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. If you wish to discuss or debate the status of cold fusion please do so at the VORTEX-L mailing list..

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

Neutrality issues due to omission of facts

There are quite a few very biased proponents and naysayers about Cold Fusion. However one of the most convincing ways to lie is to tell the truth but omit key facts.

The results of Muonic fusion are qualitative in nature yet we believe them yet the data from Aqueous Cold Fusion is too quantitative for the indicated reaction conditions. (The bias of one Nuclear physicist to Cold Fusion might in part be because his Lab blew up, no doubt because he was a careful experimenter trying to get into the second wave of papers.)

The theory behind Muonic fusion takes the Muon (as 507 times heavier than an electron) and replaces the electron in the quantum equation of the Hydrogen molecule. The resulting equation has the two nuclei in much closer proximity than a normal Hydrogen molecule, with neutron(or proton or deuteron) tunneling amplitude being significant in the other nucleus. The tunneling amplitude is high enough that it seems to be quantitative for the thousand or so reactions before the Muon decays.

The theory behind Aqueous Cold Fusion was that Molecular Hydrogen becomes Atomic Hydrogen after absorption by Palladium exists interstitially as protons within the metallic orbitals of Palladium. As the Palladium saturates with Hydrogen, two Hydrogen nuclei will occupy these interstitial sites becoming similar in proximity to the Hydrogen Nuclei in the Muonic Atom. Defects and Impurities (or lack of) in the Palladium metal will help crowd these Hydrogen nuclei.

Most Chemical Suppliers (and jewelers) sourced bulk Palladium as 99% with x impurities. Palladium absorbs Hydrogen readily, but at ratios above H:Pd of ~1 or higher the Palladium undergoes a phase change reaction that can be violent. Palladium used in Hydrogen gas purifier membranes is 5% Silver to avoid this reaction. (Palladium is also alloyed because it is very soft like Gold.) A 20 gram disk of Palladium will purify (pass through)enough Hydrogen from a chemical Hydrogen generator to fill a ~25 liter Weather Balloon in a few minutes. There is no mention of the 104 Kcal per mole generated by the recombination of atomic hydrogen to molecular hydrogen. Another fact that this article omits is that all "successful" experiments used concentrated Lithium Hydroxide (Deuteroxide) at an alkalinity that would cause considerable overvoltage of Hydrogen resulting in injection of Lithium atoms into the Palladium matrix (a common side effect in ElectroPlating. The "fusion" is said not to occur if Sodium Hydroxide or Protonic Water. If, accounting for cathode size and shape variation, a Palladium membrane can pass that much Hydrogen then one shouldn't need to preload hydrogen for a week. Electromigration of defects, impurities, metals (Lithium?) could conceivably take that long. Although Hydrogen flows freely through Palladium, Helium does not. Very few Palladium cathodes were sacrificed (dissolved) to determine trapped gasses and other fusion products.

Shjacks45 (talk) 21:18, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Dude, your post above is so laced with errors that I don't have the time to address them all. What change exactly are you proposing for the article? Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:36, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I will collapse this topic if no reliable source is provided for this info. --Enric Naval (talk) 11:38, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

There is one glaring error that I feel obliged to point out, regarding that first post: The mass of a muon is actually more like 207 times that of the electron, not 507. I'd also like to know more about that claimed "phase change reaction that can be violent", when the H:Pd ratio gets high enough. This is the first I've heard of such a thing --and if true, that alone might explain the energy observations of just about all the CF researchers. Note that I'm expecting this to be different from something long known, that the permeation of hydrogen into palladium is normally somewhat (not violently) exothermic. V (talk) 15:31, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Mea culpa, I didn't know the Muon weight (times electron is relative and not accurate anyway), it is from another wiki that apparently has accurate sources like this one. (Or Kcal vs KCal, point was there is enough heat from Hydrogen recombination to melt Steel.) By "violent" I meant enough energy to break a glass beaker, used in many attempts to repro CF. Part of the cathode is out of the solution so I presume that pressure (due to voltage) of Hydrogen entering the electrode would create more than 2Pd:H ratio typical of adsorption. Need a lot of pressure to get to 1:1.5 ratio. The Pd gas purification membranes on a Gas Chromatograph I used was made for a regulator, 300 PSI max recommended. Industrial Hydrogen cylinder is 7000 PSI. Steady state there is no heat in the Pd membrane except from pressure differential. Note the CF requirement to preload the electrode with Hydrogen for a few days. Yet Hydrogen travels through Pd separation membranes rapidly.

I wasn't questioning "violent"; I was questioning "phase change reaction". Such a change would be more physical (like an atomic-lattice rearrangement) than chemical, and of course have nothing to do with nuclear fusion (even though the old old term "heat of fusion" --associated with a melting point-- might well apply, heh!). Like I wrote, before, this is the first I've heard of such a thing as a phase change reaction when lots of hydrogen gets into palladium. Finally, regarding something else you wrote, the reason the CF researchers doing electrolysis experiments need to run those experiments for many days is because hydrogen comes out of the electrode almost as easily as it goes in, when running at ordinary atmospheric pressure. That makes it obvious that considerable time can be needed to accumulate deuterium/hydrogen inside the electrode, to the level needed for unusual stuff to begin to be observed/reported. V (talk) 04:32, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

I would assume someone moderating the cold fusion page would be familiar with the references on the Wiki already. The concept of tunneling is discussed in several key papers on low temperature fusion quoted in this Wiki, I had perhaps wrongly assumed that "neutral" moderator had read these papers himself? I would think that anyone in charge of this page knew that the Solution of Schrödinger equation for Hydrogen was a Wikipedia article under "Hydrogen Atom". I received my Chemistry degree over 30 years ago and the Sources I regularly quoted for my daily work, including legal depositions, were usually copyrighted. References like the Chemical Rubber Handbook, ASTM Test Methods, ASME Procedures, Merck manuals. In college and as a UW alumna I've used references to Journals such as Journal of the American Chemical Society and Tetrahedron Letters, publicly available at the University of Washington Libraries but inaccessible (but often referenced in Wikipedia)on the Internet without payment. There are public papers on www.lenr-canr.org but I thought you should be familiar with those. The point remains that your providing detail for the Anti Cold Fusion arguments and refusing to provide details about Cold Fusion (making it appear empty) makes the writing in this Wiki BIASED against Cold Fusion. If you think the writing is neutral then you could explain to me why you think so.

By the way, this is a discussion page. Other posts, anti cold fusion posts, don't seem to be required to put references in their posts. I don't remember a Wikipedia policy for requiring references in Discussions. Definitely seems to underscore your bias. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shjacks45 (talk • contribs) 00:57, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

That's nice, but could you propose a specific change, and give a specific reference for that change? Otherwise, we are not going to get much work done here.

(for example, taking one of the statements in your opening post, you could propose to add "all "successful" experiments used concentrated Lithium Hydroxide (Deuteroxide) at a certain alkalinity", and then giving a source for that statement.) --Enric Naval (talk) 02:06, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I have a question. Suppose we added a line to the article somewhere about the fact that hydrogen in general has a very easy time passing into/through palladium. While there is plenty of WP:RS that that is true, is there any RS anywhere about why it is true? So far as I know, nobody actually knows exactly why. But I did see a post somewhere on the Internet where the well-known thing called "The Table Of Electronegativities" ( http://0.tqn.com/d/chemistry/1/0/w/v/PeriodicTableElectronegativity.jpg ) maybe offered a clue to part of the mystery. It is obvious for anyone to see that Palladium and Hydrogen have the same electronegativity --so, The Question:-- would we need some RS that actually says, "palladium and hydrogen have the same electronegativity"???. It means that there is "no conflict" for electrons, in terms of chemical reactivity, between the two elements. Also, the SPAWAR codeposition experiment relies totally on that fact; the electroplating of palladium out of solution, while simultaneously electrolyzing heavy water, yields a 1:1 ratio of the two elements ("100% loading" of palladium with hydrogen, the CFer's say) exactly because they have the same electronegativity. And because SPARWAR gets high loading from the get-go, they don't need to wait a long time before being able to make claims of observing excess heat. NITPICK: it is possible to find Electronegativity tables in which the value of hydrogen is 2.1 and palladium is 2.2 --not identical-- so I don't really know what the real values actually are. Does anyone? Anyway, the SPAWAR experiment certainly indicates they are very close to being the same. V (talk) 15:53, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Any conjecture regarding electronegativities of metals being relevant to cold fusion experiments is original research. To wit, iridium has an electronegativity similar to that of hydrogen and palladium but does not have the hydrogen absorptivity that is known for palladium and platinum. There are external references that say the peculiar properties of palladium and platinum are what get cold fusioners so hot and bothered, but that's as far as we can go. Speculating on why these metals are good at absorbing hydrogen is well-beyond the scope of what this article can handle. ScienceApologist (talk) 17:11, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Uh, yeah, seconding that - original research. The point of the page is not to argue that cold fusion is possible, based on X, Y and Z and the "casual comment" that hydrogen can pass through a palladium lattice is just as inappropriate as a "casual comment" that suggests a reason why cold fusion is impossible. These aren't "casual comments", these are original research soapboxing that attempts to push the idea that cold fusion has been unjustly rejected. The scientific consensus is that cold fusion was an example of pathological science, and this hasn't changed yet. Please stop trying to prove that cold fusion actually exists - wikipedia is about verfiability, not truth, and when it is verifiable that the scientific community accepts cold fusion exists, we can document this. Until then, per WP:UNDUE we summarize the skeptical scientific consensus. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 17:30, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Are you guys having fun blowing stuff out of proportion? I quote from my post above, "I did see a post somewhere on the Internet where the well-known thing called "The Table Of Electronegativities" ... maybe offered a clue to part of the mystery." Do you not understand that that was the WP:OR --not anything I posted above? Nor was I talking about trying to prove cold fusion is real; I was talking such documented consequences (in WP:RS, too!) as the SPARWAR codeposition experiments --all I was doing was explaining why "codeposition" is a logical and possible and, during electrolysis, an experimentally achievable result of two elements having similar electronegativites. I quote: "...because SPARWAR gets high loading from the get-go, they don't need to wait a long time before being able to make claims of observing excess heat" --that is not at all about "proving" cold fusion; that is merely a report of claims made. Just because I chose to focus on the extra energy they've almost casually said they saw, and not mention the neutron-track data they thought was more important.... To ScienceApologist, that is a good point about Iridium, and obviously it means that even if the electronegativites thing is a factor, it is not the only factor as to why palladium likes absorbing hydrogen. Hmmm...we could find plenty of RS saying that palladium is a good catalyst while iridium isn't ... but of course then we would also need some RS indicating that that could be be the extra factor... and I already said that I didn't know if anyone knows the answer to the mystery.

Meanwhile, I see neither one of you bothered to answer the Question I asked about. If anyone can see the obvious for themselves, from an Electronegativites Table, that the values of hydrogen and palladium are the same, do we need RS where somebody actually wrote that the values are the same??????? V (talk) 20:06, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't consider this fun, I consider it annoying and unnecessary. Cold fusion = rejected, so there's no reason to play "let's pretend" with electronegativities. This isn't a scientific article, since cold fusion isn't science, so there's no need to pull in irrelevant sources. If you're not suggesting an actual change to the main page, don't bother posting. If you're suggesting a change that hints, nudges or alludes to "excess heat" - don't bohter unless you have a source, it is reliable, and is explicit about supporting cold fusion. This is not a chat room. "Extra factors" and speculation are irrelevant - cold fusion is considered nonsense; unless a source is explicit and reliable about the point you are trying to make, it's a pointless waste of time. Why should we bother including information about electronegativity when, again, cold fusion is considered nonsense? The answer is, we shouldn't. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 20:17, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

To be clear: the electronegativities of elements are irrelevant to this page unless a reliable source has commented on them as being relevant to cold fusion. ScienceApologist (talk) 22:04, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely, if I wasn't absolutely, crystal, 100% clear on that before, allow me to voice my agreement now. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 00:21, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

The two of you are obviously deliberately avoiding paying attention. There is indeed a valid reason to talk about electronegativies in the article, and that is simply to explain to the reader what a "codeposition" experiment entails, and why such an experiment is possible to do. The SPAWAR experiments have reached WP:RS publication (at least two "Springerlink" journal papers), and while the anti-CFers desperately tried to declare Springerlink to have become non-RS simply because they dared to publish a CF paper or two, the anti-CFers failed in that endeavor, which means this article is free to discuss the SPAWAR experiments in appropriate detail. Per the "Omission of Facts" title of this Talk Section, I see the article currently mentions the SPAWAR experiment but not in best way, in the "Publications and Conferences" section: "(SPAWAR) reported detection of energetic neutrons in a standard cold fusion cell design" --that faultily implies they were not doing codepositon! --which certainly can use a relatively standard-design electrolytic cell, but at least one of the chemicals being electrolyzed (a palladium compound) is very far from standard! Do note that such a detailed description, about stuff any decent mainstream electro-chemist would have no trouble with or objection to, has nothing to do with trying to prove that CF is real. The only thing we might need is a bit more in the way of third-party RS, about the SPAWAR experiments. I have no reason to think such will not appear in due course if we don't have enough already, and so it doesn't hurt to get prepared, by getting all the worthless objections out of the way now, instead of later. So, what are your next worthless objections? V (talk) 05:07, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Calling someone's objections "worthless" is a borderline personal attack. The supposed "non-standard" use of palladium in an electrolytic cell needs to be discussed in a reliable source: not just "prepared for". There is no sense in us having discussions about things which may or may not happen in the future. Wait until the sources you think are bound to show up actually appear. Then we'll discuss it. Until then, this is in violation of WP:TALK. I suggest archiving this discussion and all other discussions of this nature which are not suggesting immediately actionable edits to the article. ScienceApologist (talk) 08:24, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 10:26, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

What makes a comment worthless is the ignoring of relevant information before putting one's fingers to the keyboard (not to mention the deliberate focusing on minutia as if it was more important than the relevant information). Here are some links that may be relevant:

[1] (paper presented at American Physical Society meeting; the first thing it says is that codeposition experiments have been replicated), [2] (Note the authors mostly work at different labs) [3] (this page lists several publications of SPAWAR codeposition experiments)

[4] This one may be the most interesting --looks almost like a University Course on Cold Fusion! Does that count as Secondary RS?? (and some of the links there refer to the SPAWAR codeposition experiments)

Those links were basically found by a simple Google search for [ spawar codeposition ] --more than 1500 results. If the word "excess" is added to the search, the number of results drops to about 250, but it offers a chance to focus on excess heat and not CR-39 tracks. Here's an organization I never heard of before:

[5] --perhaps they don't care what the source of energy is, as long as an experiment yields excess energy? (Reminds me of companies making high-temperature superconductors without caring why they work.) Of course I'm fully aware that there is controversy regarding the claims of production of excess energy. Just for fun, here's a link describing CF kits-for-sale, for anyone to find out if excess energy can be produced: [6]  :) V (talk) 14:23, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

The only pages that use the words "cold fusion" are a page by a high school teacher (the "university course"), and a mail archive, neither of which are reliable secondary sources. And here is a three year old source from Wired saying we shouldn't believe in cold fusion based on SPAWAR. Anything new, and explicit? The consistent point made is you are asserting "X is cold fusion" and insisting we take your word for it. Again, it's going to take a solid, high-quality source (more likely set of sources) claiming cold fusion is a real deal to change the page. Simple google searches don't help - reliable sources do. The fact that you would present this is a reliable source is indicative of the problem. This is a personal web page by an author that doesn't appear to have any real publications - just a bunch of personal observations and presentations at conferences. Presentations are not reliable sources, particularly not for surprising fringe claims, and particularly when it's well noted that cold fusion conferences, sparsely attended by true believers, still occur. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 16:26, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I don't think these links belong in WP without some context. SPAWAR is already mentioned and discussed in what I deem to be enough detail for this article. The personal webpage of the math instructor at Montclair State is neither timely nor particularly accurate. That there are companies selling cold fusion kits is an amusing anecdote, but one that probably only bares one sentence mentioning. If you'd like to workshop a suggestion for how to write such a sentence for this article, I'd be amenable. Start a new section, though. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:32, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I admit I didn't look too closely at that teacher's site; do note, though, that I said "looks almost like" --I didn't say it actually was a university course. Next, I object to you, WLU, spouting the outright lie that I was "asserting "X is cold fusion" ". I have been describing experiments in the cf field; I have not been claiming that any of them prove cold fusion has been happening. And how can you possibly think the SPAWAR researchers are not investigating the subject of cold fusion when their papers so often talk about neutron-detection results? Not to mention, I see you have distorted your description of that Wired article, which says, exactly, "Should people believe in cold fusion based on the SPAWAR experiments (alone)? Probably not." Replication matters!!! --which is where that new paper comes in, with multiple authors from multiple labs (linked in my prior post). I fully understand the mainstream view that it is at the very least jumping-to-a-conclusion to insist that nuclear fusion is happening in those experiments; all I care about here is whether or not any of those experiments can generate excess energy, AND whether or not it can be replicated. I am getting the impression from you, that just because the mainstream thinks cold fusion is impossible, so also is impossible any excess energy in these experiments --even though it is the excess energy that the experimenters had to observe before jumping to the conclusion that fusion was responsible-- but you have never said why there cannot possibly be some other event going on instead of fusion, to cause some excess energy. I am reminded of the equally-derided "hydrino" hypothesis, and that recent remark about a "phase change reaction", mentioned earlier in this Talk Section. Are you going to say that We Know It ALL, and that is why there cannot possibly be ever-in-a-trillion-years anything unusual going on in those experiments????

Perhaps the answer relates to an inherent dilemma, caused by the anti-CFers here! If something other that fusion is going on, that would mean we need to write a different article than this one! So, hmmmm, maybe we should start writing such an article. How about "Anomalous Energy Experiments" ? V (talk) 20:13, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

It's time for you to get over your battleground perceptions, stop guessing about what the future will hold and suggest we start writing articles about it before breakthroughs happen, and stop trying to use Wikipedia to right great wrongs you perceive to have been done in the context of cold fusion arguments. ScienceApologist (talk) 20:46, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Again you misinterpret or misunderstand. I am not predicting any such thing as a breakthrough. I am talking about a great many existing experiments in the CF field where the experimenters report seeing excess energy --and in recent years they have carefully avoided using the phrase "cold fusion" in their papers, to increase the chance of publication. The approximate replication of Arata's pressurized-gas experiment is one such, getting deuterium into palladium in a different way than by using an electrolysis cell. Since they didn't use the magic words "cold fusion" in their paper, though, the feeble excuse has been raised time and time again that the experiment does not deserve mention in this article. But it most certainly could deserve mention in an article about Anomalous Energy Experiments! V (talk) 06:48, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

A wall of text, no sources, a lot of assertions and no reason to change the page. Objectivist, please let it go, there's nothing here to support a change - either policy or source basis. Again, this talk page is not a soapbox, please stop using it as one. I'm now in WP:DNFTT territory for this section, if there's a source I need to comment on, I will but otherwise I'm not wasting more time. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 21:53, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I have been following this discussion with much less certainty that "cold fusion = rejected", because I don't see how that view could possibly be construed as supported by recent reliable published sources, and have posted such a source at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive_72#Hagelstein's cold fusion review in Naturwissenschaften for comment. Ura Ursa (talk) 04:08, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Here is an interesting link: http://www.reference.com/browse/pd.d. --in which is specifically stated, regarding Pons and Fleischmann, "Lacking an explanation for the source of such heat, they proposed the hypothesis that the heat came from nuclear fusion of deuterium (D)." I know we have lots of RS slanted toward them insisting that fusion was happening, but that does not seem a reasonable thing for highly regarded researchers to do, so I kept looking.... --V (talk) 19:36, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

This is a mirror of wikipedia. The copyright date is 2001-2006, so it's probably a 2006 version of our article. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:59, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Unbelievable. Hey, folks, just because something is on the internet doesn't mean it can be used for our article. There is, in fact, lots of peer-reviewed secondary source material to use, and it's not being used. I find it amusing that my own post to the Vortex list was cited above as referring to a company selling kits to replicate cold fusion. It was suggested that you could verify excess heat for yourself. No, probably not. Those kits are being designed to be cheap. Only about a centimeter of gold wire is exposed as the cathode. The most expensive thing in the kit is 25 grams of D20, after that, it's the platinum cathode. I've never seen reports of excess heat from a codep cathode surface as small as that. The radiation detectors are LR-115, cheaper than CR-39. These kits are being optimized for neutron detection. If they work. That remains to be seen! There are *many* ways to get this wrong. No, this couldn't be in the article unless I get some press, which is way, way premature! --Abd (talk) 03:13, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Old claims and new data

Violation of WP:TALK
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The present article talks about claims made in the 1920s and 1932 regarding palladium loaded with hydrogen. The first reference is similar to Arata's (and others') modern experiments (except now they use deuterium and not plain hydrogen). The second, of course, was the inspiration for Pons and Fleischmann. I'd specifically like to ask about the relation between the 1920s experiments and approximate replication of Arata's experiment that was published in Physics Letters A ( http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physleta.2009.06.061 ). The current article doesn't say anything about the detection of energy in the 1920s experiments; the PLA article strongly focuses on the detection of energy. I see that the article currently references other references, regarding the 1920s experiments, and so it could be nice to find the orginial publication data. I found this link: http://books.google.com/books?id=eq7TfxZOzSEC&pg=PA84&lpg=PA84&dq=%22Friedrich+Paneth%22+%22Kurt+Peters%22+hydrogen+palladium&source=bl&ots=Se6FAOoRY0&sig=Q5vtl96k9g8rJbqN-m7NO5fYOrM&hl=en&ei=JABbTMCqFoaWsgO_p-CyDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22Friedrich%20Paneth%22%20%22Kurt%20Peters%22%20hydrogen%20palladium&f=false that pretty much says the same thing as the current article (and could perhaps replace the current reference-to-a-reference) --although near the top of that page is a statement to the effect that when four ordinary hydrogens fuse to make helium, considerable energy is released. It seems unrealistic to think that the 1920s experimenters were not looking for energy as well as for helium, coming as their research did hot on the heels of Eddington's proposal for why the Sun shines. I also understand, however, that they could well have not found any energy (especially since they didn't use deuterium), and therefore didn't report it. It would be an interesting question, though: "Where did they think the energy went?" --when they were very willing to claim to have detected helium! (Isn't speculation fun?) V (talk) 19:36, 5 August 2010 (UTC) Hey, I did at least offer a link that should be an improvement, for the article, in terms of replacing an existing link. V (talk) 04:54, 6 August 2010 (UTC) How was WP:TALK supposedly violated by the collapsed text? Ura Ursa (talk) 09:56, 7 August 2010 (UTC) The last sentence was certainly inappropriate. But because anti-CFers are desperate to prevent people from seeing relevant data, that's why the whole block was collapsed. The rationale is equivalent to that used regarding files at the lenr-canr.org site --that is, if a file has a little bit of stuff added to it, then the anti-CFers claim that the entire file is corrupted and worthless, and if one such file exists at that web site, then the whole site should be blacklisted. STUPID rationalizing, that is.... V (talk) 04:46, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Gentlemen, next time you want to have a general discussion about the merits or demerits of CF, you should go to the VORTEX-L mailing list. That list is intended to host that type of discussions; wikipedia isn't. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:55, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Please be more specific. Where in the above collapsed text is there something about the merits or demerits of CF? V (talk) 17:33, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I believe this text has been collapsed improperly and should be restored. Ura Ursa (talk) 16:09, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Ura Ursa, all editors here, except for those who are COI, have equal rights. If you are subject to conflict of interest rules, then you should declare so and be especially careful how you conduct yourself. I'm COI, myself, clearly, and Dr. Shanahan should, my opinion, likewise be considered so. If you are not COI, and you believe that the discussion above should not have been collapsed, then you may remove the collapse. But don't revert war! Once is enough for an action, twice is often too much. (After that, we'd seek consensus, or address the problem in a different way.) If you need help, I'm, shall we say, quite experienced in this area, and may be able to advise you, particularly off-wiki. However, my opinion is that Enric Naval was correct in what he did, if not in how he justified it, and collapse is mild compared to what he could have done, which would be to simply remove it. What's clear about the above discussion is that it was not about proposed changes to the article, it was about background, or questions about CF. Quite simply, this is not the place to ask such questions. I'd suggest many other possible places, such as my user Talk page, Dr. Shanahan's talk page, the Vortex list as suggested by Enric Naval, or, maybe even better, Wikiversity:Talk:Cold fusion, to start, because original research is allowed on Wikiversity. (Dr. Shanahan: you would be most welcome there, just be nice, okay?). You will actually get answers from those who know the field, I can probably guarantee that. And maybe, then, if the answers can be rooted in reliable source, it can eventually come back to the article. Discussion here should be limited to proposed changes to the article, particularly those clearly based in peer-reviewed or academically published secondary sources, or, in some cases -- like this -- about our own discussion process. --Abd (talk) 22:32, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

New Paper(s) Out (as promised)

My lengthy paper, ‘Comments on "A new look at low-energy nuclear reaction research"’, has now been published on-line. (Comments on “A new look at low-energy nuclear reaction research”, Kirk L. Shanahan, J. Environ. Monit., 2010, Advance Article DOI: 10.1039/C001299H, Letter ) Paper publication to follow. Along with it is a response authored by almost every ‘name’ in the field of cold fusion today. “A new look at low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR) research: a response to Shanahan”, J. Marwan, M. C. H. McKubre, F. L. Tanzella, P. L. Hagelstein, M. H. Miles, M. R. Swartz, Edmund Storms, Y. Iwamura, P. A. Mosier-Boss and L. P. G. Forsley J. Environ. Monit., 2010, Advance Article DOI: 10.1039/C0EM00267D, Letter.

[note added 9/16/19] The page and volume numbers have been assigned. My comment is in JEM 12 (2010) 1756-64. The reply by Marwan, et al, follows immediately. Kirk shanahan (talk) 12:34, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

The journal does not allow me to download from the Web page, and my library does not have an active subscription, so I have ordered the papers. Of course I know what my paper says. I will let you know what the response is when I read it. The authors didn’t bother to send me a courtesy copy. The J. Environ. Monit. disallowed a Reply to the Response, so no immediate response is possible by me.

For input to the Wiki CF article, my paper states the following while roughly following the original Krivit and Marwan (K&M) papers layout (theory and history not considered) (comments below are highly condensed):

- K&M do not cover conventional explanations

- Cold Fusioneers do not recognize and consider the CCS (with no explanation given as to why)

- Heat-after-death experiments are extreme examples of a possible CCS error

- He detection experiments do not adequately address contamination issues

- Heavy metal trasnsmutation results are most likely contamination caused

- Pits in CR-39 plates outside the electrolyte have been noted as coming from contamination, and such is not eliminated adequately in CFer papers

- Pits in CR-39 plates in the electrolyte can be conventionally caused by shockwaves (amongst other things)

- CR-39 ‘triplets’ are accidental overlaps of individual pits

- Temporal correlations of, i.e., heat and helium levels, are useful only if it can be certified that the ‘heat’ and ‘He' signals are real, i.e. come from a LENR (the point of the whole paper is to show that cannot be assured)

- The use of 5.2 ppm He as the ‘acid test’ of He production is not correct.

- Overall, many important details that would address these issues are never published.

The conclusions drawn are:

- CFers do not consider conventional explanations, which limits the validity of their conclusions

- The CFers are working in the noise, and thus are meeting one of Langmuir pathological science criteria, and in fact CF is pathological science

- The primary problem is irreproducibility.

- No serious analysis of results is attempted, thus all claims to have observed CF are accepted.

- There is a large body of evidence, but it is loaded with bad results which should have been rejected, rather than included in that body.

- The cold fusion field observer is fully justified in rejecting unsubstantiated claims of novel nuclear reactions

- A working CF-powered device would silence all criticisms

What we here now have is a journal article, i.e. RS, that clearly states nearly everything I have been trying to say is wrong with the CF field for the last several years. By the fact that it is published, it supports the mainstream view that CF is pathological science. I propose we reinsert the additions I made to the CF article in Sept. 2008 in order to provide balance to the article, which currently over-emphasizes the supposed positives of CF research, and fails to address current objections. (I also reiterate that the section on how CF doesn’t fit theory is only partially relevant from a historical point of view only, and should be drastically reduced or relegated to a side article.) However, since I have been continuously accused of “COI”, I will not edit the article myself unless consensus to do so is developed here first. It will likely require some major surgery as the article is substantially different from back then.

Also, I will take WLU’s advice and ignore all comments by V.

Once I get the Response by Marwan, et al, I will post a summary if desired. Alternatively, I can leave it to the CF advoctes here to do as I have done above. We all can anticipate they will say everything I wrote is wrong. That is a given, they are ‘True Believers’ after all. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:02, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Not everything you say is wrong. And I see you actually left out something. I distinctly recall you talking about hydrogen-oxygen recombination as a source of energy to explain experiments in which an electrode became melted in spots. And you have never explained why, when two identical-as-possible experiments are running, if one has that happen and the other doesn't, but both produces some excess heat, then CCS must be the explanation for the one where the electrode didn't melt, while of course the heat measurements in the one where it did melt must be correct (we all know that real detectable energy had to be involved for that to happen!). V (talk) 17:45, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

What you are discussing incorrectly and incompletely is the mechanism I proposed that could produce the observed CCS. The new article did not even discuss that point, which is why it is not in the list above. The rest of your comment is ignored. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:42, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Of course you must ignore the irrationality in your argument that I exposed. You claim that a CCS phenomenon, a miscalibrated instrument, could explain some observed energy as an artifact of the miscalibration, while also describing a source of real and possible-to-measure energy. You can't have it both ways!!! V (talk) 19:48, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

"Also, I will take WLU’s advice and ignore all comments by V." lol.Kmarinas86 ^(6sin8karma) 20:15, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I suppose if you're ignoring the logic already, it doesn't really make a difference anyways. Kevin Baas^talk 20:30, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

It is amusing to see the pro-CFers come out of the woodwork whenever I post. They seem to think that my prior post was a violation of some kind. I would like to note that V did bring up one point regarding my new paper which I felt needed a brief response, especially since I have spent so much time trying (and failing) to educate the pro-CF crowd here about the proposed mechanism for the CCS. I posted that and ignored V's other trolls, which I will continue to do. I also note that so far there has been no substantial comment on my proposed edits. Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:22, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

It is amusing to see a scientist use logical fallacies such as ad hominem and false dilemma so reliably. Kevin Baas^talk 16:24, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Please document these assertions. Failure to do so indicates that your comment is, in fact, an ad hominem attack. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:48, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

-

Hi Wikis, just thought I’d pop my head in here for a moment. Harp Minhas, editor of J. Environmental Monitoring, sent me a copy of Shanahan’s paper – he said it had already gone through peer-review. It appeared to me identical to the one he posted on the publicly available federal Web site. Minhas gave me an opportunity to argue with Shanahan. This link will get you access to the Shanahan pre-print and my informal response.

http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2010/35/3518responsetoshanahan.shtml

Since Shanahan, an original author, has apparently been permitted to participate here for many months with his assistance to the Wiki editors, I can’t imagine that it would be a violation of etiquette if I offered some of the same as well. Rather than fill these pages with my own deep commentary, I instead offer the July 30, New Energy Times Special Report “Cold Fusion is Neither” for your information.

http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2010/35/SR35900outline.shtml

I’m not proposing any edits to Wiki, of course, just trying to be helpful to those of you who would like some deeper insight. I’m not likely to engage in discussion here, though I’ll consider for response any emails sent to me directly.

