User talk:Pcarbonn/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

Hello

Hello Pcarbonn, welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like the place and decide to join the community. Drop us a note at Wikipedia:New user log so we can meet you and help you get started. If you need editing help, visit Wikipedia:How to edit a page. For format questions, visit our manual of style. If you have any other questions about the project then check out Help or add a question to the Newcomers' Village pump. And of course, feel free to talk with me or ask questions on my talk page. Enjoy! --Alex S 21:10, 3 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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Hi there, I'm curious about the statement you made on Winner's curse that a Vickrey auction can reduce the winner's curse. The winner's curse is based on the fact that the winner of an auction will be the person whose estimate was highest. This will still be the case in a Vickrey auction, so how is the winner's curse reduced? Isomorphic 21:25, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

My reasonning is that, because he pays the second-highest bid in a Vickrey auction, he loses less than if he paid the highest bid. Pcarbonn 07:15, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Timeline of technological discoveries ect.

Not to dampen your enthusiam about the science and technology timelines, but have you seen the list of years in science and all it's individual pages? I think it would be very difficult to create a timeline that included ALL the important scientific discoveries in every field of study without leaving out many crucial events. Generally, each of the sciences and technology fields has specific timelines, such as the timeline of low temperature technology and the timeline of biology and organic chemistry. If you'd like to continue making these timelines, I suggest you look at list of themed timelines for more ideas and to fully grasp the scope of the project you've assigned yourself. Gentgeen 12:01, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)

thanks for the comment. My goal is not to list ALL discoveries, only the major, significant ones. I agree that drawing the line could be difficult some time. On the other hand, I find it useful to have a cross-subject timeline, because it shows different fields in parallel. Do you know if this has been attempted before ?

Scientific American

Sorry about the slow response; somehow the You Have Messages didn't get triggered.

Right, I'll check the Sci Am files & see what I find. Dandrake 22:31, Jun 23, 2004 (UTC)

Yes indeed, on page 84 of the July 1987 Scientific American there's an article on cold fusion. This, however, is muon-catalyzed fusion, the approach that was getting some research attention before F & P came on the scene. The existence of this form of cold fusion is not questioned, but it's very far from producing energy; the authors were arguing for optimism (and, of course, further research) concerning improvements by enough orders of magnitude to produce a useful energy source. It doesn't seem to have panned out so far. Dandrake 06:38, Jun 26, 2004 (UTC)

To-do lists

See Talk:Train station for a current example of where a to-do list would be useful! Zoney 13:41, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Hah. Figured out how to add a to-do list - nice work. Easy to do (no pun intended) really! The automatic adding to Category:Todo is nice too, although will that not get scarily huge if the project takes off? Zoney 13:58, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Indeed, this could become an issue. The idea would be to show the popular articles first. This would be measure by the number of articles that link to them (like Google does). So the top ones would be the one to work on, because many people would be likely to see it. I have started a discussion on Village Pump on this this morning. It will probably require some developments on Wiki though. Pcarbonn 14:45, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Sorry about the numbers

Hi, just wanted to apologize for removing your priority #s from the talk pages. I had just figured out how to alphabetize the todo category, but it required saving each talk page with the new template version. In the process of saving them i removed the numbers, because I thought they were only for organization (should have read the Wikipedia talk:Todo list page first. Anyways, if we decide to go back to some sort of organization by priority, I will replace your numbers (or fix it to whatever it will be), since I made the mistake. (also see my comments on Wikipedia talk:Todo list) —siroχo 22:28, Jul 30, 2004 (UTC)

Black Body Radiation & Cavities

I have replied to your discussion question. I think one of your previous edits is wrong.

Dutch Wikipedia symposium in Rotterdam (27/11/2004)

Hi,

As a personal initiative I want to mention to you http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Symposium/Najaar_2004

There have been some voices that Dutch-speaking Belgian wikipedians might be underrepresented at that venue, so I took the liberty to post this message on the talk page of all people I found on Wikipedia:Wikipedians/Belgium.

If this doesn't apply to you (e.g. while French-speaking, or not interested in Dutch wikipedia,...) simply ignore this message.

--Francis Schonken 09:38, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wikinations

I'm afraid I can't help out on this. I'm just too involved in botanical pages, especially the orchids. JoJan 22:08, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Cold fusion

My reading on the discrepancy between half the reviewers being somewhat convinced that there's excess energy, and a sound majority rejecting the hypothesis that fusion has occured is as follows—hopefully I've understood your question correctly. In order to claim that a new form of an old process has occured, it must have some similarities with the old process. Nuclear fusion (as traditionally known) produces other products 10 million times more than Helium-4, when helium-4 is the only possible product that's been detected (and not abundantly or reliably, as I understand it). Nuclear fusion (as traditionally known) is a particle interaction, and therefore produces high-energy photons which could be detected—and aren't. Yes, one can argue low-energy nuclear fusion is different, but that doesn't mean much without a theoretical model explaining such changes, and the existing theoretical models say that the fusion product ratios should still be vastly against He-4 at low energies. If there's an excess of energy, but nobody knows the source, and efforts to connect it to nuclear fusion have failed in many ways, why not call it a new/unknown process rather than assuming it's the same thing?

As you may be seeing from the article talk page, working with User:JedRothwell on the article is extremely difficult. I do not think he cares to have a good grasp of WP:NPOV, and he has far more spare time to argue about this article than I do. Any help you can offer would be appreciated. -- SCZenz 16:03, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

It's not that I think there's something strange going on with cold fusion, it's that a significant number of scientists think there's something strange going on—and a notable minority think it's cold fusion. Their views should certainly be reported, but not as fact or as mainstream views. The tone of the article at this moment is quite derisive of, and sparse with, its coverage of the so-called "skeptic" position.

Anyway, you can copy whatever you like to the discussion page. However, as I just wrote there, I do not expect JedRothwell to accept an NPOV version of this article. If you are able to bring about an improvement in the situation, I would be delighted. -- SCZenz 14:37, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Cold fusion

Please see response here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:JedRothwell#Cold_fusion

- JR

See my response to your response! - JR

I admire your sprit but . . . see latest response. - JR

See discussion. I explained how I hope to sway public opinion. Perhaps you know a better method? You can do it your way while I do it mine. That's the good cop, bad cop approach. - JR

Shooting fish in a barrel at Wikipedia

I wrote this message on a cold fusion discussion forum. I thought you might enjoy it.]

The cold fusion article at Wikipedia has grown too large, so it must be split up. Someone asked me to assist with the sub-article "cold fusion controversy." I should not waste my time on this sort of thing, but I did.

The skeptics will soon trash this and erase it, but I had a lot of fun writing it. Have a look before it is gone:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion_controversy

I have a copy on my disk, preserved for posterity.

I did not set out to make this humorous, although I can never resist. I doubt the skeptics will see it as funny. But I trust the readers here will see the humor in parts such as my deadpan rebuttal of the claim that cold fusion researchers are insane; my description of Hoffman's masterpiece; and the juicy quote from Happer and its source (Taubes).

- Jed

Cold fusion controversy

It appears to me that Jed has created the cold fusion controversey article in an effort to remove criticism of cold fusion from the main article, using article size as an excuse, which is rather non-NPOV. I think the article should be made into a redirect. What do you think?

The size issue is because the original article was a bit redundant and bloated, and you seem to be dealing with it ok. -- SCZenz 01:05, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Maybe I've been a bit harsh on the controversy article, but it was very non-NPOV as it was before I turned it into a redirect, and Jed's comment above rather rubs me the wrong way. I still don't think we need a separate article for this, but I most definitely would like your opinion. -- SCZenz 06:24, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Don't worry: Jed is playing games on wikipedia, but is a nice person otherwise. So, feel free to be harsh with him too: he won't be offended. I started the cold fusion article some months ago, not Jed. It was done so that the controversy could be discussed in more details. Indeed, I'll try to merge it with the main article, assuming we can accept its large size. Pcarbonn 10:20, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't have time to verbally spar with him (or the inclination to withstand the unpleasantness of doing so), nor can I be effective at arguing when he knows the controversy in such detail. Frankly, I need the strong support of people who understand and are committed to WP:NPOV and the other fundamentals of Wikipedia. You seem to be such a person, so I'm hoping you can be more emphatic in your support of those principles. -- SCZenz 17:34, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Pcarbonn wrote: "Jed is playing games on wikipedia, but is a nice person otherwise." I do not play games on Wikipedia, and I am not a nice person. However, I do not go around erasing other people's contributions, and SCZenz does, so I would say he is no paragon of nicety. Also, I do not demand that he read my mind. If he thinks there are errors in the "Controversy" article he should fix them! I cannot know by ESP what he considers an error. It all looks okay to me. Of course many of the skeptical statements are intemperate and they sound bigoted, but that is because these people are intemperate and bigoted. That's their problem, not mine. You will not find any skeptical quotes which sound reasonable. --JedRothwell 18:54, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry ~guys, I'm no psychologists... Jed, I think that SCZenz recognizes that he went a bit overboard with the redirection. Can we leave it at that ? I'll look at the controversy article when I have some time. ~~

Please assist with "controversy" article

If you could check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion_controversy for ommissions and missing sources, I would appreciate it. It would look nicer with footnotes instead of citations in square brackets, but I do not recall how to make footnotes with Wikipedia.

I think the article is now too big to merge with "cold fusion." Also, it is mainly political, since it is entirely devoted to the skeptical views of cold fusion, which have no basis in fact, logic or experiment.

