping to draft the responses and revise the paper.) Believe me, the journal reviewers run these authors through a wringer -- as they should. By the time the paper reaches print, which is sometimes months or years after submission, there are no errors left. That is why there are no valid published papers showing significant errors in major cold fusion experiments -- because the errors were eliminated years ago. Cold fusion has probably been subjected to the most careful, thorough vetting by funding agencies and editors of any scientific discovery in history. (Anti-cold fusion papers and books, on the other hand, sail through peer-review like greased lightening.)

The peer-review process works, when it is done by unbiased people. So does the experimental method, and replication. You should have more faith in the scientific method. There is not the slightest chance an effect replicated by hundreds of labs at high s/n ratios could be a mistake.

- Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.219.198.240 (talk) 17:27, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

a) I don't have a COI. b)I never edited anything PCarbon wrote (that I can remember). My contention was we should have a common history section of the article (which was fine as I found it last June, ergo no editing), a 'pro' section that P basically wrote (that had lots of problems which I pointed out in the Talk pages), and an 'anti' section which after my edits, I basically wrote (the prior anti section was lame). Kirk shanahan (talk) 15:19, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

P.S. You all may want to look and see what the CFers (actually the CFer groupies) think of Wiki. http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg29899.html and http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg29899.html. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:03, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Kirk, the author of an article is generally considered to have a [[WP:COI|] with respect to the use of that article as a source. Some have tried to assert that such an editor also has a COI with respect to the field covered by the article. Maybe; but here I was simply referring to your editing to add references to your own work, if you did that. No misbehavior was alleged. However, you do seem to be trying to bring in outside controversy. What a bunch of idiots, or fine upstanding researchers, or whoever writes outside isn't relevant here unless it can help us understand the topic. Please don't make Wikipedia into a battlefield. That's what Pcarbonn, rightly or wrongly, was topic banned for. We are here, or we should be here, to seek and find consensus on article text, so, please, stay on that topic.

However, I did look at the links. There is really only one link there, not two. I see nothing there but properly and civilly expressed opinion and suggestions. Your frequent use of "CFers" and terms like "CFer groupies" is a bad sign, it would seem that you aren't capable of or willing to detach, which could damage your participation here. I hope you can be more professional. (People working in LENR really don't like the term "cold fusion" any more, for the most part, because most agree now that whatever is happening in these experiments isn't what we know of as "fusion," and don't you agree with that? You simply think that there is a systematic experimental error, which is an obvious and reasonable hypothesis. Now. How would you confirm that with experiment? Others think that there is some true unknown phenomenon; you've focused on calorimetry, but, to me, there could simply be a colossal error: the calorimetry was indeed bad -- though that seems a bit unlikely to me on the face, to be so uniformly bad with so many researchers who should know better -- *but* there are many reports of radiation and other products that we can't easily explain except by hypothesizing nuclear transformations. And none of this proves that whatever is found to be happening can be turned into a clean energy source, for example. We need science, and more science, not incivility and rejection of people doing research just because errors were made twenty years ago. Criticism is essential, in this. So why is there so little? And I've got to say, there is little.

For example, to me, the smoking gun was found with the SPAWAR CR-32 experiments, unless that can be impeached. Those papers were published in reliable source, they are citable. There is a critical report from Kowalski, which has been answered. There has been confirmation of similar results. There isn't any, as far as I can see, neutral review. There is increased interest in research in India, with notable publication. Is this stuff in the article? Why not? Well, there are surely problems, and it's going to be complicated finding consensus, I'd predict. But that is our task.

The idea that research is needed was found with the 1989 and 2004 DOE reports, this isn't some fringe claim. I'd judge from those reports that the majority opinion was that the research was most likely to find experimental error or something other than "low energy nuclear reactions," hence no recommendation of a federal program. From my point of view, the article is currently biased, a bit, against "cold fusion." But Wikipedia isn't based on my personal opinion, and my user name means "servant." --Abd (talk) 18:39, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

A brief comment. It's CR-39. The fact that pits were found in CR-39 plates is not proof of nuclear reactions. I proposed at least two conventional sources for them in 2002 when Oriani and Fisher first published their similar claims. There were claims by Szpak that one of them was eliminated, but, as usual, there was only the claim, no details. There are a lot of subtleties to the CR-39 studies that are glossed over in the latest set of Szpak and Kowalski papers. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:30, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Someone wrote:

Others think that there is some true unknown phenomenon; you've focused on calorimetry, but, to me, there could simply be a colossal error: the calorimetry was indeed bad -- though that seems a bit unlikely to me on the face, to be so uniformly bad with so many researchers who should know better . . .

This is completely incorrect. The calorimetry employed in the top cold fusion labs is the best conventional (water based) flow and isoperibolic calorimetry ever performed. Millions of dollars have been spent on the instruments at SRI, ENEA and Toyota, and the instruments were reviewed by experts from the funding agencies such as EPRI and DARPA (and by people from the "Jasons" who are less qualified in my opinion, but they wrote a report, and they found no errors.) The calorimeters at many other labs such as TAMU were designed by outside experts in calorimetry.

Jed is completely correct here. The calorimeters McKubre and Storms use are top notch. Storms has 98%+ heat capture efficiency in his, and I doubt McK's are any less efficient. However, that doesn't eliminate the possibility of the CCS, as I showed in my 2002 publication. For the record, I began developing my hypothesis while studing the data supplied by McK in his 1999 EPRI report, whichj reported on experiments done in 1993-1994 with the famous 'million dollar calorimeter'. Unfortunately there was no calibration data supplied that would allow the assessment of calibration constant variablility. So Storms 2000 data was the preferred set. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:47, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Kirk: I think it would be a little easier to follow if you would insert your comments after the message. Anyway, my point was that EPRI and the Army sent the best experts in the country to examine McKubre's calorimeter, because they paid millions of dollars for it. These experts found nothing wrong. So, either they disagree with your CCS hypothesis or they are unaware of it. It seems unlikely that you have discovered something all of these experts do not know, but it is conceivable. As best I can understand your hypothesis, it is not in evidence. - Jed Rothwell, you-know-who —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.219.198.240 (talk) 22:48, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

As Hagelstein wrote in 1993: "Scientists in the field have gone to extremes in attempts to satisfy skeptics. Cells were stirred, blanks were done, extremely elaborate closed cell calorimeters have been developed (in which the effect has been demonstrated), the signal to noise ratio has been improved so that positive results can now be claimed at the 50 sigma level, the reproducibility issue has been laid to rest; but still it is not enough."

"50 sigma" when using the baseline fluctuation as the total noise level. So, at 75 mW noise, that was a 3.75 W signal vs. a .78WW from Storms, a factor of 5 larger. I wonder what the input value was, and what the calibration variability was? Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:47, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Note also that no skeptical paper has been published showing errors in the calorimetry in any major experiment. I am sure that after 20 years, someone would have found an error if there were any. Assertions such as this, that the calorimetry "was indeed bad" are not in evidence. (Shanahan believes he has found errors, but I do not know any experts in cold fusion or calorimetry who agree with him, and in my opinion his hypothesis has no merit.)

But Jed's opinion doesn't count. Only the facts count, and the fact is that the CCS has the potential to explain "all". Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:47, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

It has been suggested that errors will be found sooner or later, or that there may be something wrong, therefore we must reserve judgment. This argument is invalid because it cannot be falsified, and it applies to all experiments that ever been performed since Newton. Any experiment might be wrong, but it is exceedingly unlikely that techniques such as calorimetry, that have been widely used for 150 years, are wrong, and that some undiscovered error in them will be found. Anyway, until you actually find such an error, you have no case. To disprove cold fusion calorimetry, you have to find hundreds of different errors, in different labs, with flow calorimeter, isoperibolic, Seebeck, microcalorimeters, bomb calorimeters and IR cameras. This is even more unlikely.

No, just one, the CCS. (And by the way, CF calorimetrists know about this in isoperibolic calorimeter. It's called the 'hot spot' problem there. I just generalized it to cover all types.) Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:47, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

The CCS finds errors in all of these different calorimeter types? That is a powerful model! Does it also disprove gas loaded cold fusion? Does it show errors in the heat balance from ordinary electrolysis? (I suppose it must, because you are saying that cold fusion is ordinary.) Does it also show that the textbooks are wrong about the heat of other chemical reactions measured in calorimeters? That is astounding. It is amazing that no one else noticed, and all these experts who designed the calorimeters at SRI and TAMU do not know about the CCS. - Jed Rothwell

P.S. What's more the CCS model shows how artifacts fool the human senses! A cell in heat after death may appear to have boiling water in it, and it may seem hot to the touch, but the CCS tells us that it is actually stone cold. All this and more the CCS can explain. - Jed Rothwell —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.219.198.240 (talk) 18:44, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

That's an appeal to authority. Do you think experts don't make mistakes in their own experiments? Au contraire, they do it all the time. And yes, it does show errors in the heat balance from ordinary electrolysis - groups have found heat using ordinary light water. Unless you think there is something going on there as well? In which case, all your control experiments to baseline the D2O heat are useless. Pick one please. And by the way, they most certainly did notice; serious errors in calorimetry are [known and written about by highly prestigious labs like Bell Labs. Read the full text preview of that last link. Phil153 (talk) 23:30, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Phil153 wrote:

That's an appeal to authority.

