Talk:Cold fusion

IMPORTANT: This is not the place to discuss your personal opinions of the merits of cold fusion research. This page is for discussing improvements to the article, which is about cold fusion and the associated scientific controversy surrounding it. See Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines.

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

DTRA report accepts LENR as real

Per freedom of information act, Steve Krivit has received this DTRA report from a meeting in 2006: [1]

Advisory Board Findings and Recommendations for LENR

- There is good evidence of excess heat and transmutation.
- New theory by Widom[-Larsen] shows promise; collective surface effects, not fusion
- Low-energy implantation of ions

--POVbrigand (talk) 06:58, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

notice of general sanctions

The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Energy_Catalyzer article discussion page contains a banner stating "This article and its editors are subject to Wikipedia general sanctions". That banner is there because the E-Cat is considered cold fusion related. There is no such banner on the cold fusion discussion page. Should there be? DavesPlanet (talk) 12:20, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Since no objections, I'll add the banner back to this discussion page. If it gets removed again please keep related cold fusion articles consistent. DavesPlanet (talk) 12:12, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Does http://peswiki.com/index.php/News:Real-Time_Updates_on_the_October_6,_2011_E-Cat_Test change anything? 67.6.156.58 (talk) 06:01, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Can you clarify what you are trying to communicate? The e-cat has had many successful demonstrations that lead me to watch it closely, as I do the Polywell fusion article. Successful testing would not seem to automatically remove or invalidate a Wikipedia sanction. If you want to continue this perhaps we should move it to the e-cat discussion? DavesPlanet (talk) 12:28, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

link to Vortex-l forum

USER:One Night In Hackney deleted the link to the VORTEX-L mailing list from the warning on the top of the page. I think that providing the link has a positive effect to this talk page, because many discussions will be started elsewhere which makes it easier to keep this talk page dedicated to improving the article. I also do not understand the edit comment "rm spam link".

I personally found the link a very subtle and polite way of saying "don't bring you rumours, OR, speculation etc. to this talk page".

see also [2] and [3]

I propose to put it back in.

--POVbrigand (talk) 08:25, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

POV edits

I WP:AGF for the edits [4] from User:Richard.decal, but there are factual errors in it and there are some other problems with the edit.

• 1) hypothetical is POV. We can discuss pages full on whether cold fusion is in fact fusion or something else.
• 2) "which was proposed by ..." the term cold fusion was used earlier, please read further down in the article "The term "cold fusion" was used as early as 1956 "
• 3) "but every attempt returned negative or false positive results. " that statement is false. There were claims of successful replication by research groups that were not retracted nor rebutted. The previous wording was correct.

I think there are also some parts of the edit that can be used, but I propose to revert to the version before Richard.decal so that he can edit in the parts that are not factual incorrect.

--POVbrigand (talk) 14:23, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

1) hypothetical because it has not happened (yet?) in any replicated experiment with proper controls and scrutiny.

2) The part about 1956 is original research and I am nuking it, the article uses "cold Fusion of Hydrogen Atoms", which a descriptive name. It was Palmer in 1986 who used "cold fusion" as a proper name with nothing attached. Jones and Palmer didn't adopt the name "cold fusion", they chose some other name instead, that's why they aren't counted as direct antecedents. And I think that it was Fleischmann in the press conference who described it as "[a sort of] cold fusion" (you need to look at a transcript of the press conference). Then the journalists took the name and ran with it, and it stuck. I don't have my books here to check it. I'm not sure if our article explains this clearly, or at all.

3) all positive results were eventually discredited, or had fatal flaws, or couldn't be repeated, or were never heard of again after one public declaration. As reported by secondary RS, and explained in Cold_fusion#Response_and_fallout. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:29, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Enric, don't be silly. That word "all" is untrue, and you know it, even if you've neglected to remember an experiment or two. Here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0375960109007877 --a Reliable Source replication of a previous experiment. If you want to say "all" then you need to need to be more specific, and only talk about the CF experiments that involve electrolysis (which even today are unreliable). Because, as I've mentioned before, to the best of my knowledge, all the pressurized-deuterium-gas-into-palladium experiments have reliably produced anomalous energy. We're just waiting for a Reliable Secondary Source to say as much, before getting it into the article here. V (talk) 15:53, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Enric, there exists no rebuttal for "Oriani, R. A. et al., Calorimetric measurements of excess power output during the cathodic charging of deuterium into palladium. Fusion Technol., 1990, 18, 652-658."