I do not understand why CZenz is upset by this, since I have carefully represented skeptical views and quoted their leaders verbatim. You'd think he would feel honored, and grateful that I have taken the time to summarize his views. Or did he expect me to go to this trouble and not include rebuttals? --JedRothwell 18:48, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I'll be happy to look for omissions and missing sources, but let me finish the main article first. I do want to remove the POV tag there first, and possibly even bring it back to Feature Article status, so that it can get more visibility. I'm not sure where the POV issue is with the content you have provided, but I'll look again when I can. In any case, the article is about the controversy: maybe there is too much of a focus on the extreme skeptical views. Pcarbonn 19:03, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! No rush. I would appreciate help with the format as well. If you want to make footnotes out of the comments in square brackets, I can fill them in with more detail such as page numbers. I can use my EndNote database.

"I'm not sure where the POV issue is with the content you have provided . . ." I honestly have no clue. I have quoted Huizenga and other mainstream sources, not the lunatic fringe skeptics.

"In any case, the article is about the controversy: maybe there is too much of a focus on the extreme skeptical views." I do not know of any less extreme skeptical views. There are only a few books. Actually, two of the big name skeptics are much more extreme. One claims that cold fusion researchers are engaged in a vast criminal conspiracy to defraud the taxpayers. The other, the late D. Morrison, I have quoted sparingly. I left out Morrison's favorite hypothesis, which he called "the regionalization of results." He gave lectures on this long before cold fusion emerged. After cold fusion came along he included "regionalization" theory in several of his Internet newsletters, which are the original source of many skeptical claims at Sci. Am. and elsewhere.

You can look up his old newsletters or I can send you one, but to summarize very briefly, according to "regionalization" all good science comes from northern Europe and the northeast part of the US. Other geographical areas, such as Southern Europe and Asia, have contributed only mistakes, fraud and poor imitations of good science. He never stated whether this difference is caused by genetic or cultural factors, but since scientific culture and training is pretty much the same the world over, I suppose it must be genetic. It looks to me like a thinly disguised neo-Nazi ideology. I met Morrison several times. He was a creepy guy and I got the distinct impression that he was . . . "a feldgrau spook . . ." as a French friend of mine puts it. Anyway, most cold fusion researchers happen to be from Italy, Japan, China and other places outside of Northern Europe so they did not appreciate this. Morrison supported his hypothesis with what I would call questionable statistics, so I called his theory Aryan Science Numerology. He did not appreciate that.

There are some other unseemly anti-cold fusion movements out there, but I think we should ignore them and concentrate on the big guns at the DoE and the APS. --JedRothwell 20:32, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Someone directed me to the Wikipedia page on footnotes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Footnotes

I shall take a crack at this, tomorrow. --JedRothwell 21:00, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Move WaPost anywhere, or chop it

At Cold Fusion you wrote:

Washington Post: I'm in favor to move this sentence from the intro to lower down in the text

I may have moved it up again, inadvertently. Move it anywhere you like, or perhaps move it out into the Controversy section.

Jefffire came in earlier and deleted it altogether, along with a bunch of other stuff, without discussion, so I put it back where it was originally.

The guy is a big help. I cannot understand the psychology or background of such people. They readily admit they know little or nothing about a subject, yet they feel free to boldly edit what is clearly a controversial and complex discussion! Honestly, they seem cookoo to me. If someone caught me editing an article about some scientific development, and they forced me to admit that I had not read anything, and I really did not know much about it other than what anyone can read in the newspapers, I would feel mortified. I would apologize profusely and never touch the article again. (Not that I would ever do that in the first place.)

People seem to have no respect for authority, expertise or documented facts. Here is a hysterical article about that:

http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,70670-0.html?tw=wn_index_19

QUOTE:

"But why should I contribute to an article [to Wikipedia]? I'm no expert.

That's fine. The Wikipedia philosophy can be summed up thusly: 'Experts are scum.' For some reason people who spend 40 years learning everything they can about, say, the Peloponnesian War -- and indeed, advancing the body of human knowledge -- get all pissy when their contributions are edited away by Randy in Boise who heard somewhere that sword-wielding skeletons were involved. And they get downright irate when asked politely to engage in discourse with Randy until the sword-skeleton theory can be incorporated into the article without passing judgment."

--JedRothwell 17:08, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I love it. It's great ! Our role is educating them, but it will never end. We should see this as a game, I suppose. Have you seen that Joke did not appear again in the discussion ? I think he ran out of arguments. Hopefully he got something out of what we said. I'll move the wired article to the cold fusion: I guess you won't be offended. Pcarbonn 17:16, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

It is funny. Why on earth would I be offended?

I expect Joke is recharging his batteries or preparing for an onslaught against the Controversy section. Jefffire promises he will take the ax to it. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Cold_fusion_controversy

I honestly cannot understand why these skeptics are so upset about the Controversy section. It merely repeats the arguments they themselves have made, such as the claim that cold fusion violates theory and therefore it cannot be true. Do they expect me to write something like that and not include the CF researchers' rebuttal? --JedRothwell 18:12, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Could not figure out how to revert, thanks

Thank you for reverting the wholesale changes in "Controversy." I was just trying to figure out how to do that, when you did it.

I will have to read the Wikipedia instructions for that, where ever they are. That fellow Jefffire does not seem inclined to discuss matters before making decisions unilaterally.

Anyway, he and the others will be back. The article will soon be erased. Wikipedia is like graffiti; someone soon overwrites it. --JedRothwell 18:37, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Please revert again when you get a chance, or tell me how to do it. I cannot figure it out, even though I have been dealing with computers for 35 years. --JedRothwell 19:11, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I looked up how to revert. Not so hard after all. I should shut up and read the instructions. --JedRothwell 19:16, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks

I just though I'd let you know that I am extremely grateful for your contributions and comments on the article even though we often disagree. My hope is that by working together we will be able to make this article shine agains and one day reclaim it's featured article status. Keep up the good work. Jefffire 13:03, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Getting to NPOV will already be a good result... :-) I certainly see a danger of going POV on the other side. Pcarbonn 14:58, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, thank you (and other involved editors)! This work really restored my faith in wikipedia... Zarniwoot 11:44, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your praise.Pcarbonn 15:59, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Award

		The Barnstar of Diligence
		For your excellent work on Cold Fusion in providing factual information as well as maintaining neutrality I hereby award you the Barnstar of Diligence. Wear it with pride, User:Pcarbonn! Jefffire 14:36, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Jeff ! Pcarbonn 15:10, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

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A little help

I'm sorry it took for me to chip in but things seem to have calmed down a little now any way. i'll keep an eye on things and do a light review of the article as it stands. Any controversial suggestions will be posted on the talk page first. It is nice to be dealing with scientists on a page. The science section on astrology for example has deteriorated markedly due to a non-scientist pushing POV, but that's another matter. Jefffire 13:11, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

The Wikipedian Who Turned Into A Parrot

I dabbled with Corentin Louis Kervran again but I am not a scientist by any standard. I just happen to have some of his books at hand. I was right to be bold however since that is how I came to know you, Pcarbonn, an asset by many standards. So, I put a note at Talk:Corentin Louis Kervran and changed some text accordingly. An expert opinion is much needed.

How I wish I were a Nightingale !

(Lunarian 17:39, 1 August 2006 (UTC))

Cold fusion history

Did you do this cut-and-paste? - brenneman ^{L} 16:07, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

yes, I did. I'm working on cutting down the history section of cold fusion. Why the question ?Pcarbonn 16:08, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I misunderstood what you were doing, and was worried about GFDL compliance. - brenneman ^{L} 16:25, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Kervran?

In the Ig Nobel Prize I read: "The ceremony is followed a few days later by the Ig Informal Lectures (...) in which laureates have the opportunity to explain their achievement ...", do we know who spoke for Corentin Louis Kervran or was it left unfair to award him posthumeously ? (Lunarian 12:59, 8 August 2006 (UTC))

I don't know. I just found this info in my reading, and thought it should be added.Pcarbonn 16:38, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

It's fun, anyway. Santé ! (Lunarian 22:30, 8 August 2006 (UTC))

'quantum mechanics is not a superset of quantum electrodynamics'

Um. It so is dude.

QED is the theory of quantum mechanics as it applies to light, (in other words, photons, electrons and protons); but it doesn't cover quarks (see QCD for that).

The idea that it isn't part of quantum mechanics and thus quantum mechanics isn't a superset is unbelievable. Do you have a cite for that?WolfKeeper 19:55, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I was using "quantum mechanics" in the narrow, non-relativistic sense: in that sense, QED is not a subset of QM. If you take "quantum mechanics" as a synonym of quantum physics, and I now realize that many do, then you must indeed say that QED is a subset of QM.

I'm afraid that Wikipedia is not consistent on this, hence the debate here. In the lead section of the quantum mechanics article: "Quantum mechanics is a subset of quantum field theory". Hence my edit. However, I now see that "It should be noted, however, that certain authors refer to "quantum mechanics" in the more restricted sense of non-relativistic quantum mechanics" (in the quantum mechanics article too). Pcarbonn 20:50, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I have now changed the lead section of the quantum mechanics section to clarify this ambiguity. Pcarbonn 20:58, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

reverted your comments at cold fusion talk

Please don't inject commentary into the middle of other people's comments. It screws up coherence, it's confusing because I'd also used indentation, and it's inconsiderate. I've reverted your edit. I would have simply moved your comments down, and I will if you'd like, but I assume that you'd want to handle this yourself. –M^T 22:04, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

AfD raised on Quantum theory

If you have view on this please go to Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Quantum_theory and cast your vote / make your opinions known. --Michael C. Price ^talk 06:07, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Quantum mechanics vs. physics

I'm a bit puzzled by this edit, which has left the stub category name inconsistent with the permanent category, the article name, and doesn't seem to tally with any discussion on the matter -- and most certainly never went near WP:SFD, which is the normal venue for dealing with such matters. Would you have any objection to me restoring this? Alai 04:30, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

• Agreed, this template is used on dozens if not hundreds of articles on quantum chemistry, which isn't physics, but is quantum mechanics--66.65.145.27 20:40, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Reply to: source for cold fusion ?