No, this is not an appeal to authority (more properly "Fallacious Appeal to Authority") because the people I am talking about really are authorities. If they were not qualified to do calorimetry, you would be correct. See:

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-authority.html

groups have found heat using ordinary light water. Unless you think there is something going on there as well?

Obviously there is. The instruments have been calibrated and checked carefully. It is not a matter of what I think or you think. The instruments show heat, so there is heat. No one can argue with a thermocouple, once the results are replicated. It seems likely that Ni can produce heat with light water, or possibly from the fraction of heavy water in ordinary water.

In experimental science, the instruments decide all issues, overrule all objections, and push aside all theories -- subject only to replication. It does not make the slightest difference how surprising or inexplicable the results may seem: they are real by definition. There is no other way to define reality.

Do you think experts don't make mistakes in their own experiments? Au contraire, they do it all the time.

No, they do not. This is rather like asserting that airplane pilots crash all the time, and doctors lose most of their patients. Most professionals do their jobs competently. People make mistakes when they do experiments that are not in their area of expertise, such as when Fleischmann tried to measure neutrons, and when plasma physicists tried to do electrochemistry.

Read the full text preview of that last link.

It discusses recombination. All electrochemists know about this. It is usually eliminated by putting a recombiner in a closed cell.

- Jed Rothwell

- Jed Rothwell, from you-know-where, whose comment will surely be erased —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.219.198.240 (talk) 19:45, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Jed, your commentary is important, though I'd ask you to be (1) more careful before reacting, (2) briefer if possible (I know, all too well, that it's not always possible, and (3) to focus on improving the article. That's where we need advice. If you just want to continue a debate here, you will be properly blocked, and, yes, your contributions will be reverted, far more automatically than you have seen. I think that would be a shame, please don't make it necessary. We are working on getting some pages from lenr-canr whitelisted, which is the toe in the door that might open it up more fully. If we can't get some pages whitelisted, delisting from the blacklist is hopeless. So one step at a time....

Now, anyone can put this conversation in a collapse box, that would be better than deleting it or removing it. Like it or not, Rothwell is extremely knowledgeable in this field, and his participation here may even be essential. Imagine, if both he and Shanahan sign off on some text, it's pretty likely to be NPOV! And that is possible, though certainly I'm not holding my breath. The rest of us will be better off if these issues are explored in Talk, instead of through edit warring and other not-niceties. If you find this boring and useless, please don't read it! If we make an edit based on this stuff, your rights haven't been removed to revert it and ask for discussion, you won't be sanctioned because you didn't participate in this extended discussion.

Now, Jed, you wrote "This is completely incorrect," in response to "Others think that there is some true unknown phenomenon; you've focused on calorimetry, but, to me, there could simply be a colossal error: the calorimetry was indeed bad -- though that seems a bit unlikely to me on the face, to be so uniformly bad with so many researchers who should know better"

I think you actually agree with the statement, at least you do if you still have some scientific objectivity left, and I think you probably have a lot, if you will bring it to bear. "Others" was a reference to those not directly working in the CMNS field, but with some indirect knowledge of it (critical or friendly). That there is some "true unknown phenomenon" was always considered a possibility in the DOE reviews that were supposedly negative. Then I turned to Shanahan and said, "you've focused on calorimetry." Was that incorrect? Remember, you just wrote "completely incorrect." Not just "incorrect in part." This is the writing of someone accustomed to tenacious debate, where there are sides and there isn't a common goal, but apparently opposing goals. I'm here because I'm a Wikipedia editor who believes in the value of NPOV, when it is true NPOV and hasn't been warped by the exclusion of some element of it. (NPOV isn't a POV, it's a consensus report of POVs and other facts. Or we could say that the POV that is NPOV is one which knows the difference between relative certainty and opinion, and doesn't report opinion as fact, but only as attributed opinion.)

Then, to Shanahan, I pointed out a theoretical possibility. I actually said that I considered it improbable. Do you think that "completely wrong?" Your habits of debate suck you into excess. It's damaging the field, and my opinion on this has been confirmed by others in the field. Your library is excellent, it's been unfairly attacked, all that. But we could deal with that if you'd clean up your act. Please, for your own sake, for lenr-canr.org's sake, for the field of condensed matter nuclear science, indeed, for the future of humanity (whether lenr turns out to be a blind alley or not), not to mention the benefit of Wikipedia, consider improving your behavior, becoming more like a professional librarian. Otherwise, I predict, I'll be watching your ban, a far more effective ban than you've seen, shaking my head and unable to do anything about it.

Now, I was going to ask you, is there any peer-reviewed work pursuing to Shanahan's claims, or recent reviews of the field that might meet WP:RS requirements? I'm aware of primary research with implications, but there is only so much we can do with that. We need some independent secondary sources. I'm prepared to argue that some sources that might be considered not-independent actually are, but the sources shouldn't be clearly biased. Even notable opinion might be helpful. --Abd (talk) 20:21, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Sorry I was unclear. I meant that there could not be a colossal error, and that the calorimetry in all of the major experiments was good, not bad. (There have been minor experiments in which it was pretty bad. I don't recall any that got through peer-review, except the negative findings of course, which always sail through unchallenged.)

If there was a colossal error someone would have found it by now. They would have found a subtle error too, but a subtle error is ruled out in any case. The effect is often large, so it cannot be caused by a subtle error. A subtle error (such as poor mixing or drifting thermometers) causes a small spurious indication of heat, say ~50 mW. With equal probability, it would indicate negative 50 mW, which is impossible. It would never indicate 10 W. Heck, even the calorimeters that I personally have constructed would never be off by more than 100 mW, and they were rudimentary!

Now, I was going to ask you, is there any peer-reviewed work pursuing to Shanahan's claims, or recent reviews of the field that might meet requirements?

Well, Storms wrote a response to one of Shanahan's papers, and Shanahan said he published a rebuttal to Storms. I think that's where it stands. You would have to ask Shanahan.

- Jed Rothwell <spam removed> —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.219.198.240 (talk) 21:05, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Jed, as has been mentioned before, it is not appropriate to include external links in your signature, doubly so to a site you control that is on the blacklist. See Wikipedia:SPAMMER #7. Since you haven't got a user page, I'm notifying you here. I'm going to remove any such links from your signature here as a straightforward application of policy. Phil153 (talk) 00:14, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I did not put an external link in my signature. A robot did that. - JR —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.219.198.240 (talk) 14:46, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I'd argue that it's not spam, as such. Those aren't links and, obviously, aren't prevented by the blacklist. They are just a URL, a URL anyone could quickly find by googling the name, so it's a convenience to someone who wants it and pretty harmless to someone who doesn't. Linkspam usually refers to links in articles, not to Talk, and is only applied to Talk pages when the links are truly inappropriate. If you'd like to buy some yarn or fiber, I could add a URL to my signature.... I'd probably get sanctioned. But for an IP editor to identify himself as the librarian of a web site on the topic of the article isn't harmful. He doesn't need the advertising (Google LENR! Googling "cold fusion," though, drops him to my second page of hits, which is appropriate, since "cold fusion" isn't the name of the field in which ongoing research is taking place.

However, for sure, it's highly impolitic of Jed to sign that way. He should stop. He has a user page, Jed Rothwell but because he never edits from it, we don't know if he logs in and uses it, and so he may not get notices that he has messages.If he keeps it up, I and others who'd like to see his useful participation here will probably be powerless to prevent his being actually banned, with active detection, regular IP blocks, and immediate removal of detected edits. His edit above is cogent. It didn't add anything I didn't already know, but he answered the question; what we need, though, are reviews that weigh and compare the conflicting views. On the face, by the way, Rothwell is probably right as to the substance of what he's said. Unfortunately, "probably" doesn't cut the mustard as a reliable source. And I certainly don't want to close the door to Shanahan; big mistakes do get made sometimes. Hmmm.... In the LENR field, Shanahan's work is fringe opinion.... which is no argument against it at all.--Abd (talk) 04:20, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it's bothered me for a while - it's basically promotion of the site littered all over the talk page. I doubt we would tolerate it anywhere else, say "webmaster, freerunningadvice.com", or "librarian, hydrogenengineresearch.org". I don't think his intent is spam, but I'm also quite sure he appreciates people visiting the cold fusion talk page to have plenty of references to his site and its opinions. I don't intend to warn him for spam, merely remove it when it gets posted in every single signature. I generally agree with you you that Jed has valuable things to say, but his constant overstating of the case (and not pointing out the boundaries of where those cases break down, instead lumping all things together) makes it hard to know when he isn't overstating. It's frustrating. I'd certainly welcome any specific suggestions he has to improve parts of the article and would be happy to add them myself. But they need to be sober, if you know what I mean.