Shanahan mentions “True Believers.” Some of you may find it interesting that I have written a detailed article on this; it’s part of the Special Report.

Also, if any of you would like to reference my two peer-reviewed Elsevier encyclopedia articles, let me know and I can send you free copies.

Best regards,

Steven “no longer pro-cold fusion” Krivit

-

StevenBKrivit (talk) 22:45, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I invite all Wiki editors to read Krivit's response as referenced. I also add that you need to read it carefully with two things in mind in particular. (1) Krivit admits he tried to get this published as an official Reply to Comment in J. of Environ. Monit., but failed to meet publication requirements. He calls this Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:54, 16 August 2010 (UTC)What he describes is 'negotiating' with the journal editor. One doesn't 'negotiate' with editors, one conforms to the standard rules of scientific debate. Krivit was unable to do that, but that's not his fault, he's not a scientist, and didn't have help on this one. (2) Make sure you look for technical comments in the response. There really aren't any, which is why it couldn't pass muster at the journal. Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:22, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

My mistake! The article referenced by Krivit as his response is a new one. The one I was referring to is the old one (http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2010/35/35pdf/3566shanahan-jem-response.pdf). (Actually the primary difference seems to be that Krivit deleted the first couple of paragraphs in his new response.) He refers to my paper as a 15 pager there when his in JEM was 16 pages. In fact, my article is 8-1/2 pages long in the proofs, with 1-1/2 pages being references. (His paper also had about 1-1/2 pages of refs.) Wiki editors should also note that in both he attempts to use my Wiki activities against me somehow. Also, don't be fooled by the "no longer pro-cold fusion" sig Krivit used. He is just following on with his crusade to get cold fusion renamed LENR. As I've said before, they are one and the same. Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:58, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

-

Kirk Shanahan, your comments "Krivit admits he tried to get this published as an official Reply to Comment in J. of Environ. Monit., but failed to meet publication requirements" and "it couldn't pass muster at the journal" are false and are misrepresentations.

JEM never received any draft from me. As I wrote, "After Harpal Minhas, the editor of Journal of Environmental Monitoring, and I made several attempts to agree on the parameters for my response to Shanahan’s comment, I gave up and decided to publish a version independently." "Negotiating" was your word, not mine, however, you could characterize my discussion with Minhas as such. However, the "negotiating" centered only around rules of engagement. As I mentioned, I never sent Minhas a draft of my response for him to consider, let alone pass muster or judgement. It was Minhas' rules of engagement which *I* declined to accept, as is my prerogative.

Your comment "he's not a scientist, and didn't have help on this one" is also misleading. I am not a scientist; I am a journalist, editor and writer, and I am quite pleased that I have been able to learn the subject matter and communicate it to the degree which I have. However, I had very little help from Marwan on the original paper. Similarly, I had no direct help from any scientist on my two peer-reviewed chapters for the Elsevier encyclopedia. Or on my review paper for Current Science.

Readers who would like the facts about me and my perspectives can very easily obtain them directly through the New Energy Times Web site and my published work. They can form their opinions of my perspectives on LENR independently of any middleman. That's it for now. Bye bye.

StevenBKrivit (talk) 18:51, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

-

Mea culpa. Please note the strikethrough and modification to the text regarding 'negotiating'. However, the point still stands. You don't negotiate with editors over how to write a Response. It's a standard process, well known to all who routinely participate in the scientific process via the literature. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:54, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Kirk, thank you for publishing your arguments. How do you respond to the SPAWAR charged particle detection results? Do you have a list of the people who have claimed to reproduce that work? How do you think the government should resolve the difference between ONR and DOE on these issues? Ura Ursa (talk) 18:24, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

In my paper I make the points that the SPAWAR results have two potential conventional explanations: shockwave-induced mechanical damage and O2 bubble-induced oxidative damage. Until those conventional mechanisms are excluded, there is no certain proof of any charged particle or neutron production. (I further disagee they have shown the so-called triplets are anything other than 3 overlapping pits.) I don't keep a list, but the only people who have done this to my knowledge is those involved in the 'Galileo Project', which also did not address conventional causes. (I generally make the technical mistake of lumping all those who use the SPAWAR protocol under the term 'SPAWAR group'. This is a technical mistake because some laymen fail to understand it is the protocol that fails not just the group.) ONR is not at issue with DOE. A few SPAWAR researchers and one or two NRL people believe CF is real. There are a few DOE people who do too, although they are not working or publishing. To try to tie these ideas/beliefs to organizations is not correct. It is people who are making the claims, not organizations. Kirk shanahan (talk) 12:36, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

How can shockwave-induced mechanical damage or O2 bubble-induced oxidative damage produce beta radiation? The difference is that ONR approves research on the subject, and DOE does not. Ura Ursa (talk) 16:05, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

You have RS on that ONR-DOE statement right? The official stated position of DOE, arising from both the 1989 and 2004 DOE Reviews, is that well thought out proposals should be funded. To my knowledge, DOE has no position saying that CF research is banned. There definitely is a bias against, I agree, and I have been subject to that too. Yet I still publish and follow the field. I think you have become a victim of the CFers victim mentality. Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:48, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

According to NRL researchers K.S. Grabowski, D.L. Knies, D.A. Kidwell, D.D. Dominguez, C.A. Carosella, V.K. Nguyen, A.E. Rogers, and G.K. Hubler in their presentation to ARL's LENR workshop in Adelphi, MD on June 29, 2010, NRL has had eight full-time LENR researchers working for the past 18 months. That is in addition to SPAWAR personnel and contractors at Nova Research in Alexandria, and it's certainly more than "one or two." I would still like to know how mechanical or O2 damage can produce any kind of radiation capable of being altered by an external magnetic or electrostatic field. Ura Ursa (talk) 15:34, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Your question assumes a fact not supported by the evidence- that beta radiation is produced. The experimental results were pits appearing on CR-39; beta radiation was a hypothesis put forward to explain that result by some of those who used the SPAWAR protocol. I haven't read Kirk's new paper, but I do know that others in the 'Galileo Project' who also used the SPAWAR protocol were not convinced of this hypothesis. Rather than a nuclear explanation, chemical or mechanical effects could explain the pits that are formed. Also as an experimental result, they found that the pits made in CR-39 using the SPAWAR protocol have an appearance unlike those made using ionizing particles. Kirk, I think you may be painting those who participated in the 'Galileo Project' with a bit too broad a brush. I've been meaning to check out this book but haven't managed to do so yet - the "Null Tests of “Free-Energy” Claims" chapter may be a reliable source concerning these results.--Noren (talk) 03:57, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Not to mention, the pits are claimed to be evidence for neutrons, which are mostly not ionizing particles. If a neutron strikes CR-39, my understanding is that what happens is, the neutron physically knocks some atom out of position in the physical structure of the plastic, weakening it at that spot. An etching process is used to reveal those weak spots as pits. There is thus an implication that other sources can damage that plastic. I don't know, though, that any of those sources can exactly imitate the type of damage that a neutron can cause. A shock wave, for example, tends to affect things on a wide front, affecting many atoms simultaneously, while a neutron is more like a bullet among atoms. V (talk) 05:03, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

To Noren: I'm not sure which 'brush' you are referring to. In my paper I cite the unpublished results of Little showing various kinds of physial/chemical damages cause pits, and I cite his conclusion to that effect. (I also cite Oriani and Fisher's publication of the same fact.) That's all I cite from Galileo, but I mention the SPAWAR group has published some results from it, and also that they claim nuclear particles of course. However, both Little and Oriani and Fisher cite difficulties in telling the pits apart from 'legitimate' ones. For the record I also don't know 'that any of those sources can exactly imitate the type of damage that a neutron can cause' (to use V's words), which is exactly my point. Until we do know, we can't assume the pits are due to radiation only. My whole thesis, since the beginning, has essentially been that the CFers have jumped to a conclusion without adequate justification. (That means, with adequate proof, they could prove 'CF' is real tomorrow.) By the way V, SPAWAR articles claim 'charged particles', not just neutrons (which are uncharged, but are ionizing radiation.) Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:48, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Kirk, it depends on what the neutron hits. Other ionizing particles can rip electrons from atomic orbits because they are electrically charged and can attract or repel those electrons as the ionizing particles pass by. Some (like energetic photons) can do it by more-direct interaction with an electron, giving it energy by, basically, striking it. A neutron mostly ignores electrons, though. I can imagine it ionizing a typical hydrogen atom because its nucleus has about the same mass as the neutron, and so a hard-enough "knock" can make the proton leave its electron behind. But this is seldom going to happen when a neutron hits a carbon nucleus that has almost 12 times its mass, or an oxygen nucleus that has almost 16 times its mass, and so on. Note in my post above I stated "mostly not ionizing". However, since plastics like CR-39 have a lot of hydrogen in their chemical structure, it does follow that neutrons can do some ionizing in there. V (talk) 16:14, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionizing_radiation Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:11, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that article basically says what I wrote above. It adds the fact that the proton, once knocked hard by a neutron, can do quite a bit of ionizing on its own. It spells out that neutrons are indirect ionizing particles; I was talking about direct ionization. Even neutron-absorption leads to indirect ionization. And note the article does not say what I wrote (but what I wrote is quite true) that when a fast neutron hits a nucleus like carbon or oxygen and bounces off, the event is unlikely to make that nucleus lose its electrons. (A really fast neutron might do something to a nucleus called "spallation", causing it to lose a proton or alpha particle that then does some ionizing, but such neutrons are extremely rare.) V (talk) 22:17, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Noren, the AIAA book you refer to is about (potential) breakthroughs in propulsion systems, and Scott Little works for Hal Puthoff who is trying to find proof for the ZPE paradigm. Hal has published several papers on using a putative ZPE device to propel rockets, etc. The book has an article in it by Scott Little, which I attempted to use in my extended debate with Pcarbonn to show he was a 'qualified' source for quotes, etc., in the Wiki CF article. Of course, P didn't agree and we moved on to argue about other things. Scott's article is short and discusses what he has done in the whole excess energy field. He has a section on cold fusion, 7 parageraphs long, which mostly cites some history and describes his MOAC calorimeter performance. One paragraph explains that he has looked at several cold fusion cells, and he says "None of these cold fusion experiments have shown any convincing evidence of excess heat in our calorimeters." This article should be RS in my opinion, but it is a Proceedings article. It certainly substantiates the mainline view than CF is not proven. Kirk shanahan (talk) 12:34, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Add section on x-rays

I was trying to ask Kirk about the beta electrons, protons, and alpha particles measured by varying an electrostatic or magnetic field around the SPAWAR/Galileo experiment and detecting different patterns of such radiation at the same location. I would also like to know if Kirk has a response to the x- and gamma-ray findings which are summarized in that link. Ura Ursa (talk) 14:02, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

I didn't respond to that part of your comment, as I agree with Noren. There is no certain proof of any kind of radiation as long as the conventional mechanism(s) remain unassessed experimentally. (Note: It has been shown and published that mechanical damage causes pits, that is not the issue.) This will be particularly difficult to do for the shockwave idea, possibly impossible. However, if a conventional mechanism can be shown to apply to the excess heat claims, then the idea the pits arise conventionally becomes very realistic. The supposed damage due to X-rays and gamma rays also is unproven. Radiation (ionizing) of all types damages plastics, so that is not a question. The question is whether the damage seen in CF CR-39 plates is due to radiation or something else. I don't feel the answer to that will be forthcoming very soon. Kirk shanahan (talk) 19:58, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Did Noren say the conventional mechanism(s) must be assessed before any kind of radiation can be measured? Why would anyone think that? There are dozens of ways to measure x-rays at a distance, and people have been reporting them consistently with all kinds of detectors. Hagelstein just published a review of more than a thousand such measurements. How do you explain the x-rays? Ura Ursa (talk) 06:37, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

No, I said that, for the last 10 years, in print, 'RS' print at that. Only the first sentence of my reply above referred to what Noren said. Why would anyone think that??? If you are on a jury in a murder trial, and the prosecutor provides evidence that John Doe killed Mary, but the defense successfully impunes the quality of the evidence _and_ brings out other evidence that seriously suggests James Doe did it, would you send John to the gas chamber? On what basis?? It is a trivial concept that when you have two equally likely explanations for something, choosing one over the other is not a scientific choice, but an expression of personal choice (or bigotry). The scientific thing to do is go get more data to resolve the situation. There are dozens of dozens of ways to mis-measure x-rays too. Which Hagelstein review? I haven't seen it. How to explain x-rays: By which method? It makes a difference. I brought up years ago solid reasons why xray film can't be trusted. Devices can malfunction, etc. Be more specific. However, I am not an expert in radiation detection devices and how the malfunction. Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:31, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

I hope science is done with the preponderance of evidence rather than the beyond reasonable doubt standard. Hagelstein, P.L. (2010) "Constraints on energetic particles in the Fleischmann–Pons experiment" Naturwissenschaften 97(4):345-52. Here are some excerpts: "Pt K-alpha x-rays have been observed in Fleischmann–Pons experiments.... Bush and Eagleton reported the observation of Ka x-rays from Pd, Rh, Ag, and Pt from a PdAg alloy correlated with the excess power. In this experiment, the excess power was given as 5.2 W over 64.4 h. About 1,800 Pt Ka x-rays was seen with a detector efficiency of 0.0033, resulting in an estimate of about 1 x-ray/J. In experiments reported in Iwamura et al. (1995), excess heat was observed uncorrelated with x-ray emission; a dominant Pt Ka was seen in the x-ray spectrum." Ura Ursa (talk) 20:29, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Actually science is never done simply on a preponderance of evidence. Collecting data is just one part of science. What has to go along with that is some kind of interpretation. This is not the false supposed requirement of having a full explanation of whatever its going on, but instead is a serious discussion of what the data is, how it is collected, whether it is of adequate quality, and how one goes about reproducing the data. In the case of bodies of evidence purported to only be posssible if a new low energy nuclear reaction is ongoing, in fact there are conventional explanations of equal or better explanatory power that have not been eliminated. When one has two interpretations of one set of evidence that are equally likely (speaking very broadly here, as the idea of a LENR is a really big stretch vs any conventional mechanism) the only conclusion one can make is that the issue remains undecided. Everyone has to go back to the lab at that point and get more dta that will decide between the two or more altenatives. This is where the CFers fall down. Instead of doing that, they wave their hands at what they don't like and act as if that disproved it, then they proceed on as if no criticism (alternative) had ever been made. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:13, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

You can't be suggesting that CFers have spent less time going back to the lab to get more data over the past 15-18 years than their detractors, are you? Ura Ursa (talk) 16:36, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

I am explicitly stating that most of their work (if not all) does not incorporate criticisms. Thus it will never resolve any issues, and thus is pointless. Repeating the past mistakes never helps. Most of their work is of this type. For example, they have know since 2002 (actually 2000 in all likelihood) about the CCS problem. They choose to ignore it or claim it is unimportant, but every publciation they put out on calorimetry shows it could be the dominating factor. This is why they should get no funding. They won't take the steps necessary to advance the state of the art, preferring to burn lots of bucks get more of the same confused data. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:50, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

What steps do want them to take to address the CCS problem? Ura Ursa (talk) 23:12, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

First off, it's not what I want, it's what produces the impression that they have actually considered the problem analytically, and then used those considerations in drawing conclusions. So far the situation is this. Up until my publication of 2002, no one realized it was a problem. Post-2002 there was one generic derrogatory comment made on it by Fleischmann, Miles, Mosier-Boss and Szpak (in 2004), and a detailed one by Storms (2006), which only dealt with the proposed mechanism that might produce a CCS, not the CCS itself. I rebutted both of these comments with lots of facts and figures (not unsubstantiated claims as they have stated in the response to my recent comment), so it certainily can't be concluded that their pubs rule the day. However, that is what they conclude, and they therefore ignore the CCS problem completely. When forced to consider it, by my recent comment in JEM for example, they grossly misstate the problem in a fashion that makes their version clearly incorrect and then claim that "obviously" the CSS is not an issue (this is known as using a strwaman argument, not an acceptable practice). There are probably a variety of ways it could be reasonably addressed. What I would do is what I did in my reply to Fleischmann, et al, and do some numerical estimation of how big a shift would be needed to cause the observed signals to be classified as 'noise'. If that change ends up as outrageous, they might have the beginnings of an argument that the CCS is not important to that work. So far though, they don't even think about it. If they would conclude the effect might be a reasonable explanation for their observations, then they would have to do some subsequent work to prove it isn't before they can claim they have evidence for a LENR. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:53, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

How can CCS be measured experimentally? Ura Ursa (talk) 20:32, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

I just noticed that this article says nothing about x-rays, other than in a title of a reference. Would anyone object if I added a section about x-rays after the section on heat, citing the existing x-ray source, Hagelstein's 2010 review which hasn't been added to the article yet, saying that the "Pd/D system emits X- rays with a broad energy distribution" as stated in Boss et al. (2009) [7]? Ura Ursa (talk) 06:48, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

The abstract you point to says nothing about xrays. I don't have the paper, it seems the book isn't out yet, at least via Amazon, even though it says the release date was (to be) July 23. Until it is actually out, it isn't published, so it's not RS. If you are citing RS you should be able to say what you want. Prior eveidence of xrays is very shaky, based on others comments in the literature, but I am not an expert in how spurious signals can be obtained with nuclear counting equipment. I have mentioned hypering and heat sensitivity of X-ray films as a likely explanation for fogging, and I do so again in my recent paper. I don't believe any of it, but that shouldn't stop anyone from using proper RS properly. Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:31, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

I've asked for a copy of that chapter -- someone might let us read it. The same information is in Szpak et al. (1996) "On the Behavior of the Cathodically Polarized Pd/D System: Search for Emanating Radiation," Phys. Lett. A. 210:382-90 when they were plating on to nickel. The url is www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/SzpakSonthebehavb.pdf but apparently lenr-canr.org is on the Wikipedia blacklist (?!?) Ura Ursa (talk) 20:29, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Here it is! Are there any objections to using these three sources (Szpak et al 1996, Boss et al "2009", and Hagelstein 2010) for a new section on x-rays? Ura Ursa (talk) 08:45, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

There are still no accepted explanation for CF, and we shouldn't start listing every attempted explanation (there are dozens of explanations, we would be picking one explanation over others when none is accepted, we would be giving prominence to explanations by insiders in a fringe field before they are accepted outside of the fringe field, etc.).

And about listing experiment results. Cold_fusion#Reported_phenomenon only lists phenomena that got prominence outside the field (and I just deleted from "nuclear transmutations" a paragraph that cited only primary sources from researches in the field). There are also dozens of different experiments claiming to have found a huge variety of stuff. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:47, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree promoting one theory over the others is a mistake on a fringe subject until the secondary reliable sources have something to say about whether, for instance, Widom-Larsen is better or worse than BEC or other theories.

But is there any reason to omit the single empirical finding which the skeptics have the most difficulty dismissing? Doing so introduces deliberate bias, does it not? Empirical observation is not theory, so the reliable secondary sources standard is appropriate for x-rays. There are so few secondary sources (and do any of them even talk about theory? I think some of them mention transmutations, though) that there's no danger of the article ballooning in size if we summarize the emperical observations they include. Ura Ursa (talk) 09:05, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

"the single empirical finding which the skeptics have the most dificulty dismissing" <-- if this is the reason for inclusion, you should find a secondary source stating so. (actually, mentions in any secondary sources outside of the field could do the trick. For example, I checked Goodstein 2010 but it doesn't seem to mention much beyond Scaramuzzi). --Enric Naval (talk) 10:41, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

I wasn't proposing saying that detractors have the most difficulty dismissing x-ray evidence, I was only proposing including the empirical x-ray evidence because it is thoroughly documented in the reliable secondary literature. However, when we talk about what should and should not be included in order to present an unbiased article, isn't it true that the x-ray evidence, for which there has been no viable explanation other than nuclear processes, ought to be included? Ura Ursa (talk) 18:46, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that x-rays are not "thoroughly documented in the reliable secondary literature". They are documented in Hagelstein's review, who is a supporter of CF. They lack an outside review that frames how importance mainstream gives to the claims that x-ray have been measured and correlated to excess heat. That why I looked at Goodstein, who is an outsider. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:28, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

There are 136 mentions of x-rays in Britz's bibliography. Before I go through looking for detractors who found x-rays (which I think may be a fools errand, because I doubt anyone finding x-rays sticks with the non-nuclear hypotheses for very long) please explain why we need outsider claims for empirical observations instead of the usual WP:RS standard. Doesn't the fact that we are supposed to summarize the most substantial controversies first mean that we need to use the peer reviewed secondary sources for fringe empirical observations, even if there is a stricter standard for theory? Ura Ursa (talk) 23:12, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

From WP:PARITY: "The prominence of fringe views needs to be put in perspective relative to the views of the entire encompassing field (in this case, physics, nuclear physycis, or maybe chemistry); limiting that relative perspective to a restricted subset of specialists or only amongst the proponents of that view is, necessarily, biased and unrepresentative.". --Enric Naval (talk) 03:03, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

That section talks entirely about fringe "theories," not peer reviewed reports of empirical observations reported in the secondary literature. Those aren't "theories" or "views." In any case, at least two of the current NRL researchers were documented detractors before they were assigned to the field, but there might be better examples in Britz's bibliography. I'll look. Ura Ursa (talk) 14:46, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

i would also add that a single piece of evidence is never conclusive. It has to replicated (in detail, so that it is reproducible). The Wiki article should focus on the supposed large bodies of evidence, and not get drawn off into trivialities. Kirk shanahan (talk) 12:59, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Are you suggesting that the x-rays are trivial or have not been reproduced sufficiently? Ura Ursa (talk) 18:46, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

Other way 'round dude. You are proposing to add a section on x-rays, when all of your predecessors found it not worthwhile. Do you have secondary RS as Enric suggested to show us that people besides the fanatics think it might be real or important? If not, then drop the issue and save us some time. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:50, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

As one of those "predecessors", I'd like to interject the comment that this Talk Section is the first I've heard about X-rays being reported in any of the literature. I don't know how many other "predecessors" also lacked that information, but it would be a very simple reason why no X-ray section has been proposed before (WAS it proposed before, and archived away, before I started posting here?). V (talk) 04:38, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

There are about 25 mentions of x-rays in the archives, the first being from Jed Rothwell, which explains the redundant autoradiographs that most of the experimenters looking for x-rays used. Ura Ursa (talk) 07:17, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Do you want a report of x-rays in a review from someone who is previously on record as disbelieving that any nuclear processes are occurring, or someone who had never before produced surprising results in the field? Why would that be better than the reports above from peer reviewed literature review? Isn't external mention the standard for fringe theories, whereas reports of empirical observations at the fringes should follow NPOV because we're supposed to order the controversies by how substantial they are? Ura Ursa (talk) 19:57, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

What I think we all want is a) a proposed edit to look at, and b) the RS justifying adding it, esp. in light of what Enric wrote above about avoiding undue weight to fringe theories. What I would call acceptable RS would be something like where one of the DOE review panels considered x-rays, etc. or some other summary of the field like Goodstein's article where they discuss the people or process that produced collected radiation data. In other words, anything where significant consideration is given to radiation data that does NOT originate from a known cold fusion researcher. Unfortunately for you, to my knowledge, no such RS exists, which is probably why your predecessors didn't try to put it in. Most of the RS available revolves around the DOE reviews and the state of affairs back in 1994, primarily because most mainline scientists quit the field about ten. Exceptions are my papers on calorimetry and Clarke's papers on He detection. So just put up a proposed edit in a new section here, with supporting refs (i.e. RS) and we'll comment. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:23, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

I propose: "X-Rays / X-rays have been observed in Fleischmann–Pons experiments. (Hagelstein 2010) The cathodically polarized Pd/D system emits X-rays with a broad energy distribution. (Szpak et al 1996)" Would one of the previously neutral experimenters confirming Arata and Zhang's gas phase x-ray observations be satisfactory as a third outside source? Ura Ursa (talk) 07:17, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

I was hoping someone else would chip in here, but I guess not. So, as I said above, I don't believe the Hagelstein reference is published (yet?), so until then, it doesn't count. The third ref you give is unspecified at this point, so all you have is the one Szpak ref, and we are back at the point of injecting fringe theory favoring material into the article. So, I'd vote 'no', no section on x-rays. Kirk shanahan (talk) 12:35, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

The Hagelstein review says "Published online: 05 February 2010". Does that change your opinion or do you still want someone to propose a specific reference from one of the several previously neutral experimenters in Britz's bibliography who confirmed x-rays from Arata and Zhang's gas phase experiment to go along with it? Ura Ursa (talk) 15:55, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I thought you said (at the NoticeBoard) that this article had been published in the RS journal Naturwissenschaften. If it hasn't actually been published yet (unless ACCEPTED pre-prints count, which perhaps is what you linked), then I might have to agree with Shanahan, that we can't use it until it is "officially published". 208.103.154.83 (talk) 15:36, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it was officially published in April 2010, in Volume 97, Number 4 of Naturwissenschaften. There have been five issues published since, so this line of argument is pointless. Ura Ursa (talk) 17:27, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

So we will just use the same argument now re: Hagelstein as we did re: Szpak. Too much support from fringe theory sources, none from mainline. Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:19, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Please be more specific. All Naturwissenschaften articles qualify as mainline, so this new Hagelstein article is mainline, too. Are you talking about the "thousand papers" that were examined in the process of this article getting written? Were ALL of those thousand articles published in fringe journals? Or, more relevant to the current discussion/section here, were only the articles that mention detecting X-rays published in fringe journals? I could agree you might have a point if that were true. On the other hand, since the Naturwissenschaften article now exists for the mainstream to get started thinking about looking for X-rays in CF experiments.... V (talk) 00:04, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Please refer back to, and understand, the above comment of Enric Naval on 03:03, 24 August 2010 (UTC). Balance has to be maintained. Cold fusion is a fringe theory, and the article should make that clear, not push the fringe theory. Therefore, no undue focus on minor issues in the field, especially to the exclusion of the major ones. Show us RS discussing x-rays (or whatever) from authors outside the fringe group to substantiate the proposed edit's relevance and importance, and its impact on balance, and then we can discuss. Kirk shanahan (talk) 12:30, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

You are saying that a peer-reviewed secondary source in a journal which has already been decided a reliable source for this article is still a fringe source? On what grounds? Would you personally remove a section on x-rays which cites the Hagelstein review, the Arata and Zhang gas phase confirmations in the primary literature, and Szpak et al 1996? Or would you merely advocate for its removal? Ura Ursa (talk) 23:20, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

"Cold fusion is a fringe theory" is not a basis for the exclusion of any reliably-sourced material from the article. There is no objective standard for "membership in a fringe group." What is found in reliable source is what we can use, and "reliable source" is dependent only on the publisher and publishing process. Storms (2007) is a secondary source review of the field, and it's dicey excluding Storms as a source; this wasn't published by a "fringe publisher." Storms covers many papers reporting X-ray emissions.

I see that there was a question at RSN about the Hagelstein review published in Naturwissenschaften. There is some remarkable material there. I'm sure we will be suggesting changes to the article based on this source. The paper is original research on a specific question, upper limits on the energy of the helium known to be generated -- this paper assumes that helium is being generated, a fact which should not be overlooked: the NW reviewers are passing such claims routinely now. The paper is reliable, peer-reviewed secondary source on the evidence that Hagelstein examines to come up with his conclusions. They are remarkable conclusions, by the way.

The basic conclusion is that as a reaction product, the alpha particle must be born with an energy less than 6.3 to 20.3 keV in order to be consistent with the absence of neutrons between 0.008 and 0.8 n/J as measured in Fleischmann–Pons experiments where excess heat is produced. Measurements of 4He correlated with energy production in the Fleischmann–Pons experiment suggest that the reaction energy is 24 MeV per helium atom produced. If so, then the experimental results are consistent with the alpha particle having less than 0.1% of the reaction energy.

I could go on to describe the theories that are actively being considered in the field; I heard Hagelstein speak on this at MIT this year, and others. People are working on various mechanisms whereby cluster fusion might transfer energy to, say, an entire nanoparticle. (Cluster fusion is necessary to deal with the problem of conservation of momentum; the reaction must produce two alpha particles; if there were only one, the energy would have to be carried off by a gamma ray, which would be detected.) Takahashi himself at one point predicted that an unspecified amount of the energy would be radiated by a series of photon emissions, by an excited Be-8 nucleus, formed from the BEC fusion of two deuterium molecules (i.e., four deuterons), before the Be-8 decays. Unfortunately, I think, if I recall correctly, the ground state decay is something like 90 KeV/He-4, well above Hagelstein's limit. But I will emphasize what Hagelstein says, which is what Storms published in 2007, and it is still true. We can't say yet that we know what is happening.