That quote is also from the 1997 New York Times piece that is referenced after the second quote, sorry that was unclear. That reference was intended to refer to both sentences previous to it. I wish that the /ref code collapsed identical entries into the same number, but as it doesn't I don't want to clutter the section with many repeats of the same reference. The only sentence ccuring between the two in the original article was "Now Japan is also throwing in the towel." I suppose it could be made into one longer quote, but particularly in the intro I thought brevity was better. Using quotations is itself awkward, but in the past critical material that was not a direct quote has been deleted or edited to unrecognizability- it is my hope that a properly referenced quotation will be more durable. --Noren 18:01, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Weasel words in cold fusion

brilliant move to identify the "weasel" words - nice job STemplar 17:27, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Pcarbonn 19:16, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Re: where did "cold fusion/tmp" go ?

As I believe I said, before, I moved it to Talk:Cold fusion/tmp because the main namespace doesn't support subpages. Apologies if I didn't make that clear enough. Luna Santin 21:19, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

the current dispute with ScienceApologist

Thanks for the idea on the Storms article. I'll pass. This will all come out in the wash. At some point in the not too distant future, ScienceApologist will wake up and realize why (smarter) mainstream science is remaining quiet on this debate and he/she will find some other Earth to declare flat.

Cold fusion

Is there any way I can help you to find a compromise in your ongoing revert war? --Guinnog 03:26, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

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Cold fusion

I would suggest that you read the article on cold fusion. Pcarbonn (talk) 17:45, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I have. I note that some of your edits there are not sufficiently cited. In particular, do you have primary sources claiming to replicate the excess heat? This again is independent of Mills' particular form of nonsense. Michaelbusch (talk) 17:50, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Please clarify which edit is not properly cited, and I'll correct it. Primary sources reporting the replication of excess heat are already cited in the article, in the sentence about peer-reviewed journals. Here they are again:

• Y. Arata and Y-C Zhang, "Anomalous difference between reaction energies generated within D20-cell and H20 Cell", Jpn. J. Appl. Phys 37, L1274 (1998)
• Iwamura, Y., M. Sakano, and T. Itoh, "Elemental Analysis of Pd Complexes: Effects of D2 Gas Permeation". Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. A, 2002. 41: p. 4642.
• Mizuno, T., et al., "Production of Heat During Plasma Electrolysis in Liquid," Japanese Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 39 p. 6055, (2000) [2]
• M.H. Miles et al., "Correlation of excess power and helium production during D2O and H20 electrolysis using Palladium cathodes", J. Electroanal. Chem. 346 (1993) 99 [3]
• B.F. Bush et al, "Helium production during the electrolysis of D20 in cold fusion", J. Electroanal. Chem. 346 (1993) 99

Pcarbonn (talk) 18:27, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

They should be cited in-line with the sentence in the lead I removed as uncited. Note that I, and most of the scientific community, has grave doubts about these papers' validity. That, of course, is another discussion. Michaelbusch (talk) 22:30, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

They are cited inline after the sentence "There are now nearly 200 published reports of anomalous power[2] - mostly in non-mainstream publications, with a few in peer-reviewed journals." I'm not sure what you mean. Pcarbonn (talk) 22:34, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I have just spent that last 6 hours reading the discussion/talk page on cold fusion. At the end of that page, Mr. Busch suggested including the "misconduct case at Purdue involving Bubble fusion" into the cold fusion Wiki-article. I was dismayed. I have a science degree, although not in physics, and simply want to know what the facts are about these topics. I at least make an attempt to obtain and read the papers cited, but I'm afraid that it's obvious Mr. Busch has not. With what I've read about Bubble fusion, and it's been many moons since I've read anything on this topic, I at least KNOW that bubble fusion is more closely related to sonoluminescence. I also know that it involves a RESONANT ACOUSTIC OSCILLATION inside a closed container with a small amount of glycerine in water. The air inside the resonantly oscillating bubbles heats up when in the collapsing (compressional) phase of the acoustic oscillation. Standard physics so far. The claim is that the air inside the bubbles heats up to hot-fusion level temperatures, stuff fuses and very high energy photons are emitted with very precise timing! Bubble fusion supposedly modifies this technique in several ways that enhances the effect. With the ease of obtaining information via the internet, there is no excuse for this kind of ignorance about a topic that an editor is suggesting be put into a Wiki-article!!! I would strongly argue that bubble fusion NOT be included on the cold fusion page; I would alternatively suggest that it be included on the sonoluminescence page. Mr. Busch's obvious lack of such rudimentary knowledge indicates that he either is too lazy, or does not have the time to do some basic research and reading of the material he is proposing to include! This makes me seriously question whether he understands the responsibility that a Wiki-editor takes on, and also makes me wonder if he has taken the time to read any significant amount of the considerable material on cold fusion... how can one even try to edit such a controversial topic as the CF Wiki-article if they haven't even read the important references cited in the Wiki-article, and cannot demonstrate detailed knowledge about the equipment, it's resolution and accuracy, experimental procedures, theoretical candidates, etc?

I have known about and used Wikipedia from shortly after it's inception, and for the most part, consider it one of the more important concepts and efforts that has sprung out of this wonderful thing called the internet. Forgive me if this edit (comment really), is not formatted properly. I do not have a Wiki account and have never felt compelled to take on the considerable responsibility and time-consuming effort as an editor. I very much appreciate the wealth of information that has been contributed by some very dedicated people. However, Mr. Busch's suggestion mentioned above, and the lengthy debate about the removal of some bibliographic links, or links to material for "Further reading" I found to be completely ridiculous. In my six hours of reading and looking at the various editorial guidelines, I can see no reasonable justification for removal of relevent links to the books! A visitor to the cold fusion Wiki-article need go no further that the first rectangular block at the very TOP of the page, to see the warning that cold fusion is a very controversial topic that still has not gained acceptance by mainstream science. Great, the reader has been warned before they even get to the introduction! Thus, if that visitor continues reading and eventually chooses to look at some of the material in the 'Further Reading' section, IT IS THEIR RESPONSIBILITY TO APPLY A 'CREDIBILITY FILTER' TO THE MATERIAL THAT IS OUTSIDE Wiki-dom. Having 'editors' decide this for me is bordering on censorship, and quite disturbing... I am well educated, with two degrees, a BS in biology and a Masters in computer sci (3.95 gpa thank you very much), and am on at least one patent for work on noninvasive blood glucose measurement. Nearly all of my reading is about science and technology; rarely read the newspaper and don't watch much TV. I am more than capable of determining FOR MYSELF what biases ANY material might have. I do not expect, nor want, Wiki-editors making that decision for me when it comes to suggestions for further reading. I do believe that editors can make such decisions regarding the primary references that are used to support the information in the main article.

I would offer up the compromise that the one or two editors' objections to the bibliographic material be succinctly stated and included as part of the reference... I believe I read that adding a succinct caveat about a reference was even a suggestion in the Wiki guideline on reference material. BUT DO NOT DELETE IT! IMHO, that is bordering on censorhship, or at the very least, implies a very strong negative emotional bias to the topic!! Wikipedia itself is all about credible sources, and I applaud that principle, however, offsite suggested reading material is NOT a direct part of Wikipedia, and so far this eve, I have not read any reasonable justification for the deletions. Since I do not have an account, and present this as an objective scientist who is just interested in the facts, I gladly include my email address so I am not considered 'anonymous'. With due respect to both sides of this discussion,

-Mark mark2059@charter.net —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.94.22.110 (talk) 11:32, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Rathke and hydrinos

Pcarbonn, please don't mis-quote Rathke. He states that hydrinos are most likely impossible. That is a flat-out rejection of Mills' work - it is nothing close to the phrases you included. And one more point: do you have anything to do with User:TStolper1W and that account's edits of today? When an account suddenly appears and begins edit-warring on a disputed page that has had only one editor supporting one side of the dispute, I'm afraid I immediately start thinking of sockpuppets. Michaelbusch 22:24, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

I absolutely have nothing to do with him. Please assume good faith. Pcarbonn 22:25, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

I do. That is why I asked. Three more things: The bullshit was TStolpher's edits, which I have removed. It is not necessary to provide such long quotes of Rathke here - it is both confusing and misleading to the casual reader; if they are really that interested, they can examine the critique for themselves. We've discussed the cold fusion business before - the particular experiments Mills was explaining were flawed, and this is important to make clear. Michaelbusch 22:28, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

They were not flawed. Please provide the quote to support this view ! Pcarbonn 22:30, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Pseudoscience

Please take extra care when editing in the Pseudoscience field to avoid edit-warring, breaking the 3RR, and to maintain a neutral point of view. Thanks! Stifle (talk) 09:07, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to thank you for the work you are doing on the cold fusion article. I think it will be better to leave the matter to you, if I got involved too much I think I would just burst out and make matters worse, you seem much more able to keep your cool when faced with rhetorical attacks. Anyway, I will gladly give help where I can (according with the time I have ;). I know that contacting an anonymous is awkward, but at the moment I prefer to keep writing under IP; maybe I'll register later. --81.208.60.199 (talk) 17:23, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

question about cold fusion

Forgive me if this is bold taking this "offline," but I am curious about what you personally think about cold fusion. Do you actually think it is occurring? There has been 17 years of failure since 1989. If there had been any real hope the 2004 DOE panel would have recommended funding. If you do believe it is occurring, how many years without practical devices or mainstream respect would it take for you to change your mind? 209.253.120.205 (talk) 12:28, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

First of all, my opinion does not matter in writing the wikipedia article. To respond to your question, I have no doubt that something strange is happening in CF experiments, and that we should fund additional research. I'm not sure why you say "17 years of failure". What is failure, when you have only a trickle of money to conduct the research ? Still, I encourage you to buy the book of E. Storms to see the wealth of quality research that has been done in the last 17 years. The informal information I get shows that the wind is turning, and that mainstream science is getting more and more interested. Pcarbonn (talk) 12:36, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually, all edits are a product of the editor's opinion of the relative merit of facts and phrasing. I will try to get the Storms book. 209.253.120.205 (talk) 13:05, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

The Storms book wasn't in the Chicago library system, but I requested it through inter-library loan, which might take a few weeks. If you will indulge me, please tell me the 2 or 3 best references that show electrochemistry-driven fusion is real. In case it matters, I have a Ph. D. in condensed matter physics and I am a coauthor on 11 patents and 17 scientific articles (PRB, APL, PRL, JAP, etc.). 209.253.120.205 (talk) 18:02, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

You may want to look at the list of selected papers on New Energy Times, or at the end of the document presented by researchers to the 2004 DOE panel.