I personally don't find Shanahan convincing, it's fine as a generalized critique and he raises sound points, but it needs hard evidence to be taken as more than plausible hand waving. It needs falsifying and quantifying in actual experiments to be compelling explanation for multiple reports of excess heat of a particular magnitude. Phil153 (talk) 04:54, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't find Shanahan convincing, but ... the DOE (1989 and 2004) didn't find the excess heat results "convincing" either. Shanahan's criticisms deserve response. There has been response, I understand, but it's incomplete. This much is clear to me: the DOE reports deserve more respect than they have gotten, from both critics and supporters of LENR. This article has tended to only report one side of the DOE reports; it's a serious problem. Because the DOE reports were widely reported in a certain way, i.e., as "debunking cold fusion," rather than simply pointing out that the evidence wasn't strong enough to revise our general understandings of physics, rather than simply pointing out the difficulties in replication, difficulties which make it quite reasonable to continue to be skeptical, when we understate what is actually in the reports, we create an effective imbalance, even if what we report is reliably sourced. I dipped my toe in this article by adding some sourced text from the 2004 DOE report, and it was reverted, with a series of reasons being given. What was legitimate about the objections would more appropriately have been addressed by adding balance, instead of removing sourced text that allegedly created imbalance. That's where we should go, on this point. Shanahan is not an experimentalist in this field, he is merely proposing, as I read his work, a kind of generic explanation of excess heat. Without a lot of careful study, I don't feel competent to judge his work, all I can say is that I'm not convinced, and that Jed's objections seem generically more likely to be correct. Absolutely, as you wrote, Phil, it needs falsifying and quantifying in actual experiments, and more than that, it needs independent review like anything else. We can report Shanahan's opinions and claims, to the extent they are in RS, but we can't imply that they are true or accepted. We may in some cases even be able to go outside standard RS, for statements that we attribute to notable experts that verifiably were made by them (an example would be Fleischmann's papers on the history of the CF affair, presented at a conference in China, and, yes, hosted by lenr-canr.org. That source was being used in Martin Fleischmann, and it wasn't controversial, apparently. --Abd (talk) 15:54, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

No disagreement, except...I think our section on the 2004 DOE is absolutely fine, and more balanced than anything we've had before, which is ironic given that the only person topic banned was a CF advocate. Compare with a typical commentary from November, for example. The only thing that could be modified is that lead, maybe with something like "The majority of a review panel organized by the US Department of Energy (DOE) in 1989 found that the evidence for the discovery of a new nuclear process was not persuasive, although uncertainties remained". It's hard to think of wording that's sourced, brief, and won't start WWIII.

BTW, looking at that November version, I think the article has gone downhill since the rewrite was done. It reads like an essay instead of an encyclopedia entry - it's focussed too narrowly on precisely looking at claims and precisely reporting events, instead of also presenting context and the social history of the topic in the narrative, which are both relevant and interesting. Phil153 (talk) 16:44, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Topic ban reminding

Guys, I remind you all that Jed is topic banned from this page, so I'm striking out all his comment here per WP:BAN#Enforcement_by_reverting_edits (I'm not removing them because it would be difficult to follow the discussion). New comments by him on this page should be deleted on sight.

Note: I'm not striking out his comments under the blacklisting discussion, but just because it's an off-topic section, so I find it silly to apply a topic ban there. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:42, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

You people need to stop obsessing about me, and ask yourselves how you ended up with an article about cold fusion that features crackpot nonsense about recombination, and no actual facts about cold fusion, such as the power levels or control factors. You have succeeded so well in ridding yourselves of me and others who know something about this subject that you are now an isolated Cult of True Believers. - Jed Rothwell —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.89.102.50 (talk) 23:38, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Ah, leave it to Rothwell to troll for a ban. Well, one reason we ended up with a relatively poor article is that an expert such as yourself has truly poor people skills, and needlessly insults people. We didn't get rid of you, you got rid of yourself, and, by failing to heed the advice from your friends, you have made it quite difficult for those who do, indeed, see the problems with the article and would try to fix them. Pcarbonn, I predict, will be back. Maybe even before the year of his present topic ban. Unless he does something foolish such as act as you do, which I rather doubt will happen. He actually understands this place. I and another editor are currently attempting to get some pages at lenr-canr.org whitelisted, which is really the first step to getting the site delisted from the meta blacklist. No thanks to you. And I don't expect any thanks from you, either, I'm not doing it for you, I'm doing it for the project and for humanity. See, I happen to think that your site is very useful, and that people, the readers this is all for, should know about it, and that I might get dinged for incivility for saying frankly what I think of your personal behavior is irrelevant. When the smoke clears and a definitive history of condensed matter nuclear science is written, it may record your substantial contributions, but also that you retarded the field due to certain unfortunate personal characteristics. You could fix those, if you'd unplug your ears and start listening, not about CMNS, but about how to deal with people. It's your choice. If you'd clean up your act, I'd support you with my not inconsiderable skills here; if not, I'll still act to benefit the project, but I'll be unable to defend you. Pcarbonn is another matter. He got a raw deal, in my opinion; fixing it will take time. The wheels of justice grind slowly but they grind exceedingly fine. --Abd (talk) 02:18, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

These assertions are not in evidence. I and others who know something about cold fusion are all censored, blocked or whatever the term is, and our work is erased and replaced by nonsense. Therefore my behavior (or attitude) is not the cause of my being blocked. If the extremists will block people like Pcarbonn they will block anyone. No amount of civility will prevent it. In any case, I am not inclined to be civil toward ignorant bullies who shred my reputation in public. I am old fashioned and I do not buy the "I'm okay, your okay" notion that everyone means well. I do not blame myself because other people dislike me. Finally, I see no evidence that "the wheels of justice grind slowly" or at all, or that such wheels exist. Human behavior is primate interaction, which is not notable for justice. - Jed Rothwell, Librarian, LENR-CANR.org

I don't see evidence that Jed Rothwell is topic banned. JzG thinks so, hence what's in the link above. He's got a registered account, it's not blocked. (He doesn't use it, I don't know why.)

There are some IP editors here who are clearly Rothwell, but I don't see abusive IP socking. Are the IP editors blocked? Blocks of IP editors don't establish a ban, partly because the IP editor may be unable to respond with an unblock request, for example. But I don't see routine blocking of identified Rothwell IP. For example, see Special:Contributions/68.219.198.240, the most recent IP for him. Many edits from 20 Jan to 23 Jan, then look at the block log. No block. With some difficulty, I found some IP blocks, looking back, before. I've had occasion to follow some truly banned editors, and when IP was identified, it was usually blocked immediately, certainly with this long a discussion here, in a place that many admins see, if he was logged as a blocked user, he'd be quickly blocked. There is a log of bans and blocks. I'll bet he's not on it.... That would take a ban discussion somewhere. I haven't seen one that came to any conclusion.

So, while his edits here are irritating, and he's tendentious, missing the point of collaboration here, he is also, perhaps unfortunately, right about a lot that he writes. I'd suggest the use of collapse boxes if someone is offended by how much space he takes up. Strikeout is irritating, I may remove it. Nobody is forced to read it; collapse box would retain easy readability for someone who wants to read it, and avoid needless irritation for those who don't. --Abd (talk) 21:20, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

To answer your implied question, see [13] and [14]. Cheers.LeadSongDog (talk) 22:34, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive179#Is_this_the_place_to_report_an_admitted_soapbox_editor.3F looks like clear consensus for a talk page topic ban to me. And it's only a month old. In addition to the 5 involved parties, uninvolved adminstrator Protonk agreed. No one objected. You can always bring it up for review at AN I guess and see what the community thinks? Phil153 (talk) 02:20, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

A quick review of Wikipedia:Editing_restrictions suggests that no ban was officially imposed or declared. Had such an official action taken place an administrator would have officially closed the WP:AN you reference here, clearly declared the parameters of the ban, and made a notation at Wikipedia:Editing_restrictions. None of these actions took place so, no, I would say that no such ban has been imposed. --GoRight (talk) 15:34, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

It looked like an informal consensus on how to deal with a disruptive soapbox editor. Jed's contribs are entirely off topic anyway (they don't relate to article improvement, despite repeated requests), so they can be removed under the talk page guidelines anyway. However, I would appreciate if Enric Naval would clarify why he thinks Jed is topic banned from this page so we know where everything stands. Phil153 (talk) 16:40, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

I have not reviewed his specific edits, however I trust User:Abd's judgment in these cases (see his characterization above). I am not commenting on anything other than the formality of whether an actual ban has been imposed, which by my understanding it has not. --GoRight (talk) 18:00, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

He was already blocked for disruptive edits on December 2007, there was a AN discussion for topic banning him where it's commented how they can't block because it's a dynamic IP, the first message in Talk:Cold_fusion#Jed_Rothwell is an admin's announcement on the talk page that he's banned (diff), this sort of announcement is not a requirement but is standard issue when handing out topic bans, and I already explained how and where to appeal the topic ban.