"Something is happening here, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?" --Abd (talk) 05:43, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Widom-Larsen theory, heavy fermions, and heavy electron/proton interactions

Moved to User talk:StevenBKrivit. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:37, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

I am not happy about these collapses and moves. The first link removed, Two Decades of “Cold Fusion”, is clearly vital to understanding the history of the topic, and simplification of Widom-Larsen theory is useful if you can get past the low-contrast backgrounds. The fact that heavy fermions, an accepted non-controversial field of research, also deals with heavy electrons in metal alloys is also appropriate here. Ura Ursa (talk) 02:07, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Here is the problem, Ura Ursa. This isn't a page for exploring the background of this topic, nor for debating the various theories extant. We might start to look at how the article is impoverished in its presentation of the various theories that have been presented over the years, as they are covered in reliable secondary sources. I'll merely add a link to what was moved,[8] and point out that this was not the place to ask Mr. Krivit a question, and his personal answers would carry no authority. However, if he points to a reliable secondary source, that would be quite useful, I'm sure, and he is even the author of some such sources, made reliable by how they were published. --Abd (talk) 22:01, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

The CFers Response to the 2010 JEM Shanahan Paper

I had promised a comment on the Response to my Comment on Krivit and Marwan’s article. As expected, according to them, I am completely wrong, everywhere. They come to this conclusion by systematically misunderstanding and misrepresenting what I wrote. Case in point, they refer to the idea that my CCS problem requires random results. In fact I have clearly published that that is not true, it is highly non-random. Yet they state it is according to me (their strawman), and then use it to prove I can’t be right, except it is _their_ proposal that is incorrect, not mine. It is truly astounding the level of denial these folks evidence. The rest of the paper is the same way, so I’m not going to bore you with details. I suspect some CF promoter will want to work it into the article. For my part that will be fine as long as done correctly. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:01, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Could you provide a link to that Response? Not to mention, OF COURSE the CCS phenomenon is non-random. It is controlled exclusively by Kirk Shanahan: Any experiment that detects small amounts of excess heat must be a CCS thing, and any experiment that exhibits such large amounts of excess heat that CCS cannot possibly explain it, must be explained instead by hydrogen-oxygen recombination. :) V (talk) 15:40, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

The link to JEM's on-line publications of accepted articles is http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Journals/JournalIssues/EM#/AdvanceArticle . Undoubtedly you will have to buy the article(s) as I had to, it is a subscription journal like all the rest. You will have to look for it, as they keep adding new ones. When I posted this, my article was 4th and the response was 5th in the list. Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:58, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

V, I suggest you google 'systematic error'. When I did, I found out, without even going to the pages brought up, that a systematic error is not random (of course I already knew this, but you never believe me, so I supply proof). The CFers response completely mis-states my proposal as being one of random errors. There is no excuse for that, they just refuse to know. Which proves the point I make in my Comment that they refuse to deal with conventional explanations. Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:58, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Would you please describe an experiment which could measure calibration constant shift? Ginger Conspiracy (talk) 22:52, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

The short answer is "No", because you have not proposed an article edit for discussion, so I don't see why we need to start this discussion. The long answer is "I already have", the 'experiment' used the very same data that Dr. Edmund Storms used for his 2000 presentation (so he did all the data gathering), I just analyzed the data differently. So, I suggest you read my first paper to understand what I did. The manuscript version can be obtained at Jed Rothwell's lenr-canr site, look under my name in the index. Then remember that science is conservative, meaning that when an interpretation of data is available that does not violate known physics/chemistry, and produces a reasonable interpretation, meaning you don't have to stretch your thinking to the breaking point, that explanation is to be preferred over one that suggests known physics is wrong and requires mental backflips to try to understand what might be happening. 'Cold fusion' was only a reasonable last alternative to explain apparent excess heat signals as long as there was no other reasonable alternative, i.e. it was the explanation of last resort. Kirk shanahan (talk) 12:32, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Should calibration constant shift be described in the article as an effect which can be measured experimentally, or as an alternative hypothesis for interpreting data? If there is no way to measure how much calibration constant shift is occurring, then the article should say that, shouldn't it? If it is possible to measure the extent of CCS, could you please at least explain in a few sentences how someone might go about measuring it? Ura Ursa (talk) 15:58, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Hey Ura, some of the comments that got archived a long time ago from this page were about experiments deliberately attempting to find evidence for a calibration-constant shift, and none succeeded. Shanahan never explained why it only occurs in experiments where he wants it to be an explanation, and doesn't appear in experiments designed to prove it can actually happen. Also, if the X-ray thing is valid, then Shanahan has ANOTHER problem, trying to make his purely-chemical explanation produce X-rays...normally, fairly-high-speed electrons are required to exist, before X-rays can begin to appear, and the voltages to cause such electron speeds are MUCH higher than those normally found in an ordinary electrochemical cell. I'm not aware of ANY ordinary chemical reactions, including Cs+F->CsF, that can produce X-rays. V (talk) 07:21, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

Can you find that discussion in the Archives or History for me, please? If an effect can not be measured, it might be a hypothesis but it can not be a falsifiable scientific theory. You would think that Shanahan would want his readers to understand how his theory could be tested. Maybe that he can't is why he feels that the experimenters don't listen to his arguments? Ura Ursa (talk) 17:29, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm sure it was more than a year ago, and I don't know enough about how to search the archives to find it. Also, if memory serves, the discussion was a bit short on specifics (references to the experiments). 208.103.154.105 (talk) 04:50, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

There has never been a valid test of the CCS outside of my reanalysis of the Storms data. There are many instances of where CF data seems to support the CCS, but it is too little to firmly do so. There are no examples proving it doesn't apply. Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:21, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

This is not a page for debating Cold fusion or the merits or demerits of Mr. Shanahan's hypothesis. This is a page for the discussion of changes to the article. I am now COI on this topic, so I will be confining my comments to Talk pages, except for making non-controversial edits to the article, or, if I think changes I'd propose might be controversial, to sometimes making self-reverted edits, so that changes can easily be seen directly, much easier than looking at an "explanation." As to the above, I don't see a proposed change there, rather a personal defense by Mr. Shanahan of his position against "CFers," which is probably out of place here. His Talk page would be fine for that. --Abd (talk) 21:33, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps you should read the whole topic before commenting Abd. If you notice it started with me supplying the promised brief comment on the new RS publication from J. Environ. Monitor. that responded to my new RS comment in the same journal. Subsequent to that is a little discussion of my comment, probably undertaken by Ura to be able to formulate his/her proposed edit, since it would probably be considered inadequate for me to formulate the edit to be added from that Response. I agree, extended discussions of CF without relevance to an article edit is not kosher here. You may also note the immediate ad hominem attack by V, and you may wish to chastise him/her for that too. (And it's 'Dr.' to you...) Kirk shanahan (talk) 12:16, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

My apologies, Dr. Shanahan. Before seeing the above, you might notice I was writing "Dr. Shanahan" elsewhere, so I had no intention of disrespecting your academic credentials. I've been following the publication described, but I don't yet have a copy of the response that was published with it. V is often a bit off, but I didn't chastise you personally, so why would you expect I'd chastise him? Below, I do comment on your recent comment that was almost purely personal without addressing the substance. On the substance of your note here, I myself fell into the error of discussing background with a goal of eventually leading to edits. It's quite unpopular, and irritates those who want to see simple questions to which they can respond, more or less, Yes or No. So such background discussion should go to individual talk pages or sometimes a working draft or the like in user space, sometimes in Talk space (which also allows subpages). Most frequently, a change will be proposed by an actual edit to the article, it's efficient to avoid discussing changes that don't actually need discussion, and then we have something to sink our teeth into, so to speak, here. However, you and I are both COI, so we shouldn't be the ones to make final decisions and should avoid making, ourselves, controversial edits to the article. We are advisors here, allowed to participate in discussion, but not to determine the results. It actually makes a great deal of sense, and the shame is that Pcarbonn was community-banned last year based solely on his advice on this Talk page, as he, also, went from being an uninvolved editor (I believe), once banned, to working in the field. Opportunities abound! --Abd (talk) 16:56, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Proposed explanations

Well over a year ago, there was some level of consensus found on the Proposed explanations section. See a poll that was undertaken at [9]. (There was a "competing poll" started, linked from there, but results from that poll, a simpler type of poll, were translated back to this poll. Later, there was some dispute about how this was translated, but "we do not vote," and the poll was simply intended to sense consensus. From the combined results, there was consensus approval of two versions: [10]. There was very low approval for the version that was restored by an admin, but, that is pretty much what stands in the article. It's time to look at this.

The changes were sourced from multiple reliable sources, some of it, or some from at least one secondary source review (and that was attributed, as I recall). Without this kind of material, the article makes it appear that there aren't any theories that might explain cold fusion, except "ad hoc" ones. In a sense, that's true, in that no theory has been well-confirmed by the traditional process of making predictions that are then found to be accurate. Such predictions are extremely difficult in the field, because the details of the reaction are still unknown, and accurate calculations from the theories that exist are extraordinarily difficult. This fact, too, was covered in the material, that no theory has been found to be fully satisfactory to explain all the observed phenomena.

Note that only two theories were given that propose an explanation, beyond the theories of "experimental error" or "misinterpretation of results." There are others; these were merely some well-sourced ones, and one of them is widely rejected by those in the field. But it is reliably sourced!

Comment on current thinking among researchers. Not for the article.

The best opinion that I get from researchers in the field is that some kind of cluster fusion is responsible for the effect. That would cover Takahashi's Tetrahedral Symmetric Condensate theory, but Storms believes that larger clusters are involved, as does Kim, I think, though I haven't discussed this with Kim. For physicists reading this, Takahashi uses classical quantum field theory to predict fusion within a femtosecond if a particular physical configuration of two deuterium molecules forms with sufficiently low relative velocity, allowing collapse into a Bose-Einstein condensate, which then fuses to a single Be-8 nucleus. This would explain, in fact, the "triple miracle." What then happens is very difficult to predict; originally I assumed that the Be-8 would immediately decay into two He-4 nuclei, with equal and opposite momentum, kinetic energy 23.8 MeV each. But apparently Takahashi has predicted that the excited nucleus would radiate energy for a time before fissioning, and the behavior of a fusion taking place within a Bose-Einstein condensate is, shall we say, unknown. The electrons are included in the collapse; they also might carry off some energy. Theory, here, is totally out on a limb. I've talked with Hagelstein about this, and we agreed that an experimental approach was to start looking for evidence that D2 exists in the molecular form, in confinement, at various depths in the metal deuteride. NMR spectroscopy? Difficult, still, since D2 will exist at the surface already, in abundance. People should appreciate how difficult it is to study a phenomenon which obviously only occurs with very low cross-section, and possibly underneath the surface of a metal, and under very poorly-understood conditions. (But the conditions are much better understood now than they were in 1989.) There are two standard objections to Takahashi's theory: It is easily thought that this would produce significant alpha radiation at relatively high energies, and Hagelstein was published this year in Naturwissenschaften as establishing an upper limit on the energy of such radiation that is quite low. I'm writing off the top of my head now, and as I recall, the limit was well below 100 KeV, maybe as low as 10 KeV. The radiation reported by various groups is probably from secondary reactions; that is how SPAWAR explains the neutrons they have reported. This reported radiation tells us almost nothing about the primary reaction, just that something is happening there and you don't know what it is, do you, Dr. Jones?" That's why the SPAWAR neutrons are important, but, as was pointed out long ago, the levels of neutron radiation are far, far lower than expected if the reaction were classical deuterium-deuterium fusion. Dr. Storms has pointed out, in private correspondence with me, that it would take energy to form the tetrahedral configuration that Takahashi studies. Where would this energy come from? My own answer to him was that sufficient energy might be available from ordinary thermal motion; we are not talking about a bulk process, but one where the actual reaction is quite rare. The energy would only be needed to bring two deuterium molecules close enough; as they slowed from normal intermolecular repulsion, outside of confinement, normally one or both molecules would dissociate; but if this happened within confinement, they might stay together, and if the approach velocity, angular velocities, and confinement were just right, this combination might reach "top dead center" and at that point, TSC collapse would take over. But talk about original research! The knee-jerk response to multiple-deuteron fusion has been that it would be supremely rare, but this was thinking in terms of plasma fusion, of the idea that if the collision of two nuclei is rare, then three would be rare upon rare, and four ridiculously rare, like age-of-the-universe rare. But that's a misunderstanding of Takahashi's theory, which really starts with a cluster that amounts to two deuterium molecules, three or four of the electrons included. And in confinement, where spatial co-location becomes far higher in probability. Please respond to this only within collapse, this is not for article editing. --Abd (talk) 00:21, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

The current version of this section: [11]. Because the article was in difficult conditions before, with revert warring taking place, I am putting together what I consider the best of what was removed, to suggest an alternative. My view is that we should, for starters, simply decide which version is better; if the present version is better, then we should stick with it and maybe incorporate something usable from the past, if the version I propose is better, then we should implement that and then fix it. Neither version is likely to be ideal, in my opinion. For efficiency, I'm proposing through a self-reverted edit, so you can see the section in context.

I propose to use this version for that section, or something improved upon it. This is based on the version just before protection. Note that I also changed, for this, the header of the top level section, to separate out the theoretical objections from the proposed explanations. This may not be ideal as an approach, but we have long had the preposterous situation of a Proposed explanation section that doesn't describe, at all, any sourced, notable proposed explanations, and there are more than I've put in. At that time, this was just the start of it.

There was substantial discussion of the issues involved here at [12]. Thanks for considering this. --Abd (talk) 00:21, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

I believe you mis-remember. As far as I recall there was no consensus reached, in part because 'illegal' tactics were being used. Further, the proposed section(s) you cite uses unsubstantiated fringe theories to defend a fringe theory. Not consistent with Wiki policy. The most that should be done is to note that there are a variety of extant theories proposed to explain CF results which cannot be proved/disproved at this time due to lack of reliable results, point to Storms' book, and leave it at that. On the other hand, there are several RS papers now that describe the conventional proposed explanations that are underdescribed in the article given the current major focus on describing all the experimental observations that supposedly support a nuclear explanation. That does need to be changed, and when I get the time, I will re-propose a section to do just that. Kirk shanahan (talk) 12:42, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

No, his memory is correct, and so is the record. And I'm sorry to disappoint you, but there were no "illegal" tactics used. Also, wiki policy says nothing on the matter of your rather egregious interpretation. You clearly made that up. etc. etc. etc. Point is, Abd is correct. And his recommendation on how to move forward is sensible and prudent. Kevin Baas^talk 14:21, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, I never agreed that his proposed section was acceptable. Perhaps your consesus is everybody except Shanahan? Given that I and Enric are about the only ones trying to rein in the CF fanatics, that rejects 50% of the commentators. Wiki policy, as stated above by Enric, says "The prominence of fringe views needs to be put in perspective relative to the views of the entire encompassing field (in this case, physics, nuclear physycis, or maybe chemistry); limiting that relative perspective to a restricted subset of specialists or only amongst the proponents of that view is, necessarily, biased and unrepresentative.". (Enric Naval 03:03, 24 August 2010 (UTC)). Given that there is no explanation of the conventional exlanations for the observations other than a sentence or two, more than a sentence or two on the putative nuclear theories is in violation of this policy. The primary 'illegal' (note the quotes please, they indicate that the word is used figuratively) method was wall-of-texting, but ad hominem attacks, refusal to accept corrective comments, etc., were also prominent. Abd's proposal violates Wiki policy. Kirk shanahan (talk) 14:49, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

The poll to which Abd refers was and is deeply flawed. Abd's reinterpretation of Woonpton's views (to which she strongly objected) produced a strong feeling that Abd's actions were unhelpful and led to some editors declining to participate. Any alleged consensus from that poll was illusory. EdChem (talk) 15:02, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

EdChem, this is completely irrelevant to the questions before us today. No claim is made that we should accept that alleged consensus text if we believe that the current version is better. Nor should be we shy about improving either, based on what we find in reliable sources and our advancing and developing consensus. I will say, however, that the argument EdChem gives would not apply to the competing poll that was set up, anyone could have !voted in that poll instead, and that poll was fully considered in what I wrote. The only reason I even mention the prior issue and the polls is to establish that the proposed text is reasonable within some kind of appreciation of what existed as apparent consensus in the past. It is not binding. --Abd (talk) 16:25, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

You are claiming the poll has value for a present discussion. I am saying, as someone who watched that earlier discussiuon, there is nothing of value to be resurrected from it. Simple. EdChem (talk) 14:36, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

It has value only to indicate a starting point, and I've repeatedly stated that, including directly above. The poll clearly indicated consensus at the time, and I've still seen no response from you, Ed, then or now, on the substance here, which is the content, not ancient disagreements over poll techniques. --Abd (talk) 15:25, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Well then Abd, why did you even bring it up (the poll, or the presumed consensus, which looks today like it never was)? Just post your proposed edits and quit the editorializing on what happened in the past. Kirk shanahan (talk) 14:31, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

EdChem: I don't know to what you are refering when you say "Abd's reinterpretation of Woonpton's views", and I certainly don't see how that would make the poll "deeply flawed" or any alleged consensus "illusory". That seems to me at best a gross and rather bald application of black-and-white fallacy. Kirk: you've made a lot of accusations, but i will only ask you to substantiate your last and most egregious: that abd's proposal violates wiki policy. please show me the policy that abd's proposal violates. (and yes, the consensus actively and intentionally excluded kirk and nobody else (rolls eyes).) Kevin Baas^talk 15:12, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not going to get into a policy debate, I am simply stating that the poll was highly problematic and disputed as I believe anyone seeking to use it now should be made aware of its illegitimacy. EdChem (talk) 14:36, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

How about we assume, for now, that the poll was flawed? So what? If we are going to debate every alleged misrepresentational nuance of every comment, we will never get to the purpose of Wikipedia: content. --Abd (talk) 15:30, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

The policy is quoted right above! It all involves NPOV, undue weight, fringe theory, etc., etc. A Wikipedia CF article that does NOT give the reader that the mainstream view of CF is that it is bogus, and that does NOT explain the valid reasons for this is heavily biased. Adding more strange junk about more irreproducible and unexplainable effects just biases it further. Kirk shanahan (talk) 14:34, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Kirk is rejecting the position that ArbComm has taken on Fringe Science. That's okay, he's COI; he is showing why a COI editor shouldn't be making controversial edits to the article, but should stay on Talk, to advise us as a (relative) expert. I see no attempt to add "strange junk" about "irreproducible and unexplainable effects" is circular, since what he might be attempting to exclude is proposed explanations! In any case, if we were to write the article to "give the reader that the mainstream view of CF is that it is bogus," without dating that view, when it is patently obvious from current publication that something has shifted, we would be giving it a POV slant. It became a very popular view among scientists, especially those not actually involved with the research, that CF was "pathological science," and there is RS for that. But the balance of publication has radically shifted in the last few years. Papers on this topic are being accepted in mainstream publications, and some of these papers simply treat low energy nuclear reactions as a reality. Are the peer-reviewers being hoodwinked? But, I'll remind us, we are here only discussing some minor changes to the article, and if every discussed change turns into a debate over the status of cold fusion, we will spin our wheels and get nowhere.

Are the proposed changes presented neutrally? Do they misrepresent what is in the sources? Are the sources sufficiently reliable for the purpose? If so, keeping the article, as it is, is maintaining the exclusion of reliably-sourced text, in a way that imbalances the article toward, indeed, the idea that "cold fusion" is purely "bogus." This is not the scientific consensus at this time, among experts. And that can be shown with high certainty to be true since 2004. So what is "cold fusion"? That's another story. We don't know. Our article should present the notable proposed explanations. --Abd (talk) 16:04, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

What is it?

(The very name of the article shows a difficult-to-root-out bias. Fleischmann later regretted having asserted that he'd discovered a "fusion" reaction. He didn't have adequate evidence for that! (He thought he'd found neutrons. He'd made an error, the physicists were quick to point out!) The problem is, partly, "What is fusion?" The fusion that was widely rejected, in the early days, is still rejected by most in the CF community as well. Almost everyone assumed that if there were a nuclear reaction taking place, it would have to be d + d fusion. It is quite unlikely to be that, which is implausible for all the reasons that the article correctly reports. However, what the article does not report is the evidence, extremely strong and covered in secondary sources -- including Huizenga (1994)! --, that the major ash is indeed He-4 (which could imply some kind of deuterium fusion, but not necessarily the simple, two-particle deuterium fusion, which almost certainly doesn't happen, the signatures are quite thoroughly missing). Instead, the article covers, on this, only an obvious error on the part of the anonymous bureaucrat who compiled the 2004 DoE report summary. Certainly it does not mention Huizenga's comment, academically published, and certainly it does not mention the many secondary sources covering this. This was all pointed out more than a year ago.... Steve Krivit has trouble with "fusion" because he's been promoting Widom-Larsen theory, which is basically Rube Goldberg, my opinion and that of many in the field. W-L theory proposes a mechanism for the production of "ultra-low-momentum" neutrons, which would have a very high capture cross-section, and which would, if formed, produce a series of nuclear transformations. Steve doesn't consider this "fusion," even though it proposes helium as a product, starting with deuterium. A purely semantic distinction! But this is why the field, as a science, is not called Cold fusion formally. It's because we don't really know what the reaction is, so calling it "fusion" is way premature, from this point of view. However, it isn't controversial any more that the primary ash is helium; W-L theory is fringe within "fringe" -- or emerging science. Increasingly, those in the field are dropping the "shame" and, from the beginning, as Bart Simon documents, they have called the field "cold fusion" in casual conversations. But formally, no, for the reasons I've explained. Fusion is still a hypothesis, other possibilities have not yet been completely ruled out. --Abd (talk) 16:04, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

I looked at that poll and now I am reminded of how disgusted i was with people. Rather than being helpful and productive and work together, some people saw the poll as an opportunity to try to criminalize Abd with very very tenuous and very bad faith accusations that where in clear ignorance and contradiction of his tone and explicit words. it was disgusting. if i were one of them i'd be embarrassed. and now you take that filth and model it as if it were some prized treasure. i find it all quite strange.

now the basic idea here is quite plain as it was before: before we go into edit warring lets find a very that is, if not mutually satisfactory, at least less contentiuous, on the basis of history and objective things rather than opinions, and then we can agree to work together in good faith and slowly come to a better version w/out so much warring. we're all adults here, i presume, that should be within the realm of possibilities. Kevin Baas^talk 15:26, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

What happened here, in brief summary, was an invasion from "outside," with larger agendas being pursued, by some editors with no interest in or knowledge of cold fusion itself, and that's a huge story that I will not tell here. I agree that we should now turn to what could have and should have been continued in the year I've been absent. Something is wrong if an article on a topic as notable as this one depends on one person (on any side of an issue). I've watched, over the year, many arguments here that were grounded in neither Wikipedia policy or what is in the large corpus of usable publication, unable to respond on-wiki. I personally benefited from being banned, for when I saw it coming, I turned to begin working in the field itself, I had been completely neutral when I started here, skeptical, in fact. I was convinced otherwise by detailed study of the available material, which, by the way, included every skeptical source I could find. I started a business selling materials and, eventually, kits for replication of cold fusion experiments, starting with the relatively simple neutron findings of SPAWAR. Much of what has been written about the SPAWAR work here has been off, both on the positive and negative side. And that will be a subject for other discussions. For now, what are the notable theories that are proposed as explanations for apparent LENR effects? I could start with Huizenga et al, in their presentation of Edward Teller's meshugatron. Why isn't this covered? I'll write proposed text. --Abd (talk) 16:41, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

It is unfortunate that you choose to characterize the situation in quite direct battleground terms. I feel that I should point out that, contrary to your "outside" generalization, I can think of at least one person (ahem) who disagreed with your actions who has been active on this page for far longer than you have. I should also point out that in addition to being inaccurate in describing the history of the persons involved, the contention that we should dismiss some editors' contributions as being "outside", and thereby judge editors by the length of time they have been editing this page is not a helpful construction. Long time editors do not own a page to any degree greater than more recent arrivals. --Noren (talk) 02:36, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Wow, were you listening to anything that he said? Kevin Baas^talk 13:28, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict with above) The discussion on which I based the claim of consensus was referenced in my comment. That's an objective statement. Every single editor who commented [on the versions] was willing to accept two of the proposed versions. Dr. Shanahan did not comment, but it would have made little difference if he had. (In the original poll, a version that had been suggested by him was included. It had no sustained support, so that version can be found in one of the collapses in the poll). --Abd (talk) 16:15, 16 September 2010 (UTC)added [on the versions] per comment from Noren, below. --Abd (talk) 14:27, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

I commented on that poll and I most certainly did not express willingness to accept two of the proposed versions. Please retract this false characterization of my comment immediately. --Noren (talk) 01:53, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Wow, feigned indignation and an inequitably demanding attitude.... clearly a republican. Kevin Baas

Noren, I assure you that if I were aware of a disagreement from you, as to the proposed versions, I would not have stated what I stated. Thinking that I'd overlooked something, preparing to strike my statement or refactor, I looked and found only one "comment," but it did not relate to the versions themselves, and was only your criticism of me and the process. I looked through all the history of the Talk page for June, so if you commented further, it would have had to have been elsewhere or elsewhen. However, when I wrote "commented," I meant, of course, "commented on the versions." There were other comments about the poll itself, i.e., debate over process rather than content, so I've added, above, the clarification of my meaning. Let's not go there again. It doesn't matter if you failed to comment then, you can comment now. Do you have any specific issues with the content proposed? Particularly in comparison to the present content? --Abd (talk) 14:27, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

On the issue of "undue weight"

talk 13:26, 17 September 2010 (UTC) There has been a great deal of misunderstanding about this issue of "prominence," and, further, there are issues in how alleged fringe science is presented that are not well-articulated in policy, last I looked. In the end, we make ad hoc decisions about the article, here, seeking consensus among those interested, and if there is conflict, we escalate discussion, widening it; for example, if there is an issue over what constitutes reliable source for a fact, that we cannot resolve here, we can go to the reliable source noticeboard. We can run a request for comment. In any case, there is a difficulty with the statement from Enric, because the nature of the "entire encompassing field" is not clear. What we call "cold fusion" may not be fusion, it might be something else. However, the discoverers of excess heat in the palladium deuteride system, the original phenomenon observed (correctly or not), were expert chemists, and they said that what they observed could not be explained by chemistry, so they proposed a nuclear reaction. Later, Fleischmann regretted having proposed that it was "fusion," because the evidence for this claim was weak, and, it turns out, based on experimental error. However, the excess heat findings have never been successfully refuted, Dr. Shanahan's efforts being the most notable attempt, the only one still standing in some sense. And it is barely notable. (It's notable because there is response to it from researchers in peer-reviewed papers, those form a kind of secondary source allowing us to cover it briefly in the article.) So, is this a chemistry topic or is it a nuclear physics topic. And the "weight" of opinion, we might find, could depend on whether we are considering chemists or physicists. It is a very complex issue, but one which, fortunately, we do not need to resolve, because we don't really depend on some kind of imagined poll of "scientists." We use our reliable source standards to determine the relevant body of evidence from which weight is determined, and we simply avoid misrepresenting what is in that body of evidence. It is, however, still, a complex decision, and one which is only resolvable through seeking consensus, which can require a great deal of discussion, at least initially. --Abd (talk) 16:15, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Now, if we mention Dr. Shanahan's CCS theory in the article, will this be providing undue weight? It could be argued so, but this is where we run into the misinterpretation of "undue weight." Due weight is determined by the balance of reliable sources that are available. Undue weight is not an excuse to exclude what can be reliably sourced. --Abd (talk) 16:15, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Continued discussion of "undue weight."

Undue weight is not a complex judgment based on our synthetic understanding of what is "accepted" and what is not, with what is not "accepted" being therefore rejected. That would be a view that would guarantee endless conflict. Rather, a fact, if found in reliable source, and especially if found in more than one, particularly reliable secondary sources, cannot be excluded from the project. How the fact is presented, though, is a different matter. For example, in the subject section, there is a claim from Dr. Storms: According to Storms (2007), no published theory has been able to meet all the requirements of basic physical principles, while adequately explaining the experimental results he considers established or otherwise worthy of theoretical consideration. This is, of course, not controversial, i.e., if we were to argue that Storms didn't make that claim in his book, we'd be arguing something preposterous. He did. And it's notable because Storms (2007) is a secondary source, published by an independent publisher not known for promoting fringe science, and Storms is widely published in the field and thus his opinion is notable. Further, isn't what he wrote our consensus here as well? Is there anyone here who believes that such a theory exists? By the way, I think that Storms is substantially incorrect, in a way. Storms himself leans to cluster fusion, and as a general explanation, it is quite predictive of many of the known phenomena; but not with sufficient accuracy that it is, as yet, clearly falsifiable. I quoted Storms to point out the general consensus, within the field, that no theory has become King, with proven sovereignty and superiority, such that all other theories can be definitively ruled out. We will need to look at Widom-Larsen theory, and since Storms covers it, and perhaps some other secondary sources, it is probably sufficiently notable to include. It will be especially notable enough if an article is created on theories that have been advanced to explain Cold fusion. That's going to take time! --Abd (talk) 16:15, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

So, would it be violation of UNDUE to cover Shanahan's theory?