Here is my personal selection. On excess heat:

• McKubre, M.C.H., et al., "Isothermal Flow Calorimetric Investigations of the D/Pd and H/Pd Systems" Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Vol. 368, p. 55, (1994)
• Szpak S. et al., "Polarized D+/Pd-D2O system: Hot spots and mini-explosions" (video), ICCF 10, 2003
• P.A. Mozier-Boss et al,”Pd/D CO-DEPOSITION: EXCESS POWER GENERATION AND ITS ORIGIN”,Symposia Papers Presented Before the Division of Environmental Chemistry American Chemical Society, Chicago, IL March 25-29, 2007,

On nuclear reactions:

• Szpak, S., et al., "Evidence of Nuclear Reactions in the Pd Lattice", Naturwissenschaften, Vol. 92(8), p. 394-397, (2005)
• Szpak S. et al., Further evidence of nuclear reactions in the Pd/D lattice: emission of charged particles, Naturwissenschaften, 2007
• Iwamura, Y., M. Sakano, and T. Itoh, "Elemental Analysis of Pd Complexes: Effects of D2 Gas Permeation" Japanese Journal of Applied Physics A, Vol. 41, p. 4642, (2002)

Pcarbonn (talk) 09:30, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

In any case, the article should reflect the best review available on the subject, and that's the 2004 DOE panel. Pcarbonn (talk) 09:46, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the links. As I suspected, the papers are pretty flawed. I have been a reviewer and a submitting author for journals like Physical Review, and in my opinion none of those papers would be published there because of incomplete disclosure and experimental methods. Getting published in prestigious journals is the oxygen of a successful scientific career. I strongly suggest you advise your informal contacts to stop submitting to second rate journals and do the hard work of getting their results published in Physical Review (or similar journals), since that is how mainstream scientists earn respect. On a related note, I am curious, does the lack of publication in prestigious journals cause you to doubt the reality of electrochemistry-driven fusion? It should. 209.253.120.205 (talk) 23:37, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

User 209.253.120.205 states: "As I suspected, the papers are pretty flawed." A PhD and you still don't realize that opinions means nothing in Wikiland. If you really want your efforts here to have an impact, and even help improve things, then provide us with a list of the flaws. Ought to be a piece of cake for you since you've just finished reading all the references and the material is still very fresh in your mind. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.94.22.110 (talk) 06:24, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

According to you my opinions are irrelevant, so that would be a waste of time. I am still curious, does the lack of publication in prestigious journals cause you to doubt the reality of electrochemistry-driven fusion? It should. Confirmation of transistor amplification and high Tc superconductivity both appeared in Physical Review less than a year after they were announced to the public, but it has already been 17 years without such confirmation for cold fusion. 209.253.120.205 (talk) 13:38, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't know who wrote the anonymous comment before yours. While the lack of publication causes me to doubt the reality of electrochemistry-driven fusion, it is counterbalanced by the breadth, depth and quality of experimental evidence published elsewhere. Prestigious editors may have plenty of good reasons to reject papers, as you suggest, and authors should improve the quality of their papers as the 2004 DOE panel said. But they have also plenty of bad reasons to not publish, such as the need for conformity, and the difficulty to recognize an error that they made 18 years ago when they rejected it. Sometimes, papers are rejected for reasons that are not scientific: eg. the lack of a theory to explain it, or the difficulty to reproduce them. While these reasons could reasonably prevent publications in prestigious papers, they cannot remove anything to the scientific validity of the results. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:23, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Another reason for me to believe cold fusion is worth researching is the 2004 DOE panel. After all, they were better place than me to judge it. When 1/2 the panelists accepts the excess heat, and 1/3 does not reject a nuclear origin, it tells you that something is going on, and that's worth investigating if you are curious. And that was without reviewing the anomalous transmutation evidence (for some reasons the researchers did not present it). I'd be happy to hear your comments on the Iwamura paper: do you see a flaw ? Is it not properly described ? How do you explain the results ? Pcarbonn (talk) 17:10, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

The Imawura paper is extremely incomplete. They report no heat, no radiation, and no intermediate products with an atomic mass change of 4. They also have no graph of [fusion indicator] vs. [time of chemical reaction]. In this case, they could make a series of samples(~20) which have varying amounts of exposure to D2 or H2, and perform identical isotope analysis on all of them. If the graph shows a monotonic increase for longer reaction times, they may have something. However, if they really want to convince people that deuterons are fusing, they have to address the issues of radiation and intermediate products. Of course, even if cold fusion was present there, it would have very little to do with heavy water fusion. 209.253.120.205 (talk) 21:09, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for looking at the Iwamura paper. You say: "They also have no graph of [fusion indicator] vs. [time of chemical reaction]. They could make a series of samples(~20) which have varying amounts of exposure to D2 or H2, and perform identical isotope analysis on all of them". I believe that's what they did in Fig 4.a, 5.a, 6.a, 7.a and 8.a Let me know if I'm mistaken.

When you say "they have to address the issues of radiation", IMHO, you are asking more than is required. You are trying to see if the experiment fits current theoretical knowledge. Obviously, it does not: current knowledge says that transmutations cannot occur in this environment. And that's the whole point. You should go back to your original requirements: is the experimental protocol flawed ? Is it properly described, so that replication can be done (it has, by the way) ? If so, the paper supports the view that additional studies are necessary, like the one you suggest, rather than the conclusion that it is all bogus. The deleted version of the article never said that cold fusion is absolutely sure; it said that more research is justified.

You say "it would have very little to do with heavy water fusion". Indeed. That's why researchers believe the name should be changed from cold fusion to low energy nuclear reaction.Pcarbonn (talk) 11:21, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Since you are asking for traces of radiation, I would invite you to look at the recent paper in the European Physical Journal, reporting on the SPAWAR experiment with CR-39 detectors. Use of CR-39 in Pd/D co-deposition experiments.Pcarbonn (talk) 08:13, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

You are not mistaken. I should have said "They have no convincing graph of [fusion indicator] vs. [time of chemical reaction]." Your comment on "asking more than required" is core of the disagreement. When an extraordinary claim like cold fusion is made, the burden is on the advocates to have extraordinary protocols (many many data points, multiple labs, multiple analytical techniques, etc.). If they do those things and get consistent results, mainstream scientists will listen. When high Tc superconductivity was announced in late 1986, it only took weeks for it to be confirmed. Physical Review Letters published one key paper (Wu et al., March 2, 1987) less than a month after it was submitted because they want to disseminate important news quickly. 209.253.120.205 (talk) 03:57, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Excuse me if I butt in. I don't particularly like the sentence about "extraordinary evidence", not because I don't accept it in principle but because it's often associated with "moving the goalposts". In the case of cold fusion, the critics asked for better repeatability, they got it after some years (H/Pd > 0.95 and all that jazz) and in most cases never acknowledged it. They asked for radiation and got it (tritium production well above background measured multiple times) but, same as above. They asked for helium production correlated to heat, and when it came they mostly dismissed it citing contaminations (without demonstrating that a contamination indeed happened, I mean). I'm not accusing you personally, obviously, but I don't detect much good faith in this pattern. Well, at least here in Italy academic people in the last years went back to speaking openly of cold fusion without fearing ridicule or immediate dismissal... we'll see what they can come up with (and if I manage to get in the position of helping, I'll be there ;) --Holland-it (talk) 07:05, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and about the "17 years of failure", for me the "upper bound" for this kind of thing is the time it took to accept continental drift: 40 years ;) Not to mention that Wegener's evidence, after all, was less than what the CF researchers have to offer in defense of their field, and his attempt at a theory was very clumsy (like those of many CF researchers, sadly). Yet right he was.... --Holland-it (talk) 08:18, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I fully agree with Holland-it. You ask for "many many data points, multiple labs, multiple analytical techniques, etc.". Then look at Ed Storms book: you'll see plenty of protocols, plenty of reports, plenty of labs. The extraordinary evidence are there, if you look for it. If you ask for a publication in Nature, we just need to wait: it will happen, eventually. But I don't see the scientific basis for asking it. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:52, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Just to clarify further: I completely agree with our friend that the Iwamura paper by itself shouldn't convice anyone of anything: it's the way it fits in the picture drawn by many more studies, most of which were concerned with different things, that should be evaluated.