Those steps are enough to impose a topic ban on an editor. Additionally, if an editor only disrupts one page the usual solution is blocking but:

a) he is using a dynamic IP so it would need a IP range block that would affect other people on his ISP

b) he has not edited from his account so nobody has seen the need to block it (mind you, if he edits this page from his account he'll probably be considered to be making edit "in deffiance of his topic ban" and get his account blocked)

c) a ban can be implemented by using the technical mechanism of block, but you can also topic ban an editor from certain pages without blocking him (User:Pcarbonn, is an example of this)

d) listing in Wikipedia:Editing restrictions is not a requirement and there must be like a thousand banned editors not appearing there because nobody cares

e) it's not even a requirement to slap a {{Banned user}} template on banned users' userpage and sometimes admins even forget to block the account, someone else will block later when/if the error is noticed because the ban is still in effect even if the user is not blocked

f) bans are not done on accounts but on persons, so he's still under the ban conditions even if he edits unlogged or from a different account

g) we are not even counting all the tens of thousands maybe hundreds of thousands of accounts that are technically banned because they are indefinitely blocked for assorted reasons and no admin is willing to unblock.

Seriously, there is no big hidden mistake that everybody missed except you. He's topic banned and you need to argue how lifting the topic ban would help the encyclopedia (have I already linked to how and where to appeal the topic ban?). --Enric Naval (talk) 20:51, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't have to do anything, actually, since I don't have any stake in his being banned or not. But procedurally you can't just get five or six people to make a couple of posts on WP:AN and call that a ban. If you feel that this user actually IS banned, then I suggest that you follow the proper procedures by having the administrator who is declaring the existence of a community consensus for the ban (based solely on 5 or 6 comments in an obscure thread) formally make that declaration on WP:AN and subsequently record that finding at Wikipedia:Editing restrictions. If things are as you claim this should be a simple matter to accomplish. Until then you are clearly on thin ice with your claims. --GoRight (talk) 22:22, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. --TS 22:34, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

As Tony says. There is no need to try to fullfill a set of not-actually-needed bureaucratic steps that the rules don't demand.

Also, this an useless discussion, so I'm not replying anymore to it. Please direct further comments about flawed bans to WP:AN, where they belong. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:41, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

I am just saying that IF a topic ban actually exists, it should be no problem to have it actually recorded in the proper places which already exist for doing so. As you say, failing to have done so does not change whether the ban exists but having it recorded in the proper places should work to your benefit in this matter as this would remove all doubt. Failing to record the ban only aids the banned user. --GoRight (talk) 22:50, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Absence of an entry in Wikipedia:Editing restrictions doesn't mean he isn't topic-banned. That was a very brief discussion, though. I don't see a problem with reviewing his contributions and declaring a topic ban if it's necessary, though I take into account Abd's opinion that he's "right about a lot that he writes" which suggests that his comments may be of some value. If he's being a nuisance by not logging in to comment, we could require him to log in, and ban him from making comments without logging in. --TS 18:40, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

I would disagree on a procedural basis. There is nothing in the WP:AN discussions that declares a topic ban. There are a handful of users expressing general support. I doubt that this is considered sufficient. But as I said above, if he truly is topic banned there should be no problem dotting the associated i's and crossing the associated t's now that everyone is aware of them. If there is a problem getting those i's dotted and those t's crossed, however, then I would argue that the claims of a ban are premature.

Hell, even the request for semi-protection of the talk page was denied. Obviously page protection and banning are two completely separate things, but this does suggest that the problem was not considered worth addressing even at that time. --GoRight (talk) 22:22, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

PS - Please also note the title of Wikipedia:Editing restrictions. The purpose of the page is to list users who are NOT banned but have editing restrictions (which a topic ban would be). It is not titled List of All Banned Users. Note also that User:Pcarbonn appears on that page, consistent with the arbcom ruling creating the editing restriction. --GoRight (talk) 22:33, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Okay, I have no idea why some think this so important, but one argument at a time:

• LeadSongDog wrote, To answer your implied question, see [15] and [16]. The first diff is to short blocks and user-requested user page deletion from April 2006. The second is to Rothwell's Contributions, showing last contribution logged-in as May 2006. I don't know why LeadSongDog would think I hadn't already look at those, but ... they show me that, yes, he's not recently using the account, but he also negated his stated intention not to participate by contributing after those events. For all I know, he may have spiked his password or simply lost it and it isn't worth it to him to go to the trouble of recovering it. This is moot. He has an account. It's not blocked. It has a Talk page, a convenient place to notify him of bans, and he'd be easily considered responsible for following them, then. And they could be appealed, as could any blocks of the account.

• Phil153 wrote, Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive179#Is_this_the_place_to_report_an_admitted_soapbox_editor.3F looks like clear consensus for a talk page topic ban to me. First of all, this discussion opened with a serious error. Rothwell could be considered to have a WP:COI with respect to the topic (it's debatable). For him to confine his contributions to Talk pages was asserted here as some kind of problem, when, in fact, it's what a COI editor is supposed to do. He's an expert on the topic, a published author, has collected the largest and most useful bibliography on it and the largest collection of freely-accessible copies of published papers and other documents. He's also, like a lot of experts, quite opinionated and short with those who don't know as much as he does about it, and who ignorantly repeat what he's heard a thousand times and knows to be false. That doesn't mean he's right, in any given instance; this is the classic problem with many experts on Wikipedia. As to the discussion, the first attempt was to semiprotect the page, that's what Protonk "voted" for. The request was (properly) denied, see [Wikipedia:Requests_for_page_protection&oldid=258795705#Talk:Cold_fusion_.28edit.7Carticle.7Chistory.7Clinks.7Cwatch.7Clogs.29 permanent link]. Then Oloinish, who had made the report in the first place, asked, Is it OK if we just delete all future messages identifiable as Jed's? Two consented: JzG, who is deeply involved (he'd just unilaterally blacklisted Rothwell's web site, and removed references to it which had been accepted by consensus), and Bishonen. The latter admin (quite a respected one, by the way), opined: User's edits are a complete waste of time. I have no reason to consider her involved. However, the judgment would be a complex one, rather difficult for someone who doesn't know the field to determine. And this discussion didn't mention "ban." It wasn't closed, because no decision was made that required administrative action. It established nothing other than that an editor could remove (with the consent of two administrators, one involved and one presumably not) edits of Rothwell's on sight; otherwise such a removal might be, itself, considered disruptive.

• Enric Naval gave an extensive list of reasons why we should consider there is a ban. Most of them are moot. But I respect Enric, and he deserves an answer.
  • He was already blocked for disruptive edits on December 2007... 24 hour block. There is no question that Rothwell's behavior is marginal. But he's not blocked, let alone banned. Certainly it is possible that if his behavior were brought up, he could be blocked or banned. JzG, here, by the way, reveals the source of his clear POV on the topic. Personally, as to Rothwell, I'd prefer to continue efforts to persuade him to begin to act in a collegial manner. I'm under no illusion that this is easy! He is an expert, he knows the sources (on "both sides"), better than any of us, I believe. That he may be biased doesn't negate this.
  • there was a AN discussion for topic banning him where it's commented how they can't block because it's a dynamic IP This was covered above. Further, they can block, and it's routinely done when an admin thinks it worthwhile. That the editor may easily evade it doesn't change that. It takes moments to block a single IP. But it requires an administrator to take responsibility for the block.
  • the first message in Talk:Cold_fusion#Jed_Rothwell is an admin's announcement on the talk page that he's banned.(diff Note that the IP editor whose comments were removed in association with this wasn't Jed Rothwell. Jed Rothwell seems to always sign his posts with his name (and domain, irritatingly). That wasn't just "an admin's announcement," that was a comment by JzG and was simply his own inadequately confirmed opinion. Admins can do all kinds of things like this if nobody objects. It's efficient. However, as one very long-term, highly respected editor commented in this affair, the same administrator should not be prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner. Too many hats interferes with clear thinking.
  • The rest of the list from Enric aren't reasons why there is a ban, but rather reasons why, for example, that there is no block of User:JedRothwell, that there is no editor restrictions listing, etc., doesn't prove that there is no ban, and that is all correct. However, the lack of these things, continued after attention has been called to them, does establish that something is probably missing: a ban that is anything more than an informal decision by a small number of editors or administrators. Most notably, what is missing is a neutral administrator who closes the ban discussion with a decision and then takes responsibility for administering the ban. Then, if someone wishes to appeal it, they would first go to that admin. That's how WP process works. It's highly efficient. Examples given of a closing admin not taking actions like informing the user, blocking the user for violations, or logging the ban assume a closing administrator with the responsibility to do that. The suggestion that I, for example, should go to AN to appeal the ban is backwards. There is no ban to appeal. There is no block worthy of being appealed. AN would be a waste of many editors' time. That someone claims there is a ban doesn't cut it. Even if that someone is an administrator. If the administrator uses admin tools to enforce the ban, then there would be something to appeal. Do I need to spell it all out? Hint: I won't.