The original wording was perfect. Richard.decal walks in, changes something and now we are back discussion basic stuff ? come on ! --POVbrigand (talk) 17:17, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Remember the discussions about papers being primary sources, specially when published by the researchers that are making the claim? And about needing secondary sources outside the fringe field that acknowledge a significant experiment that has been replicated by other researchers, in a manner accepted outside the fringe field? Any secondary reliable source? --Enric Naval (talk) 18:16, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Read "What If Cold Fusion Is Real? " by Charles Platt or "Cold Fusion: The Ghost of Free Energy" by Jon Cartwright again and recite from them instead from Huizenga, Taubes and Close. Enric, were have you been ? Have you visited an anti-CF training camp lately ? ;-) --POVbrigand (talk) 19:21, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Platt, Cartwright, (and Goodstein) are reporting that people inside the field are not being believed outside the field, and complaining about it. Now, of course the article should say that these claims exist.

But the scientific consensus is that there are no convincing experiments/replications, and our article should reflect that. See, for example, WP:FRINGE#Unwarranted_promotion_of_fringe_theories (claims made only by adherents of the fringe theory), or WP:FRINGE#Evaluating_claims (distinguishing mainstream science from fringe claims). --Enric Naval (talk) 10:26, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

There is no scientific consensus. The article already reflects the mainstream pov: "Hopes fell with the big number of negative replications, the withdrawal of many positive replications, the discovery of flaws and sources of experimental error in the original experiment, and finally the discovery that Fleischmann and Pons had not actually detected nuclear reaction byproducts.[5] By late 1989, most scientists considered cold fusion claims dead" - all perfectly RS and no WP-editor is contesting that wording.

Your reasoning is flawed: Anyone producing positive results immediately becomes an "adherent of fringe", therefore following your logic there will never be an independent replication by non-adherents.

Your reading of WP:FRINGE is influenced by your point of view. This article happens to be about a "fringe" topic. There is no way WP can have an article about a "fringe" topic without somehow explaining the "fringe" point of view. The "fringe" point of view is that there were some positive replications. --POVbrigand (talk) 11:04, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