To answer my own question, no, brief reference to Kirk's theory would not be undue weight, if we decide that it is sufficiently relevant to the article. However, there is a veritable mountain of fact available on this topic in reliable source, and I am only referring to what is available in secondary sources that we can use, not the ocean of material in conference papers and primary sources or secondary sources that are self-published. If we present every fact on the level of notability of the CCS theory, our article would become enormous. There is an obvious solution, and it was previously interdicted by the objection of editors who were largely ignorant on this topic, but who were certain that the whole thing was bogus. The solution is topic forking, not to create havens for fringe views, not to avoid the process of finding consensus, but to categorize information so that details are covered in sub-articles. Our system will rather confusingly call this a "main article." I.e, the main article on a subtopic. So, here, we would have a section on excess heat that would, in summary style, cover the topic of excess heat. Dr. Shanahan's theory is not notable enough to be in Cold fusion, but would be mentioned in what is currently sitting neglected at User:Abd/Calorimetry in cold fusion experiments. Dr. Shanahan was a major contributor to that article, and it was, in my view, improperly deleted; I can help shepherd that through the recovery process. Currently, the calorimetry article shows undue weight toward Shanahan's theory, but that can be fixed. To give an overview, Jed Rothwell compiled a list of 153 peer-reviewed papers showing excess heat in palladium deuteride experiments, as I recall. The list and general analysis of cold fusion publications as to balance (positive/negative) can be found at lenr-canr.org. Dr. Shanahan and all editors here are invited to work on that article in my user space, before it is moved back to mainspace; there, I will consider myself allowed to edit, even though I'm COI. If you want to respond to this diversion from our main topic in this section, please respond within the collapse. We can later take this discussion to a section where some action based on it is proposed, if needed. --Abd (talk) 16:15, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Dr. Shanahan, unfortunately, in his response above, reduces what should be a sober examination of sources and facts and the balanced presentation of them, into conflict between "CF fanatics" and a handful of lone defenders trying to rein them in. That's unfortunate. However, we are lucky to have Dr. Shanahan here, as the only remaining active scientific critic of low-energy nuclear reaction research, with one recent publication under peer review, a secondary source, and we should cut him a great deal of slack, as a relative expert on the critical arguments. I do not believe that the subject changes violate policy, and it appears that they were accepted at the time by Enric Naval, and I assume we will see what he says now. Enric was generally reasonable here, back then. Consensus can change, and there is no requirement that we accept, uncritically, what was standing for a short time then, even though it was improperly removed (as was later seen in the Request for Arbitration that ensued).

Meanwhile, if Dr. Shanahan has any specific criticisms of specific elements of the proposed change, those will be most welcome. If he believes that this will unbalance the relevant section, he is likewise invited to present reliably sourced text that will improve the balance. --Abd (talk) 16:15, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Comments by Kirk Shanahan

Specific comments:

- Delete all discussion of hydrino theory. As noted in proposed text, it is unaccepted by mainstream, serious flaws have been pointed out, and there seems to be no response to the critics. As discussed previously, we don’t use pseudoscience to support pseudoscience.

- ‘Proposed Explanation’ header needs to be underlined or something to distinguish it from subheaders (like the ‘Patents’ header just under your proposed section)

- Retitle ‘Theory of…’ to ‘Proposed Nuclear Explanations’ and move 1st sentence under ‘Proposed Ex..’ immediately below the new header. I think a line or two on some other theories would be appropriate as well.

- Add section ‘Alternative Chemical Explanations’ - Start with discussion of the fact that effects can be explained separately with conventional explanations. Begin with electrochemical recombination of H2+O2 producing apparent excess heat, noting that it occurs, but also noting research showing it is not important at high current densities. However also note much older work may have this problem, as it was initially assumed to not be a problem. Then discuss the CCS problem and proposed FPHE mechanism that can give it. Moving to ‘nuclear ash’, discuss contamination proposals and evidences to explain observed 4He and heavy metals. Discuss shock/O2 proposal for CR39 tracks (I will write this subsection). Kirk shanahan (talk) 14:18, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Kirk. My detailed responses are individually signed so that responses may be threaded --Abd (talk) 15:12, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

• Hydrino theory. Hydrino theory is definitely not accepted by the mainstream. I think Krik has misunderstood the purpose of this section, and perhaps of Wikipedia itself. It is not to "support" a "pseudoscience" (nor to "refute" it). It is simply to report, for our readers, what theories have been notably proposed to explain the experimental phenomena known as cold fusion. The current section pretends there are none of note, other than "error." I do not accept hydrino theory, but the theory is mentioned because it's notable, and there are adequate mentions in reliable source. Absolutely, we should not present hydrino theory as something accepted by the mainstream, and, in fact, hydrino theory is also generally rejected by the cold fusion community. It could conceivably explain excess heat -- if hydrinos are real -- but not the heat/helium correlation, which is, as you must know, the most solid evidence for cold fusion that exists. We'll get to that! It also would not explain the reports of various kinds of radiation, nor other reported nuclear transformations, nor the strong preference for deuterium as a reactant, in most CF experiments, over hydrogen. Here, though, that's all moot. The theory is notable, that is why it would be included. The text is sourced. By the way, cold fusion is not regarded as a "pseudoscience," nor is hydrino theory, both are falsifiable, and were it a pseudoscience, you would not be finding anything from yourself on the topic being published as a peer-reviewed debate, nor the burgeoning publication of papers relating to it, under peer review. But that's another question. Consensus here has been that it is, at most, "fringe science." I will contend, when it's necessary, that it is actually "emerging science," still controversial. It is not necessary to consider this for the consideration of these changes. Proposed theories are proposed theories, and the section makes it clear that none have been accepted. But there are theories passing peer review, and being mentioned in secondary sources. That's enough for us. --Abd (talk) 15:12, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Hydrino theory is not relevant to this field. If you think it is, please give some RS suggesting it is.

Alos, you fail again to understand the relevant Wiki policies. Look at the bottom of the Cold Fusion article page. It lists relevant topics to the article, and includes 'fringe science'. Wiki policy is NOT to give UNDUE WEIGHT to fringe science claims/theories. Hydrino theory is definitely fringe. Thus even using it here gives it undue weight. Then there's the undue weight it gives to cold fusion. The only difference though between it and the other 'theories' you mention is that hydrino theory has apparently been negatively critiqued. Most CF theories have not been tested by any 'outsider'. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:59, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

You do know that I agree with you, Dr. Shanahan, right? Except historically. Nobody is advancing this theory any more, and Mill's work is entirely with hydrogen now. Historical facts, though, are still facts. (I want to cover the Meshugatron, you know, there is plenty of source!)

Now, what sources do we have in the proposed change to the article?

• Article in the Guardian on hydrino theory. I put this in, and, unfortunately, I don't think I read it carefully enough. Cold fusion is mentioned in the article, along with Mills, but they are not connected. So if this section goes back in, this would not be a source! There are, however, three others.
• [13] covers what may be two related topics. Most importantly, it directly connects Mills' theory and "cold fusion." The other aspect of this report, independently, covers a hypothetical particle, a very close union of a proton and electron. That is actually quite similar to a "hydrino," i.e., to a proton with a collapsed electron.
• R.L. Mills and S.P. Kneizys, Excess heat production by the electrolysis of an aqueous potassium carbonate electrolyte and the implications for cold fusion, Fusion Technology, 20, pp. 65-81 (1991). This would be the original source where Mills made the claim, as you can see from the title!

Would that be adequate source? Well, maybe. See, we are talking about "proposed explanations," and it is possible that this can be based on a proposal. Attributed, to be sure. Would this really be enough? Probably not at this time. But there is more, which changes the situation. I originally put in hydrino theory because this is covered in Storms (2007), which is a review of the whole field, and Storms lists hydrino theory -- even though I know he doesn't believe it -- as one that has been advanced as a possible explanation. So we have to add:

• Storms, Edmund, The science of low energy nuclear reaction, World Scientific, 2007, p. 184-186. He also criticizes it, by the way. Originally, the section was supported by Mill's own work, as cited in Storms. I think the mention of Storms was taken out because some editors were allergic to Storms.

Storms also mentions, by the way, Shanahan's theory, in two places, p. 41 and in more detail at p. 172. My opinion is that this establishes sufficient notability for this theory to allow brief coverage. Other published responses to Shanahan may also accomplish this. --Abd (talk) 21:15, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

• Reformatting. Reformatting is easily accomplished through the ordinary editorial process, with any change. I'm not reviewing those suggestions at this time because it is much easier to go over them when real content is being reformatted. Nothing stood out as a problem, though, from Kirk's suggestions. --Abd (talk) 15:12, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

• Alternative chemical explanations. In a different world with a different Wikipedia, I'd readily accept this. However, what would be needed are peer-reviewed or academic secondary sources from which we would derive text on these explanations (or sometimes ordinary media sources will suffice, as long as "scientific fact" is not being asserted. Dr. Shanahan is specifically invited to point us to this. I can probably find some. For example, the "cigarette lighter" hypothesis (involving D2-O2 recombination), I think, has been covered. The whole issue of "nuclear ash" will require separate consideration. I have good secondary sources on this, and, in fact, there is a forthcoming review article on the topic, I'm told it's accepted at Naturwissenschaften. Obviously, though, we can't use that yet. Meanwhile, Dr. Shanahan is cordially invited to participate at Wikiversity:Cold fusion. Original research is allowed on Wikiversity, and he could write relatively freely there, under certain constraints, which I'd be happy to assist him with. As to the NW article, my name is mentioned! I'm excited about that; this is the journal that published Einstein, so ... it's full circle for this Cal Tech dropout. --Abd (talk) 15:12, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Please stop with the self-promotion. Failure to include this section will produce a more biased article. The only way to remain neutral (recall NPOV?) is to present the conventional explanations as well as the far-fetched ones. If you will not allow this section, I contend we should not allow your whole section in. Furthermore, nuclear ash is an integral claim to the CF field. It was in both DOE reviews, and in the recent Krivit and Marwan review, no separate consideration required, and in any case, the information is already liberally scattered throughout the CF article. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:59, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Eh? Self-promotion? for a personal snippet in smalltalk? Compared to reams of your coverage of your own paper above? You've missed my point entirely, Kirk, it is not that "I won't allow this section." I'm COI just like you. It's not my decision. It's that I suspect the editors who can edit won't allow it. I'm getting that you still don't understand that I'm trying to improve the article so that it is both complete and rigorously neutral, so that it is informative and also fully satisfies RS and NPOV and UNDUE guidelines. Let's cooperate on that, okay? Can you help by pointing to some reliable sources on "Alternative chemical explanations," so we can get to work on it? We will, I assume, develop, or assist in the development, of language for that, with references, and present it to the regular editors for their approval. However, in spite of the quid pro quo that you seem to be demanding, "Alternative chemical explanations" isn't relevant to the two proposed explanations (one of which is about a form of "fringe chemistry" and the other is nuclear in nature) and the overall comment by Storms -- which also covers your own theories, which are not accepted. It would simply be more detail on what is already there, and I would do what I could to support it. As I wrote, I could already write some of this, and assume that I will, in any case. --Abd (talk) 18:38, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict with below) I agree with Dr. Shanahan that failure to cover "alternative explanations" is a serious failure of the article as it stands. I assume that we will work on this, and that the proposed inclusions I prepared, last year, would only be part of what would be inserted. The obvious proposed explanations are

• Experimental error. I.e., that the reported results are experimental error, perhaps cherry picked to emphasize positive results, with an effect that negative results frequently don't get reported. This is a real and serious problem, by the way. I won't present, now, why this is a preposterous explanation! If the preposterousness is not covered in reliable sources, tough! Well just have to present what is covered. (Note that it is highly likely that there are many reports that were in error in some way, most notably Fleischmann's initial neutron report. One problem with this is with reported series where all cells were reported, including "unsuccessful" ones. There are no "unsuccessful" experiments except those where the results are not reported!)
• Chemical effects, such as unexpected recombination, causing an appearance of excess heat where there is none. Difficult to see how this could have much effect on closed cells, and the more serious excess heat work used closed cells for this very reason.
• Contamination, a proposed explanation for helium results, as well as for reported nuclear transmutations. To my mind, other than helium, the evidence for nuclear transmutations is relatively weak. However, if helium is produced, we could reasonably expect a low level of other nuclear transformations. What's in reliable source, will be our standard, I assume. Reliable source, note, does not expire, so we should ultimately cover, somewhere, all the stupid things that were said and reported in 1989-1990, if it's covered in reliable source. Wikipedia articles on a scientific topic should cover, not only the science, but the history of the topic.!
• Fraud has been alleged but is highly improbable, no fraud by a major researcher has been proven, allegations were generally dismissed.
• Background radiation or radionucleide contamination or concentration has been alleged with some radiation and transmutation reports. If not, it should be! Suppose that something about electrolysis concentrates atmospheric radon on the surface of the cathode? Unlikely, but so is cold fusion (or at least it was unlikely from the limited view in 1989).
• Chemical damage has been alleged for CR-39 results. Difficult to allege with the "back side" wet results, even more difficult for the dry configuration results.
• Electronic noise has been alleged -- or shown -- for some electronic radiation results, and also for possible calorimetric error.
• Calibration Constant Shift -- Shanahan's theory -- has been alleged, this could lead to calorimetric error. To be a cogent criticism, this would have to be systemic error, as I think he claims, and this has difficulty explaining other evidence. But I assume that we can find sources on this.
• Mass hysteria. Naive hopes for free energy. Ignorance of nuclear physics. Greed for research funding. Incompetence. Fanaticism. Zombies ("die-hards"). I think all of these have been alleged and may be found in reliable sources. These proposed explanations, however, may say more about those proposing them than about those being ridiculed.
• Probably I've missed something. --Abd (talk) 19:26, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Abd seems offended by the fact that I am here attempting to get my own work included in the CF article. He elsewhere say I have a COI conflict. I agree, and have stated so before, that it might seem that way given the way Wiki policy is written on this. However, two points: (1) In science, you are expected to defend your own ideas. The only time you don't have to do that is when someone else steps up and does so for you. You don't solicit a 3rd party to defend your ideas. They volunteer as the case may be. Thus Wiki policy is in conflict with standard practice. This leads to point (2). I would love to have someone else do this. Please, step up! {listening....[chirp, chirp]...nope, just the crickets}. So, should we not include my 4 RS papers in the CF article, because the only person suggesting them is me? I suppose we could decide to do that, but I think all can see it would lead to unbalance. Abd, if you have a specific place where you think I have lied or otherwise misrepresented something, please point it out. Otherwise can the comments. Also, what did your self-promotion have to do with the article? Ans. nothing. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:59, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Abd responds to Dr. Shanahan. This is ultimately relevant, and covers some policy issues, but is long and could distract from our immediate task.

"Alternative chemical explanations" is most assuredly a "Proposed Explanation". In the article, a variety of experimental evidence is cited, almost exclusively to support the CF idea. For balance, the opposite side needs to be heard. Your unwillingness to do this just highlights your strong bias. (P.S. My alternatives are certainly accepted. They are published in a RS, a peer-reviewed journal article. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:59, 17 September 2010 (UTC) Kirk misreads my emotional state. Yes, I expect Kirk to "defend his own ideas," and I will defend -- as I have in the past -- his right to do that. He's COI, and in the Request for arbitration that arose out of the situation here, I proposed that COI editors be specially protected, provided they confine themselves to Talk page discussion and are civil in it. And I'd personally cut them quite a bit of slack. An expert in a topic can sometimes become a little heated when debating with Randy from Boise. Was my proposal accepted? No, it was ridiculed, because I was faced with editors who really didn't want COI rules enforced when it came to them or their friends. They completely missed the "protection" part, only the part where I affirmed present COI rules! And one of this crowd subsequently arranged to have Pcarbonn banned from here again, based solely on his very civil arguments for a supposedly fringe position here, only on Talk, i.e., he was behaving exactly how someone with a COI -- as he had by that time -- should behave. The history of this article has been a travesty. But what can we do? We can start to work for an informative and neutral article here, going forward, and I intend to participate in that, as I'm permitted. Publication of a paper on a new theory is not enough, or publication of a series of papers doing the same by the same author. We will be looking for secondary source review. Now, it's my opinion that if a theory is publicly refuted, and the refutation is published under peer review, that this makes what is covered in the second paper from the first paper "covered in secondary source." We would need to make sure that the review paper doesn't distort the original. This is why I believe that we will find adequate source for Shanahan's CCS theory, and I've merely been asking him to provide the references! I assume that should be easy for him, easier than writing about Stuff that has nothing to do with our text. It would also be off-balance to then report only the original material and not the peer-reviewed "refutation." And there is no way to get all of this clear without consensus, which is our real standard. It's been well-established: the way to establish balance, if text supported by reliable source is asserted and could unbalance the article, is to assert text with contrary implications from reliable sources of equal or better quality, not to exclude reliably sourced and verifiable information. Such exclusion violates basic Wikipedia policy. It is sometimes argued that there is no contrary source because "the field is fringe and nobody wants to bother to write on it." That is a circular argument, because, by definition, a fringe field will have a paucity of reliable sources. There is a logical error in the argument. We determine "fringe" by the balance of what is in reliable sources. What those who want to exclude what they think is "fringe" will often do is to try to impeach what would ordinarily be considered reliable source because the "author is fringe." Again, that's circular. Why is the author "fringe?" Because what he writes "supports a fringe theory." How do we know that the theory is "fringe?" Well, there is a paucity of sources. Because every source that supports the theory is rejected, ipso facto. This should not be confused with what appears in ordinary reliable source (generally not peer-reviewed papers and peer-reviewed secondary sources) stating that a field is "fringe," or, notably, in this case, "pathological science." We can report that. But this is only, generally, reporting some notable opinion, so it would require attribution, and this kind of opinion, in science, can easily become obsolete, because sometimes new evidence is discovered or it is realized that existing evidence was misinterpreted. So it should also, probably, be dated. Anyone who has been watching publication in the field of low energy nuclear reactions can see that there has been a sea change in publication since 2004, when the DoE again repeated its 1989 recommendation for further research and publication. The "votes" in the 2004 DoE review, alone, establish this topic as no longer true fringe, which is why there was so much edit warring over coverage of that review in the article, because there are still editors very much opposed to allowing the article to reflect more recent sources, because they believe that cold fusion is bogus, like Dr. Shanahan. But I'm not ready to try to establish this for the article, let's just try to get some basic facts in. --Abd (talk) 20:04, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Prior discussions

• [14] On Storms' comment on proposed theories, and on the Be-8 hypothesis (Takahashi).
• [15] On Storms' comment and the Be-8 theory.
• [16] On hydrino theory.
• [17] On the "proposed explanations" section that existed at that time, which only covered "error" and hydrino theory.
• Just so we don't re-invent the wheel. --Abd (talk) 16:31, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Heat/helium correlation

• [18] On the source for the article's present explanation (Cold_fusion#Helium-4) of the excess helium report.

Our article still says about this (my emphasis):

Considerable attention has been given to measuring 4He production.[12] In 1999 Schaffer says that the levels detected were very near to background levels, that there is the possibility of contamination by trace amounts of helium which are normally present in the air, and that the lack of detection of Gamma radiation led most of the scientific community to regard the presence of 4He as the result of experimental error.[74] In the report presented to the DOE in 2004, 4He was detected in five out of sixteen cases where electrolytic cells were producing excess heat.[68]:3,4 The reviewers' opinion was divided on the evidence for 4He; some points cited were that the amounts detected were above background levels but very close to them, that it could be caused by contamination from air, and there were serious concerns about the assumptions made in the theoretical framework that tried to account for the lack of gamma rays.[68]:3,4

The above focuses almost entirely on the response to the helium reports, not on what has actually been reported, and this section is supposedly on the evidence. What evidence is there? It is obviously undue weight if the reasons for rejecting evidence are given more prominence than the evidence itself! (Because every rejection is a secondary source coverage of the evidence!) If a non-peer-reviewed criticism of the evidence in the Hagelstein paper is presented, surely the evidence itself, made notable by its inclusion in the 2004 report, should be covered.

As I pointed out before, the statement, 4He was detected in five out of sixteen cases where electrolytic cells were producing excess heat, is based, not on "the report presented to the DOE" in 2004, but upon an error by the anonymous reviewer in presenting the information from the report. The actual claim in the report is far, far stronger. --Abd (talk) 18:16, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

This is a heads up, edits will be proposed. Includes quotes from Huizenga that can be used.

I began working on heat/4He by using coverage from Storms, last year. There is coverage of this in other reviewed secondary sources as well. For reasons that may or may not be obvious, the article relies upon an obvious, easily verified error, from a bureaucrat, which can be compared with the report that supposedly was its foundation, or, as well, with independently published and peer-reviewed sources. The real claim (as taken from Storms, we can also look at the DoE/Hagelstein paper and what is found in reliable sources -- Hagelstein is a review of the field, so it's a secondary source, but it was not peer-reviewed, as such --) goes something like what's below, I'm writing off the top of my head, and would certainly carefully correct everything and source it well before proposing a specific edit. But this will lead, quickly, to a proposed edit, that's why I'm leading here. In a series of 33 experiments by Miles, 21 produced measured excess heat and 12 produced none. 4He was measured for each cell, and the measured 4He correlated with the excess heat found, except for two cells (which were considered anomalous for other reasons). The 12 cells producing no excess heat produced no 4He. 18 of the other 21 cells produced measured helium, and the value was "within an order of magnitude of that expected from deuterium fusion." Storms, reviewing this and other work that measured both heat and helium, estimated the "Q value" at 25 +/- 5 MeV, which compares well with the expected 23.8 MeV. Huizenga noted the work of Miles, in 1993, in the second edition of Cold fusion: The scientific fiasco of the century. He wrote (pp. 243-244): The invited paper by Miles, Bush, et al, made the most spectacular claim at the [1991] conference. It was reported that, The amount of helium (4He) detected correlated approximately with the amount of excess heat and was within an order of magnitude of the theoretical estimate of helium production based upon fusion of deuterium to for 4He. This claim has been published elsewhere [cited, J. Electroanal. Chem] and I have commented on it previously (see p.136 and 212). If it were true that 4He was produced from room-temperature fusion in amounts nearly commensurate with excess heat, one of the great puzzles of cold fusion would be solved! However, as is the case with so many cold fusion claims, this one is unsubstantiated and conflicts with other well-established experimental findings.... Huizenga then goes on to give, as "experimental findings," the branching ratio from deuterium fusion. He was, as did many, explicitly assuming that if there was production of helium from deuterium, it would be through d + d fusion, nothing else was considered, and that reaction only produces helium only tiny fraction of the time, and would also produce 3He, etc, as well as heavy neutron and gamma radiation. Huizenga repeats this over and over as a reason to reject the reported experimental results. He then points out that Miles et al, "reported that they can produce neither excess power nor 4He from their electrolysis experiments." Huizenga obviously misses a very important implication. An F-P experiment was extremely difficult, and Fleischmann also experienced a period when he couldn't produce the signs of a reaction, probably because no reaction was taking place! There are a number of causes for "failure," for example, the reaction is very sensitive to the nanostructure of the material, and when a "successful" experimenter obtained a new batch of material, it commonly failed. (And, of course, if experimenters started with "bad material," they found nothing.) ENEA, in Italy, seems to have nailed down how to produce good material, and other techniques, such as codeposition, may bypass this problem. But Huizenga wouldn't have known that. What he truly missed was that Miles also did not find helium when he found no excess heat. Which tosses a bit of a monkey wrench in the theory that the helium found in the other experiments was from leakage. Why would only cells not producing excess heat be the ones with no leakage? (In addition, even a small amount of light water present in the heavy water, which will happen if the heavy water is exposed to air for a time, apparently poisons the reaction, that has been studied and published by Storms. This is something that I must be very careful about, because I'll be running open cells.) This also creates a difficulty for the theory that the excess heat measurements are errors, or due to CCS or some other chemical cause. Why, then, would excess heat correlate with 4He? The problem with the 2004 DoE error is that what it claims is anti-correlation, not correlation. We must to present the leakage theory, i.e, that the helium findings are the result of contamination from ambient air, because it's notable, it's been covered in secondary sources. It's just for background that I point out that it is, as a criticism of Miles, preposterous. This would explain neither the correlation with heat, nor that some experiments found He-4 rising well above ambient, nor the amazing 'coincidence' that the ratio is in the right ball-park for deuterium to helium fusion. Earlier (pp. 243-244), Huizenga had stated (in his first edition, I believe): The unmistakable signature for the occurrence of nuclear fusion of deuterons (D+D) is the production of fusion products ... Heat, if due to nuclear fusion, must be accompanied by a commensurate amount of fusion products. Once one abandons this equality, one has left science as it is normally practiced. One careful experiment showing an equality between heat and fusion products would settle the issue. However, two years have elapsed [this was 1991!] and there is not a single claim where the reported heat is accompanied by a commensurate amount of fusion products! In fact, the two quantities differ by many orders of magnitude. (Just getting excess heat was very difficult. Doing it and measuring helium was difficult upon difficult. And where was the funding? Almost nowhere, thanks to Huizenga!) Now, this argument was already a little ragged by 1991, and he does note the problem with it, in a footnote pointing to a peer-reviewed paper where there is, he says, a claim of a measured commensurate amount of 4He in the effluent gases. He rejects it on the basis of no gamma rays and no He3, and he notes that the absence of He3 "requires a miraculous alteration of conventional low-energy D+D fusion." He was right, in a sense. However, he also overlooked something that hardly anyone had thought of. Maybe the reaction wasn't "D+D" but something else! So when Miles' work was published, notice that Huizenga did not really change his tune. There was now an actual "careful experiment," even if he wants to discount the early report, perhaps it wasn't "careful" enough, but Miles was now a confirmation of sorts, which has later seen much more confirmation (Storms reports in what I've seen from him, 12 confirmations or so), which showed what he was demanding. Now, how many "scientists" who continue to believe that cold fusion is "bogus" are aware of this work? The idea that "cold fusion" must be error was extremely strong, so strong that one of the 2004 DoE reviewers entirely missed the major contrary evidence that was presented, clearly misunderstanding and misreading what was merely in an appendix, and then the reviewing bureaucrat compounded the error. That report did not present the Be-8 theory, which was, if I'm correct, still very new. It is now covered in multiple publications under peer review. The reaction could still be something entirely different, Be-8 is still just a theory, but one which does possibly explain the "triple miracle." (The calculations predict fusion at low temperature. Some have thought, at first sight, that the BEC would form preferentially at low temperature. That's a shallow thought. It requires energy, probably, to form the tetrahedral configuration in lattice confinement, which is required. The experimental results show increased reaction with an increase in temperature, up to a point, anyway, and this could explain that.) I don't know if there is source for spelling this out. I've had to do, in coming to an understanding of it, a lot of explanation that isn't found in the source papers (which I've confirmed with scientists in the field). For example, what Takahashi calls "condensation motion" is the formation of a Bose-Einstein condensate, and the reactants are not deuterons, but rather two entire deuterium molecules (D2 or D2+). Further, this will not necessarily produce what I first thought, two He-4 nuclei, with 23.8 MeV each. Some of the energy would be radiated from the excited Be-8 nucleus before it decays. Nobody really knows how a fusion taking place within a BEC will behave! My explanation requires synthesis, we can't use it. But there is another paper by Kim that proposes a larger cluster BEC theory that could include Takahashi's small condensates. Kim, published, as I recall, in Naturwissenschaften, last year. It is important to note that NW is publishing papers on this topic, certainly this isn't "pseudoscience." Takahashi predicts fusion from the math of quantum field theory, from studying a particular physical configuration that would be expected to be very rare, and that wasn't thought of by the early workers in the field (including, obviously, the skeptics). Fortunately it's rare! If it were not rare, Fleischmann's lab might have vaporized. --Abd (talk) 18:16, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Recent RS explains that it is reasonable to assume both that no excess heat exists and that the detected He arises from leaks. This same RS says therefore a plot of heat-vs-helium is meaningless. This fact would need ( or just 'needs' since it may have been mentioned already) to be included in the article if any mention of heat-helium correlations are made. Kirk shanahan (talk) 19:03, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

If I'm correct, there is one recent paper which "explains" this. There are many which assume the contrary, and get that past peer review. If Dr. Shanahan is talking about his own paper, he should disclose that and not lead others to believe that his quite isolated opinion is somehow scientific consensus. I'm not sure why that journal published the paper, except that this may be the best they could find to respond to the earlier paper, which, of course, says quite the contrary of what Dr. Shanahan asserts, and, again, his paper was co-published with a response from several completely different authors with extensive and prestigious publication histories. I suspect that the editors wanted to allow the debate to become explicit, probably because there are still a lot of people out there who believe as Dr. Shanahan apparently does. Dr. Shanahan is here presenting his own opinion, presented in a published debate, as if it were established, ipso fact, as a fact. That's misleading.

If we look just at that series, there is one paper asserting Shanahan's position, and two asserting the contrary, all accepted by the editors and, presumably, reviewers. Yet Shanahan is asserting that his view is scientific consensus. Look elsewhere, there is practically nothing since 2004 that supports his view. One paper out of how many? Perhaps we should look at those numbers!

Scientifically, Dr. Shanahan is out on a limb here. Two "meaningless" values will not ordinarily correlate, when they are examined through a series of correlations; a single apparent "correlation" isn't what is meant by this. This is the basis of a great deal of research. Let me put it this way. I have prostate cancer. If there were a very expensive medication that was shown, by a correlation this strong, that using it was "correlated" with later biopsy showing the cancer couldn't be found, I'd be doing what I could to obtain it! Unless there were something even better! And so would everyone else with that concern. Medical research doesn't ordinarily come up with correlations this strong! (Biopsy results can be pretty "noisy." Mine was 12 samples, with only one showing 10% cancerous cells. A biopsy can easily miss early Stage I cancer.)

