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.

POV edits

I WP:AGF for the edits [1] 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)

Hi everyone, I stumbled into this talk page and noticed you are all talking about me :-). When I found this article, it had major problems with clarity, flow, concision, and especially NPOV. Most of what I know about cold fusion I was taught by my ex-roommate (a particle physicist), so I refrained from editing the actual content of the article and just tried to improve readability.

This article used to be featured, and now it is a mess. Why don't we compare it with the featured revision? (link)

I am not familiar with the CF literature so I can't comment on the "pro-CF" results which have been successfully replicated. In any case, be wary of Wikipedia:UNDUE#Due_and_undue_weight. Richard☺Decal (talk) 14:43, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi Richard, no problem. I assumed good faith for your edits. Interesting that you mention that most of what you know was taught to you by a particle physicist and that you are not familiar with the CF literature and yet you believe this article in NPOV :-) But don't worry, that happens often around here, you are not alone.

I do agree with you that this article has problems with clarity, flow, concision. But believe me that it is very difficult to clean this up when every step has to be perfect or it will be reverted. --POVbrigand (talk) 15:34, 25 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)

[outdent] >>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 ?<<

I would say no, especially in this case. First, I find the idea of making a science journalist into an arbiter of scientific truth to be a particularly bad one. (We currently doing that for the claim about 80% versus 90% maximum loading, since Cartwright's article does not make it completely clear where this supposed information is from.)

Second, if someone is a world-class expert on something, we might use a blog posting of theirs on a subject close to their center of expertise, if no better source can be found. From his website, Jon Cartwright has a Master's degree in physics and has written some news articles, including two on cold fusion for semi-popular magazines. This is not enough for us to take things that he says on his own (self-publishes) about cold fusion as reliably sourced.

Third, if a statement is controversial, the need for it to be well sourced increases. Cardamon (talk) 09:29, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

We can surely come to a compromise on the loading issue. Please be aware that the loading issue is also used by Goodstein.

I do not want to present the >90% loading as a hard fact with WP voice. I want to present the fact that scientists "found this out" by analyzing the experiment protocols of previous failing experiments which all were assess to have <80% loading and that they present this as "new evidence". This issue was used by two impartial reliable sources: Cartwright and Goodstein.

So I agree that Cartwright is NOT an expert who can assert that the 90% loading issue is hard proof, but he is a reliable source for noticing this is "proposed evidence" which came out of the field.

Feel free to tweak the lines to reflect what you think would better fit in WP, but please read Goodstein first. And if you really want to tweak it into perfect NPOV, then I suggest you invest some time to skim though these proceedings from the "ICCF-14 International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science. 2008. Washington, DC.":

"Cravens, D. and D. Letts. The Enabling Criteria Of Electrochemical Heat: Beyond Reasonable Doubt."

"One hundred sixty seven papers from 1989 to 2007 concerning the generation of heat from electrochemical cells were collected, listed, and digitally posted to a CD for reference, review and study. A review showed four criteria that were required for successful experiments attempting replication of the Fleischmann-Pons effect. All published negative results can be traced to researchers not fulfilling one or more of these criteria. Statistical and Bayesian studies show that observation of the Fleischmann-Pons effect is correlated with the criteria and that production of “excess heat” is a real physical effect “beyond a reasonable doubt.” [2]

However, most fringe fighting WP-editors won't go through the trouble of actually reading something else than the completely outdated prose from Huizenga, Close and Taubes.