• What happened is that a user, believing that there is a ban, removed text. I'm not offended. If I don't like it, I can revert that. The status quo is that some editors believe there is a ban and some don't. I have no agenda to fix that, but I'm responding to statements here that there is a ban. I do not see adequate evidence for that, but until and unless an admin uses tools to enforce it, it's moot. One point, though: no dissent was expressed in the AN report cited as the primary evidence for a ban. There is, however, dissent expressed here. Where is it more appropriate to discuss a topic ban? In an article on the topic, where it will be seen by the editors interested in and knowledgeable about the topic, or on AN, where it will be seen by editors and administrators not familiar with the topic, who may opine -- and often do -- based on shallow and inadequate investigation if, indeed, there is any investigation at all? Generally, going to a noticeboard should be preceded by lesser efforts and the formation of editorial consensus, which someone then violates. Was this less disruptive process followed? --Abd (talk) 23:34, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

WP:AN is thataway --Enric Naval (talk) 23:37, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Right. Be my guest. Let me know if I'm mentioned so I can hide under a rock. Or not. --Abd (talk) 02:02, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Meaningless Break

I have requested that User:JzG address this point both here, and at WP:Editing restrictions if appropriate. --GoRight (talk) 02:40, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Ah, GoRight, let it go, don't harass the poor Guy! Too much drama already. Rothwell's irritating IP edits are a minor issue. Given how totally impolitic Rothwell is, wider attention is simply likely to get him actually banned, no matter how harmless it is. Let me put it this way: if you want to clean up a hornet's nest, don't stir prematurely. --Abd (talk) 05:42, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

He's evading a block. Or rather he was, he's now blocked at his new IP. We do not need him, we should simply WP:RBI whatever he posts - he and Pcarbonn are collaborating externally and anything Jed does can be viewed as covered by Pcarbonn's topic ban. As an aside, Kirk also has a COI here so should be watched carefully. Guy (Help!) 09:20, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

As we all know, blocks are not bans. I note the lack of any updates at WP:Editing restrictions. Until the purported ban is recorded there I will assume no such ban exists.

WP:RBI would seem appropriate in this case for anything that actually constitutes vandalism, but again that clearly is not the same as a topic ban.

"anything Jed does can be viewed as covered by Pcarbonn's topic ban" - I am not aware of any policy that says topic bans are transitive to other users. Indeed, such a notion seems completely counter to the prevailing cultural norms here on wikipedia. Can you please provide a reference? --GoRight (talk) 15:04, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

WP:BAN#Editing_on_behalf_of_banned_users SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 15:46, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Do you have any evidence that Jed is editing on behalf of User:Pcarbonn? The mere fact that they may or may not have an off-wiki relationship is irrelevant to that point. I think at this point that it is well established that they are different individuals and that Jed is not merely a meat puppet for User:Pcarbonn even though they may share similar views. --GoRight (talk) 17:25, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I presume your question is intended for Guy. I was merely providing you with some policy information, to show you that Guy's position ("he and Pcarbonn are collaborating externally and anything Jed does can be viewed as covered by Pcarbonn's topic ban") is consistent with ban policy. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 19:22, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Fine. Your policy information does not actually contradict my original statement which is that topic bans are not transitive. In other words, just because User:Pcarbonn has a ban does NOT mean that Jed does. The policy you cite does not restrict Jed from making his own personal comments. So in order for it to even apply in this case you must have direct evidence that a given comment made by Jed was done solely at the direction of User:Pcarbonn. Hence my request. I don't care who responds with the evidence. --GoRight (talk) 19:59, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Pcarbonn is topic banned. Truth. Jed Rothwell isn't banned at all, as far as I can tell. This would be the first time, to my knowledge, that a topic ban on one user is applied to another based on an alleged coincidence of opinions; my guess is that Rothwell and Pcarbon, however, disagree on many things and that Pcarbonn would likewise protest against the worst aspects of Rothwell's behavior. I haven't seen evidence that Pcarbonn and Jed Rothwell "are collaborating externally." Normally, in any case, external cooperation isn't relevant here. If Rothwell were taking comments from Pcarbonn and posting them, instead of simply posting his own opinion, absolutely, it would be meat puppetry and sanctionable. I highly doubt that this is happening. How about asking Pcarbonn? My sense, though, is that he's paying hardly any attention to Wikipedia now. He'd probably respond to an email. --Abd (talk) 19:33, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I've just checked this discussion on Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration. It's obvious that Jed Rothwell is about as topic banned as it's possible to be, and the arbitration committee does not want to be dragged into a formal procedure simply because some editors insist to the last that he is not. It's done, he's banned. --TS 13:54, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

No, evidently I am not banned. Or blocked, whatever the difference may be. However, someone keeps erasing my comments. - Jed Rothwell

JzG escalated to arbitration, opening the can of worms. No, Rothwell isn't banned, he's blocked, by JzG. And ArbComm now has an opportunity to examine this. Note that we have, here, an admin taking his action to ArbComm, not because he's been reversed, but because there was objection. The one asking for ArbComm action here is not me, and not GoRight, but JzG. Insist to the last? Tony, I had simply asked Guy to unblock, based primarily on his prior involvement and lack of sufficient evidence for a block. You want to the last, you ain't seen nothing yet! I'd done the first step, it was over, JzG refused. So, second step, probably, seek informal mediation. That had not begun. All that had happened, let me repeat, was that an admin took an action and two editors requested reversal, giving reasons. JzG doesn't want discussion on his Talk page, he can ask that it stop. But he went to ArbComm. Might be a good thing, actually; the risk is that ArbComm confirms JzG, which would do a great deal of damage, in my opinion. But it might well decide that WP:DR wasn't followed and so a hearing is premature. Or it may also realize that there are some serious issues here, issues of administrative abuse to enforce a POV, and take the case. I know that there is substantial sentiment in the community that this is the situation, but many have thrown their hands up in the air, believing that nothing can be done about it. Maybe they are right. Maybe we will find out. --Abd (talk) 15:06, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Revert by TS of substantial new material in lead

A newly signed up editor, Gen ato (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), has added around 2 kilobytes of new material beginning with the following text:

On May 2008, cold fusion finally become a reality.

The source of this information appears to be an eyewitness report by Steven B. Krivit published in New Energy Times. The added text also references a 1998 paper published in Proceedings of the Japan Academy and some articles from the proceedings of a 2003 conference on Cold Fusion held in Cambridge, MA. It is not in good English and it probably doesn't belong in the lead. I have reverted it pending discussion. [17]. --TS 04:48, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree with the revert. Because there might possibly be something usable there, I'm copying the wikitext here below. --Abd (talk) 05:53, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

copy of edit by Gen ato

On May 2008, cold fusion finally become a reality. Yoshiaki Arata, a senior esteemed japanese Physics Professor and his colleague Yue-Chang Zhang, made a famous demonstration in front of many journalists and researchers. They presented a cold fusion reactor that was able to move a Stirling engine. Yoshiaki Arata e Zhang Yue-Chang, after a work of many years performed on 1998 a previous experiment.

Before Arata's experiment many theoretical studies was made from him and many others. We quote those of Giuliano Preparata, at the ENEA [Infm-Lab][18] (National Institute of Physics - Frascati Italy).

What seems to have happened here is the anomalous production of heat. Arata says it's fusion. The claim has been met with skepticism. [19]--TS 06:45, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

As is to be expected, Tony. Arata, though, isn't some backyard bozo. I'm not sure that Arata says it's fusion. Got RS on that? (just a question, not a challenge!). He may well say it's nuclear in nature, I think he has published evidence on that, but I don't keep all of this in my aging head. --Abd (talk) 15:25, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

• More of the usual nonsense. I have rarely seen so many WP:WEASEL words in a supposedly serious scientific topic. It goes, pending coverage in reliable mainstream sources, for all the usual reasons. New Energy Times is emphatically not a reliable independent source for such claims. Guy (Help!) 09:23, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

The editor is clearly inexperienced. Expect more of this, much more, where Wikipedia lags seriously behind what is available in sources considered reliable by the public. As to NET being a reliable source, it's an edited news magazine, primarily. Looks quite reliable to me, actually. Opinion is attributed. It's not a peer-reviewed journal, it's actually a secondary source, like a newspaper; just one specialized in a fairly narrow field (which certainly is not only "cold fusion"). The whole question of the usability of a source like NET, which was here reporting the personal experience of a writer, is interesting. That personal experience doesn't establish a "scientific fact," but may still be notable. I'm not pretending that the solutions here are easy and obvious, but neither are they as knee-jerk simple as JzG has proposed, and has he used as the basis for his actions. It already went, JzG, and I concurred. So what are you arguing here? Nobody is maintaining that it should be reinserted! Please beat dead horses elsewhere, if you must, it makes me queasy.