secondary sources that acknowledge successful experiments

• During the past nine years this work has yielded a huge body of evidence, while remaining virtually unknown - because most academic journals adamantly refuse to publish papers on it. - Charles Platt
• The bottom line, though, was that since most labs couldn't replicate the effect, most physicists sincerely believed that cold fusion didn't exist. - Charles Platt
• In Italy, Giuliano Preparata claimed he had replicated the original experiment successfully. So did a Frenchman named Lonchampt, with support from the French Atomic Energy Commission. - Charles Platt
• Some reports claimed unequivocal success: In August 1994, in document TR-104195, regarding project 3170-01, EPRI concluded: "Small but definite evidence of nuclear reactions have been detected at levels some 40 orders of magnitude greater than predicted by conventional nuclear theory." NASA Technical Memorandum 107167, dated February 1996, concluded that "Replication of experiments claiming to demonstrate excess heat production in light water-Ni-K2CO3 electrolytic cells was found to produce an apparent excess heat of 11 W maximum, for 60 W electrical power into the cell." - Charles Platt
• Initially, he was a skeptic. "We ran some experiments," he says, "and didn't get any results. Then we got some results three months later, but we didn't believe the results. Then we replicated them, and I realized there was something here. I think we spent about $300,000, mostly on labor - not a lot by Los Alamos standards." - Charles Platt
• There must have been 50 attempts to reproduce the effect."Only three succeeded. One was Claytor's, another was by Howard Menlove, a world expert in neutron detection, and the third was by Storms. - Charles Platt
• We ran 250 experiments, taking one whole year, and I think 13 made excess tritium. - Charles Platt
• But when I speak to Michael McKubre, he's as fatalistic as Ed Storms. "I doubt that any single result is going to change everyone's minds," he says. After all, skeptics have been unimpressed by other evidence of cold fusion. Why should they be convinced now? - Charles Platt
• Although positive results drifted in from some labs, major facilities, including the California Institute of Technology (better known as Caltech) and Harwell in the UK, failed to reproduce the phenomenon. - Jon Cartwright
• The US Department of Energy initially encouraged his research into cold fusion but withdrew funding after a year even though he had begun to register positive results. - Jon Cartwright
• Oriani finds when he places CR-39 inside active cells it records a stippled pattern of pits, whereas in control cells it records next to nothing. He knows that the pits cannot come from any radioactive contamination because the undersides are pitted too, which means the particles must have been of particularly high energy. He knows that they cannot come from so-called cosmic rays because those tend to produce tracks in the shape of rosettes. Indeed, Oriani has tried everything to explain away his results but can only conclude that the particles originate from some kind of nuclear reaction within the cells. - Jon Cartwright
• Doug Morrison, a physicist at the European lab CERN, showed in a 1992 lecture that the number of experiments finding nothing was initially far greater than the number finding evidence of cold fusion. - Jon Cartwright
• After reportedly having their work rejected by three journals without peer review, it was finally peer reviewed and accepted for publication in the German journal Naturwissenschaften. Since then the results have been corroborated at several labs including the University of California at Berkeley. - Jon Cartwright
• Goodstein speaks guardedly about his own opinions on cold fusion, but admits that all scientific arguments levelled at it have been rebutted - Jon Cartwright
• In 2004, half of a panel of scientists hired by the US Department of Energy to review cold fusion agreed that evidence for excess heat was “compelling”. - Jon Cartwright
• In the course of their experiments, they often detected nothing at all, but on a couple of occasions, their detector indicated very substantial bursts of neutrons. - David Goodstein
• However, this experiment, like their own earlier work and many others blossoming around the world, produced positive results, but only sporadically. - David Goodstein
• In 1992 and 1993, these experiments, too, gave positive results. The cell would produce very substantial amounts of heat (a few watts) for periods of tens of hours at a time. - David Goodstein
• Both the American and Japanese groups showed data indicating there is a sharp threshold at x=0.85. Below that value (which can only be reached with great difficulty and under favorable circumstances) excess heat is never observed. But, once x gets above that value, excess heat is essentially always observed, according to the reports presented at Maui, and recounted by Franco Scaramuzzi in his seminar at the University of Rome. - David Goodstein
• However, I have looked at their cells, and looked at their data, and it's all pretty impressive. The Japanese experiment showing that heat nearly always results when x is greater than 0.85 looks even more impressive on paper. - David Goodstein

Please note that none of these supports the "but every attempt returned negative or false positive results." line.

In fact they contradict it.

--POVbrigand (talk) 08:43, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

I kinda liked User:Richard.decal's edits, calling it "hypothesis" is the same thing as "a proposed nuclear fusion process offered to explain a group of disputed experimental results", "hypothesis" sounds perfectly science while "a proposed nuclear fusion process offered to explain a group of disputed experimental results" sounds like weaseling debunker language. Anyway, no new bias was introduced. The bias was very much already on the page. "The results received media attention" is much better than "The media reported that nuclear fusion was happening inside the electrolysis cells"; which OMG LOL sounds like a child wrote the article. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 06:40, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Can we agree that "The results received media attention" is a better wording, and edit it into the article? --Enric Naval (talk) 15:50, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm all for it --POVbrigand (talk) 16:16, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Maybe "hypothetical" is not completely wrong to describe "cold fusion", but it isn't completely right either. It depends on what aspect of "cold fusion" we are aiming at. Depending who you talk to "cold fusion" is a name given to a multitude of aspects: The Fleischman-Pons experiment, the Fleischman-Pons claim, the Fleischman-Pons debacle, the field that investigates low energy nuclear reactions, the field of condensed matter nuclear science, pathological science, the entrepreneurs claiming working machines, the investigations that renowned institutions are conducting, the proposed nuclear reaction pathway of D-D, or H-H, or H-Ni, or D-Pd, or other, the ignorance and denial of "mainstream" scientists. Calling it hypothetical means picking one of these aspects, but not others. And as there are claims and proof that there is some truth behind the whole idea, hypothetical is just not the right word to use.