It is easy to dismiss all claims of evidence once one has acquired the idée fixe that it is all crackpot and humbug and that therefore there cannot be any evidence. Circular reasoning in the name of WP fringe fighting. --POVbrigand (talk) 10:35, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Second, if someone is a world-class expert on something: How about Fellow-APS, Fellow-ANS, Fellow-IEEE, Fellow-NASA George H. Miley who writes this: "early experiments were done in haste without even measuring the loading obtained, so it is not surprising to see variable results without any clues about why this may have happened." here --POVbrigand (talk) 10:58, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Do you know the APS ? In the proceedings from their annual march meeting (2009) you will find in the abstract of this paper: "Recent research has developed a technique for imbedding ultra-high density deuterium "clusters" (50 to 100 atoms per cluster) in various metals such as Palladium (Pd), Beryllium (Be) and Lithium (Li). It was found the thermally dehydrogenated PdHx retained the clusters and exhibited up to 12 percent lower resistance compared to the virginal Pd samples\footnote{A. G. Lipson, et al. Phys. Solid State. 39 (1997) 1891}. SQUID measurements showed that in Pd these condensed matter clusters approach metallic conditions, exhibiting superconducting properties\footnote{A. Lipson, et al. Phys. Rev. B 72, 212507 (2005}\footnote{A. G. Lipson, et al. Phys. Lett. A 339, (2005) 414-423}. If the fabrication methods under study are successful, a large packing fraction of nuclear reactive clusters can be developed in the electrodes by electrolyte or high pressure gas loading. This will provide a much higher low-energy-nuclear- reaction (LENR) rate than achieved with earlier electrode\footnote{Castano, C.H., et al. Proc. ICCF-9, Beijing, China 19-24 May, 2002.}." --POVbrigand (talk) 12:18, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Yet another reliable secondary source that found it interesting enough to mention what researchers have found out regarding the loading issue [3]

"Cold fusion proponents, however, say they do consistently observe the fusion reaction when the ratio of hydrogen to metal atoms is greater than or equal to one. In other words, when the hydrogen atoms are really dense, and there's more than one of them for every palladium atom (or nickel or some other metal, as the case may be), cold fusion always sets in. Or so the cold fusion researchers say; since there's no peer-review process in the field, no one is sure what to believe."

I am fine if we use the "voice" of this article. --POVbrigand (talk) 10:39, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

From the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Research Laboratory of Electronics - progress report 2010 nr 152 [4]

"Perhaps the best way to understand why things didn't work is to examine the conditions under which positive results were obtained. This was done over many years in the case of experiments at SRI, where it was noticed that positive results were obtained only when the cathode D/Pd loading exceeded 0.95 at some point during the several week long loading cycle prior to excess heat bursts (high D/Pd loading is difficult to obtain because the Tafel leak rate is exponential in the loading above 0.60 near room temperature). When seen, the excess heat was proportional to the square of the D/Pd loading above a threshold which was typically near 0.85 in those experiments. Additionally, a delay of 2-4 weeks seemed to be required prior to the observation of the first excess heat burst, as discussed by McKubre recently at ICCF15." --POVbrigand (talk) 13:45, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

I think I've shown that the Cartwright article is not a good source. Here are some quick reactions to the sources you suggested about loading:

-Goodstein. Do you have an exact reference?

-abstracts of presentations at APS sessions. Probably not. A presentation is less than a paper, and its abstract is less than the presentation. Also, APS presentations (whether talks or posters) are typically not peer reviewed.

-www.lifeslittlemysteries.com . Is this any more than a (well-written) website?

-Energy Production and Conversion Group reports(s) by Hagelstein and others including McKubre. Maybe! These show what some leading cold-fusioneers believe. Using self published sources to show what the people who wrote them say can be okay.

>>Feel free to tweak the lines to reflect what you think would better fit in WP<< (Almost) everyone is free to tweak wording. What's needed is more than a tweak though.Cardamon (talk) 07:52, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time.

Goodstein link [5]

APS and ACS proceedings, I am aware that there might be issues with using them in an article as reference, but here I only wanted to use them on the talk page to show the developments in the field. Many WP-editors are completely unaware of these developments and believe that reciting from 20 year old books is a way to improve the article.

www.lifeslittlemysteries.com is a well written media outlet with editorial team and staff writers and is part of techmedianetwork.com. It is a RS, so it can be used in the article.

"These show what some leading cold-fusioneers believe. Using self published sources to show what the people who wrote them say can be okay." -> yes, thanks for correctly assessing this source.

As long as "more than a tweak" does not mean deleting it completely, I am all for it.