Recently, an article published on the EJP brought evidence of anomalous d+d branching ratios for conventional deuteron-beam experiments at low energies. They didn't reproduce the CF ratios, and their setup didn't have anything to do with Fleischmann-Pons experiments, but that's just why it's so interesting: when a number of completely different methods of inquiry continue to crash into "something strange going on" with hydrogen isotopes in metal lattices, in my opinion, you have a much more compelling evidence than what would come from incremental betterments of a single experiment.

The obvious sign of real pseudoscience is that no matter how high the efforts, the quality of evidence never increases with time or even diminishes. The quality of CF evidence, on the other hand, has steadily increased. If you say "I think it's still not enough to make us rewrite nuclear physics", fine with me. But it's surely enough to make us want to know what the hell is really going on there ;) --Holland-it (talk) 11:40, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

The Wegener episode is a great example of how science succeeds. There was a shocking proposal with only limited data. People discussed it openly but few believed it. Years later new measurements in several areas, especially sea floor magnetism, convinced people that the continents are moving. When cold fusion advocates have data like that, people will definitely pay attention. 209.253.120.205 (talk) 13:08, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

And many people are paying attention again, I tell you, especially outside the USA (You keep paying attention to string theorists in the meantime, I really doubt that it is a more intelligent bet but we'll see ;) The Wegener comment was just in response to your "17 years are too much" sentence: since sometimes it took more than double the time to vindicate a theory, I surely won't dismiss CF just because of that... I would if I saw published papers just going in circles around the same old things. But they are not. --Holland-it (talk) 13:25, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Is it ok if I move this conversation to the cold fusion page ? I think it may be of interest to other editors. Pcarbonn (talk) 14:51, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I give you permission to purge my snide remarks about string theorists and national biases ;) (Though I still believe that 17 years of contested experiments are much more about science than 30 years of applied mathematics without one experimental confirmation in sight...) --Holland-it (talk) 15:18, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

First, I would like to thank User 209.253.120.205 for responding in a scientific manner: namely, reading and bringing up what he believes are SPECIFIC flaws in the papers, and doing it in a sincere, non-condescending way. If we could get the main editors of the CF page to do the same, it would shape up quite nicely. Instead they want to criticize the journal, the publisher, the country it was published in, the scientists, etc. They find all kinds of things to criticize except experimental setup, procedures or analysis of the science! That is completely unscientific...

Second, User 209.253.120.205, I would like to ask you to consider the following: There are two ways to break a wine glass: with the cold-hard steel of a sledgehammer (the brute-force, unintelligent method), OR, with nothing more than a voice (a little bit of acoustic energy at the right frequency)... i.e., RESONANCE. All of nuclear physics has been using brute-force devices (particle accelerators, etc.) to probe the physics of the nucleus. It's about time that we begin trying more "intelligent" ways to interact with the nucleus; try something a bit more elegant. I do not have the details on the tip of my tongue, but I believe at least two of the CF theoretical papers involve a resonant/harmonic condition that either alters the branching ratios, or one that involves coupling of the excess heat into lattice vibrations (phonons). If we are dealing with a resonant/harmonic phenomenon, then everything about the experimental setup and environmental conditions (e.g., temperature) interact in complex ways, thus, the experiments would be VERY difficult to reproduce.

Third, User 209.253.120.205 said, "According to you my opinions are irrelevant, so that would be a waste of time". Not at all! What people like me are dying for are experts outside of the CF field to READ carefully the papers and critique the details of the experimental setup, the experimental procedures, the data collection, the analysis of the data. We welcome this kind of intellectual discourse because we're tired of hearing that an electrochemist can't do nuclear physics, or that it was published in a second-rate journal, or published in a German journal, etc.! PhysicsEng (talk) 06:03, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

If I might inject a comment here. I'm not 209.253.120.205, and I have been on the mainstream side of the recent disputes, yet I mostly hold the "jury still out" opinion of some parts of CF. I would like to ask PhysicsEng to put a little more effort into his wineglass analogy. Much as Holland-it associates "extraordinary claims" with moving the goalposts, I associate "resonance" with, well, harmonic convergence, crystals, and all that newage. So convince me otherwise. When we talk about resonance of an oscillator like a wineglass, it's not just a buzzword. We can talk about Q of the oscillator. We can describe how the energy sloshes back and forth between potential energy bound up in elastic deformation, and kinetic energy of motion. We can talk about the coupling between air motion and glass motion. All that description is "wrapped up" in a shorthand term for a phenomenon common enough to need its own term... resonance. But we call it resonance on the basis of knowing what is resonating, and how it is resonating, and what would make it stop resonating, and so forth. So here's the question. Why should I think of DD fusion as being analogous to resonance? What is it about changing the branching ratios that suggests a resonant phenomenon to you? It's a serious question; I'm not just trying to point out some apparent lack on your part. I really would like to understand why the resonance idea/analogy is suggested to you. JohnAspinall (talk) 05:51, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Speaking of intellectual discourse, and electrochemists doing nuclear physics, have you considered the possibility that someone has pulled a Sokal_hoax on the CF field in order to test the integrity/quality of its peer review process? (Disclaimer: I have no knowledge that this is true; I consider it unlikely; but it is possible.) Suppose, among the cold fusion papers cited in every internally-written review of the field, is a piece of deliberately designed nonsense. It would be plausible to a non-specialist reader, but immediately apparent as a hoax to the people who would be the best peer-reviewers. And every year, another ICCF rolls around, and our hypothetical hoaxer gives another sigh of disappointment that no-one in the field has found it yet. What do you think? JohnAspinall (talk) 15:53, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Everything is possible if you make the hypothesis that everything is possible. All the quantum mechanics paper could be hoaxed, and cold fusion could be true. Who knows ? :-) Pcarbonn (talk) 16:34, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I consider that avoiding the question by a false equivalence. Working pieces of technology have been designed and successfully built on the basis of the quantum mechanics literature. Who knows? Millions of people know. In contrast, nothing, not even a confirmatory experiment, has been designed on the basis of (for example) the Widom Larsen "heavy electron" theory. 144.212.112.207 (talk) 18:49, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Previous comment was me. Sorry about not signing. Perhaps you missed the significance of Sokal_hoax? I didn't just say "hoax". JohnAspinall (talk) 19:15, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Indeed the equivalence is false. My point was that this hypothesis is ridiculous: nothing supports it, and even if true, it would not remove any substance to the other CF paper (see Association fallacy). Pcarbonn (talk) 09:25, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

OK, I won't belabor the point. This is a basic difference between us in how we view the whole business of peer review and making reference to other people's work. But we shall just have to agree to disagree. JohnAspinall (talk) 15:09, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Having said that, it could be argued that some CF papers presented at ICCF are very poor, possibly to the point that some could even be considered Sokal hoax. Here is what David Goodstein said in 1994 (quoted in the deleted version of the article): "because the Cold-Fusioners see themselves as a community under siege, there is little internal criticism. Experiments and theories tend to be accepted at face value, for fear of providing even more fuel for external critics, if anyone outside the group was bothering to listen. In these circumstances, crackpots flourish, making matters worse for those who believe that there is serious science going on here." But generalizing this to say that all CF papers are crackpots would be a fallacy.

Papers presented to ICCF should clearly not be considered as peer-reviewed; only those published in peer-reviewed journals should be. Is that the point that you wanted to make ? Pcarbonn (talk) 16:01, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Hello again, this from the person who posted the question above on Dec. 10, and I just got back from a trip. I would like to narrow the question and direct it again to Pcarbonn: Do you believe that deuterons were fusing in the Pons-Fleishmann apparatus in 1989 and that they were capable of producing a detectable temperature increase? By now dozens of labs have tried to duplicate it, but I haven't seen believable thermometer-based duplication data. Remember that if this arrangement cannot make a thermometer rise reproducibly, there is no real hope for power generation. 209.253.120.205 (talk) 05:20, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I do believe that they was a detectable excess of heat generation. I don't know whether it is due to deuterons fusing, but it has a nuclear signature, and the excess heat cannot be explained by chemical reaction. I'm in good company with this opinion: half the DOE panelists found the excess heat evidence convincing. I do accept however that others don't believe it, because the evidence is not "beyond doubt". Pcarbonn (talk) 09:27, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

You say: "Remember that if this arrangement cannot make a thermometer rise reproducibly, there is no real hope for power generation". I don't share your view. Here is what the 1989 DoE said: "Even a single short but valid cold fusion period would be revolutionary.". You just need to hope that it can become repeatable someday, as I'm sure it will. Pcarbonn (talk) 09:31, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, I would also stress more that there is a very large and meaningful spectrum between the "single short period" and a three-nines availability commercial system. The group of Vittorio Violante at Frascati (an Italian Nuclear Energy Agency lab) currently claims "about 50%" success rate for its experiments with 50% detected energy gain. 50% reproducibility is outstanding or awful depending on your perspective: a power plant that turns on five out of ten times wouldn't be good for much, but a missile that downs 50% of the aircraft it's fired at is a pretty good weapon ;)

The original Fleischmann-Pons setup had a much lower success rate and I think nobody is contesting that. Current experiments are based on heavily modified versions of the original apparatus, or even completely different setups (thin wires, glow discharge cells and so on). Whether it will ever be possible to bridge the gap from 50% to 99,9% and increase power to useful levels is a question that only further research might answer. --Holland-it (talk) 12:18, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Pcarbonn, I just wanted to say that I noticed you changed the hatnote. Thanks! 209.253.120.198 (talk) 23:44, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Cold fusion

Thanks for your message. I have yet to form an opinion about the overall direction of the article. I'm not sure that I have enough scientific knowledge to come to an opinion. In the meantime would like to see the article based on reliable sources and more accessible to lay readers. I also think it could be shorter. I look forward to reading your further comments on the talk page. Itsmejudith (talk) 20:36, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Request for mediation not accepted