What Kirk does is to assert that excess heat measurements may all affected by some systemic error that causes overestimation of heat, and that helium measurements, as well, can be the result of atmospheric contamination. He's correct, so far, or at least relatively reasonable. Then he claims what is clearly bogus: that therefore correlation means nothing. No, if the helium is measured independently, in particular, as was the helium in Miles' case (it was sent to a lab that measured it blind), and if it correlates well with the measured excess heat, cell by cell, and absent some possible mechanism that would cause helium levels to rise significantly with what is really a small amount of heat -- I've tried to think of one, and it's pretty hard -- this confirms both the heat and the helium measurements and indicates some common cause. Guess what that might be! (By the way, remember not to believe your guess, we really don't know what's happening in the cells, but we might start to apply Occam's razor.) --Abd (talk) 20:31, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Leakage to the atmosphere would plausibly cause (and thus be correlated with the extent of) errors in the calibration. If the appearance of excess heat is (to some extent) the result of such calibration errors, we would expect the extent of the leakage of the apparatus to correlate with the magnitude of the apparent excess heat. Atmospheric leakage would correlate more directly to the the amount of helium introduced to the system. Thus, the two observations might indeed arise from a common cause - atmospheric leakage into the apparatus. The two measurements would both vary between individual runs based on how well the system had been sealed to the atmosphere during each run.--Noren (talk) 01:53, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Shaky. Nice try, though. I don't see that "leakage to the atmosphere would plausibly cause errors in the calibration." How? If heat were leaking out, say, carried by effluent gases, wouldn't that cause a loss of heat to be measured, and thus lead to an underestimate of excess heat? This, however, is moot for our article purpose, we could speculate all day. What's found in reliable source? --Abd (talk) 04:17, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you Noren! Finally, someone who is actually trying to think through the alternatives. To add one point to your proposal, you need to recall what is going on at the electrode whenever apparent excess heat signals are generated, namely, explosions! And explosions produce shockwaves, which in turn induce vibrations in whatever they strike (at a minimum). In the 'leak' business, vibrations are bad news. They cause seals to unseat, containers to develop microcracks, and who knows what else. Thus the CCS signal vs. He leak plot might be expected as you note. If one seriously wants to consider the apparent excess heat signals as direct indicators of how severe the FPHE is, then one is almost forced to that kind of interpretation. But once again, proving that would be a nightmare.

I do prefer however my CCS mechanism as the cause of the calibration shifts. Leaks of air would provide some additional O2 for reaction with the D2, but I'm not sure it would be that significant. The He measurements are done at trace levels but the calorimeter signals are on a different order of magnitude. But if you could develop a mathematical model to support your position I would certainly consider it. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:45, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

This "vibration" theory is quite clever. Yes. If vibration were caused, this could possibly explain a correlation, though, given the positive pressure, i.e., gas flow would be out of the cell, not into it, it would still be quite a stretch. Further, the correlation would break down as the detected helium approached ambient. (I.e., further increase in apparent excess heat would no longer correlate with detected helium.) However, what is the evidence for these "explosions"? First of all, there are tiny areas, around ten microns across, where it appears that the palladium has melted. For that to happen underwater, there must be a very rapid increase in temperature. Shanahan posits that this is due to H2-D2 recombination, completely overlooking that explosive recombination requires an explosive mixture (one problem), and that a ten micron bubble of explosive mixture, even if it formed (how would that form?), ignited (what would ignite it?), would not produce anything close to the energy needed to melt palladium or cause a shock wave. These micro-explosions (I don't consider them well-confirmed, but plausible given the evidence) require an energy density not attainable with chemical reactions. However, there is direct evidence that Shanahan's theory is preposterous. SPAWAR created, for one reported experiment, a cathode which was a piezoelectric sensor, used as a substrate for the plating process in a codeposition experiment. The signals from this cathode were then recorded. They found occasional high-frequency spikes. However, these spikes were not high amplitude, and were detected right at the source, by a sensor intimately connected, in terms of sound conduction. (I'd estimate the frequency of the spikes themselves, from what I've seen, at over 100 KHz, but the repetition rate was low.). I am, in fact, planning to instrument my co-dep cells with such sensors, though not as part of the cathode, and I consider it quite possible that I won't find anything. But I would certainly find "vibration" at a level that would loosen seals, and I very much doubt that vibration on that level would have escaped notice by others. I will also be looking at the cathode during the process with a microscope. A level of explosions sufficient to cause damaging vibration would almost certainly produce significant visible light emissions, probably visible with the naked eye. From the IR imagining that SPAWAR has done, however, we would be looking at a few "explosions" per second, up to maybe a few dozen. Nowhere near enough to loosen seals. Again, it's a long shot that I will see anything, my inexpensive digital microscope may not be able to catch the possible transient visible light emissions from these events. I'm mainly looking for neutron evidence. To my knowledge, though, nobody has ever watched an active CF cathode during the experiments, at a microscopic level. The experiments are not normally designed to allow this.

As to CCS, vastly more O2 would be released in the cell from electrolysis, there is positive pressure from this. "Different order of magnitude" could be misleading. The calorimetry is, relatively speaking, very accurate (*even if shifted*), the helium measurements are generally noisy. However, correlation is precisely the way to overcome the sloppiness of the helium results, and CCS simply would not explain correlation at all. If we are getting a systematic shift, as expected with CCS, that would simply come out in the wash. Shanahan is simply denying the power of correlation.

This is all original research, it might be allowable in discussion, for background, but how about we focus on what's known in reliable source about the subject of this thread: heat/helium correlation, as covered by Huizenga, among the skeptics, and many others, more recently. This whole topic will be greatly expanded with what I'm told is appearing in Naturwissenschaften this year, on this very subject. A detailed review of the literature on nuclear products, especially helium. --Abd (talk) 17:18, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

(A) Vibrations are caused and have been measured by a piezoelectric transducer. Results were presented By F. Gordon at the U. Missouri seminar arranged by R. Duncan. It is not an 'if'. (B) Ambient He conc is not reported. The recent response by the collection of cold fusion authors suggests data may be available, but it is unpublished at this time. (C) The evidence for the explosions are the published still from the freely distributed IR video produced by the SPAWAR group _and_ their own figure caption therein saying the observed transient hot spots are 'micro-explosions'. I have agreed with this in print (i.e. RS) but differ on the cause. There are literally thousands of flashes per second based on areas of one flash and the area of the whole zone, which of course can be dozens if you want to use that counting basis, I prefer base 10. It is OR to use any other arguments. Abd's OR on how and why these explosions might/might not occur, their strength, and effects _is_ OR. I contend they would need to be measured or calculated in detail to reject the idea without testing. (D) Abd fails to understand the implications of the CCS problem, again. (E) I agree this is all OR. What is not is that there is a _recent_ peer-reviewed publication expressing disbelief in the nuclear hypothesis. Appropriate extractions from this report for the article are indicated. (As for the supposed upcoming publication, all I can say is: "Goody, another chance to show the CFers mistakes." Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:43, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Very misleading. First of all, Shanahan presents evidence that I acknowledged and incorporated in my comment above, as if it were some kind of refutation. One issue at a time, here.

Vibrations. Vibration implies, in normal usage, something more than isolated "pops," and in context, to be meaningful for the effect Shanahan proposes -- causing leakage -- those pops would have to be, in addition, relatively powerful. What is shown in the reports? First of all, we have no reports of "vibration" as such, grossly detectable, all the reports were with a piezoelectric cathode which would be exquisitely sensitive, being itself the substrate for the active palladium deuteride surface. The area involved is not explicit, but more to the point is the data Gordon presented in [19]. I believe I've seen this from earlier publications as well. Shown are oscilloscope plots of voltage vs. time for the piezo sensor, which would be detecting sound from the entire surface. You can see the very sharp rise time of the "pops." I don't know what the rise time actually is, but these sensors are very high frequency response. I wrote 100 Khz, but that isn't shown by these graphs, it may be lower than that. However, the repetition rate of these pops is not high. The scale is 0.2 seconds/division. The right hand plot shows a series of events. It's looking like it is well under "dozens" of events per second. The hot spots may be seen in a video at [20]. Yes, it's hundreds or thousands of flashes per second. But "flashes" aren't "vibrations."

The CFers mistakes. I.e., the mistakes of the peer reviewers at Naturwissenschaften and many other recent publishers. I need to emphasize just how isolated Dr. Shanahan is. We will, I assume, be looking at his paper, in addition to the original paper by Krivit and Marwan, and the response to him copublished with his last ditch effort. In detail. These three papers are all peer-reviewed secondary source review. Now, was the original secondary source review (Krivit and Marwan) considered "reliable source," here? Somehow, based on the shallowness of the article, and prior treatment of anything from Krivit, I suspect not! But now that it is Shanahan as an author, we are supposed to fall all over ourselves to give this single paper high prominence? Higher than the other two papers published in the same journal? I don't think so, but, folks, it's not my call. Kirk, our job here is to present the evidence in reliable sources, with some cogent analysis, hopefully, and allow the non-involved editors decide. How about we get to work on that? --Abd (talk) 21:36, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Question for the Wikilawyers

What about errors in RS?

Let's assume an editor wants to use a particular reference article to document an article addition. Also, let's assume that normally the article would be considered RS. But now let's assume the article has a key point blatently wrong, i.e. not a typo or anything like that, not a matter of interpretation, a flat out mistake, and one that impacts negatively a significant section of the article. Can that article still be used? How would it be disqualified from use? Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:42, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Do you want an answer or do you want to accuse people of being wikilawyers? I'll assume that you want an answer, okay, but my assumption is rebuttable.

RS is RS, my opinion, that a source is reliable is not dependent upon the information in it being "correct." The term "reliable" in "reliable source" can be misleading. If you read the policies carefully, you will see that what determines "reliable source" is the manner of publication and the publication process. It does not depend on the author. It does not depend on the actual reliability of the content. (I.e., even a careful publisher can pass material that contains errors.)

However, having said this, if there is verifiable reason to believe that information in reliable source is an error, and there is reason to refer to the source containing the error -- perhaps it's notable in some way -- we can also balance the error with a reference to, for example, a primary source (one of a number of exceptions to the ordinary rule excluding primary sources for fact), or to other reliable sources covering the error. The latter is the normal way, the former is unusual, but there has been one example in the history of this article.

A statement from a commissioner of patents in the U.S. was quoted as saying that the U.S. Patent Office does not issue patents that make claims about cold fusion. However, there are such patents. For a time, reference was made to one to show that the statement from the official wasn't accurate. For another time, there was reference to a source which described how a patent holder got around the restriction (the restriction is, to my knowledge, still in place, and this has probably done more to inhibit research in this field than anything else, because there goes the motive for a venture capitalist to invest money in expensive exploratory research, the very constitutional purpose of patent protection -- but I digress.) There are actually two methods that have been used to get around it; one depended on the age of the applicant, the other on simply patenting a device as intended for use in electrochemical research. However, possible power production from electrolysis of deuterium with a palladium cathode was listed as a claim, but the basic claim caused the patent to be reviewed by a chemist rather than a nuclear physicist. Which, in fact, makes a point that I've long made, that "scientific consensus" depends on the field of the scientists you ask. Most chemists familiar with the topic know that it's not chemistry, most physicists aren't familiar with the evidence. There are, of course, exceptions on both sides.

In the end, no set of guidelines and policies can adequately set out what can and cannot be used, the ultimate standard is editorial consensus. A policy like NPOV and Verifiability is considered "non-negotiable," but there is room for special considerations on about everything else. Just realize, though, that there are some who will push for "strict application of standards," and hang the usefulness of the article! That is actually a violation of policy, itself, but difficult to prove! --Abd (talk) 21:33, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

You should take the issue to the reliable sources noticeboard and explain what the error is and why you are sure it is an error. You might need to signal that you are looking for responses from people with scientific knowledge to a certain level. Itsmejudith (talk) 22:07, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Itsmejudith. That's one of the places to go where the editors of an article can't directly find consensus on a point involving the reliability of sources. --Abd (talk) 22:48, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Judith. I am almost positive this will come up soon. There has been some new publications in this area, pro and con. The problem is that the 'pro' comments are predicated on a completely misunderstood version of the 'con' comments. Unfortunately (but as would be expected) this leads the pro commentators down the wrong path to the wrong conclusions. And it won't take science experts to see this, just people who can read English reasonably well. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:53, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

There have been some new publications in this area, pro and con. What area? The question was a general one, about usage of RS where a source contains a known error. I think that Kirk is referring to something different. He categorizes papers and people as "pro and con," and he's referring to "pro cold fusion" and "con cold fusion," which is not exactly an objective scientific categorization. Then, there have been many papers that I'm sure he'd classify as "pro" published, since 2004. Under peer review, my sense is that it is well over sixty, but we should compile a list of recent sources. There is one "con" paper recently published, covering Dr. Shanahan's theories, which, right or wrong, must be considered fringe in the sense that there is no sign they have been accepted by anyone under peer review.

I am confident that if we discuss these matters and then, if disagreement remains, refactor this discussion into a clear RfC, neutrally summarizing the arguments in consensus-seeking fashion, ordinary editors with an "ability to read English reasonably well" will be able to penetrate the veil and smokescreen. It takes time and patience. --Abd (talk) 15:50, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

more detail about "new publications," by Abd

(I don't have a copy of Shanahan's paper in front of me, but he does repeat certain old theories that were proposed by others, perhaps notably, more than a decade ago, but none of this has sustained acceptance.) "Wrong conclusions" is Shanahan's opinion, and we can see here how he is attempting to exaggerate the significance of a single paper published as a debate; his paper was a response to an original paper by Krivit and Marwan, and was co-published with a response by scientists in the field; so if we want to look at the balance of publications to determine due weight, just from the one journal we have a 2:1 ratio "pro." But, of course, it's not just that one journal. There is, in fact, one other paper which might be thought of as "con," since 2004 after 2006. That would be a response by Kowalski to a SPAWAR paper in EPJAP, questioning the SPAWAR conclusions about the nature of the particles producing CR-39 tracks. Kowalski is very much pro cold fusion, in fact, but he's also rigorously honest and is attempting to maintain skepticism; he's recently done work (rejected for publication) attempting (and failing) to verify Oriani's work on light-water electrolysis with CR-39. A disaster, in fact, the whole thing. We can't cover it, this is truly fringe, i.e., fringe within fringe/emerging science. (Some of the SPAWAR claims are questionable, my opinion, we should be very careful. Most notably, with reference to other recent comments on this page, the implied or purported influence of an externally-applied electric field on results has a high bogosity factor, never acknowledged by them, though they no longer give it much emphasis, and in the Galileo project, the magnetic field originally recommended was later considered irrelevant. What they have for years reported as evidence of nuclear tracks is mixed, for if we examine the images, what has been called "ground beef" by the Russians is probably one of two things: chemical damage, or a mixture of nuclear tracks and chemical damage pre-etching those areas. However, when they were given permission to release the neutron evidence, the balance shifted, for those findings were outside the "hamburger" areas. Shanahan has gone to great stretches to explain the back side CR-39 tracks, with a series of preposterous hypotheses. We'll get to that, if any of this is considered notable enough to include. My biggest concern about the SPAWAR neutron findings is that they are notable as hell, but not confirmed, though they do, themselves, confirm earlier reports of very low level neutron emissions, in a way that bypasses the prior objections of cosmic ray background or detector noise.) --Abd (talk) 15:50, 18 September 2010 (UTC) (Note: putting together a compilation of post-2004 reliable sources, at Wikiversity:Cold fusion/Recent sources, I found two more negative papers in 2005 and 2006, which appear to be a continuation of a habit of using cold fusion as an example of "pathological science." They were not actually reviews of the science, itself. In addition, two papers from Dr. Shanahan were published under peer review in 2005-2006.) --Abd (talk) 02:01, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Abd, stop messing with my posts. I placed my response to Judith right where I wanted it. Leave it there. Kirk shanahan (talk) 15:26, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

This refers to this sequence: I posted a comment, dividing it into two pieces, one open and the other collapsed for detail. Dr. Shanahan broke it up by posting a response to Judith in the middle of it.[21] Assuming this was inadvertent, I restored the original position of the collapse as a continuation of my comment. He just reverted that, also reverting, at the same time, my addition of a clarification to the collapse summary. My edit left his post easily visible and clearly as a response to Judith. His positioning concealed the nature of my continued comment and its timing (read the section in the permanent version as edited by him.) I have not "touched his post," and where "he wanted it" was in the middle of my comment, but not as a response to my comment. I have only restored and edited my own original post, restoring its original positioning. Dr. Shanahan is a single-purpose account and may not be familiar with discussion conventions. Further discussion of this, if it's necessary, should take place on user Talk pages. It has nothing to do with the substance here. --Abd (talk) 16:17, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Abd STOP MESSING WITH MY POSTS! The comment I placed my original response after was signed and timestamped. THAT MEANS IT IS AN END POINT! I can post there if I like. I don't read your collapse bars. That is the point right? There is nothing important enough to bother us with inside them, right? Otherwise, you are just wall-of-texting in a different format. As well, if you note, the indent level was appropriate for a response to Judith, as I intended, not you. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:10, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

The comment in collapse below was part of my original response to Judith, posted as a continuation of it, but was chopped up by Dr. Shanahan as described above. Dr. Shanahan apparently wants to insist on this, to the point of revert warring over it.[22][23] I commented on his Talk page with [24], he has not, at this point, responded there. This extended comment was posted before the discussion above, and immediately after my direct response to Judith. (I added the additional signature above to allow interspersed response, i.e., response to my exposed comment, if desired, separately from what was in collapse, not to allow it to be split up with response to someone else. This is not a common practice, but it can improve readability of a discussion, if that intention is respected, which it was not, here.)

It occurs to me that Kirk doesn't understand what I did. When he looks at the revision in history, it looks like I moved his post. In fact, I did not touch his post, I simply picked up my own collapse section and re-inserted it where it was originally, thus working entirely with my own text, and causing no misunderstanding in appearance. His action did cause misunderstanding in appearance.

As to the importance of what is in the collapse, most of it is as important or more important than Dr. Shanahan's very off-topic commentary in this page, and some of what others post here, but I collapse it precisely because it isn't necessary for consideration of the immediate questions. If you want to know, read it. If not, don't.

I'm dropping this now, it will not lead to article improvement.--Abd (talk) 17:46, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

continued detailed consideration by Abd in response to Judith's suggestion

Please understand that Dr. Shanahan is a scientist, and a long-time critic of cold fusion, and he's published in the field. I'm, comparatively speaking, an amateur, but I do have a background in physics, generally understand the issues, and know the literature, plus I'm in good communication with scientists in the field. We aren't likely to find editors at RSN who know the topic as well as the two of us do, together. We are both, on the other hand, COI. However, if we have developed an issue to the point that it is sensible to take it to RSN, it is a good way to get another opinion, possibly from experienced editors who understand the problems with mindless and narrow interpretation of RS guidelines. I've done it in the past. We can also use RfC. This isn't merely an academic question. There is a particular error in a source that would not normally be considered reliable source, but which is, in itself, notable; that is the 2004 U.S. Department of Energy review of low-energy nuclear reactions. Our article presently relies upon this error, and sources which would ordinarily be considered to be of higher reliability (peer-reviewed and academic secondary sources) are neglected. But the error itself isn't covered in reliable source, I seem to have stumbled across it myself, it escaped notice for an all-too-common reason: proponents of cold fusion were generally upset with that review and didn't really look at the nitty-gritty details, and opponents were quite ready to assume that the error was correct, since it fit with their preconceptions, they weren't inclined, as well, to go over the details. I tried to substitute material from a stronger source, over a year ago, but that was reverted, because the DoE report -- by an anonymous bureaucrat who did not necessarily have expertise, but it doesn't take expertise to verify the error -- is certainly notable, it's been widely reported in media. My notice of the error on Talk, though I didn't try to put it in the article, was called "original research" and the Talk section involved was collapsed by a hostile editor, as I recall. It's been quite a mess here! I'm not yet proposing to edit that section, I just posted some material above on heat/helium to provide a "heads up" that something would be coming, and the particular issue is a critical one, it is about the strongest evidence that exists for cold fusion. If the claim were as presented by the DoE review and our article, it would be evidence against cold fusion! I was a skeptic, and once I understood the reports and how much they had been confirmed, I was convinced! We'll get to it, and, again, thanks for the suggestion, I'll probably follow it if we get stuck on that point. --Abd (talk) 22:48, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

WOW! I get other things on my mind, than looking at Wikipedia, for 3 days, and find that this Talk page has grown explosively. Welcome back, Abd. (And try to be careful about the quantity of your writings, heh.) To Kirk, the simple answer to your WikiLawyer question is the old, old Standard Wikipedia Rule: This encyclopedia is about verifiability, not truth. That would mean the erroneous article would be "acceptable". None of us have to like it, but that's the way it is. I have just two other things to post about at this time. First, since it appears that Ursa has indicated that X-ray observations have been published in RS journals, it logically follows that any CHEMICAL explanation for the OTHER observed effects, in CF experiments, must now also explain the X-rays. Good Luck With That, Kirk! And second, to the best of my knowledge the "electron catalysis" hypothesis for actual nuclear fusions in a CF experiment offers an easy explanation for X-rays, since the hypothesis indicates that quite a few electrons containing significant energy would end up moving through the metal lattice. V (talk) 12:00, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, we have a lot to cover. This article has been impoverished for years, compared to what is available in reliable sources, with long-term revert warring, intervention by admins with axes to grind (check it out, that was confirmed by ArbComm), but most of all, just plain noise. I'm going to encourage you to sit back and watch and learn. Much of your comment shows that you have a little knowledge of the field, not a lot. I'll respond below a little, but we should be careful. Arguing about these things doesn't necessarily get us closer to improved text, which is going to require reliable sources, not more and more synthetic analysis and original research or ideas. --Abd (talk) 20:09, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

You really didn't know about all the x-ray work? Just more proof you are here for nothing but the fun of aggravating people. The x-ray data can generically be broken into two blocks. First is data from electronic instrumentation. I do not specifically comment on these because they all tend to be near the noise level, and I am not an expert on the techniques and equipment used. However, I will note that nuclear counting technique results tend to have error bars presented based exclusively on Poisson statistics, which often is not the largest error term. IOW, one needs to be 'generous' in considering what the error bars on the technique is. The second block is based on film data. Most of that can be disregarded for two coupled reasons, one is hypering, which leads to an increased sensitivity of the film, and the other is that film is heat sensitive, meaning heat can fog it. In the end, very little data falls outside the influence of all these factors, and is thus not very compelling. Kirk shanahan (talk) 14:40, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Dr. Shanahan has an obvious opinion that any evidence leading to a conclusion of LENR must be bogus, he's not been alone in that, for sure. However, the basis for such opinion, originally, was the belief that (1) if there was a nuclear reaction taking place, it must be deuterium fusion, and (2) deuterium fusion at room temperature, without neutrons or gamma rays, is impossible. The second statement is probably true. The first was simply an unquestioned assumption. We now know that there exists, from quantum field theory, at least one possible explanation that requires no new physics, (Takahashi's Tetrahedral Symmetric Condensate theory) and it predicts this: surface effect. No major neutron or gamma radiation. Helium ash. But ... this theory isn't yet adequate to predict alpha energies at creation, and Hagelstein has just published, this year, an analysis setting a frightfully low upper bound for helium energy at creation, below the Be-8 ground state breakup energy. Many mysteries remain! But helium is being produced, and it has become preposterous to deny it, and the peer reviewers seem to have come to agree with what was a very substantial minority opinion at the DoE review in 2004 (reported as about 6/18). That means LENR, and if we don't like it, we can stuff it. We would be very unlikely to get a paper past peer reviewers, now, that denies this without clear evidence, based merely on wild speculations.

There are many reports of X-ray emissions, including radioautographs from cathode materials after the experiment (I think that could be gammas, actually), apparent X-ray images of a grid cathode, etc, stuff that Shanahan's ad hoc imaginations wouldn't account for. --Abd (talk) 20:09, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

I can't tell if the bigger comment two steps up is from V or ABd, but it doesn't much matter. They both are constitutionally unable to accept anything I write. Bottom line, the comment above is full of mistakes, but has nothing to do with any edit, so I will not address each one. I do want people to realize the level of denial evidenced here by both V and Abd. Kirk shanahan (talk) 21:22, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

So, in essence, you claim the researchers had to be incompetent about ANOTHER old old scientific measuring technique. AND that the peer-reviewers were incompetent, also, to let the work pass, to be published in RS journals? Like I said above, "Good Luck With That, Kirk!" Not to mention, I see an inconsistency in what you've written. If heat can fog the film, then that means the CF experiment had to have generated real heat, and that the CCS explanation, regarding illusory heat, cannot be correct. You can't have it both ways, Kirk! Also, it occurs to me that metals like palladium are probably not very transparent to X-rays, so if the "electron catalysis" hypothesis explains what is going on, then only fusions near the surface of the metal would yield detectable X-rays ("low level"), while X-rays produced deeper inside the metal would be absorbed and converted to heat. V (talk) 18:09, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

No V, I claim they were unaware of complicating factors arising from the application of an 'old' method in a new environment. The peer reviewers did fine. Peer review is supposed to be lenient. That's why many examples of bad science have extensive publication records associated with them. The xrays photos I am referring to came from Pd. Pd will eventually release all its H, because it has a significant (1-10 torr) equilibrium pressure at room temperature. When the H comes out, it burns in air. No relation to the CCS problem, but you certainly are searching for a way to misunderstand the whole thing aren't you. Kirk shanahan (talk) 21:22, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

First, that "bigger comment" above was by Abd. Next, I'm quite aware that hydrogen escaping from palladium does so SLOWLY. Even if it is monatomic hydrogen that instantly reacts with the oxygen in the air, the rate of that reaction will be low enough that I seriously wonder about what the temperature of the metal will become. What data do you have on that? Do note that since hydrogen absorption by palladium is exothermic, hydrogen release must be endothermic! Your combusting hydrogen will have to warm up a lower initial temperature! And what temperature is needed to fog the X-ray film, anyway? V (talk) 05:51, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

I note you skipped insulting my answer on the competency of researchers and reviewers, so when can I expect an apology for the indirect ad hominem attack ("Shanahan thinks CF researchers are incompetent and so are peer reviewers.")? Soon?

All of your points above are good ones, especially since the answer is that we don't know the answer to them. But that of course, means one can't reject the possibility either. More information must be obtained before a conclusion is drawn. My personal experience working with Pd-based materials is that they can have enough residual hydrogen in them to noticeably warm themselves up when exposed to air. Also, I took a soldering iron to Polaroid type 55 film once to test the heat sensitivity. I placed it on the film pack (55 produces both a positive and a negative image, so it is thicker than things like dental film) for 5, 10, and 20 seconds. The 5 seconds didn't seem to show anything. The 10 seconds gave a spot that was ~2x the iron's end, and the 20 sec gave about 2x that. So yes, my experience supports my concern. Again, insufficient experimental data to know how important this might be, ergo no exclusion of possibilities possible. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:07, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

If what you write can be so easily misinterpreted from what you intended it to mean, whose fault is that, really? Moving on... comparing a "noticeably warm" piece of palladium alloy to a several-hundred-degree soldering iron is ludicrous. I therefore repeat what I wrote earlier, "Good Luck With That, Kirk!" V (talk) 03:41, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

(A) That's my point, it is NOT easily misinterpreted. You have to work at it. (B) Again you miss the point (probably deliberately, see (A)). The soldering iron test was a test to see if film was heat sensitive. It was. Since film can be sensitive, and since heat could be produced the possibility of heat fogging of a hyper-sensitive film is real. Therefore, concluding the film fogging can only come from x-ray exposure is premature. The conventional alternative must be shown to not apply. No such research is available. This is the classic cold fusioneer problem in a nutshell, jumping to the predetermined conclusion. Kirk shanahan (talk) 15:20, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

But you are wrong--what you write often is very easily misinterpreted, and I don't have to work at it, at all. But I can explain why this is so true with respect to myself; I've been heavily involved in programming computers for nearly 30 years. Are you not aware that computers don't do what you mean; they only do what you literally say? So, to become a good programmer, one needs to develop a very literal mindset. Which I did a long time ago, and don't have to "work at it" to maintain it, not at all!!! Next, you are wildly mistaken about film needing to be hypersensitive to detect X-rays. They certainly didn't have any such film when X-rays were first discovered to fog film! V (talk) 05:47, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

FWIW, i'm a programmer, too (though not 30 years yet), and i can atest to the very literal mindset and not having to "work at it" to maintain it. (also, that probably goes a long way in explaining why i'm so keen on picking apart logic. a trait which many no doubt find frustrating, but in my profession it is absolutely neccessary. (and, in fact, failure to do so is the most frequent cause of frustration.)) Kevin Baas^talk 14:16, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Oh, there are tons of RS's with blatent errors all over them in the article. All those ones that have all those rebuttals published after them that say what you think of it when you read the original article. I suppose to correct the errors you'd put up the rebuttals with the the article to balance it out and "present all sides" of the issue in accordance with non-negotiable NPOV policy. Though there always seems to be a lot of friction... Kevin Baas^talk 23:06, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

One such error

Reports_of_nuclear_products_in_association_with_excess_heat, prior discussion of this. From our article, present text:

• In the report presented to the DOE in 2004, 4He was detected in five out of sixteen cases where electrolytic cells were producing excess heat.[68]:3,4

The source cited is

• U.S. Department of Energy (2004) (PDF), Report of the Review of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Energy, retrieved 2008-07-19

There is no such claim in the "report presented to the DOE," which is included in the DOE report, it is a review paper by Hagelstein. It is not too long to search for any part of it which claims what the summarizing reviewer claimed. I documented how this error probably arose in the prior discussion. That study is original research and speculation on my part. But that the statement is an error is obvious. It is very simple to refute this, if I'm wrong. Show, anyone, where in the "report presented to the DOE" the claim of detection of 4He in five out of sixteen cases where electrolytic cells were producing excess heat is found. Surely someone here, if this claim were true, has actually read the report and can tell us where it is.

In the original discussion, it was demanded that I show that "non-cold fusion" experts had confirmed the error. There is no such source, to my knowledge, from anyone. Except me, and anyone who actually looks and verifies this. It is an example of an error, as described above, where the source itself is internally contradictory. And blatantly so. --Abd (talk) 23:09, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

You haven't read and understood. The quoted statement above is a paraphrase of the same statement in the DOE Report. The DOE Report refers to the Hagelstein, et al, document as you note. In Appendix B of that document is found Figure 12. Figure 12 shows plots of He detected in 6 of 16 experiments. One of the curves is on the baseline, i.e., no helium detected. Ergo, 5 of 16 showed He. Kirk shanahan (talk) 15:01, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

The quoted statement above is a paraphrase of the same statement in the DOE Report. Yes. It is.

The DOE Report refers to the Hagelstein, et al, document as you note. In Appendix B of that document is found Figure 12. Yes, that Appendix was the source of the misunderstanding. Let's have the statement from the review itself.

Results reported in the review document purported to show that 4He was detected in five out of sixteen cases where electrolytic cells were reported to be producing excess heat.