--POVbrigand (talk) 08:47, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

2006 good article

"Good article" nominee from 5 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cold_fusion&oldid=57340784

2004 "Featured article"

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cold_fusion&oldid=5255762

84.106.26.81 (talk) 15:41, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

MIT progress report

The 2010 MIT progress report commenting on other labs' replication results. I don't think that is the same kind of self publishing which is meant in the WP-rules.

Is this information verifiable - yes, is it attributed - yes, is MIT a renown research institution - yes, are they self promoting their results in this quotation - no.

What do other editors think ?

--POVbrigand (talk) 22:37, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

There are plenty of cold-fusion-related sources in peer-reviewed journals and major periodicals. We should be very careful about using self-published reports; what is so important about this one? Olorinish (talk) 23:18, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

The replication section currently only talks about the replications of the early 1990s. The reader will get the impression that there have never been claims of replications after that. What is good about this quote is that it mentions several claimed replications of the last years.

Regarding self-published, that argument is moot. The inclusion is in line with "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable 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." It is a progress report by a well respected research institution. The quote is verifiable and correctly attributed.

Please also be careful of "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is whether material is attributable to a reliable published source, not whether it is true."

I will put it back in.

what do other editors think ? --POVbrigand (talk) 07:11, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

I think you are being impatient. I've been waiting more than 2 years for some RS second-or-third-party source to talk about the successes of the pressurized-deuterium experiments. The one's I've seen seem to be focused on the claims of that Rossi fellow, when there are more experiments out there than just his. V (talk) 08:32, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

I also searched for that, so I know your "pain", but you are confusing the other editors. They know nothing about gas loading experiments by Arata & Zhang and the successful replications by Kitamura et al. and others. They don't know the difference between electrolysis and gas loading, they don't know about loading issues and that the loading issues were the reason for most replication attempts in 1989 to fail. For most WP-editors Cold fusion is a dark room and they want to keep the door firmly shut and stay far away from it like some phobia. --POVbrigand (talk) 09:13, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Remember to include NASA on your list of experimenters. Because http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19900008108_1990008108.pdf indicates that they may have been first.

Research at NASA is mentioned in the "ongoing scientific work" section. --POVbrigand (talk) 15:56, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

My bold edit got reverted [6] with the request to first get consensus. This reason for revert is moot. Editors are not obliged to get consensus first.

I invite User:IRWolfie- to come up with a plausible reason for his revert here.

The original section title was "The experiments can not be reproduced" a few weeks back when this section was part of "Explanations given by cold fusion opponents" that was then a good accurate title for the section. There was also another section titled "Reports of reproductions" within the section "Explanations given by cold fusion proponents". Then almost two weeks ago Enric Naval put both sections (opponents and proponents) together [7], which was a very wise edit, because it increased readibility. Now that the section holds both "The experiments can not be reproduced" and "Reports of reproductions" content I am sure that a change of title to simply "Reproductions" is a good thing. Also because the section title one level up has changed to "issues".

I just noticed that I possibly misunderstood the revert by IRWolfie. He was objecting to the addition of the MIT progress report about the reproductions.

@IRWolfie-, please see Cardamon's assessment of using the MIT progress report -> Talk:Cold_fusion#GroundReport.

--POVbrigand (talk) 05:39, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Please note that wp:BRD is not wp:BRRD, nor wp:BRRRRD, nor wp:BRRRRRRD. The first revert demonstrates lack of consensus. Discussion should be the next step, not counterreversion. LeadSongDog come howl! 13:39, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

It is very complicated to reach consensus on this article, because editors believe they are obliged to defend the truth, but as you know wikipedia is not about truth, it is about verifiability. I think many editors mistakenly think that the topic of the article should be verified, instead of just the sources.

If every editor would abide by the wp policies and the wp spirit that would certainly make it much nicer around here. But when an editor reverts for "weight" and "self-publish" and both arguments are moot, then I think a counterrevert is allowable. You see, some editors revert for weight so often that it really shows they are just POV-pushing by deleting out the edits which are not conforming to their view. It is very annoying, reverting for weight means more or less "shut up about it, I don't want to hear your arguments". It is wrong that important content is deleted for weight just because the other side has nothing more to say on the topic.