A Request for Mediation to which you were are a party was not accepted and has been delisted. You can find more information on the case subpage, Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Cold fusion. For the Mediation Committee, Daniel 01:00, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

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Just for your information

I noticed that you are assembling some lists of reference papers about cold fusion. I'd like to remind you of the following one; if it isn't of help, just forgive me for the inconvenience ;)

"Evidence for a host-material dependence of the n/p branching ratio of low-energy d+d reactions within metallic environments" Eur. Phys. J. A 27, s01, 187{192 (2006)[1]

Quoting from the ending section:

"We presented a first experimental evidence for an alteration of the branching ratios in the d+d fusion reactions obtained in an accelerator experiment which can be theoretically explained by polarization of the reacting deuterons in the crystal lattice. Several other conceivable but rather trivial causes could be excluded. Albeit the deeper reason for the deuteron polarization on its part is still unknown."[...]"Our findings also provide a first independent support for the claim in cold fusion that requires a heavy alteration of the d+d reaction channels in contradiction to the results obtained for gas targets. Thus making it, together with the enhanced electron screening in metals [19], more credible although further efforts are necessary." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Holland-it (talk • contribs) 19:05, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

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AfD nomination of 2004 DoE panel on cold fusion

I have nominated 2004 DoE panel on cold fusion, an article you created, for deletion. I do not feel that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2004 DoE panel on cold fusion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time. Guy (Help!) 10:34, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

MfD nomination of User:Pcarbonn/arbitration

User:Pcarbonn/arbitration, a page you created, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Pcarbonn/arbitration and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of User:Pcarbonn/arbitration during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. Guy (Help!) 19:56, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Request for mediation accepted

A Request for Mediation to which you were are a party has been accepted. You can find more information on the case subpage, Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Cold fusion. For the Mediation Committee, WjBscribe 19:15, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

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I have accepted the mediation case regarding Cold fusion. Can you provide a brief summary of your view points regarding the issue here? Thanks, Seicer (talk) (contribs) 02:05, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Timeline of cold fusion

I have nominated Timeline of cold fusion, an article you created, for deletion. I do not feel that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Timeline of cold fusion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time. Guy (Help!) 15:46, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Please

Please don't tell me you are prepping the page for multiple versions of the history :) seicer | talk | contribs 11:51, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Microstrain

Another editor has added the {{prod}} template to the article Microstrain, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but the editor doesn't believe it satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and has explained why in the article (see also Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not and Wikipedia:Notability). Please either work to improve the article if the topic is worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia or discuss the relevant issues at its talk page. If you remove the {{prod}} template, the article will not be deleted, but note that it may still be sent to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. BJBot (talk) 16:01, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

On the removal of the table from Tensile strength

At the very least, you simply yanked the table out of the article, and didn't even bother to edit the section that it was in to reflect the fact that the table was no longer there. Now, the table did ***not*** only list yield strengths, so I have to ask why you moved it, and why you didn't clean the article up afterwards. So why? Scythe33 (talk) 03:42, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I shoud have done it better. I have now fixed it, I believe. The correction was made after noting the difference between tensile strength and ultimate strength. The redirection in ultimate strength should be corrected, I suggest. The table is not lost, but moved to yield strength. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:38, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Bubble fusion

Why did you make the article non-chronological again? The Forringer experiment happened after the Nature piece, and the university called off their investigation after another successful replication. Should be in that order, I think. — Omegatron 20:59, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Again ? I don't recall doing this before. Anyway, I believe that the article does not have to be chronological, especially for a scientific subject. It is better to have sections that address topics fully, rather than jump from one topic to another based on chronology. Pcarbonn (talk) 22:26, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I mean I just made it chronological yesterday and then you put it back to the way it was. No, a scientific article does not have to be chronological, but this one is, other than the parts you changed back. It's sort of appropriate for something that's been demonstrated, and then refuted, and then demonstrated, and then criticized, and so on. — Omegatron 00:51, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

citations in cold fusion draft

Hi. Could you and the other editors please go through the draft and complete the citations that are either missing page numbers (eg, #4, #22, #23, #26, #32, #37, #38/#40/#42/#43, #52, #58, #59, #60, #61) or are otherwise incomplete, eg missing issue numbers as in #57 etc, or missing specifics as in #59 [is that a book, journal article, or what?], or missing virtually everything as in #26, #32, #71.

I can complete information such as author etc when the document is online, but I can't even begin to guess page numbers, or -- in the case of "Biberian 2007 and Hubler 2007" -- what anything else might be. Help please? -- Fullstop (talk) 17:08, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Nice work

...on Cold fusion, Pierre, your edits have helped the article quite a bit this month. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 03:01, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. (I don't think that it's limited to this month though... :-) Pcarbonn (talk) 06:28, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry I don't have more time for a longer review, I can only look at a couple of earlier versions and what has happened this month. Maybe the Arata TV event will give us more to write about :) - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 14:15, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

I understand. This announcement should not distract us from the Good Article Nomination process though... Pcarbonn (talk) 14:19, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations, the article has been promoted. I'd like for you to go back and think about whether the sentence you just added today in the lead is wise, and tell me what you think. (Here or on the article talk page.) - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 13:56, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I went ahead and deleted the sentence I objected to when I found out that people from physorg.com were reading us.

On another subject, I mistakenly said in an edit summary that you had changed some == headings to === subheadings; that was Ruslik. I think he was trying to package up all the GA stuff together, which is fine with me. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 19:19, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Hydrino theory

The description of the board members still sounds a little like a plea for legitimacy, but I can live with that version. Thank you for finding a compromise instead of just edit warring, I appreciate it. - Eldereft ~(s)talk~ 18:42, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Fringe science

You might want to take a look at cold fusion's treatment in the article Fringe science. Salut.--Anthon.Eff (talk) 19:16, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I can see that the fringe science article tries to nuance the different meanings of the word, and I appreciate that. In the cold fusion article, I'm insisting that any input is properly sourced: without that, an enormous amount of time is lost in discussions. I'm not aware of any source that says cold fusion is a fringe science, using these exact words. I'm not sure the category has any informational use either, being such a broad set of fields. Also, abuse of that word is too easy. So, I'm not in favor of categorizing cold fusion as fringe science. I hope you'll understand. Pcarbonn (talk) 19:33, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Of course. And I agree, the term is subjective and inherently pejorative. I would nominate fringe science for deletion, but it's too much hassle. Better to just notify the concerned articles, so that editors can check its content. --Anthon.Eff (talk) 21:52, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Dubious

Template:Dubious has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. NonvocalScream (talk) 17:13, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Talk:Cold fusion

May I request a refactoring of your recent comments to Talk:Cold fusion? The content is fine, but interlacing it in the previous editor's comment breaks the numbering and promotes confusion of who is writing, especially once others chime in. I think a second numbered list would indicate sufficiently to which points you are replying. Thank you. - Eldereft (cont.) 19:31, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Reported to conflict of interest noticeboard

You have been reported here.

ScienceApologist (talk) 14:53, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Removal from talk page

Hello Pcarbonn. We never ever put editors' full names and home addresses on the wiki. That's what I removed and I have asked on the helpdesk to have those details removed permanently. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:19, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

I had to act very quickly and it was easy to revert to last good version. You can restore yours now. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:30, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Actually, neither of us can. You will have to talk to User:PeterSymonds, who permanently removed the intervening edits. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:46, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Average scientific lab?

Hi Pcarbonn. In my interpretation of wiki philosophy this is just a castle in the air invented by SA. The article should not take the view of the average scientific lab because it should not take a view at all. In my opinion it will be much more productive to go back to the sources. Which sources are useful for the article? How do we summarise each source fairly? How do we build the facts and views we find in those sources into a structured article, without creating an original synthesis? That's all. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:34, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Misleading edit summary

This edit summary is misleading. There was no consensus on the talk page for you to undo my edit. ScienceApologist (talk) 16:47, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

WP:AN

Apparently JzG thinks you're out to eat babies or something and has started a thread about you at WP:AN#Cold fusion. -- Ned Scott 08:11, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Another subject of Cognitive dissonance. Pcarbonn (talk) 09:32, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I edited your userpage

I removed this from your userpage. I don't really care about the issue as long as it defers to appropriate sourcing. However, treating mediation (and articles in general) as wars to be won or lost is inappropriate.-Wafulz (talk) 15:29, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:No original research#Proposed text addition to the policy

I see that you've worked on the Wikipedia talk:No original research page. Would you care to comment on this proposal? Thank you. --Phenylalanine (talk) 02:48, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Injunction request

I have requested at WP:COIN#Request for injunction against Cold Fusion investor Pierre Carbonnelle that you be banned from editing cold fusion due to your investment in both cold fusion companies and your crowing about your successes at POV-pushing in New Energy Times. ScienceApologist (talk) 17:13, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Given the confusion about whether you had deliberately disassociated your name from your ID, I suggest you consider putting your real name back on your user page to avoid such in future. Thanks for turning up at the noticeboard and clarifying matters by re-associating your name and ID. ++Lar: t/c 11:01, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

MfD nomination of User:Pcarbonn

User:Pcarbonn, a page you substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Pcarbonn and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of User:Pcarbonn during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:25, 26 October 2008 (UTC) ScienceApologist (talk) 19:25, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

October 2008

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, we would like to remind you not to attack other editors, as you did on Wikipedia:Good_article_reassessment/Cold_fusion/1. Please comment on the contributions and not the contributors. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. Verbal chat 16:35, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for refactoring. All the best, Verbal chat 16:55, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Archiving assistance