Figure 12 shows plots of He detected in 6 of 16 experiments. Here is a link to the paper. There is a plot of helium measurements there for six experiments. We have no data on the other ten, except that the paper strongly implies that some of these were control cells with hydrogen instead of deuterium. And does state that no helium was detected with the hydrogen cells. [Hagelstein categorized the cells according to helium behavior, with the first category being "Cells that show no increase of 4He over long periods of time (including all cells operated with H2)"] I would like to find other reports of this work, I haven't done that. I'd have roughly guessed that they ran 8 cells with deuterium and 8 with hydrogen, which would have meant that they reported helium for 6 out of 8 deuterium cells, and we also know that some Case cells were "dead," he mentions that. No excess heat, and, we may guess, no helium. (This is a stunningly consistent report across many reports from many workers, including, by the way, early replication attempts that looked for excess heat and helium and found neither. These were not "failures," they were demonstrations of heat/helium correlation!) What was the excess heat for cell SC1? Hagelstein, in writing the review paper, was cramped for space. He simply didn't report these details there, because the ultimate usage of this series was only to back up Figure 6, showing a Q value of about 31 MeV for heat/helium, based only on SC2, well within range of the magic 24 MeV number.

Were these electrolytic cells? No. They were Case cells, i.e., gas-loaded. This was an unusual technique, using a particular catalyst, which produced some interesting results, but hardly central to the field. Researchers were later unable to reproduce the "Case effect." The original batch of catalyst was reportedly discarded accidentally in a clean-up.

In how many of these cells was excess heat found? We don't know. Hagelstein only presented us with data on one cell, SC2. He was interested in the time correlation of helium with heat (Figure 13), not correlation across multiple experiments.

What that appendix actually showed was that, for one cell where heat and helium were measured and reported, heat and helium were well-correlated. What about the other fifteen cells? It may be that this has been reported elsewhere, I haven't looked. But it wasn't in the review paper. We only know heat for one cell, and helium for six.

This was in an appendix because, though the results were quite interesting in certain ways, they were not central. The core paper itself presented much more evidence on heat/helium, referring to Miles et al. That crucial evidence was neglected, in the summary, in favor of what was almost a footnote. The Case evidence from the single experiment SC2, however, was summarized and analyzed with Figure 6, and the Appendix was simply providing more detail about the experiment, but certainly wasn't a complete report.

(If I'm correct, the reviewers were provided with a package of all the referenced papers, so the report included Miles et al by reference.)

By the interpretation presented by the reviewer, making two major errors, heat/helium, indeed, looks very unconvincing. Yet the review says that This evidence [on heat/helium] was taken as convincing or somewhat convincing by some reviewers; for others the lack of consistency was an indication that the overall hypothesis was not justified. We know that one reviewer, at least, misinterpreted the heat/helium data (which might have led the summarizing bureaucrat to follow that path). We also know that some reviewers were absolutely unwilling to consider the experimental evidence unless a convincing explanation were provided. Were those who thought this "convincing" or "somewhat convincing" deluded? 5/16 sounds like a totally lousy correlation to me! But it wasn't 5/16. It was, in fact, as to what was reported in that Appendix, 1/1, with the matter of interest being the time correlation, which was buttressed by the time behavior of the other 5 cells for which helium was plotted vs. time. (with one of them being quite anomalous compared to the others. That is the one that might look like leakage. What was the heat result for that cell? We don't know. You can argue that the results were cherry-picked, I'd have no problem with that, except we may be able to find more details later.

So, the question: was the comment cited from the review in error? Can it be relied upon for our article?

There is no doubt in my mind but that this comment of the reviewer is historically important. The error probably existed in the mind of more than one reviewer. But, for now, what we have has been the active the suppression of ample material available in peer-reviewed secondary sources, in favor of a single unreviewed comment by a single anonymous reviewer, that, were it true, would be opposite in implication from the large number of other sources we have.

I thank Dr. Shanahan for taking the time to look at this, and to demonstrate how easy it was to make this mistake, since he apparently repeated it. His comment, though, itself, did not actually repeat the error explicitly, but only implied it. He did not mention "electrolytic" and he did not mention "excess heat." He implied that only five of the sixteen showed helium, we don't know that, we only know that one cell showed no helium, plus all the hydrogen controls, unreported quantity, assuming that SC1 wasn't a hydrogen control! --Abd (talk) 19:28, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

It seems we really have trouble staying on topic here. I apologize for my part in that. This section is about a specific error in the 2004 US DOE LENR review. Our article quotes the error, but does not refer to the massive publication of contrary information. Any specific comments? How about we start to refer to what is the single most persuasive piece of evidence that not only are there nuclear reactions taking place in palladium deuteride under certain conditions, but it's something that ends up with a fusion product, commensurate with the heat. What we cite contradicts this, based on a verifiable error. Is there anyone here who can substantiate the claim in the review? After all, it isn't just a general opinion, it specifically is purporting to repeat what was claimed in the Hagelstein review paper. --Abd (talk) 15:02, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

I missed the section divider when I posted; I will move my text (and Kirk's reply) V (talk) 17:52, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

As noted above, there is no error. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:56, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Look again. Dr. Shanahan, see the above response to your comment. Electrolytic cells? 16 cells with excess heat? (Highly unlikely, I can guess 8, more likely 5, but let's see if we can find a more detailed report from SRI.) In any case, heat data was only given for one cell, SC2, not sixteen. --Abd (talk) 19:33, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

You seem to be right on this. The 16 cases were Case cells, not electrolysis cells. So, I propose we include the DOE report comment and then add something like "but it seems clear that the reviewer mistook Case-cell results for electrolysis cells. However, this is a minor problem, and realizing the truth would not have changed the intent of the conclusion." The rest of your points are OR. No information in the ref document is no information. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:56, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Kirk, that is helpful. It's incomplete, though. That, actually, is the least important of two blatant errors; as you say, it wouldn't shift the conclusions. The other one might well have done so; but we have no reliable source on this, AFAIK, and we can't make up explanations like that, as you seem to frequently imagine. The major problem is that the reviewed report doesn't claim that "4He was detected in five out of sixteen cases where electrolytic cells were reported to be producing excess heat." I have bolded the problem phrase. The report only claims excess heat for one cell, which is the one that the Appendix focused on, it was concerned with time correlation in this case. From other sources and circumstantial evidence, I can guess that they found excess heat in four or five cells. The ones for which they reported helium! The report incorporated, by reference, many other, stronger, claims about heat and helium, including the very notable Miles. We have abundant source on Miles! Including Huizenga. Any problem with that?

The probable solution here is to simply skip this, deleting the reference to the DOE report, and report about helium from far stronger sources. I'll come up with language and references. --Abd (talk) 19:24, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Measuring calibration constant shift

From above:

Would you please describe an experiment which could measure calibration constant shift? --Ginger Conspiracy 22:52, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

... The long answer is "I already have", the 'experiment' used the very same data that Dr. Edmund Storms used for his 2000 presentation (so he did all the data gathering), I just analyzed the data differently. So, I suggest you read my first paper to understand what I did. The manuscript version can be obtained at Jed Rothwell's lenr-canr site, look under my name in the index.... --Kirk Shanahan 12:32, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ShanahanKapossiblec.pdf is the actual URL. The http:// in front of it will trigger the meta spam filter, that's an old problem I need to get around to fixing one of these days. Nobody carried on this work while I was absent.... But I'll probably go back to meta and request delisting again, now that we have many links locally whitelisted.... --Abd (talk) 21:50, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

I have read all the Shanahan papers on the subject I can find, but I'm not sure which one is the first, and in the papers where you discuss Storms' data I can not find a protocol for actually measuring the calibration constant shift effect. I am trying to determine whether the calibration constant shift is occurring, because I think the article needs to say more than it does on this subject. Can you please cite page numbers, copy-and-paste, or provide a URL to anything which describes an experiment which could measure how much calibration constant shift is occurring in the presence of other sources of apparent heat? Secondly, would you please list the reason(s) that CCS is or is not a falsifiable hypothesis? Ura Ursa (talk) 23:31, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

OK Ura, you seem to have read but not understood, so I will explain. In my first paper (manuscript version on lenr-canr website) published in 2002, I take a data set collected by Ed Storms and published as demonstrating cold fusion, and see what the assumption that no excess energy was really there does. What it did was force us to recognize that it required a change in the equation used to translate temperature changes into power output. Those changes however were trivial, and well within the limits developed from other pieces of the same data set. Note that this is just math, no experimental changes required. That means the two approaches used to translate the data into conclusions were equivalent, i.e., neither could be rejected without further information. The data table presented in the paper 'measures' the CCS, as a %difference from a base value. All values were under ~3%. That tells you directly how big the CCS had to be to get the observed temperature differences. A random 3-sigma error of +/-3% is a top line analytical technique in chemistry (but recall, the CCS observed in that study was NOT random).

CCSs have been observed many times for the case where a cell design change has occurred or a cell has been disassembled and reassembled. The only 'new' thing that I proposed was at-the-electrode non-electrochemical recombination. I surmised that it would produce a different internal heat distribution in the cell/calorimeter, and mathematically showed how that could change the calibration equation by considering the cell as a two-zone structure, one with high heat capture efficiency and one with somewhat lower efficiency. That is also just math. I went one step further when I proposed the at-the-electrode mechanism, as it explains much and considering it might help get control over the effect. That was purely speculative.

If one wanted to simulate the at-the-electrode problem, one might set up a dual resistor arrangement, with one in one zone and the other in the other, and try different power inputs to each and see what was obtained. I would start with some ratio that would be close to something a closed F&P-type cell would normally have. But, that is just my guess as to how to test the idea directly. There could well be other ways I haven't thought of, after all it's not my job to do that, it's the job of people who want to say "No, the real reason is ...". Kirk shanahan (talk) 14:17, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

List of recent sources (after 2004)

To get an idea of the balance of publication and what current trends are in publications in the field of "cold fusion," I've started Talk:Cold fusion/Recent sources. Others are invited to help with this. Publications should meet at least the basic requirements of WP:RS for scientific work. If something is controversial as to being "RS" we will note the nature of the controversy. requested deletion for that page, see below re move to Wikiversity.

Self-published materials should not be included there. These should all be independently published, by a publisher not specifically affiliated with or representing the field of condensed matter nuclear science or low-energy nuclear reactions.

This is also not intended to include conference papers, unless they have been peer-reviewed, selected, and edited for publication.

This compilation is intended for works published after 2004.

I just started with 2005. Our own Kirk Shanahan published that year! There was one negative paper that I'd not seen before, I don't know the nature of it yet, I haven't seen it, titled "Controversy in chemistry: how do you prove a negative? The cases of phlogiston and cold fusion." Sounds pretty negative, eh? The ratio of "positive/negative" publications that year, from the Britz bibliography, which may not be complete, was 4:2. Britz might classify one of the ones I'd call "positive" with "neutral." Maybe more; for example, the Spzak paper in J. Electroanal. Chem. doesn't make "cold fusion" claims, but is clearly a part of the SPAWAR opus, evidence that they have been building for twenty years. On the other hand, in hindsight, that paper establishes no evidence for cold fusion and it's a bit weird that it was even published. "Electrostatic field" in a conductive liquid? No current flow means no voltage across the resistance of the liquid, the field will be entirely across the cell walls, i.e., no field experienced by the cathode. They might as well have recorded the effect of waving a magic wand. I don't wonder at some of the skepticism! --Abd (talk) 23:03, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

My, my, the geese fly south and so does the mind! I searched for a copy of this paper and found a review of it. Starting to read it, I was assuming this was old. Nope. I wrote it, last year. The link to the copy of the paper is dead; however, I wrote that it depends heavily on Simon (2002), which, of course, I have. Enjoy. --Abd (talk) 23:14, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

I decided it would be better to develop this as a learning resource at Wikiversity, I've blanked the page and requested speedy deletion. I recreated the content at Wikiversity:Cold fusion/Recent sources. Editors are welcome to contribute there. Wikiversity is more flexible; for example, it has mainspace subpages, so we can have the source list in mainspace, with an attached Talk page. Original research is allowed, etc. --Abd (talk) 00:28, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Fringe theories noticeboard post

I'm going to post to the Fringe theories noticeboard in order to get more eyes onto the article. Kirk, could you add just below here a brief summary of your point. Abd, could you add just below that your take on it. Then people who come to the article can begin to engage with it. We could turn it into a request for comment, but those usually fail unless they are correctly introduced. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:32, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

The assumption here seems to be that there is a dispute that could be summarized succinctly from both "sides," and outside opinions solicited. I do agree that outside eyes on the article would be good, but I'm puzzled as to which dispute you are referring to? Abd has contributed to several disputes in the last few days. He started by bringing up the long-dead dispute over a poll that was considered, among other issues, in the Abd/WMC arbitration which resulted in a three-month site ban and a year long topic ban for him. Now that the topic ban has expired, he's taken up exactly where he left off. After unnecessarily rekindling the acrimony over that old poll, (here's my analysis of that poll, from the "analysis of evidence" section of that case) he went on to jump into several ongoing discussions on this page. Which one did you have in mind as the problem dispute? Woonpton (talk) 15:25, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not all that clear! Kirk was talking about an error in a source and you'll see above that I advised him to take it to RSN. Then Abd added a lot of stuff that I can't follow. If you say I was wrong to interpret this as a dispute, then you may well be right. I'd be grateful if Kirk will say if he has a question about sourcing that would benefit from outside comment. Itsmejudith (talk) 15:38, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

That isn't quite what I was saying; I wasn't suggesting that there's no dispute, only that there are so many that I wasn't sure which one you were referring to. I gather from your response that you mean the dispute about what the 2004 DOE report says about a correlation between helium and heat. (The way I read the dispute, BTW, it was Abd who was arguing that the source was in error, and Kirk was arguing that there was no error, but Kirk can elucidate that for you if he chooses.) I haven't participated in that debate (or on this article or talk at all for more than a year, though it's been on my watchlist), and not having the source in front of me don't have an informed opinion about it one way or the other. I was only trying to determine which of the several recent discussions Abd has been involved in, that you had in mind when you referred to a single dispute. Woonpton (talk) 16:06, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Abd certainly hasn't changed much has he. The initial question I posted was whether a blatant error in a journal article could lead to its banning as RS, and how to determine that. My question was hypothetical because I anticipate the problem arising and wanted to know what one could do about it, not that it has already occurred, and Judith answered sufficiently. Abd chimed in about 'verifiability not truth', but I think Wiki would disagree. For ex, if a prominent newspaper published in an article that the President was actually a native Lithuanian, I expect Wiki would not want that included in an article, as it is clearly untrue. Thus it's not just 'verifiability' of whether a reference has been in fact published, it's verifiability it is at least not grossly untrue. I believe we depend on peer review in science journals for that normally. The case we may see here soon is a grossly untrue-type of problem. Peer review doesn't always work.Kirk shanahan (talk) 21:03, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Ah, okay, then it was a different dispute yet. I guess I just skipped over the hypothetical question. If there's a particular source you have in mind, why not just bring it up? In general, my observation has been that the answers to questions like this tend to depend on the context and on whether the error has been noted in reliable sources, but if it hasn't been, then you have a problem where verifiability and accuracy come into conflict, and OR is a potential problem. We can't introduce our own analysis of the error into the article, but as in your example, we don't want to introduce inaccuracy either. In a situation like this on another topic, the issue was decided by simply leaving out the erroneous statement and its source, as it wasn't essential to the topic, but this is a sticky area. And yes, I agree that peer review doesn't always work and that papers get published that shouldn't have passed peer review. Woonpton (talk) 13:07, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, I see Abd has been busy. Is there anything you need from me regarding this mess Judith or Woonpton? Kirk shanahan (talk) 03:37, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Not for me at the moment. I'm particularly interested in sourcing issues. As you may remember from my involvement some time ago, I'm a social scientist with only a basic knowledge of physics and chemistry, although I am quite interested in the philosophy, sociology and history of science. If there is a proposed amendment to the encyclopedia that depends on handling of academic sources, then I may be able to comment. It's much harder to comment on hypotheticals. Itsmejudith (talk) 07:06, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Nor for me. I was just trying to follow the conversation on the page, which became difficult when the page was suddenly overwhelmed with mushrooming clouds of text on several different issues all at once. Woonpton (talk) 13:07, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

[unindenting] to Judith and Woonpton, to sort of finish this off, I had decided based on Judith's response to avoid the attempt to get the source banned, and instead I have included a brief discussion of it in a proposed additional section on conventional explanations. The last two paragraphs of the Calorimetry section are what I refer to. The blatant error that seriously impacts the value of reference 4, a recently published article purporting to respond to my recently published comments on problems in CF research, is that after 4 publications and 6 years (and many emails to E. Storms), the CFers call my proposal a 'random' one, while I clearly and multiply call it systematic. Random and systematic are diametric opposites. Because they refuse to understand what I say (I can't put it any other way after all this time), they make assumptions that lead them to publish garbage like this paper. Unlike the error in the DOE report that Abd may have noted, this error kills their arguments. The majority of the paper in invalid because it drives off of their rejection of _my_ (actually their) work. Only the comments on heavy metal transmutation are not seriously affected. This should have, but wasn't, caught by the peer reviewers. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:29, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

The substance for review

Because Itsmejudith actually did go to the Fringe theories noticeboard, and because some editors may show up here as a result, and because Kirk didn't respond with any answer about an actual text issue, I'll point here to two pending issues. Only the first was ready for actual clear consideration, where specific proposed text was given and discussion opened, most of which went off-point.

• Talk:Cold fusion#Proposed explanations.
  

Review of this could be helpful. The other issue was preliminary. Specific sourced text was added in the past to the article, and taken out without, in my opinion, adequate review, but I haven't proposed new text now, I was simply raising the issue, and expect I will, if permitted, make specific proposals, with ample sourcing. But comments could assist in this. These would be:

• Talk:Cold fusion#Heat/helium correlation, and continued at
• Talk:Cold fusion#One such error.
  

What would be truly useful here would be watching of this Talk page by more experienced editors, to keep discussion from going off track, and to help head off incivility and useless bickering. There isn't a behavioral problem with the article at this point, but, if the past is any sign, there might be some problems coming up. Not from me. I'm COI and respect the restrictions. Thanks! --Abd (talk) 01:49, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

So you are just back from block and immediately trying to re-open the above three questions, with walls of text. This doesn't seem helpful at all. I see that at one point there was a suggestion of you getting a mentor. Did that work out? Itsmejudith (talk) 07:11, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

@Itsmejudith. There were two proposals for mentorship: voluntary and involuntary. The text "unless approved by his mentor(s)" was removed by this request for clarification, but nobody updated the case page.... --Enric Naval (talk) 14:42, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps sooner than Abd had anticipated... Itsmejudith, your comment doesn't seem "helpful at all". It seems like the kind of thing Abd just described. Ignoring what was just said, directed at the person, bad faith, negatively characterizing, AND patronizing. Inflammatory in many ways and I don't see what it could possibly accomplish besides. Kevin Baas^talk 14:22, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Aw, cut her some slack, Kevin. I'll answer on her talk page. Meanwhile, would someone please collapse this off-topic diversion? --Abd (talk) 14:45, 20 September 2010 (UTC). --Abd (talk) 14:45, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Abd. I didn't mean to be patronising. I came here to see if I could shed light on a question about errors in a reliable source. It's taken me this time to work out the context. Itsmejudith (talk) 15:24, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

reply to Itsmejudith --Abd (talk) 19:11, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm not just back from block. A topic ban expired. Meanwhile, I became COI and now have extensive personal correspondence with the researchers in the field, I've met a few in person, and my understanding has greatly deepened, I know the skeptical arguments, understood them long ago, and understand why they aren't being accepted any longer. I fully respect the COI restrictions and agree with them. I started as a skeptic about a year and a half ago, like many who now accept that something nuclear is going on. "Cold fusion" -- which might not be "fusion"! -- is not fringe any more. But the difference isn't great, we shouldn't fight over it, whether it is fringe or emerging science. However, a significant faction of editors, across many articles, want "fringe science" entirely excluded or presented only from a presumed majority POV, and act to exclude the alleged "fringe POV," even where it is well-covered in reliable sources. If editors follow RS, inclusion, and WP:UNDUE guidelines, properly, per RfAr/Fringe science, there will be no problem. Undue weight, properly, is determined by preponderance of reliable sources. We'll deal with each specific case as it comes up. Sources are not excluded because they support a "fringe POV," because that would be circular. They are accepted if the publisher and publishing process meets RS standards. Undue weight is then determined by the balance of acceptable sources. I hope you will watch this page and the article, and your participation here will be most welcome, regardless of your initial "POV." Much discussion here may be over your head, unless you have adequate background in nuclear physics and chemistry. That's fine. I encourage you to skip that discussion! Before anything goes into the article, it should be sufficiently explained and referenced to be understandable and verifiable by you, not just by experts, or it's useless! It can take some discussion to get there, though. Watch! --Abd (talk) 19:11, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Proposed Section Addition - Conventional Explanations

At this point, I no longer wish to argue with either Abd or V. Both have formed an irreversible opinion of me, and this colors all their responses and contributions to this topic. Instead I want to proceed with my long-term intention to bring the conventional explanations of cold fusion results to the Wiki CF article. The following is offered up for wordsmithing, leading to later incorporation. References are at the end, several are already used in the CF article. The new ones will have to be added in proper format of course. The following suggested contribution can be placed anywhere in the article it is appropriate with whatever title/header works. I will call it:

I'll insert a comment here rather than at the end. Kirk is wrong about my opinion. I think much of what he says is stated so poorly or incompletely that it generally has huge logical holes in it. Kirk chooses to take my objections personally, as if what he says somehow equals himself, as evidenced by so many ludicrous claims of "ad hominem attacks". For example, if I say that a particular remark is irrational --and explain exactly why-- Kirk somehow thinks I am claiming he is irrational. But the fact is, anyone no matter how smart is able to make an irrational remark --and almost everyone does on occasion. Therefore I know full well that people are different from the things they say. If Kirk doesn't know it, that's his problem, not mine. V (talk) 03:33, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Actually, the problem is V refuses to understand what I write, because if he did, he would be forced to realize that CF is unproven to this day. I have tried multiple times in the past (check the Archives) to explain the basics of the issue to him, and he consistently fails to get it. I finally accused him of doing it deliberately. Goodstein's new book concludes that CF is a case of self-delusion, and I think it was Feynman who said the easiest person to fool is ourself, so I write it off to self-delusion in V's case. The CCS is nothing but algebra. The algebra is either right or wrong. If it was wrong, you can be assured there would be multiple publications out there trumpeting it. There are zero. So, failure to understand simple algebra is a personal choice. The only reason to choose that is to avoid having to admit you are wrong. That is the basis of V's bias against everything I write. I don't care if V believes it or not, but the result is that the CF article ends up with none of the conventional explanations given any mention longer than a line or two, while there are multiple paragraphs about all the wonderous 'proof' of LENR. Definitely NPOV. Kirk shanahan (talk) 12:37, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

I do realize that CF in particular is unproven as far as the mainstream is concerned --but the mainstream data I've encountered in the past few years strongly indicates that the mainstream is beginning to formally recognize that something very unusual is going on in those experiments --that is, the early claims that all the results were due to experimental error have, in essence, been proved false, though you, Kirk, appear to refuse to understand that (and perhaps are doing it deliberately). For example, consider the experiments that yieled spots of melted palladium, as shown in that university video with Rob Duncan (the 60 minutes investigator, in, I think, this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nNRB0K_dw0 ). The type of melting indicates that heat inside the metal caused a small amount of metal to erupt like a volcano. Kirk wants us to think that a hydrogen-oxygen chemical reaction can do that, except Kirk forgets that the permeability of oxygen into the body of palladium metal is practically zero. Kirk has offered no explanation how dissolved oxygen at the surface of metal could cause this shape of melting, if it combined with monatomic hydrogen at the surface of the metal. Therefore it is visually obvious that something unusual had to have happened inside that piece of metal. Kirk hasn't even explained how there could be enough oxygen in the vicinity of the palladium for this to happen, since in electrolysis experiments the type of oxygen normally found near the hydrogen-releasing electrode are negatively charged oxygen ions that would not be reactive, at all! Finally, I repeat something I've said elsewhere/elsewhen, only in different words here: CCS may explain some experimental "detections" of heat when there is no other data, from those experiments, indicating that such heat was produced. It cannot possibly explain experiments in which things like melted electrode material proves that real heat had to have been there, to be measured by a calorimeter. V (talk) 15:35, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Before Kirk decides to misunderstand one of the above points, it seems best to clarify it. The Statement "All early CF experiments yielded data that was the result of experimental error" is a false statement. If the word "all" was replaced by "many", it would be a true statement (and might be true even if "all" was replaced by "most"). But some experiments yielded valid data, and this is what the mainstream has recently begun to recognize. V (talk) 15:59, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

V makes a common error here. I'm not aware of any "early experiments" where the final published report contained major calorimetry error. Once we realize that it was extremely difficult to demonstrate the heat effect, given the ignorance of the exact necessary conditions on the part of everyone, Pons and Fleischmann included, we can then look at all the negative experiments as simply confirmations of this, and the most interesting of them are those which looked for, and failed to find, nuclear effects that others, who got significant heat, did report. These are confirmations of the heat/helium ratio (more generally, the heat/nuclear reaction ratio)! They are, in fact, quite good control experiments, once we know what we are looking for. They also showed the importance of loading ratio, and recent meta-analysis of this work (a conference paper, though) shows 100% correlation between certain reported variables (such as loading ratio or a lack of concern for loading) and "negative results."

Further, there is an error in understanding what "mainstream" means. Does it mean "all scientists," or does it mean "all experts familiar with the evidence"? This is why Wikipedia depends for science on peer-reviewed publications or independent publisher decisions. The former, especially, will make decisions based on review by experts who consider the evidence. The 2004 DoE report, if you read it carefully, showed, probably, a great difference between the opinion of a panel of experts, compared to what we might have expected at the time from a random sample, of, say, particle physicists. Long before 2004, most particle physicists had decided that to keep abreast of evidence in this field was a waste of their time. Except for a few, whom editors here will cheerfully call "fringe." They were, for a time. Not any longer, apparently. --Abd (talk) 16:21, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Alternative Chemical Explanations of 'Cold Fusion' Observations A variety of observations have been claimed over the years to support the contention that a new and novel nuclear reaction (or set thereof) had been discovered initially by Fleischmann and Pons (F&P), and separately, by Jones. The Jones claims have never been as strongly pushed as the F&P ones, primarily since the Jones observations are based in low level nuclear radiation counting techniques, which were recognized as being susceptible to various problems. Replication difficulties led Jones to take a more circumspect approach to the subject. The F&P claims however, have found vociferous support in a variety of forums, including the scientific literature and popular books. Two recent examples of this are the aforementioned 2007 book by Storms[1], and a review article by Krivit and Marwan (K&M) [2]. The following will roughly follow the outline of the latter, and refer heavily to the Comment on it published by Shanahan[3]. A Response to the Comment has been published [4], which will also be discussed briefly. The Storms book provides more detailed examinations of the extant CF literature on these topics through 2007, although in two cases key publications suggesting problems with the presented results were not discussed in either source[1,2].

Calorimetry

In 2002, Shanahan published a simple explanation for how apparent excess heat signals could be produced from F&P electrolysis cells[5]. This explanation was composed of 3 parts: (1) the basic problem, called the calibration constant shift (CCS) problem, (2) a contention that the calorimeter/cell needed to be considered at a minimum as a two-zone entity, which allowed an understanding of how a CCS could occur via a change in heat distribution, and (3) a postulated physical/chemical mechanism that would lead to the changes required to shift the cell steady-state configuration, which could produce a heat distribution shift between the two zones.

The basis of (1) was the recognition that calibration constants in calibration equations used to translate experimental observables into power signals were experimentally determined and thus subject to some error. The 2002 publication took real data published by E. Storms [6] and reanalyzed it under the assumption that no excess heat had been produced. It was found that this assumption forced one to change the calibration constants to drive the apparent excess heat signal to zero. What was noted was that the changes required were minor, being ~1-3% of the originally determined values. Further, it was recognized that there was a consistent pattern in the shifts with time and experimental operations that clearly showed the problem to be systematic, i.e. non-random. It was also pointed out that the estimated shifts were of approximately the same size as the variations in constants obtained by calibrating with different methods and at different times. This led Shanahan to conclude the CCS was a feasible explanation for the apparent excess heats.

Shanahan went further and postulated that a shift in heat distribution in a cell might cause the CCS, showing this mathematically would lead to a CCS. Shanahan also proposed a physical/chemical mechanism for how this shift might occur. This involved the formation of an unspecified 'special active surface state' which would promote at-the-electrode hydrogen + oxygen recombination, which would cause extra heat to be deposited at the electrode instead of at the recombination catalyst in a closed cell or being lost out the vent tube as unreacted H2 + O2 in an open cell. A surface state was proposed since (a) the cathode in these studies was Pt, which is not known to hydride under any conditions (thus no bulk hydride could be involved), and (b) the free metal surface under the growing hydrogen bubble would serve as the recombination catalyst.

The primary impact of the CCS concept is that it negates the idea that baseline noise represents the only important error in these experiments. The Storms data showed a 780 mW peak, but this was now explained as an ~3% shift in calibration constant. It was suggested that simple sensitivity analysis of what apparent excess power signals could be expected from 1-10% changes in calibration constants should be part of every subsequent cold fusion calorimetric study.

Unfortunately the CF community has rejected the CCS concept out of hand, as illustrated by the recent publication[4]. However, the CF community has apparently failed to grasp the CCS concept, since the recent primary thrust was to discredit “Shanahan's random hypothesis”[4], which indicated a complete misunderstanding of the systematic nature of the CCS as presented by Shanahan [3,5,7,8]. This has led to additional issues when they consistently apply their erroneous rejection to the other aspects of CF observations easily explained by Shanahan's proposed mechanism. For example in reference to HAD events, Shanahan contends these are events interpreted based on the same calibration equation while the severe change in cell conditions would in fact require recalibration. But since the CF community rejects the CCS, they reject this contention as well.