We happen to have the difficult situation that the scientific discussion stopped a few months after it began. One side continued to produce sources, the other side refused to look at it because it was denounced as "pathological science".

Wikipedia policies were certainly not made to precisely fit this difficult situation, but I am very sure that, as long as it is clear from the article that CF is a controversial topic, the spirit of wikipedia allows for much more prose on the pro side of cold fusion than is currently the case in the article. --POVbrigand (talk) 16:26, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

I try to make small edits, that way, if they get reverted at least we know what the issue is. In stead of objecting to being reverted you could just continue to make slight improvements. There is much to do.

I removed that long and authoritative-sounding quote but kept the link to the self-published document. The article already has lots of pro-CF text which happens to have better sourcing. Keeping the quote in shifted the article away from NPOV by giving too much weight the view that cold fusion has a positive reputation among scientists, which is not the case. When quotes like that are made by fusion experts, this article will change to reflect that. Until then, we should be conservative and wait. The present version is more useful to a typical wikipedia reader. Olorinish (talk) 03:22, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

While I completely disagree with you reasoning. The solution is ok for now, I will add one line. Keep in mind that somewhere else in the article, probably "ongoing scientific work" we still must mention that research in ongoing at MIT [8] and UIUC [9] otherwise we are giving too much weight the view that cold fusion research by renowed research institutions is not happening as we speak.

You want experts ? Heinrich Hora [10] is a laser fusion expert, his research interests: Theory of laser-plasma interaction, relativistic and quantum effects, optical properties of plasmas, nonlinear (ponderomotive) forces, nonlinear principles, correspondence principle of electromagnetic interaction, inertial fusion energy, laser acceleration of ions and (relativistic) of electrons, electron beam pumped lasers (GaAs, diamond), low energy nuclear reactions of protons in metals, magic numbers and nuclear shell model, quarks and nuclear binding energy, theory of photoemission and multivalley band model.

By all means this guy a mainstream scientist. So here is your expert, now this article will change to reflect that. --POVbrigand (talk) 07:34, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

dating

I don't like how the dates are missing from statements. For example:

Issues > Small quantities of reaction products The detected reaction products are barely above background levels. The levels of 4He could have already been in the surrounding air instead of being created by any nuclear process. Detected neutrons and tritium were often barely above background level.[121]

It might still be correct, it is from a book published in 2000? Refuting the statement might be hard to source etc. I wouldn't know. The only thing important is that the reader doesn't know it comes from a book published in 2000. At the time it was probably a really good book on the topic, we shouldn't pretend it is any authors current opinion. Or should we? The book describes the last 10 years of cold fusion research not the next 10 years. lol It is bad to mis represent the source like this but I have no idea how to fix it. 84.106.26.81 (talk) 19:34, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

That is a good catch, are there any more recent sources on this topic? And possibly a proffesional/person knowledgable enough to rewrite if possible?Beefcake6412 (talk) 19:36, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

News Flash

Today (Oct 28) Rossi is supposedly doing a public demonstration of a 1-megawatt CF reactor. On this page: http://www.e-catworld.com/2011/10/october-28th-e-cat-test-pre-game-thread-gather-here-for-news-and-discussion/ there is a post by Rossi that claims it is working well. If I recall correctly, his reactor uses pressurized deuterium and Element 28, nickel (lots cheaper than palladium!). I'm aware that Rossi thinks that the CF reaction in his device combines the two to make copper. From what I know of nuclear physics, this is rather less likely than the idea that more-ordinary deuterium-deuterium fusion occurs. To be determined, of course! Because when the test is over, there ought to be some significantly detectable reaction products, of one sort or another, if the test-reactor actually does generate 1MW for a decent period of time. And, even if CF of any sort isn't actually happening, this seems to be more evidence that something scientifically interesting can happen in pressurized-deuterium experiments (releasing anomalous energy). V (talk) 16:34, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Rossi isn't doing any science. He is selling something. Science is done in daylight. ArtifexMayhem (talk) 14:29, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Rossi is selling a product and keeps his secrets. But cold fusion research is done in broad daylight, yet noone seems willing to take note. --POVbrigand (talk) 15:34, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