And yes there were good corrections made by Richard.decal's edit too as I have stated here. I also agree with you that the article is still a bad piece to read, even if we have improved readability over the last months. So please, feel free to add back in what you think was an improvement. My main disagreement was with "hypothetical" and "but every attempt returned negative or false positive results." which I have now explained in length.

btw I think I don't revert other editors very often, I personally dislike it. --POVbrigand (talk) 07:52, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

It is very important to distinguish between Hypothesis and Theory; many people don't understand the difference that is used in Science. For example, the Theories of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are called that because they have a great deal of supporting evidence. Meanwhile, "Cold Fusion" is an explanation for which there is as yet insufficient evidence to call it "Theory", and therefore it must be called "Hypothesis" (a guess, that is). A similar example is to be found in biology, where Evolution is a Theory, but Creationism is just a Hypothesis. It might be noted that very probably the usage in Science derives from Mathematics, where a "Theorem" is something that usually gets absolutely proved (and anything else is just a "Conjecture"). It is difficult to Science to absolutely prove some things, so "Theory" is the word that gets used --but only when enough supporting evidence is found. V (talk) 13:35, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I sometimes read the logs of this article just for the comedy value of the hysterical bias. On the web people can say things that in real life are just impossible to pronounce with a straight face. Like 2008 version that use to say: "Small groups of scattered researchers have continued to investigate cold fusion. These advocates have reported what they describe as "additional evidence" at some conferences and in journal papers and books, but most scientists have met these reports with skepticism." O haha! Shouldn't that have been "most conferences"? Wait don't answer that or we will be banned.

I think Richard.decal also improved this section:

"These reports prompted the scientific community to to confirm the discovery by replicating the experiment, but every attempt returned negative or false positive results. Flaws in the experimental design as well as experimental errors in the original experiment were uncovered, and it was discovered that Fleischmann and Pons did not actually detected nuclear reaction byproducts."

While still perfectly untrue and completely inconsistent with the sources this is better than the original in that it is free from emotional byproducts:

"and these reports raised hopes of a cheap and abundant source of energy. Many scientists tried to replicate the experiment with the few details available, some to prove it wrong, but most because they wanted to be part of this new exciting discovery. Hopes fell with the big number of negative replications, the withdrawal of many positive replications, the discovery of flaws and sources of experimental error in the original experiment, and finally the discovery that Fleischmann and Pons had not actually detected nuclear reaction byproducts."

ehm... "...they wanted to be part of this new exciting discovery"?? oh, but then "Hopes fell"?? Maybe, lets try to remove all descriptions of peoples emotional state and write an article about cold fusion? I even think "false positive results" should not be mentioned. I think everyone vaguely familiar with the topic already knows: "most initial attempts returned negative results". What would false positives have to do with this?

"These reports prompted the scientific community to to confirm the discovery by replicating the experiment, initial attempts returned negative results. Flaws in the experimental design as well as experimental errors in the original experiment were uncovered, and it was discovered that Fleischmann and Pons did not actually detected nuclear reaction byproducts."

Perhaps someone could explain what the difference is between "Flaws in the design" and "Errors in the experiment"? Then, is "not detecting nuclear byproducts" a separate discovery beyond flaws and errors? Are we not saying the same thing 3 times in a row while at the same time repeating the same thing 3 times? I'm reading referenced article right now, it looks like a note worthy bit of history. The most remarkable thing it tells us is that those hundreds of replication attempts had little to work with beyond a picture of the cell. Is it not perhaps fair or even interesting to share that with the Wikipedia reader? Hundreds of replications based on a picture while using Pons hand as the only scale reference.

"Warning Signs of Bogus Skepticism" is also a fun read, not sure if we can use that. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 10:05, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

We should not remove the few emotional wordings. There were high hopes, the press pushed the story of limitless energy further, there was a "feeding frenzy" amongst the scientists (D. Goodstein). "they wanted to be part of the exciting discovery" depicts the state of mind perfectly for me. --POVbrigand (talk) 12:25, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Explanations > Explanations given by cold fusion opponents >The results of the experiments can not be reproduced

Under: Explanations > Explanations given by cold fusion opponents We read "The results of the experiments can not be reproduced". You cant source that on article from 1998. It should either be removed or it should be fixed. For example: "Explanations given by cold fusion opponents in 1998" or "Explanations given in 1998 by cold fusion opponents". It properly describes the opinion of the author about the state of the art in 1998 but is presented out of context. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 07:47, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes I agree. The whole section tries to sum up one by one the explanations against CF and the following section shows the explanations of other side. These explanations were proposed mostly in 1989, but they are still used. If you drill down the sources you will not find new explanations against CF even if new proof of CF has emerged. --POVbrigand (talk) 07:58, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

what is the scope?