Pcarbonn, hi, is it alright if I setup an archive bot for your talkpage? It's currently at 90K, and some people's browsers start having trouble with anything over 32K. But I could set up a bot that would auto-archive any threads which had gone inactive for a period of time (30 days?) and then you wouldn't have to worry about it anymore. Let me know, --Elonka 20:11, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that's fine. Thank you. I did not realize it was so big. Pcarbonn (talk) 22:18, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Done.  :) I started a new archive page for you, as well as an automated archivebox, which has the pre-2008 threads. The rest will get picked up on the next pulse, which should happen in the next 24 hours or so, and then it'll review your page daily. If you'd like any adjustments, let me know! --Elonka 22:39, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

User:Pcarbonn

Hi Pcarbonn. I just suggested on the MfD for your user page that moving it to a subpage of your userspace would demonstrate a great willingness on your part to minimize the drama that always attends commenting on other users. Would you be willing to do that? If you need technical help I am happy to assist you. --John (talk) 04:25, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

The consensus of the MfD was to keep your page, but that doesn't mean you should keep what is on it. Please consider removing the timeline section as it is causing problems. Wikipedia is not a webhost - you can put this information on your own website or save it in a text file on you hard disk, and email it to anyone who asks for a copy. Just please remove it from your wikipedia page where it is only doing harm. Thanks, Verbal chat 16:11, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

I did consider removing the timeline, but considering the lack of consensus for that request on the MfD, I have decided to keep it, for the reason I explained. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:19, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

The MfD was about deleting the page, not removing the timeline. Why not remove it anyway, and add a diff for anyone who is interested? Verbal chat 17:41, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Because an inordinate amount of editors' time is lost repeating the errors of the past. Pcarbonn (talk) 18:17, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Very sad. Verbal chat 10:14, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Removing the timeline would only be positive in my opinion. Widefox (talk) 10:46, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

ANI

You're up: WP:ANI#Please review this case. ScienceApologist (talk) 05:25, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion

Hi Pcarbonn, I've been looking through your contribs, Pcarbonn (talk · contribs), and though I realize that you've been participating on Wikipedia for years, I have to admit that it does appear a bit unusual that all of your recent energies on Wikipedia are devoted solely to one article (and a controversial one, at that). Just as a friendly suggestion, it might help reduce tension, if you could also from time to time put some effort into working on other articles as well? Even if you're just helping with something at Category:Articles that need to be wikified or one of the other cleanup categories, it would help show other editors that you were here to help with the project as a whole. Plus, it can be very therapeutic to work on non-controversial articles, in places where editors are actually grateful for the help! :) Just wanted to toss that out to you as a suggestion, --Elonka 03:57, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestion. As I've said elsewhere, I have written 2 user scripts recently.[2][3] I may consider stopping editing the main Cold Fusion article, but still contribute to the talk page. Would that be OK ? Pcarbonn (talk) 08:52, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi Pcarbonn. Elonka's suggestion seems very constructive to me. I consider contributions to article talk pages as contributions to the article. Why not take a break from the article for now? Just my thoughts after editting the article for the first time. Widefox (talk) 10:46, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

curious

I was just curious as to your experience and background in basic science? Thanks.--OMCV (talk) 15:20, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

OMCV, I have noticed that you have voted for banning me from contributing on cold fusion, despite a request from Jehochman to stop that vote. This is not the way to solve a content dispute. See Galileo. Pcarbonn (talk) 11:18, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing out my vote was in the wrong place, my bad. If you displayed competence in evaluating and weighting scientific information I would reverse my opinion (and find the right place for it). So far it seems you are ignorant of the finer points or choose to ignore them. The way you edit right now displays a distinct agenda and pushes a POV with a willingness to use policy (similar to SA) and sophism to seek your ends. What I'm trying to determine is whether you need to be taught or stopped. Finally, I didn't ask if you knew the history of science. I just wanted to see if I need to correct my judgment on your block proceedings.--OMCV (talk) 00:14, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Discussion of topic ban

Since you contributed to the ANI discussion that led to this, you may wish to contribute to the topic ban discussion here: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Proposed_topic_ban:_User:Pcarbonn_from_Cold_fusion_and_related_articles. Regards, SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 21:17, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

WP:RFAR

I have requested arbitration of the disputes surrounding Cold fusion. Please see Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration. Thank you. Jehochman ^Talk 19:35, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

RFAR formatting

I believe it is customary to restrict your comments at ArbCom, including responses to comments by other contributors, to your own section. I suggest you consider reformatting. Ronnotel (talk) 16:09, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Trying to understand this…

Hi Pierre. You’ve no-doubt seen my post on the Arbcom. From a cursory glance over the talk pages, I am unable to discern your expertise in CF. I can see from newenergytimes that you seem well placed and in the thick of things, but I still can’t tell what your involvement is at the technical level. What first-hand expertise do you have in CF? If not any first-hand, what is your interest in it? Greg L (talk) 04:09, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't have any first hand expertise in CF, in the sense that I have not conducted nor participated in any cold fusion experiment. My interest in it, as I explained, is that I see it as a way to provide a better world for my children. Pcarbonn (talk) 05:38, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

• Thank you for that pithy candor. Unfortunately, my previous posts on the Arbcom wouldn’t apply in this case. My recommendation for you is to listen more carefully to what other editors are saying. High-grade heat (high temperatures) are required in order to generate steam. Everything I’ve seen on CF suggests we’re talking about awfully low-grade heat so far. So it’s all dependent upon discovering and understanding the underlying mechanisms and optimizing them to get some serious power densities. It’s all so embryonic at this stage. CF-generated power is 30+ years in the future—if ever.

  In the mean time, we could require that all automobile manufacturers have a fleet average of 35 MPG and we’d cut our foreign-oil dependence to zip. We could also do as France did, and have one single standard fission plant design that is replicated dozens and dozens of times. France did it that way and now has a 90%+ nuclear share in electrical production. Clean stuff. No mercury in the air. The old American system of having free-market competition in the construction of nuke plants (Babcock & Wilcox Company v.s. G.E. for instance) resulted in each plant being a one-off, custom design for each utility. Cost overruns were exorbitant. There are at least two intrinsically safe fission reactor designs (a GE design and a Swedish design) that I know of which are incapable of melting down—even if all pumps stopped working. We could also have Congress guarantee that crude oil prices won’t dip below $70 per barrel for instance (by taxing imported oil if it goes below that point). This would provide long-term assurances for companies looking at billion dollar investments into coal shale and coal-to-oil conversion processes; they have had the price rug pulled out from under their feet by OPEC before to kill these trends so OPEC can keep the gravy train going. My personal interest is in geothermal. I recently did a calculation of the entrained energy underneath Yellowstone. Just the entrained energy (assuming zero additional heat comes up from below) would be enough to satisfy the entire U.S. electrical consumption for many, many centuries. All these solutions require a national consensus to do any real good. What is clear is that your advocacy here on Wikipedia won’t advance the state of the art in cold fusion and therefore can’t impact the nation’s energy problems.

  I’m just suggesting you go with the flow some more. I’m struck with the amount of effort being expended by so many others to deal with an issue that you are at the center of. KnowwhutImean? Greg L (talk) 06:14, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

You may be right. However, when Pierre Curie discovered radium, its temperature was only a few degree above ambient. Who would have thought that one could make weapons of massive destruction out of it ? Pcarbonn (talk) 07:50, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

• Indeed. No one thought radium had that potential at the time. More importantly, no one thinks that today either. Radium doesn’t fission and no matter how much of it you accumulate, it will never explode. Plutonium too is an alpha emitter and a bomb pit of it feels warm to the touch. But it’s not the alpha-emitting property of plutonium that give it its potential, is it? Back in the late 30s it was uranium that fissioned and Otto Frisch very quickly realized that the energy of a single fission event was so great that it would make the two halves of the nucleus recoil apart at one-third the speed of light. Once the basic nature of fission was understood, everyone had the big *ah Haa* at the same time. There is no such epiphany yet with cold fusion and there may never be. It is troubling to me that many scientists can’t reproduce certain experiments and, even when they do, the reaction disappears in a few days. This state of affairs has many of the hallmarks of polywater, where human sweat was ultimately found to be the culprit.

  I’m not so sure you’ve recognized my main point in my previous post, above, and—at risk of reading too much into it—your response betrays what seems like an obsession here. Your advocacy and evangelizing of what you see as the potential of cold fusion will not advance the state of the art. Government grants will be based on advise from science councils that will look to the actual peer-reviewed literature; the councils won’t be coming to Wikipedia for guidance and inspiration. The other editors who are running into edit conflicts with you feel you are looking at the literature with biased, rose-colored glasses. They may be right and they may be wrong. This is a collaborative writing environment and there are differing interpretation of facts and values amongst editors. If you are going to participate here, you should not edit against the consensus view. Greg L (talk) 17:13, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Can you explain why governments invest billions in the Large hadron collider, and peanuts in cold fusion ? You say : "Government grants will be based on advise from science councils that will look to the actual peer-reviewed literature". I would be delighted if they were to do it. Pcarbonn (talk) 12:04, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I think the quote from Greg is the answer. The LHC shows amazing promise based on firm theoretical data and experimental results, from the peer-reviewed literature. The advice from science councils, research bodies, and overview of the peer-reviewed literature, taken together, gives a much clearer return-on-investment (in view of the scientific results and economy) in supporting the LHC over cold fusion. Verbal chat 12:28, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

How does this discussion relate to the case ? Even if I agreed, why would that prevent us from presenting the scientific evidence in the scientific controversy ? Pcarbonn (talk) 13:00, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

• I see… So you, Pierre, raise various points, they are soundly trounced and refuted, and then you claim those points are irrelevant and take us full circle. I can see now that arguing with you is beyond pointless and, further, convincingly demonstrates why you mustn’t be in a position to be deciding what scientific papers support what conclusions. What just transpired above is not how science works. In the dictionary, under “pseudoscience”, it should say “n. See here” Your technical arguments (“radium”) crumble like Chinese school houses, your basic premiss for promoting CF (‘think of the children’) is pointless since there are viable alternatives to avail ourselves of that would make immediate and significant change, and you misinterpret/misrepresent what scientific papers are really saying. Furthermore, arguing with you is like squeezing a balloon: successfully press down on an inane logic bulge here and you pop up with an equally inane bulge elsewhere. No wonder everyone is so frustrated; you persist with a catch-me-if-you-can absurd logic that is simultaneously civil and has a child-like innocence. You are somewhat of an enigma to me. But I’ve seen your writing on New Energy Times and think it is more likely you know full well what you are doing. Quite masterful, really, what you’ve managed to pull off.