By the way, it may look like a scientific topic, but the scientific topic would be Condensed matter nuclear science, redirected here by one of our friends. Cold fusion is actually, properly, about the history of science and about a social phenomenon that involves science. There is no active research maintaining "cold fusion" as originally claimed. The original cold fusion claims should be covered under CMNS as a section, a rejected hypothesis to explain experimental data that apparently has some other explanation, which may or may not be nuclear in nature. We should, here, have much more about the splash that the original announcements made, the history. Much less about the science itself. --Abd (talk) 15:22, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

I would certainly agree with Abd on his final point regarding the relationship between CMNS and Cold Fusion. It is clear that the claims of actual fusion in the traditional sense are dismissed within the mainstream scientific community, but there is also acknowledgment that some as of yet unexplained phenomenon may be occurring and that additional funding should be invested in researching that. --GoRight (talk) 15:35, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Abd, please try to be civil. JzG is not beating dead horses, he is establishing consensus for an editor who is contesting the removal of the material. See User_talk:Gen_ato and the recent history of continued insertion by Gen ato. So somebody is indeed maintaining that it must be reinserted.

As for NET, NET is blacklisted, and you are arguing it's a reliable source that we can use for original claims in the article. Maybe take it RS noticeboard?

You CMNS distinction seems unfounded. It's the same horse with a different saddle, and cold fusion is by far the most well known name for both low energy nuclear reactions and condensed matter nuclear science, and the set of experiments and reported anomalies surrounding them. Per our title conventions, this isn't even close. I know that you already know this. Phil153 (talk) 16:10, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Phil, you will note above that I agreed with the removal. I'd have done it myself if someone else hadn't gotten to it. "Dead horse" is a reference to the fact that there isn't the slightest danger that the improper text would remain. No established editor has supported it, including myself. "Somebody" is maintaining it, yes. A new editor who probably doesn't know the history, I'd guess. The editor has been warned about edit warring, and properly so. Yes, dead horse. That's not an uncivil comment, it's a standard argument; it means that a point being made is moot, already accepted. Now, consider this: Gen ato is a new user. Was JzG's response, above, "civil"? Is this the way to welcome a new editor? Yet you think "beating a dead horse" is uncivil? --Abd (talk) 00:28, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Can somebody explain me why the scentific publications and works of some important scientists on cold fusion are simply cancelled or not reported on the english version of the wiki? For example the works of Giuliano Preparata, Yoshiaki Arata and Yue-Chang Zhang, T. Ohmori and T. Mizuno, Francesco Scaramuzzi, Francesco Celani (considered fundamental from many scientists) are not quoted. In the italian version of wiki for example they all are quoted very well. Sorry but there is something that I don't understand. It seems that in the english version of the wiki the term "cold fusion" it's treated in a very "non neutral" way. Of course rules are fundamental in an enciclopedical work. But they have to grant neutrality. If we don't use rules in a soft way, if we exceed with the legalistic use of rules, we can transform them as the best stones to cover the scientific evidences and not as milestones to spread knowledge. This happened many times in the history of science. My text for example was completely cancelled and not trasformed or changed with a mutual cooperation. And cooperation (and not chensorship) is basic in every project! I agree that "New Energy Times" is not a scientific isitution (but it's quoted on the italian version. Here it's not blacklisted?) and I cancelled this reference from the first version. But what about the others? Are they not scientists? Can You please answer on a rational basis to all of these points? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gen ato (talk • contribs) 19:55, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Your description of the article as it was before your additions is false. Arata, Zhang, Mizuno, and Scaramuzzi were all referenced. A difference in content between the English and Italian wikipedia articles does not mean that it is the English one that is written from a biased point of view. The reliable secondary sources on the topic are much more negative than the selection of primary sourced proponent articles you are repeatedly inserting into the lead. You might want to consider that you might be the one attempting to force a point of view on this article. I'm reverting. --Noren (talk) 03:00, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Gen ato, you've attempted to insert the same text (with minor modifications) 5 times in the last 36 hours. It's been reverted 5 times by three different editors. This is not censorship, but disagreement about the place where it's included, the weasel words being used, the reliability of the sources used for the claims made, the weight given to one particular experiment. To a first approximation, Wikipedia reports what is published and noticed in reliable secondary sources with appropriate weight, especially in the lead. Please do not continue to edit war and insert text that other editors have removed; instead, seek consensus on the talk page before adding something controversial. Also note that the 3RR rule that I informed you of is not an entitlement. Phil153 (talk) 04:28, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Gen ato, I'm sympathetic to your point of view. I'd agree that the article can be improved, but it's a highly controversial subject. Edit warring isn't the way to fix the article. You now know that your changes are controversial, and no other editor has supported them. Consider what small changes you might suggest. If they aren't accepted, do not revert. Under some conditions, even a single reversion to restore previously removed content can be considered edit warring and can result in a block. Discuss. It can be a slow process, please be patient. --Abd (talk) 00:28, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

It's my opinion that 3 of the five pillars of Wikipedia are not respected at the voice "cold fusion" (from Gen Ato):

1)Neutrality I think that, expecially if one voice is a controversial term or have controversial meanings, we have to report all the scientific point of view (and all the possible meanings if this is the case) giving them the same evidence (this means the same "dignity" in the position of text, number of words etc.. In the voice "cold fusion" in the english wikipedia f.e. there is not an historical timeline quoting all the different (or at least the most controverse or discussed), scientifically publiced studies and different position of the scentists (there is only a little chapter with only Fleischmann and Pons and some american scientists quoted. All the international ones are not present and this chapter ends at the year 1989!). Then it's not the same thing to quote an important research (or considered important from a part of the scientific comunity) on a footnote (between hundred references with a very little text) or on the main text descripting the voice. If we want to be neutral we have to give to all researches or studies the same dignity that we give to the others.

2)Free content This lak of neutrality of the voice "cold fusion" in the english Wikipedia was for me very evident, especially if You compare the description of the same voice in other languages, f.e. with the italian Wikipedia. Because of that I was sincerely trying to give to this voice a better equilibrium, in the sense of the evidence given to every "position". This is essential in a case of a very controversial voice. But my text was completely cancelled. Wikipedia is not the right arena for to decide or for to discriminate wich is the best or the good research. There are other instruments or places to do that. The first aim is to show "the mountain" from every point of view. "Free content" means to give the possibility and the opportunity of free expression to every position of the scientific field. And I think this is not the case for Wikipedia at the voice "cold fusion". Let me add that if somebody simply cancell your text, without providing any correction to it, it's not a cooperative work. We have to clearly understand that, if the project it's a public one, like wikipedia seems to be, this way of doing is seen as pure censorship. Of course we have to correct, to propose and to negotiate with a mutual work to reach the goal. And what is the goal? To describe a process, a voice or anything else with a neutral clearness. Phrases like "More of the usual nonsense" or "The editor is clearly inexperienced", like I have read in this discussion are not only offensive, expecially between the members of a project. Are scientifically and politically not correct because they are not propositive. If somebody want to put in evidence something You cannot simply say that his or her words are not correct. You have to propose corrections. This is cooperation. This phrases are inaceptable because in a public project nobody has to be neglected. The aproach have to be inclusive and not exclusive. This is one of the principal differences between public projects and private projects. Otherwise it's simply an occupation of a public space from a group (or a corporation or a club or a caste). And this is also not ethic in a public space where many people are sincerely and freely giving something.

3)Consensus There was not any attempt to find consensus around my position. In a few minutes my text was repeatedly cancelled. None of the two or three members inserted anything to substantially support my point of view, that in a few word is: "some researches and important studies and scientists involved in cold fusion are not quoted here and I suggest to insert at least some of them". This is a political position and You don't need to be an expert of cold fusion to understand this point. It's very difficoult to find consensus in a group if You are weak and the others are very strong. Democracies f.e. have certain rules in order to protect minorities. What to do in Wikipedia? I give here an example: suppose that I'm a multinational corporation, with a strong interest to hide a certain experiment or research in the scientific field. If my interest it's very big, it's very easy to have ten or twenty "watchdogs" between my employee around the world. They will build very easily a "firewall" simply cancelling text of other members with different legalistic pretext or simply saying that they are not experts. Without proposing solution to represent their point of view, but simply censoring their text. Naturally there will be consensus, because many members of the group involved in the project are also members of the corporation. Of course I'm not sayng that this is the case of some members involved in the voice "cold fusion" in the english Wikipedia. But if You make a little calculation of the budget involved in the nuclear fission or in the warm fusion programs We can say that, witouth doubt, a risk in this sense is also a possibility. So my proposal is not to cancell the text of the others, but to interpretate the point of view and proposing something.