I think it is important to note this article use to exist only because of the media coverage, if the topic didn't get this much media attention the article would have been deleted long ago. Now I believe this is no longer the case, the article today also exists because of the ongoing work the proponents claim to be doing. The difference is that popular culture articles may (should) use media references, and science articles should avoid opinions from journalists as much as possible. Not that the media circus around cold fusion wasn't note worthy, it obviously is. Regardless of what it should be considered to be: it is now floating between those two very different formats which is a bit strange. I think it would be best if we tried to go for a science version with a folk mythology section rather than the other way around. Previous versions of the article use to start with "Cold fusion, sometimes called low energy nuclear reactions (LENR) or condensed matter nuclear science." The redirects are still in place: Low_energy_nuclear_reactions. Without pointing fingers at Eric Naval there seems to be an active conspiracy going on to narrow down the scope of the LENR/cold fusion article down to cover something that it claims not to exist. I think we should focus more on the part that does exist. ehm? But more importantly, what is the article about now? The content is still there some what down the page: :"A small but committed group of cold fusion researchers has continued to conduct experiments using Fleischmann and Pons electrolysis set-ups in spite of the rejection by the mainstream community.[10][69] Often they prefer to name their field "Low Energy Nuclear Reaction" (LENR) or "Chemically Assisted Nuclear Reaction" (CANR),[70] also "Lattice Assisted Nuclear Reaction" (LANR) and "Condensed Matter Nuclear Science" (CMNS), one of the reasons being to avoid the negative connotations associated with the original name." Articles are suppose to start with other uses of the term (in italic) followed by "foobar - also called foo-bar". Hiding this information in the section "Ongoing scientific work" is wrong. The reader has no idea what the article is about now. "Low energy nuclear reaction" was moved to "Condensed matter nuclear science" where it was deleted as a POV fork of "cold fusion". Meanwhile by some the e-cat is considered not cold fusion, but Low-Energy Nuclear Reaction. My point is obvious, we failed to keep our lies consistent between the different pages. Someone should do something. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 10:42, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I am aware of this situation. But, as far as I understood, within the field there is also some disagreement about whether "cold fusion" is fusion or just some weak force nuclear reaction. Is H + Ni -> Cu still fusion.

I think that due to the limitations of WP we will not be able (yet) to write a LENR science article. Mainly because Huizenga, Close and Taubes have written secondary sources that state nothing more than that cold fusion is crackpot and delusion. And anyone else that utters something otherwise is thus a deluded crackpot. I am pretty tired of all this WP:FRINGE, WP:OR, WP:WEIGHT, WP:SYNTH waving. Lately we have "ACS LENR sourcebook vol 1 and vol 2" and we have "Wileys Nuclear energy encyclopedia" with several chapters dedicated to LENR. But, oh no, it's edited by Steve Krivit and he is an "adherent of cold fusion". You have read Enric's comment up here stating that only opinions outside of the field will be valid. Those books are published by ACS and Wiley, for crying out loud. The DTRA has a report in which they state "There is good evidence of excess heat and transmutation.", but try to use that source and I bet you'll get reverted because the way WP rules are interpreted here is that using a primary source is considered OR if there is no secondary source mentioning it. Let me add that I do appreciate Enric's work here and that with my comments I am no way trying to discredit him. --POVbrigand (talk) 13:16, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Oriani

Regarding Oriani's rejection at Nature.

It's Beauddette's book that is self-published, not Oriani's paper.

Oriani's rejection is not pointed out as a significant event in any other source. Only Beaudette, a self-published book, points this as a crucial point that could have changed the course of the field.

The experiment stopped working after changing the calorimeter. In Huizenga's book: "Since reworking its calorimeter in late 1989, Oriani's group has not had any experimental runs over the many subsequent months where an excess amount of heat was observed". --Enric Naval (talk) 15:36, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Enric, does Huizenga mention Oriani's paper at all ? If not why ? --POVbrigand (talk) 16:04, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't have my books here now :( Not until weekend. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:28, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Issues section

The issues section deals almost exclusively with the Fleischmann-Pons era (ie early 1990s). Only in the theories subsection there is some stuff from later date. I am not sure if moving the issues section up to after "response and fall out" is a good idea, but we should make clear that the issues mentioned are very much tied to (or stem from) the early 1990s. Also we could rename the section maybe from "issues" to "issues of dispute" or something similar. --POVbrigand (talk) 19:38, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

GroundReport

I do not think we should be using GroundReport as a reference in this article. It seems to be a wiki-like thing that anyone can edit. (We don't use ourselves as a reference either.) Cardamon (talk) 00:15, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

I disagree.