Likewise, Storms attempted to discredit the proposed Shanahan mechanism[9], but Shanahan rebutted this attempt[8]. Unfortunately Storms [1] stated that he had successfully discredited the mechanism but failed to mention the Shanahan rebuttal. This problem was described [3], however, in the response[4], the authors repeat this mistake, again indicating their lack of understanding of the Shanahan proposals.

Transmutation

Two types of transmutations have been discussed in the literature based on the observation of He in gas samples and on heavy metal content in/on solids. The original F&P claims [10] suggested deuterium fusion as the source of the apparent excess heat, which immediately suggested that 4He should be observed. Subsequently, various groups reported detecting 4He. It was pointed out in the 1989 DOE Review [ref] that this had to be shown to not be due to leakage of external 4He into the apparati. Various CF researchers have claimed to have shown this. However, the SRI group supplied samples to B. Oliver of PNNL, who, working with W. B. Clarke of McMaster University, a recognized expert in low level He measurement, found the samples grossly contaminated with air [11]. At this point no replication of this experiment has been attempted, so it remains an open question as to when the air was introduced. But if it was from the SRI phase of the work, then clearly the SRI group would not have solved the in-leakage problem recognized in 1989. No CF researcher has presented adequate documentation that environmental He has been successfully excluded from their apparatus, thus the use of He results to conclude active nuclear reactions is unsupported at this time. (This documentation would include full disclosure of analytical methods and results, including from calibrations and background measurements, and replicated results with those methods (preferably at other laboratories).)

Heavy metals were found on active F&P-type cathodes very early on and their presence in general is not contested. Some time later these results began to be claimed to be from transmutation reactions, as opposed to the commonly accepted contamination processes, and as well were claimed to often have anomalous isotope distributions. No substantial proof of the nuclear source of these metals has been offered, some unpublished results clearly show contamination as the identified source (discussed in [3]), and several data misinterpretation examples can be identified, leading to the conclusion that contamination still remains the most likely cause of the appearance of these metals.

CR-39

The Shanahan mechanism proposes that the hydrogen + oxygen recombination in bubbles produces explosions (also contended to be present by Szpak, et al [3]). These explosions could potentially induce mechanical damage in the CR-39 material used to search for nuclear radiation, which in turn would lead to the observed copious pits in the etched material as mechanical damage is known to produce pits in etched CR-39 material [3]. The CF community rejects this hypothesis since they believe no at-the-electrode recombination is occurring, thus they are forced to conclude actual nuclear particles have been formed. The CF community had made much of the apparent similarity of so-called 'triplets' found in the sparsely pitted areas of CR-39 plates to those found in plates exposed to D-T fusion neutron sources [4]. However, until such time as the details of how the copious explosions in SPAWAR cells might or might not produce pits are worked out, it is impossible to say if the pits and 'triplets' in the CF CR-39 materials are due to nuclear particles or not. Essentially until the parameters of how and when mechanical shock can induce pitting are worked out, the CR-39 method is not exclusively diagnostic of nuclear reactions.

Temporal Correlations

The CF community has also emphasized correlations between apparent excess heat signals and measured He levels. Shanahan pointed out that such correlations are meaningless when the actual identity of the plotted parameters is unknown [3]. Since excess heat signals are not proven real, and since He signals are not proven to exclude air leaks, correlations between these variables are meaningless. This point was also not understood by the CF community.

Shanahan also noted that selective data presentation was occurring in the recent review [2], and referred to the same data in the Hagelstein report [12]. He asked the question of why the He levels appeared to decrease after some point, which should not occur. The response offered an undocumented assertion that the sample had absorbed some of it [4], which is an inadequate answer, experimental proof or literature references are required.

A General Problem

As can be seen, conventional explanations are varied and might or might not be applicable in any specific given case. For example, the Shanahan CCS mechanism is clearly not applicable in a gas-solid only system, while a CCS caused by another mechanism might be. However, the CF community consistently lists a variety of experiments and results under the single broad heading of LENR and attempts to derive confidence from the sheer number of such reports. The problem with this is that this is an illegitimate approach to scientific inquiry. Before individual experiments can be included in the whole body of knowledge there needs to be confidence that the individual results are reliable. Reliability is always indicated by detailed reproducibility. At this time, no CF experimental protocol is capable of producing reliable results. Until such time as a set of reliable experimental results is obtained, different experiments cannot be shown to result from the same putative source (LENR).

REFERENCES 1.) Storms, Edmund (2007), Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction: A Comprehensive Compilation of Evidence and Explanations, Singapore: World Scientific, ISBN 9-8127062-0-8
2.) Krivit, Steven B., Marwan, Jan, (2009), "A new look at low-energy nuclear reaction research"’, J. Environ. Monit., 11, 1731-1746
3.) Shanahan, Kirk L., (2010) , ‘Comments on "A new look at low-energy nuclear reaction research"’, J. Environ. Monit., 12, 1756-1764
4.) J. Marwan, M. C. H. McKubre, F. L. Tanzella, P. L. Hagelstein, M. H. Miles, M. R. Swartz, Edmund Storms, Y. Iwamura, P. A. Mosier-Boss and L. P. G. Forsley J. Environ. Monit., (2010), “A new look at low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR) research: a response to Shanahan”, J. Environ. Monit., 12, 1765-1770
5.) Shanahan, Kirk L. (23 May 2002), "A systematic error in mass flow calorimetry demonstrated", Thermochimica Acta 382 (2): 95–100
6.) Storms, Edmund, (2001), Excess Power Production from Platinum Cathodes Using the Pons–Fleischmann Effect, in: F. Scaramuzzi (Ed.), ICCF8—Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Cold Fusion, pp. 55–61
7.) Shanahan, Kirk L. (April 2005), "Comments on "Thermal behavior of polarized Pd/D electrodes prepared by co-deposition"" (PDF), Thermochimica Acta 428 (1-2): 207–212
8.) Shanahan, Kirk L. (15 February 2006), "Reply to 'Comment on papers by K. Shanahan that propose to explain anomalous heat generated by cold fusion', E. Storms, Thermochim. Acta, 2006" (PDF), Thermochimica Acta 441 (2): 210–214
9.) Storms, Edmund, (2006), 'Comment on papers by K. Shanahan that propose to explain anomalous heat generated by cold fusion', Thermochimica Acta 441 (2): 2 207-209
10.) Fleischmann, Martin, Pons, Stanley, Hawkins, Marvin, (1989), Electrochemically induced nuclear fusion of deuterium, J. Electroanal. Chem. 261 (1989) 301, and erratum (1989), J. Electroanal. Chem. 263, 187
11.) W. B. Clarke, S. J. Bos and B. M. Oliver, (2003), Production of 4He in D2-Loaded Palladium-Carbon Catalyst II, Fusion Sci. Technol., 43, 250
12.) Hagelstein, Peter L.; Michael, McKubre; Nagel, David; Chubb, Talbot; Hekman, Randall (2004), New Physical Effects in Metal Deuterides, Washington: US Department of Energy, (manuscript) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kirk shanahan (talk • contribs) 16:19, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Comments about this proposal

Thanks, Kirk. I will review this in detail and respond. This is alternate text, or supplemental text, for what I've proposed above. I can see right away, though, that it isn't written from an NPOV perspective, with comments like "This point was also not understood by the CF community." That's original research, yours, and appears to be quite incorrect. But let's take this one point at a time. There may be much of substance here that may be used. I think we agree that the article, as is, is impoverished. My "opinion" of you isn't relevant. --Abd (talk) 18:36, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

The section is certainly not, sentence by sentence, NPOV, and it wasn’t intended that way. I find that concept to be hopelessly confusing for a Wiki reader. Instead, my proposal has always been the article should have 3 sections: a neutral blow-by-blow historical account, a presentation of why the CFers think LENRs are present, and a presentation of why the ‘mainstream’ thinks the evidence is not compelling enough to force a rewrite of physics textbooks (i.e., the conventional explanations and lack of testing of them by the CFers). So, we are not going to try to NPOV this section, we are going to try to balance the whole article so that it is readable and understandable by laymen.

I did try to condense this as much as possible, expecting interested readers to go get the papers and read them themselves, but since you dislike the ‘not understood’ sentence, I here expand that section to document with quotes why this is said. We should add the text (less the first line) right after the statement you noted.

[begin addition] This point was also apparently not understood by the CF community. In [3] two rhetorical questions were asked in reference to supposed heat-He correlation plots. The first was: ‘‘If in fact there is no excess heat, then what exactly is being plotted on the Y axis?’’ In [4] the answer was given as: “Where does the ‘fact’ that ‘there is no excess heat’ come from? It comes from the strained logic that the CCSH ‘explains all excess heat results.’ As discussed above, CCSH has no validity.” (The CCSH is the acronym defined by the authors of [4] to assert the CCS was ‘just a hypothesis (H)’. This is the ‘random’ error they think Shanahan proposed.) Obviously given the statement above, disbelief in the possibility of a systematic CCS has led these authors to not give any consideration to the point that an apparent excess heat signal may not mean true excess heat. Later, Shanahan asked: ‘‘If there is no proof that the observed He is not from a leak, then how does one know that is not what is being plotted on the X axis?’’ The answer given [4] was: “This is easily explained. The shape of the measured 4He vs. time curve is quantitatively different from that of a convective or diffusional leak of ambient 4He into the closed cell.” They go on to further explain what they believe the shape of the He vs time curve should be if it arose from the ‘simple’ leak that they envision. Here the authors fail to take into account that the experimental time period extends over a month. The idea of a fixed He concentration is simply the simplest model imaginable of what is probably a very complex time function. In fact Shanahan mentioned this oversimplification [3], but this was apparently missed by the authors also. Given that ambient He concentrations could vary significantly on a day by day basis, a more reasonable procedure would be to attempt to back-calculate an ambient He concentration that would produce the observed profile, and then attempt to determine if it might be consistent with He usage in the laboratory building and HVAC characteristics. In the end though, measurement of this is required. [end addition]

So you see it’s certainly _NOT_ OR, it is a simple and direct reading of the text. If the authors had understood the CCS, they never would have said what they did about apparent excess heat. If they understood anything about He in laboratories, they never would have assumed the experiment was sitting in the middle of a corn field (or such).

Your opinion is certainly relevant because you have decided I cannot possibly know what is going on, and thus everything I write must be wrong. Therefore you challenge everything, thereby missing the point of everything. The example is right above. Instead of assuming I had good reason to put the comment I did in, you assumed I was slamming ‘those dumb CFers’ again. Shame on you Abd, it shows a lack of good faith. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:16, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Hey, Kirk, if you can convince the community to violate NPOV, who am I to stand in the way? But you won't. Gee, I thought I was being friendly and supportive above. Seriously. I'll just respond to one thing here:

• a presentation of why the ‘mainstream’ thinks the evidence is not compelling enough to force a rewrite of physics textbooks (i.e., the conventional explanations and lack of testing of them by the CFers).

How do we know what the "mainstream" thinks? We can make sourced comments for the period before 2004. I'm not concerned about that. What does the mainstream think now? Our best guide is what peer reviewers are passing, and peer reviewed secondary source reviews of the field. I'm compiling a list of all peer-reviewed publications I can find, at Wikiversity:Cold fusion/Recent sources, covering the period after 2004, when the DoE review that year made it plain that cold fusion was far along toward acceptance, compared with the 1989 review. Editors here have focused on the "overall conclusion," which was about funding, not the science. Given that nobody knows for sure what the reaction is, and that it seems fragile at best, major funding didn't seem a good idea in 1989 and 2004, and quite possibly even now. It's very hard to engineer something that you don't understand. Both the 1989 and 2004 reviews recommended more research into the basic issues, and that's finally happening.

But CF (i.e., LENR) being real doesn't require a "rewrite of physics textbooks," unless they were so foolish as to declare an "impossibility" without knowing precisely what reaction is supposed to be "impossible." Yes, we understand well the reasons why straight two-deuteron fusion is probably impossible as an explanation of CF results, but that is not, by far, the only physical possibility, merely the most obvious -- and it got even more obvious with the heat/helium results, even Huizenga took notice of those results. If Takahashi is correct in his theory, fusion is predicted from standard quantum field theory, but it is not two-deuteron fusion. None of this will be presented in the article until and unless though coverage in peer-reviewed secondary or academic sources, or sometimes sources of lower quality if we can find consensus and justify the lowering of standards. --Abd (talk) 21:26, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Abd, I love it when you prove my points for me. Thanks. You use publication as the indicator of 'mainstream', but every pseudoscience boondoggle has been published. I read a 2004 DOE report that says almost exactly what the 1989 report says, and you think they have suggested things are improving. Elsewhere you talk about publications stats showing how the field is somehow valid that I see a showing a small band of die-hard fanatics are still at it. You need to reread Langmuir's description of pathological science. The only problem with it is he didn't see the die-hards hanging on. He just predicted each instance would fade away. The publications stats you like fit his predictions except for that minor detail. If you want to see what a healthy publication profile is, go study high temperature superconductors. There is a success story. You also prove my point about how everything I do is wrong according to you when you fail to understand why the article is currently not NPOV, but would be a lot closer when my section is added. It contains all the left-out stuff. But, your objective is to stop me, not get an NPOV article. Kirk shanahan (talk) 00:29, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

This isn't about "conventional explanations" so it's collapsed. Respond to Shanahan. --Abd (talk) 01:21, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Take a look at what's below. "Die-hards," indeed. How about we get to work and stop the silly irrelevancies! Anyone who thinks the 2004 DoE review treated cold fusion as if it were pathological science can't read and understand what they are reading. One reviewer did, and maybe more, but not a majority. In 1989, I think the majority would have taken Fleischmann out and had him shot if they could have. So to speak. There were maybe two members of the ~15 member panel who thought CF was worth looking at. One was a Nobel Prize winner, and that's why the final report of the 1989 panel had that conciliatory language. He threatened to resign if it didn't. In 2004, -- read the report! -- half the panel thought the evidence for excess heat was "conclusive" and one-third thought that evidence of its nuclear origin was "convincing" or "somewhat convincing." Now, if you don't believe in the excess heat, you have no reason to think that heat that doesn't exist is of nuclear origin. This means that those who accepted the excess heat evidence were two-thirds convinced that it was nuclear. We can easily quibble about details. But to anyone familiar with the events of 1989, the 2004 review was a vast difference. And even then, it's pretty clear that some didn't get the message, see those errors about heat/helium mentioned above. This is the strongest evidence available that there is a nuclear reaction taking place, -- as Huizenga (the co-chair of the 1989 panel and author of Cold fusion, scientific fiasco of the century, realized, I covered that above. If you don't realize the significance of the correlation, you are then stuck with worrying about details of possible calorimetry errors, and if you don't realize how strong the correlation is between excess heat and helium, you have missed practically the whole point. No heat, no helium. Always. Heat, helium roughly correlated with the heat. Almost always. And helium can escape if something goes wrong... (just as it could leak in.) --Abd (talk) 01:21, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

It's the balance of publications, and publication by independent publishers that are what we use to determine balance, not editor opinion about what is fringe and what is not. I'm quite aware that isolated publication doesn't prove that something isn't fringe, but when there is increasing publication in mainstream journals, including the one I cite below, that consider the matter resolved positively (as to preponderance of the evidence) and a disappearance of publication that assumes the whole thing is bogus, we know that a shift has occurred. The "isolated publication" now is Shanahan's recent paper, published, my sense, to seal the matter, showing how desperate the skeptical arguments have become. But we'll look at that in detail. I'm pretty sure we will end up citing Shanahan. --Abd (talk) 01:21, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

No Abd, 'fringe' is decided by the logical position of the proposition under consideration with respect to the prevailing view (i.e. the 'mainstream' view). CF is NOT recognized at all by the prevailing view, it is considered a prime example of bad science. While you see the few recent publications as a sign of things looking up for CF, I see the affect of 15 years of the mainstream thinking CF was dead (as Langmuir would have predicted). With journal shopping in play, the CFers have found a crop of reviewers who are unfamiliar with the issues, and are fooled by the psuedoscientific approach they use. It requires some detailed study to note the problems, unless you read my and Clarke's papers. Then the errors are directly pointed out, which is of course why the CFers (a) don't mention them if at all possible and (b) denigrate them if forced to acknowledge them. If you think the CFers are really serious about their ideas, you should suggest to them that they present a paper at an upcoming conference of metal-hydrogen systems experts. To date, they have never done so. The next opportunity will be this summer at the Gordon Research Conference on Metal-Hydrogen Systems. Failing that, the next opportunity would certainly be the next year at the International Symposium on Hydrorgen-Metal Systems. The date and location of that will be announced at the Gordon Conference. There may be some other opportunities crop up elsewhere as there frequently are several smaller meetings or sessions per year. The people that attend these conferences are experts who will have no difficulty understanding any of the CF concepts. (In fact the two panelists I know from the 2004 DOE Review are routine attendees.) They represent the mainstream quite well. If the CFers could convince them, I would alter my opinion on this at least (can't say about others). Until then CF is, by definition, fringe. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:04, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

The point missed: How do we know the "mainstream view" in science? Can the "mainstream view" shift, and how would we know it? Many individuals tend to hold persistently to their previous strongly expressed opinions, so we will get excessive conservatism if we look solely at individuals. Sometimes a demonstration is so clear that it becomes untenable to hold onto an old rejection. There have been such demonstrations, heat/helium correlation at a fusion value is one, as Huizenga noticed, but they were not necessarily noticed. There is another, the recent triple-track and other neutron evidence, but that has been inadequately confirmed, in my view, even though it, itself, confirmed older findings. For years, now, CF papers have been published in mainstream journals, though not the ones that some physicists demand to see, and the extreme skeptical position that Shanahan represents has not appeared in response, except for his one recent response, which I'm sure we will look carefully at, together with the co-published rebuttal.

When we tell the whole story of CF, as told in RS, we will understand this. There was widespread rejection of CF papers by policy. Without review. Or with reviewer assumptions that, for example, there couldn't be excess heat because fusion at these temperatures is impossible, therefore there must be an error, therefore this should not be published. Which is, of course, a circular argument! Made even if the paper didn't mention "fusion." This isn't just the whining of "fringe scientists." It's well-established and verifiable.

So, to answer the question, we suspect a shift when reviews of the field, independently published, shift. The shift becomes solid when reviews of the field are published under peer review (PR), and contrary PR reviews don't appear. The preponderance of evidence has already shifted, based on PR reviews, many of them. The most recent positive review in Naturwissenschaften will, I'm sure, bring out what's left of the skeptical position, and I would make no final conclusion at this time. But it is no longer acceptable, here, to assume that, of course, this is fringe. It certainly was previously, but the 2004 DoE review, carefully examined in context, already showed that this wasn't correct any more. You don't have one-third of reviewers on an 18-member panel of experts, supporting a "fringe view." It has become "emerging science," still controversial. How many of those reviewers "rejected" cold fusion, i.e., considered the evidence to be have refuted? We aren't told; there may have been none at all. From the overall recommendations, all reviewers supported further research, that wasn't a compromise, as it had been in 1989. You don't have a unanimous recommendation for further research to identify the cause of anomalies when the field is known to be bogus, based on error, with no evidence. So the shift had occurred by 2004. --Abd (talk) 16:12, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

I understand that a lot of effort and anger was put into that comment, but frankly it's all straw-man and non-sequitor. (and in addition some of it is specious and/or opinion masquerading as fact) Kevin Baas^talk 15:43, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Shall I assume from the indentation that you are refering to my last comment? Perhaps some specifics might be helpful as opposed to generic, and therefore unusable, remarks. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:38, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

My remarks were not generic, and certainly not unusable. Also, were they "generic", it would not logically follow that they are unusable. (for example, "be more careful" is "generic" advice, but can be more beneficial then more "specific" advice that only covers a few specific dangers.) That is an example of a specious argument. I find it hard sometimes to choose how "finely" to respond. Too much, it seems, can be unnecessarily aggravating. While too little, and people might not even know what you're talking about. now the non-sequitor, of course, relate to the whole paragraph and every thing in it. That's just the nature of non-sequitor. it's "nothing in A is logically relevant to the argument put forth". if the fallacy was of the from "something(s) in..." (existential (some) rather than universal (all/none) then yeah, you could be more specific. but it's not. that's just the inherent logical nature of non-sequitor. straw man is kind of implicit in non-sequitor, by the very fact that by non-sequitoring you're implying that his argument was relevant to what you said, which it wasn't, and thus is something different than ti was, which is straw man. so admittedly that's a little redundant. the others i can cite a few examples on. bear in mind that these are only a few. (frankly, pretty much every sentence has at least an opinion as fact, specious logic, or both) just picking a random sentence here: "the CFers have found a crop of reviewers who are unfamiliar with the issues, and are fooled by the psuedoscientific approach they use" - obviously opinions, and rather egregious ones at that. but worded as assertions. i.e. "opinion masquerading as fact". worse, you use this (and others like it) as a "premise" to an argument. that in itself demonstrates said argument to be "specious". if you want more examples, they're easy to come by. but i implore you to just examine what you wrote critically. they should be pretty easy to pick out, if you're really intellectually honest about it. Kevin Baas^talk 18:16, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

What I'd like to see here is for a sympathetic editor, one whom he might accept, to mentor Kirk, so that his expertise and energy are channeled into article improvement. --Abd (talk) 16:23, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

This is from the guy who has posted numerous comments in this section and others, with only one oblique suggestion, which I responded to almost immediately. I see a case of projection here. Why don't we start with you practicing what you preach? I' started this section with a proposed article improvement, which was a continuation of the tack I had been on for some time (see section on New Paper Out), certainly from before you showed up again. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:38, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

I am practicing what I preach. The section proposed above has a snowball's chance in hell, just sitting there. I've copied it to Wikiversity, to Wikiversity:Cold fusion/Skeptical arguments/Shanahan, where we can work on this, and, Kirk, you are cordially invited to help. Another approach, Kirk, if you'd prefer, is for you to create a page in your user space, and you can invite other editors there to help you develop this into something that might be usable, and, as it would be in your user space, you can be in charge. You can be as opinionated as you like, but you might be shooting your own content in the foot if you refuse to accept good advice. I can guarantee you that it's not usable as-is, not even close, and doing the extensive work that will be necessary on this article Talk page is completely impractical. That's not a threat, I have no power here except to advise, and even that is shaky. It isn't my decision, what gets used in the article. I'm COI.

Original research is allowed on Wikiversity.--Abd (talk) 01:31, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I have started to add comments to Shanahan's work, on Wikiversity. I'll repeat the invitation to Kirk and to others to examine this material there. Original research and attributed opinion is allowed on Wikiversity, it is far more like a university-level course or seminar than like Wikipedia. I also added line breaks to Kirk's references, above, to make that part of his proposal much more readable. --Abd (talk) 16:00, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

New Naturwissenschaften review paper

Status of cold fusion (2010), Edmund Storms. Abstract:

The phenomenon called cold fusion has been studied for the last 21 years since its discovery by Profs. Fleischmann and Pons in 1989. The discovery was met with considerable skepticism, but supporting evidence has accumulated, plausible theories have been suggested, and research is continuing in at least eight countries. This paper provides a brief overview of the major discoveries and some of the attempts at an explanation. The evidence supports the claim that a nuclear reaction between deuterons to produce helium can occur in special materials without application of high energy. This reaction is found to produce clean energy at potentially useful levels without the harmful byproducts normally associated with a nuclear process. Various requirements of a model are examined.

Disclosure: I haven't seen the actual article as published, but I helped edit it and I have a preprint, which credits me and another who used to haunt our talk page here. I previously attempted to introduce text on heat/helium based on Storms (2007), and it was claimed that the source wasn't usable (though it does meet ordinary RS standards). This new paper is a secondary source review, published in a mainstream peer-reviewed journal, the gold standard for science articles. It's very recent, which means that it could supersede older work. Times have changed.

Important point: Dr. Storms mentions "a nuclear reaction between deuterons to produce helium." Don't assume that this means simple d-d fusion. He writes, "... Storms (2007) obtained a probable value for MeV/He equal to 25±5, which is close enough to the expected value of 23.8 to be considered support for a D-D fusion-like reaction being the main source of energy. However, this does not mean the process involves direct fusion of two deuterons to make helium. The process or the mechanism is obviously complex and is not revealed by this measurement." He lists a series of possible reactions, but only two come up with that energy per helium nucleus: D+D = 4He + energy, and 4 D = 8Be = 2 4He + energy.

There are more than 150 papers cited.

Dr. Shanahan, if you haven't seen this yet, you may be pleased to know that your criticism is noted, increasing its notability and therefore appropriateness here.

Storms (2006) addressed and rejected a number of errors proposed by Shanahan (2005, 2006).

My opinion is that the calorimetry topic belongs in a forked article, an old one is at User:Abd/Calorimetry in cold fusion experiments, where it can be worked on. It does need work before it could be moved back to mainspace (and Deletion review might be required). --Abd (talk) 00:58, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

This is:

• authored by one of the proponents of the field
• not published in a physics journal

So, I think it merits a mention, but let's not completely change the article because of it. --Enric Naval (talk) 07:31, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

That seems appropriate. I don't think it's a systematic review of the type you find in medical research. Itsmejudith (talk) 07:34, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

It's as close as you are likely to see in this field, which isn't exclusively "physics." It is deeper and more solidly grounded than any other review to date. Cold fusion is cross-disciplinary in nature. Most chemists familiar with the evidence say that what they are seeing is "not chemistry." Some physicists say, "it couldn't be physics, that's impossible!" But what is impossible? Straight deuterium fusion? It probably is! This whole concept of "proponents of the field" is totally off. Storms is a scientist who has worked in the field since the beginning. Who else will write a review based on intimate familiarity with the literature? He's cautious: when he speculates, he tells you. The level of evidence involved here, if found in medicine, would be way beyond that normally considered adequate to advise a treatment modality. Medical evidence frequently depends on far weaker correlations.

There has been a failure to recognize that we really have two articles (at least). One is about the science, and the entire field of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science, which is about how nuclear behavior is different in solids than in a plasma -- and it is, that's not actually controversial, the only controversy is the extent of the difference -- has been stuffed into this article because the popular name, used by the researchers themselves colloquially, though not formally, is "Cold fusion," even though "fusion" isn't proven, though this article does point to very strong circumstantial evidence. I.e., if helium is being generated with the energy found, Occam's razor suggests just what he concludes, some sort of process that results in the effect of fusion. Even Widom-Larsen theory proposes that the helium is made from deuterons, through a neutron pathway.

The other article is about the history and sociology. Historically, for sure, CF came to be regarded as paradigmatic of "pathological science." That is a well-documented story, found in many reliable sources. That's not going to go away.

It was long argued that Naturwissenshaften is a "life science journal." See the mediation on this. NW has access to the best reviewers, probably from the Max Planck Institute, it's the journal where Einstein published, it seeks cross-disciplinary material, it is the best available journal to publish material like this. That NW started accepting articles related to Cold fusion in 2005 was one of the early signs that the threshold had been crossed to acceptance of the field. When we simply tell the whole story as found in reliable source of the rejection of cold fusion, it will be obvious what happened. --Abd (talk) 15:10, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

First off, let me be clear that I am not in any way opposed to the inclusion of this reference in the article’s references. I will probably reference it myself in my new proposed section if the comment from it posted by Abd is correct, because it supports the contention that the CFers refuse to deal with critics. But when it comes to adding a pile more text to the article, I have to insist that that only be allowed if there is actually something new presented in it. From the abstract, there is not anything significantly new. As such, it might stimulate slight rewording in the pro-CF parts of the article, but that would be all. Quite possibly all one would have to do is add the reference points in the article without changing anything.

And Abd has it wrong, there is a failure to realize we have three articles (or parts of 1 article as I have repeatedly stated), the history, the pro CF ‘science’, and the con CF ‘science’. Except Abd is right too. That third part, which is certainly not about CMNS, is almost non-existent and easy to miss. Of course, that’s why the article is unbalanced right now. And most chemists who say it isn’t chemistry are the cold fusioneers themselves (for examples, Storms). In fact, most chemists say ‘What, that isn’t dead and gone yet?’ And then you have me who says it is decidedly chemistry.

Regarding the medical comparison, I believe that if a bunch of studies came out trying to show such-and-such was true, and a critic then detailed why the evidence presented was ambiguous, no medical doctor would risk giving his patient the proposed treatment. Lack of ambiguity is required.