Gen Ato--Gen ato (talk) 01:19, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

A Parting Comment on RS

The biggest problem I see with the Wiki approach while writing about cold fusion is the lack of reliable sources for the ‘anti’ position. To quote the current Wiki CF article:

'In 1994, David Goodstein described cold fusion as "a pariah field, cast out by the scientific establishment. Between cold fusion and respectable science there is virtually no communication at all. Cold fusion papers are almost never published in refereed scientific journals, with the result that those works don't receive the normal critical scrutiny that science requires. On the other hand, because the Cold-Fusioners see themselves as a community under siege, there is little internal criticism. Experiments and theories tend to be accepted at face value, for fear of providing even more fuel for external critics, if anyone outside the group was bothering to listen. In these circumstances, crackpots flourish, making matters worse for those who believe that there is serious science going on here." '

What this means is that there are almost 0 reliable ‘anti’ sources, because the mainstream quit publishing in c.1993-4. Now, you can find newspaper articles, and these serve for the historical./social contexts of the article. But how do you get ‘reliable sources’ for technical aspects of the field, like what constitutes ‘reliable experimental work’? Answer, you don’t by and large. In fact to my knowledge, my work, the Jones/Hansen calorimetry papers (c. 1995), and Clarke’s work represent the only examples of this from that latter period (’95 to present). Those papers do not address every claim made by CFers, yet there are valid conventional reasons not to believe the vast majority of such claims. What you are left with after applying ‘common’ chemistry knowledge is a few experiments here and there that do not have enough numbers to constitute anything other than a suggestion something might be going on. What Wiki editors do however, is attempt to apply the ‘policies’ as iron-clad rules, especially when they have a pro-POV to push, to keep out the ‘common’ knowledge. This seems to occur because no one editing knows chemistry or trusts a chemist to explain it to them. Instead they shout ‘COI’ and ignore expert advise.

In the meantime, copius contributions from the ‘pro’ side are found, and cited liberally in the article. What that does is give the Wiki reader the impression that, in the fact of scads of ‘reliable’ reports of CF, the mainstream stubbornly refuses to accept the facts, probably due to some nefarious government plot, instead of the correct impression that the mainstream detected the psuedoscience in the field long ago and moved on and nothing reliable has been added since by the CFers. Oh well, if that’s what Wiki wants, that’s what it will get.

I think I’m done. No more for me thanks. {[{My opinion...noone else's}]} Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:18, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Calorimetry in cold fusion experiments

This article was deleted January 11 after a one-day AfD discussion. I requested that the AfD be reopened, and it has been. The article was already undeleted and userfied. It appears that the article was created to allow detailed consideration of the calorimetry issue without creating undue weight problems here. The work to bring back a summary may not have been completed. --Abd (talk) 14:12, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

• Um, no, it was created in order to inflate the significance of the fringe views of its creator. Like all the other forks he created. You are doing an extremely good job of appearing to advance the same agenda, and indeed to work on behalf of the topic-banned POV pusher. Guy (Help!) 21:47, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Pcarbonn created that article, yes; it doesn't appear to have been controversial at the time. That doesn't prove much, but I don't see that article as "fringe," nor does it reflect Pcarbonn's views. Maybe what is there belongs here. Maybe what needs to be here is already here. I'd just like the editors of articles to decide what goes in them and what is subclassified, not unfamiliar editors at AfD or involved administrators who delete pages because they don't like them. In any case, this isn't the AfD, JzG, so why did you come here with your WP:ABF comment? Please use this Talk page to improve the article. However, for other reasons, thanks for contributing to Talk history, it might be useful some day. --Abd (talk) 00:37, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

If the AfD closes with Delete, and any editor has argued for that, please do not then object to the inclusion here of reliably sourced material on the topic as creating "undue weight," for the community will have decided that the topic belongs here. If it closes with Keep, and you have argued for that, please do not then object to the removal of reliably sourced material here to that article, provided that there is adequate reference here to that article. Note that summary style doesn't generally need citations, the main article should contain them. It really can clean up an article. My own preferred position would be to Keep, but then Merge or not according to current consensus here. Merge is more flexible. With a Deletion, it's much harder for consensus to shift, it would require a deletion review. I was able to get the AfD reopened because it was closed in a day, instead of the standard period, and I requested it, not because I concluded that we should have an active and separate article, but because that is a reasonable opinion, and if we are going to freeze our conclusion, we should go through the full process. So I urge editors here to consider the options and participate in the AfD, if you have an opinion. At this point, a strong enough majority is clearly Delete, so that I'd expect a Delete close, and I certainly would not take this to Deletion Review myself unless a clear consensus appeared supporting that. It simply places more burden on this article, but not an impossible burden. Your choice, Wikipedians. --Abd (talk) 13:34, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

The image of the SPAWAR cell that adorned the article

A few days ago, Steven Krivit replaced the image of the SPAWAR cell that had graced the article prominently, with a version that said "Removed," and clearly reacting to the (in my view improper, unjust, and unfortunate, there was no linkspamming) blacklisting of newenergytimes.com. Because the file had been licensed for use under the standard commons license, Krivit cannot, if I'm correct, revoke permission. I have accordingly restored the file, taking the copy that was at Wikiversity, copied there back in 2006. I'm not today inserting the image again, it's more complex than I have time for at the moment, but the original file name, File:Spawar1stGenCFCell.JPG, works. --Abd (talk) 16:32, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

You can't revoke permissions after you release them under a permissive licence. That would make permissive licences meaningless. Krivit's recent actions related to these images and the CF article are pure vandalism, even if done in good faith belief in his own rights, and should be reverted on sight. Phil153 (talk) 16:37, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Oh, come on, be nice! The V word is totally unnecessary. Krivit discussed this with admin Noren. I did revert one, it was then taken out because an editor objected to the language -- which had been standing -- so I put it back in with simpler language, I'll let somebody else spice it up if that's needed. Krivit is bailing from supporting Wikipedia, and I understand why. He's basically been slapped across the face, so to speak, for no reason. No linkspamming. No incivility. No excuse, in short. Just an admin who has a point of view and who uses his tools to enforce it. If he's got consensus, fine. Consensus is the authority here, except for what's supposedly non-negotiable from on high. But if not .... --Abd (talk) 16:53, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I just want to clarify here that I'm not and have never been an admin. -Noren (talk) 02:45, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I understand he's angry. But he's knowingly disrupting Wikipedia and making an article poorer. It's no different to me getting blocked by an admin, then going through and removing a bunch of useful edits I've done because I'm pissed. It's a simple case of vandalism that needs reverting. It's just a description of the edits, not a judgment on Krivit.

As for the image, I prefer the old wording, it presents the context much better to a lay reader. Hopefully others will agree and then it'll get re-added. Phil153 (talk) 17:05, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Sure, you could describe it that way. Go ahead, pour salt on his wounds. I feel bad enough insisting on keeping it, he was the photographer. Look, I didn't see anyone here screaming about that image going missing. The only one who worked to get it back was me. I'd never uploaded an image to Commons before, and I'm still not sure I did it right. In any case, it wasn't treated as vandalism, at least not the SPAWAR cell. Rather, Noren replaced it, moving the calorimeter image up. I'll fix that. Meanwhile, we have a situation with the CR-39 image. There's always somethin'.

No comment. As for the CR39, it was in the article for a long time, which I think implies some form of consensus for its inclusion. I've put it back in, we'll see what happens. Phil153 (talk) 22:03, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I added a section below, Talk:Cold_fusion#Removal_of_CR-39_image on this. Phil153 beat me to the revert. I'm certainly open to discussing the caption! --Abd (talk) 22:25, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

My edit to move the other image to replace was not intended to be any sort of verdict about status of the previous image, it was just a simple patch to improve the then-existing article with the ugly deleted image caption.--Noren (talk) 02:45, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Right. That was obvious. It was an act of clean-up. It was substantially more work to find another copy of the image; though for someone experienced with image process, it would have been pretty easy. No piece of Wikipedia work is obligatory for anybody, with few exceptions. Now, it is also relatively easy to put the image back; I restored the original image at commons. Noren's edit can't be reverted, so it's just a matter of moving the calorimeter image back where it was and adding the link to the original, the same link should work. So what's interesting to me right now is how willing we are, collectively, to discuss the process, but nobody puts the image back. As I wrote, I will, when I can get to it. My hands are a tad full right now. I'm very concerned how much we are focused on the battle against POV pushers -- on all sides -- and how little on the article itself. There is a lot to do, folks, and we need to unite and work together, and we won't do that by tolerating incivility and borderline edit warring and other pathologies. Some of us are working together, in spite of apparent POV differences.

My own POV is that all POVs of any notability must be represented in any consensus, by those who hold them, or else we are in danger of subtle POV bias, we need the "spin detectors" that anyone knowledgeable and who has a POV can be. Excluding them is very, very dangerous, if our goal is a "compendium of all human knowledge," that is also solidly NPOV. I've been reviewing the history of this article in detail, documenting pieces of that history, and I'm struck by how often sources and links to information that I'd want to know about as a reader, the best available on the web, has been removed because it was allegedly biased or argumentative. To me, as a reader, the project is being damaged, just as damaged as it is when fringe opinion is presented as reasonable or excessively important. The conflicts here are symptomatic of conflicts taking place all over the project, where there are controversies. Articles that haven't received so much attention tend to be more poorly sourced, but, often, more interesting and useful! As a reader, I can recognize POV, weasel words, unsubstantiated claims, all that. And I think most readers can, in fact. We are not smarter than them. We just know more about Wikipedia process and how to use -- and abuse -- it. --Abd (talk) 13:08, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

To revert the removal of the original image by its photographer User:StevenBKrivit as suggested would have required making a judgment in the other direction- I did not intend to make such a judgment call in either direction. I am just an editor, not the admin that Abd claimed I was above, and I did not make any edits that are not easily undone. Perhaps the difficult to undo edit attributed to me was User:StevenBKrivit's removal of his image, that would not be easily undone, but it's not my edit. I do not understand why Abd persists in labeling me with attributes that I do not possess. --Noren (talk) 15:20, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Improving the outline

Here is the current outline:

1 History

1.1 Early work

1.2 Fleischmann-Pons announcement

1.3 Reaction to the announcement

2 Theoretical issues

2.1 The probability of reaction

2.2 The branching ratio

2.3 γ-ray conversion to heat

3 Further developments

4 Cold fusion research

4.1 Experimental setups

4.2 Excess heat observations

4.3 Reports of nuclear products in association with excess heat

4.4 Evidence for nuclear transmutations

4.5 Non-nuclear explanations for excess heat

4.6 Theoretical work

4.6.1 Analysis of factors affecting reproducibility

I would like to make the article more chronological, like it used to be. Would anyone object if I changed the outline to this?