GroundReport is not "wiki-like" in the sense you a probably thinking.

Jon Cartwright is a freelance journalist, according to his website his work has appeared in The Observer, New Scientist, Nature, Science, Prospect, the Times Higher Education, Venue, Sky at Night, Physics World and Chemistry World.

I did my own assessment a while ago and I am confident that articles on GroundReport are acceptable for Wikipedia. On GroundReport's "about page" ist says:"From journalism students to nonprofits, our reporters submit articles, photos or videos of news events to GroundReport, which are vetted by our Editorial Staff prior to publication. Content Partners with Verified status bypass the submission queue, publishing instantly to an audience of millions through our site and syndication partners."

To me, the quality of the article is a clear indication that is has been written with great journalistic care, furthermore Jon Cartwright is a accepted science journalist.

I will put the references back in. I hope my explanation was clear and you can agree with that. If you still have doubt, please bring this up at WP:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. Thanks --POVbrigand (talk) 08:08, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Our article says that GroundReport didn't have editorial control until May 2009, and that source was published in March 2009, two months before. The author's bio says "He went freelance at the start of 2009 to branch out into more controversial research and topics outside the normal boundaries of science journalism.". --Enric Naval (talk) 12:52, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I know. But Jon Cartwright published other "cold fusion" articles for reputable magazines around the same time. I really _honestly_ cannot see how this source is unreliable. It is a well done piece of journalism. Of course you could raise your concern at RS/N but I personally don't think there is much to argue other than the technicalities and the letter of the policy. --POVbrigand (talk) 13:21, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Your evidence that GroundReport is a reliable source is only what they say about themselves, such as that they have a vetting process of some sort. However, as Enric Naval pointed out, this process was probably not in place when the Cartwright article was written. So, the Cartwright article was essentially self-published.

I would suggest that the reason the Cartwright article looks to you like a well-done piece of journalism is that it is written in a good prose style (except in a couple of spots where it isn't), and that you find it pleasing. But it has some spin, in many cases I can't quite figure out when and where and to whom the quotes were said, and it sometimes states things as facts without attribution (such as the bit about 90% loading being necessary, which you used). Also, some of it, such as the several paragraphs devoted to Arthur C. Clarke, is fluff. Overall, it reads partly as an opinion piece, rather than as just straight reporting. Cardamon (talk) 19:00, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Then as I said before please bring it up at RS/N, thanks --POVbrigand (talk) 19:27, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

There is no procedural requirement to discuss an unreliable reference at wp:Reliable sources/Noticeboard before removing it. Cardamon (talk) 20:07, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

No, but endlessly deleting and reverting won't help us either. So let's discuss.

1) you think it is self-published -> Wikipedia:RS#Self-published_sources_.28online_and_paper.29 says that "Some news outlets host interactive columns they call blogs, and these may be acceptable as sources so long as the writers are professional journalists ..." and "Self-published material may be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications.". So self-published is not always a no-go.

2) you think it is a opinion piece -> Wikipedia:RS#Statements_of_opinion states that "...that publish in a "blog" style format for some or all of its content may be as reliable as if published in a more "traditional" 20th-century format."

There is more in favour for RS of this source. I understand your concern, but I also thought about it and I couldn't find a hard no-go in the policy. Let's work it out in the next couple of days. --POVbrigand (talk) 20:27, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm busy - my actual reply will have to wait a few more hours. Meanwhile, what do others think? Cardamon (talk) 23:51, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

POVbrigand wants to include these claims:

1) "many scientists aren't even aware that there is new research."

2) "Mainstream scientists perceive the field as the remains of the controversy of the early 1990s."

3) "Around 1993 scientists found out that the effect had a very low probability of occurrence when the loading of deuterium into the palladium was below 90%. The experiments performed by the Caltech lab that debunked the Fleischmann and Pons’s results only had had a maximum loading of 80%."