Another thing Abd has wrong. No journal is associated with a particular institute which it draws upon for reviewers. What actually happens is that the editorial staff categorizes the paper, and sends requests to review to known participants in the field, usually preferentially to ones who publish in the journal themselves beause they already have all the contact information, but certainly not exclusively so. These people can come from anywhere, employment status doesn’t matter. So, who might have Natur. sent Storms’ paper to do you think? Well, how about Mosier-Boss for one, that’s probably a good bet, maybe Miles too. Sometimes they even ask the author for suggestions. Who do you think Storms would suggest? I can assert I wasn’t asked..;-). What’s my point? This is how the peer review system is thwarted when the average scientist doesn’t know zip about a subject. And this is why Naturwissenshaften is now a favorite, it let a couple through and now has that list of CFers (or undereducated, lenient others) who see it gets through again. Wiki needs guidelines to decide what is useable in its articles, but too many think the peer review system is God or something. Remember, all pathological science got published at one time or another. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:23, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

So, Springer, founded in 1842, the publisher of Naturwissenschaften, founded in 1913, which calls it their "flagship multidisciplinary science journal covering all aspect of the natural sciences,"[25] (I recommend reading all of what they say about it), are going to risk their very substantial reputation by confining peer review to some fanatic die-hard "CFers," as Kirk calls them? Who is arguing here like the embattled proponent of some rejected fringe theory? Who is claiming that we should reject peer-reviewed secondary sources in favor of his own cherry-picked and isolated ones? Single one, in fact, his own! Who is claiming that the reviewers are "biased"? Sure. Reviewers can be biased, sometimes, as I've noted, as we can see in reliable source on this very topic. But Wikipedia depends on publisher decisions, as reviewed by our consensus. We then can, by consensus, deal with blatant errors, as described above. But they better be clear! We handle biased publications by balancing. Not from our own opinions or original research, but from other publications of similar or higher quality. --Abd (talk) 18:58, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Storms (2006) addressed and rejected a number of errors proposed by Shanahan (2005, 2006). which of course is patently false. Do you ever read any of this stuff Abd? In my 2010 article I take 2 paragraphs to discuss this. But beyond that, how could Storms' 2006 article, which I responded to, respond to the response? Logically impossible, that requires a subsequent publication. What did happen was that Storms, 4 years after my first publication, wrote a comment on that publication, criticizing only the addmittedly speculative mechanism (point (3) in my suggested additional section above) for how to get a heat distribution shift in a F&P-type cell. However. his remarks were incorrect, and I pointed out the errors in the 2006 response, which he never replied to. All he has done since (2007 book, and now apparently a 2010 paper) is claim his 2006 paper rebutted my 2002 paper completely. Now it seems he is becoming even bolder in claiming it pre-rebutted my 2006 response. Amazing... In the end though, the mechanism IS speculative, as are ALL mechanisms, at least in chemistry, and he has never touched the simple mathematical fact that the CCS can cause apparent excess heat signals.Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:59, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

The above is an example of how Shanahan confuses his opinion with fact. Did Storms address "a number of errors proposed by Shanahan?" Yes, he did, and anyone can tell that by reading the sources. Did Storms reject those criticisms? Yes, he did. So was the sentence quoted verifiably true? Yes, it is, but above, Kirk says that it is patently false. He's projected onto the sentence a claim that he personally rejects. If the sentence had been, "Shanahan raised a number of false objections," he'd be within reason to claim that this was false. Yes, I read "this stuff." Carefully. Some of the crucial language in the review paper came from me, because I know the skeptical arguments well, and I want all of the notable ones to be adequately covered in our article, or, as will become necessary, in subarticles. --Abd (talk) 15:28, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Not to mention that Kirk continues to be inconsistent. Melted palladium requires real heat. Fogged X-ray film requires X-rays or real heat. Any helium detected above the background level will almost certainly be associated with real heat (I'm pretty sure no physicist would say that helium can come into existence without any energy also appearing, including the alpha-particle decay process of heavy atoms). CCS merely indicates that if a calorimeter measures heat, the measurement might be off --but it is not the ONLY way real heat can be detected or inferred! V (talk) 15:48, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Real heat: melting Pd requires 38.6 cal/g at 1555 Celsius according to the 58th ed CRC Handbook. I doubt that figure has changed much in more recent years. Just how much Pd melted? LeadSongDog come howl! 19:20, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

There are isolated examples of massive melting, the earliest one was Pons and Fleischmann were working in secret, some years before 1989, and they had loaded a cubic centimeter of palladium, and left it for the night. When they came back, they reported later, the apparatus had been destroyed and a hole existed down through the lab bench and some distance into the concrete floor. That, however, was a very isolated anecdote, and reports of a reaction like that are very rare. The melting V is referring to is shown in SEM images of codeposition palladium, holes are visible surrounded by what looks like frozen once-molten ejecta. There is evidence of mini-explosions (from infra-red imaging and shock waves), and some evidence of local elemental transmutations (right around these "holes.") As to the point of your question, we are talking about holes on the order of ten microns across, as I recall. The total heat involved in one of these "mini-explosions" is thus quite small. The issue, instead, is energy density. Dr. Shanahan proposes that these mini-explosions are caused by unexpected deuterium-oxygen recombination, but we are talking about an area immersed in heavy water. He proposes that oxygen bubbles circulating in the cell from the anode contact the cathode and "explode" there. However, explosions take an explosive mixture, plus there must be some ignition, deuterium and oxygen mixing at room temperature will not explode. If we get past that, an explosion of a bubble on the order of ten microns across would hardly produce any visible effect at all. And certainly not enough heat, quickly enough, to melt any amount of palladium. Underwater. No chemical process produces an energy density adequate to melt palladium on that small a scale. --Abd (talk) 19:44, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

@LSD: Good question! i have been thinking about that a bit. The structures V is referring to are from bubbles (voids) forming in the Pd near the surface. There are a couple of ways tis can happen but the simplest is to realize that at the equivalent gas loading pressures obtained from the electrochemical charging, H2 is thought to self-nucleate bubbles of gaseous H2. Near the surface, these can exceed yield stres and peel back, leaving the exposed edges of what was the 'cap' of the bubble. The caps are what 'melt' on these electrodes. However, they don't actually have to melt, they can sinter, and sintering can be seen beginning at about 1/2 the melting point. Now, the cap edges are 'high energy' sites, and as such should be good sites for H2 bubbble growth. The CCS mechanism says an O2 bubble hits an H2 bubble and merges, then explodes, so the high energy of the surface tension there should facilitate the merging also. Once the explosion takes off, whatever energy that is released is released fast, so you have to compare the energy deposition rate to the flow out of the region into the bulk. To make a long story short, I think it is possible that there is enough energy deposited in a short enough time to sinter the edge of the cap, or slightly more. That all would have to be calculated out though and then tested of course.

The F&P 'melted Pd' is most likely just partially the same thing combined with explosive forming of the ductile Pd.Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:10, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

@LSD, I put up a little calc you might like on my talk page on this. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:52, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

He did, see permanent link. His estimate of the hole size is off by three orders of magnitude, probably. --Abd (talk) 18:55, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I presume, Kirk, that you have read an eyewitness account of that incident? See Beaudette, [26], pp. 35-36. It's worth reading, this might give one a sense of why Pons and Fleischmann thought they were on to something. (Similar things, not so dramatic, happened to Mizuno and others, it is a major reason they persisted in spite of massive rejection and derision.) This was a one-centimeter cube of palladium, which had been loaded with deuterium for months, and the current was shut off in the evening. The next morning, a grad student, Kevin Ashley, witnessed the wreckage.

"The bench was one of those black top benches that are made of very, very hard material.... the experiment was near the middle where there was nothing underneath. I was astonished that there was a hole through the thing. The hole was about a foot in diameter. Under the hole was a pretty good sized pit in the concrete floor. It may have been as much as four inches deep."

Now, there is some kind of chemical mechanism one can imagine for this. Something caused that cell to run dry. The cube would start evolving deuterium, and a one cm. cube of palladium can hold quite a bit of deuterium. If it ignited, the heat would cause even more deuterium to be evolved. It would not explode, however, it would burn, as a flame, and that flame would not get hot enough to melt the palladium. There wouldn't be enough oxygen, supplied quickly enough, to do that. My sense is that chemistry couldn't do this, what was described (hole burned into the concrete floor?), but you couldn't prove that by me....

However, we were really talking, before, about microbubbles. How an oxygen microbubble would be able to approach a cathode which is evolving hydrogen and have time to mix before it is swept away by the flow, is difficult to understand. However, suppose that it does this. Suppose it forms an explosive mixture. What's going to ignite it? Okay, suppose it ignites. As an explosive mixture, it will rapidly convert to water vapor. How big is it? We are postulating that the heat from this melts a hole into the palladium that is about ten microns in diameter. In fact, most of the heat will go into raising the temperature of the heavy water close to it, but suppose somehow the heat is all transferred to the palladium. So we have a ten micron sphere of hydrogen/oxygen at room temperature and pressure, and, say, we have the same volume of palladium. It should be a fairly easy calculation to determine just how hot the palladium would get, neglecting all the heat conduction. I don't have time today, and it's not a calculation I've ever done, but I'd think that if someone is going to propose a Rube Goldberg mechanism for explaining those pits, and the molten ejecta, and, as well, shock waves penetrating to the other side of a 1 mm thick piece of CR-39 to cause pits there, they'd at least look to see if enough energy is available! To top this off, Shanahan is proposing that this recombination heat is enough to fog X-ray film, with cathode materials later laid on top of film, or during the experiment, with the film outside the cell. Further, the mechanism he proposes would presumably operate in the same way with hydrogen in place of deuterium. But the phenomena interpreted as evidence for nuclear reactions almost completely disappear if the experiments are run with light water.

Anything but maybe admit that we don't know what's going on. Sigh. I need to stop responding to this. But LSD's question was a good one.--Abd (talk) 02:50, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm going to decline Abd's kind invitation to engage in original research. There are simply too many suppositions to make it a matter of simple calculation. LeadSongDog come howl! 14:04, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, thanks for considering it. We can use some level of original research to judge plausibility, as background. Obviously, your calculations couldn't go in the article! --Abd (talk) 15:18, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

|}

As we know, Storms is not an independent or neutral source. Abd appears once again to be proxying for Pcarbonn and Jed Rothwell. I thought that Abd's crusading here had led to a topic ban? I don't know why we have to sit through all the same re-arguing of the primary case again. Guy (Help!) 07:49, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Storms isn't the source, per se. And I haven't had any communication with Pcarbonn or Rothwell on this, and none at all for weeks. The topic ban expired, and would Shanahan please cease the irrelevancies? The source is Naturwissenschaften. Wikipedia depends on publishers to determine what is reliable and what is notable. Editorial consensus has some room to move, and if bias is alleged, a source can be balanced by other material from other sources of commensurate reliability, or even, sometimes, if we think it's needed, by lesser -- but still reliable -- sources. "Reliable" is here a relatively objective term of art, per the reliable source guideline. --Abd (talk) 15:18, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Cover the recent Naturwissenschaften review paper in the article

I edited the lede, and self reverted with [27]. Any editor who considers one of these self-reverted "per COI" edits superior to the standing text may simply undo that self-revert. However, please note: I placed this in the introduction because it balances unsourced synthesis in the introduction, about "mainstream reviews." A better solution could be to place this new material in the section, Cold_fusion#Further_reviews_and_funding_issues, and remove the unsourced comments in the lede.

A link to the source is [28]. I have a preprint, if anyone has questions about the article. I left this out of the self-reverted edit, by mistake, I think.

(There are many mainstream reviews of the field, since 2005. But our lede says: There have been few mainstream reviews of the field since 1990. I will provide reference to mainstream reviews. Historically, here, they have been rejected based on author identity, ("fringe author") rather than the standard for reliable sources: independent publisher, and, for this case, mainstream publisher.)

This article shows a problem that is common with "battleground" articles: a referenced lede. The lede should present, in summary style and balance, what is established in the article, the references belong there. The lede should enjoy the highest possible level of consensus. What cannot find that should not be in the lede at all. --Abd (talk) 17:06, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

On mainstream reviews

Studying balance.

To be meaningful, "mainstream review" must refer to a review published in a mainstream publication, not to a review expressing some alleged "mainstream view," because this would be circular. I have compiled a list of papers and independently published materials, based initially on the Britz bibliography, since 2005, at Wikiversity:Cold fusion/Recent sources, permalink. While there is room for interpretation, I count and have bolded in the list, there, 16 secondary source reviews of the field or parts of the field. All were "positive." I did not include, for example, the many reviews in the 2009 special issue of the Journal of Scientific Exploration because this publication is, by definition, about subjects that have been "inadequately studied within mainstream science," though Britz lists this with other peer-reviewed publications (and it is peer-reviewed). The mainstream publishers were Elsevier, Higher Education Press (China) with Springer-Verlag, World Scientific, Current Science (published by the Indian Academy of Sciences), the American Chemical Society (with Oxford University Press), and the Royal Society of Chemistry.

I find no peer-reviewed or academic secondary sources that are "negative." There are three possible quibbles, of inadequate substance to counterbalance the extensive reviews shown. We may wish to discuss those. References to anything missed are very welcome.

The extant literature does not show that Cold fusion is still a rejected field, and it shows quite the contrary. The negative sources in the article are almost all old sources, before 2004-2005, when, of course, that was the state of affairs. Scientific consensus changes, just as does ours.

I am not proposing that the article state that Cold fusion is now accepted by the mainstream. We have no secondary source that says that, to my knowledge, not directly. There may be some sources that can be quoted to that effect, however. The statement in the article to the effect, though, of there being "few mainstream reviews" since the 1990s is clearly false. It appears to be unsourced, but perhaps it's buried somewhere. "since the 1990s" is vague. It might have been true before 2006. --Abd (talk) 23:30, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

"few mainstream reviews since the 1990s" looks like an accurate statement ("since 1993" would be more accurate). Not sure if there is a source for it.

I looked at wikiversity:Cold_fusion/Recent_sources, but I don't see "many mainstream recent reviews". --Enric Naval (talk) 11:30, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Fifteen isn't many? I suspect this is because you immediately reject a secondary source as "not mainstream" because you identify the author(s) as "fringe." That's an old error, missing the point of RfAr/Fringe science. A review is mainstream if it is published under peer review by a mainstream publication or publisher. Wikipedia depends on publishers to filter out "fringe," for they have reputations to protect. Sometimes they will publish a "fringe view," but they will identify it as such or place it in context as a debate. I listed the publishers above. There have been many more reviews that were published in a way that didn't represent the "mainstream," most notably an otherwise excellent series of reviews published by the Journal of Scientific Exploration. I'm not including them. So what if we were to say, if you like that they are are only "few," that, "since 2005, there have been only fifteen reviews published in mainstream peer-reviewed journals (or as books by mainstream publishers)." Do we mention that every single one of them has been "supportive" of the reality of cold fusion? (Once again, "cold fusion" is a popular name for any kind of nuclear reaction occurring well below thermonuclear fusion temperatures, it is not proven that the reaction is "fusion." Storms, while being careful about this, shows why it is almost preposterous to think it is not some kind of fusion.)

Why do we have an article which implies, through the weight of facts presented, and through synthesis, that cold fusion remains massively rejected? Why do we have an article from which the single most important research finding, the basic reason why Storms can get that review published, has been actively excluded, in spite of being found in multiple secondary sources, including Huizenga (!), going back to 1993 and before? (Heat/helium ratio.) Storms built that article on solid evidence, carefully examined. I'll be proposing language in another thread. By the way, thanks for refactoring discussions, it's needed. I thought you might be helpful, and you are.

One more general point. I wrote long ago that I believed the entire article needed rewrite. It's probably impossible to do that in situ; this is a common Wikipedia problem. Hence I propose that we work on an article, following Wikipedia guidelines, at Wikiversity, as part of the Wikiversity:Cold fusion resource. What we can find consensus on there, whoever helps out, we can then propose as an alternative to whatever is standing here when it's ready to port. There, we would be free to completely reorganize the article, and we can also create alternate versions there, if we like. Wikiversity actively encourages forking. Please, any of you, consider joining me at Wikiversity. All POVs are welcome, and you could work there even if banned here. --Abd (talk) 14:08, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Why do we have an article which implies... Because of the simple idea first presented by Goodstein in his 1994 article, that the mainline has given up on CF. Why would you expect people who have given up on a subject as not worthy of attention to go write scads of articles on it?? No, mainline acceptance today would be indicated by bunches of newbies writing about how this new thing, the FP effect, was used to discover more things or to improve existing ones, etc., etc. Kirk shanahan (talk) 15:31, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Goodstein should be read carefully, he's been widely misrepresented. Goodstein was correct in 1994, but, note, at that point he was pointing out that the rejection wasn't exactly kosher. He remained with this in his recent comments on the subject. Only the negative part has been pointed to by skeptics here, the positive part gets short shrift.

So, we agree: by 1994 the "mainline" -- mainstream -- had "given up" on cold fusion, in spite of accumulating evidence to the contrary, covered even by Huizenga, in spite of the opinions of three Nobel Prize winners, in spite of unexplained anomalies remaining, major ones, being confirmed around the world. We have lots of source on the declaration that cold fusion was "dead." It's a fact, that this was common opinion. It was reported and used as an example of "pathological science," in tertiary sources, for years, including into this century. All with the normal mechanisms of scientific inquiry and consensus formation being bypassed, and, again, that's covered amply in reliable source, when we start to rely upon those sources instead of our own judgments of "fringe," (and, on the other side, of "rejection conspiracy").

But that was a long time ago, Kirk. Science moves on. The following is what would happen if matters were as you claim, that anyone who knows anything about this topic other than fanatics would simply continue to ignore it.

When reviews start appearing in mainstream journals supporting the idea that CF, in at least some way, is real, these experts would write outraged responses, or sober ones, and they would be published if they were mainstream. I have no doubt that such responses have been written, but only Shanahan has been recently published, in a relatively minor journal that is probably trying to attract more readers, I'd guess. It should work for that effect, and that is how the system should work.

That journal first published a review of the field by Krivit and Marwan, with no markers, AFAIK, that this was "fringe." That's a sign that their peer review signed off on it as a fair representation of the field. Shanahan has been a strong critic of cold fusion since the early 1990s. He managed to get some criticisms of the calorimetry published in 2005 and 2006. Those were noted by other authors, including in the recent Storms review of the field (Naturwissenschaften, 2010), but rejected by them. He is the author of the only peer-review published critiques of the overall evidence in the field, since 2005, when my study at Wikiversity begins. The recent paper was published together with a rebuttal, which is how journals handle fringe arguments, if they decide that the controversy is worth covering. --Abd (talk) 16:45, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I should add a good example of that is the aftermath of Fleischmann's 1974 discovery of what eventually became known as the Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering effect. However, a review of that published in 1998 says "SERS was discovered though not recognized as such, by Fleischmann, et al." Tons of papers on SERS these days, but they had to correct the incorrect cause postulated by Fleischmann. Lightning does strike twice in the same place... Kirk shanahan (talk) 15:52, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Added

I added it in Cold_fusion#Further_reviews_and_funding_issues. It has far too much weight in the lead. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:55, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I'd disagree about the lede (as to the detail that I provided, perhaps the most important part of which you stripped) but, hey, one step at a time. That review is a major one, extensively referenced, published in an important journal. You qualified Storms with "supporter," which is a continuation of the practice of neglecting the science, neglecting the importance of peer review, treating peer-reviewed secondary source reviews as if they were editorials. That addition is POV. Got a source for it? The whole point of peer review is to take the personalities out of it!

Again, you stripped, as well, that this was published in Naturwissenschaften. At the same time as it's implied that the mainstream has completely rejected cold fusion, here is a solidly mainstream publication which publishes a major review showing quite the contrary. "Supporters" have issued reviews every year for many years. What was different about this one to make it worthy of inclusion?

The difference is that it was published, not only in a mainstream journal, but a major cross-disciplinary journal of high reputation, and as a review of the field, not as some quirky "minority opinion." We can't say that directly in the article, perhaps -- not without additional sources -- but we could at least mention the journal! It's important. --Abd (talk) 13:36, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Time Out

It is painfully obvious that Abd, with part time assistance from V, are happy to argue interminably. I am not. I call a 'time out'. I will only respond to actual criticisms/suggestions of my proposed addition, as modified by the response to Abd's first comment, in so far as I am able. In any case, I will not respond to any other comment by Abd, V, or Kevin Baas except those that are specifically regarding mods to my proposal. Someone else will have to answer their silliness. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:45, 21 September 2010 (UTC) Oh and for simplicity I would request that said article-related comments be placed in this section. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:56, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Abd did have one other suggestion embedded in the above, namely “My opinion is that the calorimetry topic belongs in a forked article”. I uncategorically reject this, as this was how Pcarbonn was able to minimalize and eventually delete the same material during my first attempt to get this info into the article in c. 2005-6 (this is my 3rd attempt folks). Looking at the body of publications that claim to have observed cold fusion effects, far and away the largest is based on calorimetric results. The Wiki article thus needs comments on calorimetry to explain the basis of the claims and counterclaims. I already suggested that the section on what is typically called ‘the 3 miracles’ could be forked out, as it is of practically no importance today and a simple note in the article with link to the forked one would be sufficient. If it isn’t read nothing big is lost. Not so with calorimetry. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:53, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Calorimetry is a complex detail, on which there is much reliable source, and Kirk's critique of it, while sufficiently notable for mention, is isolated. His CCS theory, which has no experimental validation, is merely a proposed alternate explanation or analysis, and is not the basis of most criticism of the calorimetry. I've pointed to the deleted article, because I rescued it for work, and that article, once restored to mainspace, would be summarized back in this one. Shanahan could be mentioned in the summary, perhaps, though only very briefly. A proper fork does not imbalance an article, it is a way of avoiding undue weight. However, that article was deleted in 2009, not by Pcarbonn, but through an AfD blaming Pcarbonn at a time when he could not respond. I've invited Kirk to work on it, many times. Kirk is rejecting what would allow him the legitimate part of what he wants, based on his apparent belief in the enmity of other editors. We can agree, nevertheless, on something, and I'd urge Kirk to focus on agreement rather than disagreement: we can cover this subject better and in a more balanced way, if less notable subtopics are forked out and summarized here following summary style.

The AfD succeeded because, in fact, that removal of excess material here and the summary wasn't done; I have not reviewed the causes of that, but I can guess. See the arguments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Calorimetry in cold fusion experiments. Pcarbonn had no ability to "delete" material from this article at the time of the AfD, he was banned by then from the whole topic. --Abd (talk) 18:36, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Focusing on the indirect comments, there are several inaccuracies in ABD’s comment. First, a data reanalysis is not an ‘experiment’ in the classical sense, but is a legitimate line of scientific inquiry. I can reference at least one example from the cold fusion arena if needed, perhaps more. The validation of such an effort lies in the results vs the objective of the reanalysis. As stated in the proposed text (pt), the objective was to determine what it took to zero out the apparent excess heat signal and compare that to experimental observations. This was successful in that the change required was consistent with experimental observations. Thus the CCS is validated. This recognizes that the CCS is part (1) in the pt. The pt also states the need to treat the cell/calorimeter minimally as a two-zone entity is unchallenged. The pt also states the proposed mechanism is NOT validated and is for consideration only. It has no impact on the value of the CCS, which as stated in the pt, is to deliver a realistic (non-random) ‘noise’ measurement. Understanding this is simple and straightforward for unbiased readers. The rest of the comment above is ignored. Kirk shanahan (talk) 19:03, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

In response to the (apparent) comment by Storms that Abd posted, which I will verify, the following should be added to the proposed text at the end of the calorimetry section (assuming the comment is verified): Furthermore, the mistake was again committed [13], where Storms states: “Storms (2006) addressed and rejected a number of errors proposed by Shanahan (2005, 2006).” On the surface the statement seems valid, but in fact can not be so. The Storms 2006 publication preceeds the Shanahan 2006 publication and thus could not address any comments made after it. These two papers are typical of topical literature discussions in that the 2006 Storms comment [9] (revised 8/25/2005) refers to the 2002 and 2005 Shanahan publications, and the 2006 Shanahan publication [8] (received 11/14/2005) responds to the 2006 Storms comment [9] (both accepted 11/15/2005). In order for Storms to have addressed propositions put forth in the 2006 Shanahan publication, another comment would have to have be subsequently written, submitted, reviewed, and published. No such publication was ever published, instead Storms has simply claimed success with no evidence [1], [4], [13].

New ref: 13.) Storms, Edmund, (2010), “Staus of Cold Fusion (2010)”, Naturwissenschaften, DOI: 10.1007/s00114-010-0711-x —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kirk shanahan (talk • contribs) 15:04, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

For those who are interesteed, I have placed an outline summary of the two 2006 articles on my Web page. Kirk shanahan (talk) 15:26, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Shanahan is placing his own original research above the decisions of the peer reviewers at Naturwissenschaften. If he believes they erred, he can submit a comment to them. However, I have seen no sign anywhere that Shanahan's arguments have been accepted. They have been published under peer review, yes, but they have also been answered, and there is no review of Shanahan that accepts his arguments and considers them unanswered. It is not our job as editors to second-guess the literature, based on his polemic. As to his claim of anachronicity, Storms may believe, and the reviewers may have accepted, that Storms had already addressed whatever was new in the 2006 article. Or the comment has a (minor) error. But I have not reviewed that specific history. --Abd (talk) 15:26, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, No OR here on my part, just a description of the papers, all RS. For the record, I suspect I will be submitting a comment, but not for the reasons Abd suggests. Using your own logic Abd, if I get published, my ideas are accepted (except of course by the tight-knit band of pathological scientists who refuse to consider anything but nuclear explanations). I agree you shouldn't be trying to out-OR me. Just comment on the proposed addition and stop bringing up extraneous points (like above).

So far I have only seen a couple of sort-of relateed comments, which I have responded to. Clock's ticking. If I don't get some substantial ones next week at least, I will go ahead and add the pt to the article. Kirk shanahan (talk) 15:26, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I think that Kirk doesn't understand what WP:OR covers. It includes original research, original reports, etc., published under peer review. When these attain sufficient notability -- as shown by them being noticed, -- they are then sufficient for mention, but typically attributed. The content of such a source cannot generally be reported as fact without appropriate secondary source acceptance. Mainstream publishers may decide to publish fringe arguments, sometimes -- which is what they recently did with Shanahan -- but not likely as if they were a "mainstream" view. A reputable mainstream publisher will not leave the situation hanging with a mainstream view being apparently refuted by post-hoc rebuttal from a "fringe" POV. (We will, in incorporating in Wikipedia coverage of Shanahan's CCS theory, examine the publication sequence there, I have not done this in detail, because at this point it's moot. There is no way that this theory, which has seen no confirmation at all from anyone under peer review, but rather the opposite, peer reviewed rejection, can be presented out of context, as if it deserved the status of "presumed true as the mainstream view until refuted." --Abd (talk) 17:37, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

hyphen vs en dash in subject headers

resolved issue: Manual of Style stuff

[29] changed some subject headers to en dashes. I cut my teeth on the Chicago Manual of Style, which recommends hyphens in these usages. However, there is also usage of the en dash for this application, and having reviewed the matter a bit, I'm inclined to agree, and to reserve a hyphen for the cases where one adjective modifies the next. However, when we change even something minor like this in a subject header, it can break links to article sections. Maybe that's not important, but I thought I should bring it up. In many, many sources, the effect that is the subject of this article is the "Fleischman-Pons effect". With a hyphen. In fact, searching I found only two en dashes. One was our usage here. Because of the ubiquity of the hyphen and because of the possible breakage of section links, I'm changing that (partial revert), but I'm not prepared to contend on this at all. Your call, folks. --Abd (talk) 15:54, 22 September 2010 (UTC) Hyphen. Kevin Baastalk 15:59, 22 September 2010 (UTC) Wikipedia's maual of style has WP:NDASH and WP:EMDASH. I have never managed to make any sense of them. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:04, 22 September 2010 (UTC) At wp:HYPHEN we have Article titles with dashes should have a corresponding redirect from the title with hyphens: for example, Michelson-Morley experiment redirects to Michelson–Morley experiment, as the latter title, while correct, is harder to search for. This seems pretty clear to me. LeadSongDog come howl! 16:09, 22 September 2010 (UTC) sure, but what if it's a section? you can't exactly redirect section headers. Kevin Baastalk 16:13, 22 September 2010 (UTC) (edit conflict) Ah yes i see, thanks. I've always been curious when to use them. From that it suggests that an ndash should be used. But i'm still partial to hyphen as it's more of a standard character and after all it's a header and the whole link-breaking thing. unless there's a bot changing everything and the links consistently, which i doubt (how would it know whereer to use an ndash or emdash?), for the sake of consistency hyphen would seem preferentially, and with an ndash manually writting a link (which i usually do) would be trickier and confusing (you'd have to look at the code to know it was an ndash and not a hyphen). all in all, a hyphen seems far more practical, and an ndash really doesn't make enough of a visual difference to justify its impracticality. Kevin Baastalk 16:12, 22 September 2010 (UTC) (edit conflict) Yeah, Kevin, that's kind of what I thought. But it turns out the MOS is explicit on this. I reverted myself. I won't touch it again, but anyone else can. I don't think the (small) potential damage to section links is worth hassling over the MOS. They even allow changing quoted text. This is arcane publisher stuff. Enric, the usage for en dash, relevant here, is for a compound adjective, where both adjectives (names in this case) modify the noun, "effect" in this case. More generally, an en dash is used for ranges, such as, say, 1989–2003, the Death of Cold Fusion, 2004, something strange happened, and 2005–2010, the Resurrection. Heh! Just practicing. --Abd (talk) 16:17, 22 September 2010 (UTC) If people were typing in the section headers, en-dash breaks it for people, making it impractical. But people will usually copy and paste section headers. Frankly, I think that WP goofed in selecting en dashes or em dashes for anything at all, given that simpler usages existed and are allowed by different manuals. (The software should read and display "--" -- double hyphen -- as an em dash). Probably too late! Can you imagine the decision process? --Abd (talk) 16:22, 22 September 2010 (UTC) I think you can use both hyphens and dashes by making use of the {{anchor}} template. Use the dash for the header (say), add an anchor for the hyphen version, and then wikilinks to either form should work. It's desirable to add an anchor if a long-established header is changed, that way existing wikilinks continue to operate. EdChem (talk) 16:45, 22 September 2010 (UTC) Cool. Great idea, EdChem. I'll do it if nobody beats me to it! (Later today, I hope). --Abd (talk) 17:08, 22 September 2010 (UTC) You might try == {{anchor|Fleischman-Pons effect}}Fleischman–Pons effect == That seems to be the recommended form. LeadSongDog come howl! 17:27, 22 September 2010 (UTC)  Done --Abd (talk) 18:16, 22 September 2010 (UTC) In Wikipedia's mathematics community, which concerns itself with tens of thousands of Wikipedia mathematics articles, the en-dash prescribed by WP:MOS has been pretty much taken for granted for maybe five years now. Wikipedia's physics community seems to have been having a hard time learning both WP:MOS and WP:MOSMATH. I confess to a suspicion that there are some people to whom the difference is not conspicuous, but that's only a suspicion. In some ways it's surprising that this issue is being discussed here and now after having been the prescribed standard in Wikipedia since 2003 or so. Michael Hardy (talk) 17:24, 22 September 2010 (UTC) Well, I'm glad it was. I learned something and maybe someone else did too. It's not surprising, the MOS made a decision that goes contrary to normal usage in the field. If it's "hard to learn," maybe that's because most people don't even realize there is an issue that they should read the MOS about! Thanks. --Abd (talk) 18:16, 22 September 2010 (UTC) Thanks, Enric, for refactoring this to collapse the section. It was relevant to the article when begun, it wasn't "off-topic," but it is no longer necessary, it's resolved. Hopefully a harbinger of many more resolutions. --Abd (talk) 14:12, 23 September 2010 (UTC)