1 History

1.1 Early work

1.2 Fleischmann-Pons announcement

1.3 Reaction to the announcement

1.4 Further developments

2 Experimental Details

2.1 Experimental setups

2.2 Excess heat observations

2.3 Reports of nuclear products in association with excess heat

2.4 Evidence for nuclear transmutations

2.5 Non-nuclear explanations for excess heat

3 Incompatibilities with Established Physics

3.1 The probability of reaction

3.2 The branching ratio

3.3 γ-ray conversion to heat

Olorinish (talk) 18:36, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Looks good to me Phil153 (talk) 22:15, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

My conclusion is that there really are two quite different subjects. One is about an historical event, the research leading up to the 1989 announcement, the uproar, the reactions, and then the continued research, and this is about history. The other is about the field of Condensed matter nuclear science, which covers quite a bit more than "cold fusion," which was a popular term, not a scientific one.

There is a CMNS article, it was redirected here, but that's misleading and, in fact, POV. I just got the Talk page restored for it, it had been deleted. This article, then, becomes more about the history with, of course, reference to the physics. As a precedent, see Muon-catalyzed fusion which is, in fact, "cold fusion." But it isn't called that because, well, Muon-catalyzed fusion isn't "junk science" and "cold fusion" is. Our article on MCF currently reads, "It used to be known as cold fusion; however, this term is now avoided as it can create confusion." Indeed.

In any case, a draft article could be created in Talk space, but this makes it difficult to have an attached talk page! It could be hosted by a user, I'd volunteer. Promise not to be a tyrant! Feel free to use this link: User:Abd/Cold fusion draft, go ahead, make it blue. (Of course, anyone else can do the same!) This way there can be a Talk page with it, and then, if we get sufficient consensus, we can move it to article space. --Abd (talk) 22:37, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Removal of CR-39 image

The CR-39 image was removed by the original contributor recently; Two days ago, I reverted that and was reverted by Kaiwhakahaere, with the summary (Weasel! Remove image which possibly or even probably does not show possible nuclear activity, perhaps.) Well, the original caption was A CR-39 detector showing possible nuclear activity in cold fusion experiments at SSC San Diego The weasel word there would be "possible." I think that "possible nuclear activity" is, in fact, quite accurate. We couldn't take "possible" out, until and unless the claim that nuclear activity is taking place is solidly confirmed. At this point there seems to remain some controversy.

However, to meet the objection, I restored the image with a simpler caption, |A CR-39 detector from experiments at SSC San Diego. Kaiwhakahaere again reverted, this time with the caption, (Remove image which is NOT of a detector as caption claims. Inclusion would require caption accurately stating WHAT the image shows.)

The image is a micrograph of a CR-39 plastic radiation detector. These plastic chips are manufactured for that application. Note that for use for radiation detection, the date of manufacture and how the chips are handled is crucial; for background radiation will slowly fog the detectors. As to calling them detectors, that usage is routine. See [20], for example, and many other pages can easily be found. I see that Phil has reverted.

The image was stable in the article. I only looked back about 1000 edits, though. --Abd (talk) 22:22, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

(Lost this in wikiconflict, so replacing) I don't have a major prob with the image. I simply want to see it accurately described, without weasel words or inference, because I think words are important. You say you restored a simpler caption, namely "A CR-39 detector from experiments at SSC San Diego". Read that again. It is not a coherent sentence. It also does not explain what the reader sees in the image. So I removed it because the intention seems to be that the image remain without a sensible caption. Look back here where I changed a misleading caption. The image was not of a calorimiter claimed, but was the diagram of one. Same problem there as with the CR-39 image - words are important. Kaiwhakahaere (talk)

Sure. However, picture captions don't need to be sentences and, in fact, a sentence can be more difficult. Would the caption be any better as a sentence that says the same thing? "Above is a CR-39 detector used in experiments at SSC San Diego." I don't think so. What I'd agree with is, however, that the image is more than just that. It's a microphotograph of the detector showing pits claimed by the researchers to be a product of nuclear radiation, and no coherent objection has been made, though this claim has been out there for quite some time. Only Kowalski, to my knowledge, has published a critique that postulates something else, and his claim is, in fact, preposterous, reviewing the evidence. What a casual observer of this may not realize is that these pits often don't communicate with the surface of the detector, they are buried, and exposed by etching. Right away, that rules out chemical contamination, dendritic damage, or corona discharge, leaving ... neutrons, which are hypothesized to interact with the material and generate tracks. The tracks also appear on the opposite side of the detector, in a pattern correlated with proximity to the cathode. Etc. Has the work been verified? Yes, there is confirmation. Has it been reviewed in a secondary source? I think so, but ... what's a secondary source that we can use? There are specialized publications which report on this field. At least one of them operates according to journalistic standards, though it also includes "editorials" with attributed opinion. It reports all the negative work that comes up. Looks to me like it's reasonably neutral. But we can't use it. Blacklisted. Why? Did we decide on that? I'd say not, that's clear from edit history. --Abd (talk) 13:21, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I believe the CR-39 image was incorrectly removed from the article on the premise that it may not actually show nuclear activity. The correct standard to use is not what's true, but what can be verified. The image can be reliably sourced to peer-reviewed claims. Provided the image represents something notable, and I think it does, the article should include the image and allow the reader to determine the validity of the researcher's claim. If there is evidence that the image is not what the researchers claim then that can be included as well. Simply removing the image based on our own notion of it's appropriateness is WP:OR. Ronnotel (talk) 22:28, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I guess the dispute is about "possible nuclear activity". I think that's fine and describes the signficance of the image. You have tracks in a detector that are thought by some to be nuclear in origin. Possible covers this. It's not like the caption is a standalone from the article, without context. Kaiwhakahaere thinks "possible" is weasely. It's been replaced with "unknown activity". Guess we need more opinions. Phil153 (talk) 22:34, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

How about "purported nuclear" in place of "unknown"? That seems less weasel-like. Ronnotel (talk) 22:36, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

OMG, "purported" seems less weasel than "unknown"! Really? Kaiwhakahaere (talk) 22:44, 28 January 2009 (UTC) I think I need to stress something here. I do not lean for or against the concept of cold fusion but for encyclopedic standards in Wikipedia, and will continue to fix bias/pov either way when I see it. Kaiwhakahaere (talk)

Sorry, did mean to seem antagonistic, I used the term weasel loosely and should have avoided. But yes I do think purported nuclear is better supported by the sources than the term unknown. Ronnotel (talk) 23:06, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

I think you're taking the weasel thing a bit far. The trouble with "unknown activity in a CR39 detector" is that it presents no context for the reader. Are the tracks an x-files mystery? Are they caused by bees? Heat? Electrons? The significance and perspective of the tracks is that they're "possibly nuclear", or "purported to be nuclear", "unknown" fails to convey anything. Phil153 (talk) 08:09, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

"Cite error:"

There is a stray "Cite error:" message at the bottom of the article which seems to have been there since this edit (16:06, 28 October 2008) in which the citation format was cleaned up. Investigating further, I find that the links for the citations "Tate 1989", "Di Giulio 2002", "Fleischmann 1990", "Storms 1993", "Miles et al. 1993", "Krivit 2007" in the References section do not work (at least, not in Firefox 2.0.0.20). By this I mean they do not take the reader to the correct entry in the Bibliography section, as all the other references do. In my browser, they just stay in the same place on the current page.

I don't know how this citation format works, but I do note that in the rendered HTML the link for Tate, 1989 in the References section is shown as '<a href="#CITEREFTate1989" title="">Tate 1989</a>' whereas the citation appears to be labelled with 'id="CITEREFTate"'. Maybe this is the problem, and if so, maybe somebody who knows how to do this citation style can fix the broken links. --TS 07:33, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I managed to fix the Tate 1989 reference--the parameter "year=1989" was missed from the citation template. The others proved too difficult for me--and some references, such as "Storms 1993", do not seem to have citations in the bibliography. --TS 13:48, 29 January 2009 (UTC)