I would like to see all three claims removed. The first two because I don't see evidence in the Cartwright article that either Cartwright or Storms are experts on what scientists think, and because the article is not published in a traditional periodical. Regarding the third, the wording implies that the chance of cold fusion is higher if the loading is higher than 90%. However, this has not been demonstrated. If researchers had discovered real evidence of cold fusion through hydrogen or deuterium loading, someone would have been able to convince mainstream nuclear reaction experts by now. Keep in mind that Wikipedia is not going away; when better evidence for cold fusion is available, this article can be changed accordingly. Until then we should be conservative and wait. Olorinish (talk) 03:06, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Olorinish, remember the pressurized-deuterium-gas experiments. They are practically guaranteed to exceed 90% loading, while ordinary electrolysis CF experiments have to wait for weeks, hoping for that much loading. And the evidence, so far as I know, is that all the pressurized-gas experiments yield anomalous energy. Here's a Primary Reliable Source regarding replication of earlier results: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0375960109007877 --I don't know of any articles talking about failed pressurized-gas CF experiments. Do you? V (talk) 07:12, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

regarding the third: Goodstein also says it. --POVbrigand (talk) 06:14, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

It is easy to believe that pressurized gas experiments produce anomalous energy, but this is an article about nuclear reactions. Until there is a change in the mainstream view of the nuclear reaction success, this article should be very cautious about wording that hints that fusion has been produced. We should continue the current approach, which is to provide links to the best pro-CF and anti-CF discussions, and describe what they say in a neutral way. Olorinish (talk) 11:46, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Olorinish, no, this article is about the claims that nuclear reactions are responsible for --are the source of-- the anomalous energy. The whole controversy about whether or not CF is happening has clouded the more-fundamental claims that anomalous energy gets produced in the first place, when (enough) deuterium gets into palladium. So, the article I linked doesn't mention CF, which means that scientists can focus on the more-fundamental claim without being distracted by the CF hypothesis. You have no basis to exclude the pressurized-gas experiments from this article, when the fundamental claim it makes is so relevant to this article --and all the article needs is a slight modification at its start, pointing out that the original P&F announcement consisted of two claims that most people lump together without considering them individually. Even the first sentence of our article does that lump-together thing(!): "Cold fusion refers to a proposed nuclear fusion process offered to explain a group of disputed experimental results of fusion at unexpectedly low temperatures" --and I'll be boldly editing it right after saving this post. V (talk) 20:14, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

@POVBrigand This is a reply to your post of 20:27, 21 October 2011 (UTC). I don't think any of your policy quotes from wp:RS get the Cartwright article off the hook of being self-published, because none of them apply.

*Some news outlets host interactive columns they call blogs, and these may be acceptable as sources so long as the writers are professional journalists or are professionals in the field on which they write and the blog is subject to the news outlet's full editorial control. From this article in Businessweek, it looks like GroundReport did not implement its vetting system until May 2009. So, whether or not it now exerts "full editorial control", it did not do so in March 2009 when this article was written. So this does not apply.

*Yes, Self-published material may be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications. Let's accept for the sake of the argument that Cartwright is a science journalist. There is no evidence that he is a scientific expert, and it would generally be a mistake to confuse a science journalist with an expert on science. So this doesn't apply either.

*’’Note that otherwise reliable news sources—for example, the website of a major news organization—that publish in a "blog" style format for some or all of its content may be as reliable as if published in a more "traditional" 20th-century format.’’ This does not apply unless one has a reliable news source. For reasons stated above, I do not agree that GroundReport was a reliable news source in March 2009. So this too does not apply.

By the way, I didn't say it was an opinion piece; just that it read somewhat like one. Cardamon (talk) 07:16, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

I think we are discussing the technicalities of the policy and that we are argueing by abiding by the letter of a policy or guideline while violating its spirit or underlying principles. I am not blaiming Cardamon and I do not want to discredit anyone. It is my observation that 1) the Cartwright piece is RS and that 2) depending on how one reads the policy, it might or might not be RS. --POVbrigand (talk) 07:47, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

I think the question to ask which is not clearly answered in the policy is: "When an established science journalist, who has been published in reliable media writes a self published piece on a subject for which he has also been published in reliable sources. Is that self published article then reliable source ? --POVbrigand (talk) 08:10, 23 October 2011 (UTC)