If he has a working product, then it doesn't matter if Rossi isn't publishing details. Eventually someone will buy a unit and dissect it, looking for reaction products --and publish. All we have to do is wait. V (talk) 15:41, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

I with you V. Rossi might have something but it is obvious he doesn't understand the mechanism. If the mystery client is legit they'll be taking the thing apart post haste. We wait. ArtifexMayhem (talk) 16:14, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Congrats to Blimpguy and Enric for updating the "claims of commercialization" section. --POVbrigand (talk) 13:34, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

available in the market

"working machine available in the market" Rossi is not taking any order from customers. You can only buy an E-Cat by contacting Rossi directly and negotiating a custom contract. Heck, he still has to sell (and deliver successfully and test that it works!) any unit to anyone in any market whatsoever. There is no unit "available in the market", independently tested or not. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:44, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

I fully agree with Enric. We can rediscuss the "availability in the market" when Rossi has delivered a handful of devices to preferably several known customers. Until then, there is no need to change the wording, also because the status of the Rossi device is described in sufficient detail immediately following this sentence. --POVbrigand (talk) 11:24, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

It occurs to me that in my "news" post above I neglected to think about the overall "reliability" issue associated with CF experiments. I know I've stated in several posts over several months that the pressurized-deuterium experiments seem to have had zero failures to produce anomalous energy (and so far nobody here has pointed out a case where such an experiment has failed). Rossi is obviously boldly assuming that his design is reliable enough to sell --which I'm sure is a primary reason the CF detractors have suspected him of being a charlatan. But if he is actually succeeding... then probably something about the reliability of the pressurized-deuterium experiments should be put somewhere in the article here. I know I'm still waiting for some relevant second- or third-party source to talk about this, so that the normal/formal rules here can be followed, but if Rossi is making Genuine News, then doesn't that open a relatively standard alternate route, for getting certain things into Wikipedia? V (talk) 15:45, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Heres a CNN report (an "ireport", less formal than most CNN reports): http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-696792 --it says that the Associated Press has a world exclusive on the formal news report. So far, though, I don't see such news at the AP website (conspiracy theorists, start your engines!). V (talk) 18:20, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Like most ireports, that one has not been vetted. The author, Joe Shea, has a long history of reporting fringe topics in less-than credible publications. This will do nothing to improve the article. LeadSongDog come howl! 03:08, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Try reading what I actually wrote, instead of what you think I wrote! Why doesn't "less formal" equate with "not vetted"? The report we need is the Associated Press report. But where is it??? V (talk) 04:43, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Not disagreeing with you. See Talk:Blacklight_Power/Archive_4#Joe_Shea_socks...probably. and the subsequent section re ireports.LeadSongDog come howl! 14:27, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

A quick Google search for "Associated Press" and "Andrea Rossi" yields a number of hits to sites that are talking about (as I write this) how 4 days have passed and the Associated Press either is sitting on the story, or has killed it. So, either of two Questions seems ask-able: "What do they know that we don't, which makes that story not-newsworthy?" or "Is AP under the influence of some organazation that wants to keep positive CF results quiet?" --In the meantime, we editors here get to feel a bit like the mythological Tantalus.... V (talk) 22:29, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

e-cat not room temperature

Some one suggested the cf article says LENR happens at room temperature being inconsistent with the e-cat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Energy_Catalyzer#Cold_fusion_link_is_inappropriate

84.106.26.81 (talk) 20:47, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't know a lot about the e-cat. At what temperature does it start to produce energy? I'm sure the temperature can be expected to go up if the reaction does indeed produce energy, but that doesn't have anything to do with the initial temperature. V (talk) 07:11, 5 November 2011 (UTC)