  We’ve had other editors here on Wikipedia try to “promote” the adoption of IEC prefixes (terminology like “mebibyte” instead of “megabyte”) even though our readership didn’t even recognize the terminology. They were equally as evasive when you tried to logically pin them down. That is not  what editors try to do on Wikipedia: *promote* an agenda; we simply follow what the reliable sources say and, currently, all the reliable sources say that cold fusion, perpetual motion, homeopathy, opposition to the fluoridation of municipal water (“gumint” conspiracy”), aliens at Roswell, ghosts, goblins, and other such nonsense are products of overactive imaginations and aren’t well grounded in science. Thirty watts of excess heat ought to produce clear, convincing, and abundant evidence of fusion. But it doesn’t. If I had to venture a guess, CF is the product of nothing more than unidentified chemical reactions, poor design-of-experiment, and (very) poorly done measurements. I personally think these experimenters are making the world’s crappiest and most expensive batteries, which effectively passivate and crap out in a matter of hours.

  That your disruption to Wikipedia has gone on for so long speaks to the shortcomings of Wikipedia’s “pure democracy” culture. I don’t know where you reside, but here in America, they name new procedures and laws after a notable disasters (Amber alerts, Meagan’s law). Maybe Wikipedia will one day have a all-powerful administrator with “Pcarbonn authority” to rapidly and decisively deal with disruptive editors such as yourself. Goodbye. I will no longer waste my time with you. Greg L (talk) 23:04, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

You are mistaken. It is the other way around. You try to attack me from all sides because you don't find anything wrong with my core position. The discussion above is irrelevant to our case. Pcarbonn (talk) 10:44, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Your questions above deserve a better answer than the one I gave in a angry state of mind. So, here is what I can say at second thought.

You said : "CF-generated power is 30+ years in the future-if ever". That would be assuming some decent money put in it I suppose, which is not the case today. Indeed much work is still needed to understand and control the phenomenom. Still, 30 years would be sooner than the hot fusion commercial applications, which are 60+ years in the future, with billions of euros required.

You say that CF would need to provide serious power densities to be interesting. The current literature on CF already says that the power densities in CF experiment are several orders of magnitude higher than any chemical reaction, and even higher than the one achieved with fission fuels. You say that high grade heat is required, and you are right. Fleischmann & Pons have reported one incident of melting their Palladium cathode, which requires 1800°K. In a heat-after-death event, Mizuno has reported the evaporation of 37 liters of water with a palladium cathode of 100 grams. These are occasional occurrences, and have thus a subjective convincing power. Szpak 2005 has reported hot spots detected by infra-red and crater-like features on the surface suggesting locally-high temperatures. All this gives a hint of what could become possible. (source: pp. 9-10 of this book, published by the American Chemical Society and distributed by Oxford University Press)

You seem to suggest that fission plants offer a better route for energy supplies. Unlike CF, fission creates a lot of radioactive waste. CF has no such negative aspects, based on our current knowledge. (source: p 12 of the same book)

You say that the CF state of affairs has many of the hallmarks of polywater. Unlike polywater, the experiment, although difficult, has been replicated by many scientists with a variety of set-up. It becomes hard to believe that a single, mundane explanation could be found. There are evidence of nuclear reactions (p. 11 of same book). The only explanation that is left is that the researchers are fraudsters, but I would then ask : why would they commit fraud if the only result is that they are derided by their colleagues and their career prospect is damaged.

In any case, you keep an open mind of the possibility of cold fusion, as a good scientist should. I wonder why there is so much opposition to have wikipedia present the scientific status of CF, instead of the sociological one. Wikipedia deserves better. Here is what WP:NPOV says : "The principles upon which [the NPOV] policies are based cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, or by editors' consensus." and "Keep in mind that in determining proper weight we consider a viewpoint's prevalence in reliable sources, not its prevalence among Wikipedia editors." This is what I'm arguing for. Pcarbonn (talk) 10:42, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

• I agree, that is a much better response. I can’t speak much to the details of your response nor the reliability of the sources you cite; that would take far more time reading the actual papers and searching for the scientific community’s reaction to those papers than I am prepared to invest. I simply don’t want to get dragged into a situation where I am playing your game of arguing what various parts of various CF papers mean. It is clear that many other Wikipedians, most of whom have infinitely more CF-writing experience than I, have tried to deal with you on that playing field and have found it to be an exceedingly frustrating experience. Yes? And from my brief dealings with you, it is clear that you have a propensity to raise points, have others soundly refute them, only to watch you declare the whole thing as beside-the-point anyway. Indeed; highly frustrating.

  I will add this: thirty extra watts averaged across the entire active area available for heat exchanging purposes isn’t my idea of “high-grade heat.” After decades, CF doesn’t seem to be any closer to becoming a practical energy source than from day-one.

  From what I have read, the general scientific community’s consensus is that there is a serious and troubling pattern with cold fusion research: some of it has been the product of extremely poor science where carefully-performed experiments by others are unable to reproduce results. This is always a warning flag. Whenever that occurs in science, others can usually figure out why they have been unable reproduce the problem (often, an error in the original research), and that’s the end of it. In the case of CF, the underlying reason for the observations isn’t understood and even highly respected researchers want—at least—to get to the bottom of it, but seem to be doing so on the assumption that it is unknown chemical reactions. I recently read in the popular press (not here or one of your referenced papers), that a researcher was claiming to have measured neutrons from CF. However, critics pointed out that his experiments entailed bombarding his apparatus with bursts of external neutrons and poor measurements made it appear that the flux of neutrons coming out of it was in excess of what he put into it. The poor quality of past experiments (and the fact that non-scientists are hip-deep in it too) is the primary reason researchers don’t even mention the term “cold fusion” in their papers!

  I know you really and truly believe there is promise here. But neither you nor I have the expertise necessary to vet the scientists who have published on this subject. Note that when I first saw a complaint against you, citing “conflict of interest,” I figured you to be some sort of CF scientist tooting your own horn. And I initially came to your defense, stating that we need to lean way over backwards and accommodate experts here on Wikipedia. I guess I was projecting my experience with regard to PEM fuel cells. I must have something like ten patents in PEM fuel cells since I worked in R&D at a fuel cell start-up. I was employee #2 there. Yet, I won’t even look at our fuel cell-related articles let alone touch them with a ten-foot pole. Why? Because I wouldn’t want imbeciles reverting me, nor experienced Wikipedians saying ‘where the hell did you get that information(?) – citation needed.’ After digging into all this some more, I quickly found that this is not the case with you; you are a CF enthusiast with no direct experience with CF design-of-experiment. You apparently don’t even have any experience merely helping to operate some other researcher’s CF experiment. So…

  The general consensus here in the Wikipedia community is that you lack the scientific experience necessary to vet the reliability of CF papers. Further, the consensus is that your enthusiasm is leading you to cherry-pick bits and pieces from papers and weave them into our Cold fusion article in a manner that is misleading. Further, your unbridled enthusiasm for CF makes reasoning with you from a logical and scientific point of view an exercise in futility. So…

  I stick to my advise to resolve this: I believe the Physics World Mar 1, 1999 article, Whatever happened to cold fusion? should be considered as the paradigm example of a reliable source with regard to cold fusion and should serve as the template for Wikipedia to use in setting the tone and summarizing the current state of affairs on the subject. Anyone with a consistent pattern of editing on our Cold fusion article that has the effect of ennobling cold fusion and giving the field greater credibility than would be supported by the Physics World article should be considered as editing against the consensus. And a refusal to conform with that consensus view should be considered as disruptive. Greg L (talk) 20:42, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

It's funny you do not want to contribute to the PEM article "Because I wouldn’t want imbeciles reverting me, nor experienced Wikipedians saying ‘where the hell did you get that information(?) – citation needed.’" I can tell first hand that this experience is frustrating, even when I provide good sources such as the 2004 DOE. But that frustration will not stop me. You seem to follow WP:Mainstream, and as I said elsewhere, I consider it ill-conceived and contrary to WP:NPOV. This is the core of the issue. Wikipedia is based on scholarly sources, not on news article. I'll continue to defend our core policies. Pcarbonn (talk) 08:51, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

• Yes, I follow Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a mainstream encyclopedia. I see no conflict between that and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view; you apparently do. But then one man’s “freedom fighter” is another man’s “terrorist”.

  Based on your above post, you seem to be of the belief that you, a Wikipedian with zero  first-hand experience in cold fusion, are some sort of cold-fusion expert. I applaud your professional and civil demeanor as you deal with the daily “frustrating” experiences of sharing Wikipedia with the many imbeciles weighing in on our Cold fusion article. You revert their work as they push their horrid agenda that “is so mainstream sciency that it is.” Why can’t they see the *truth* in your arguments? You must subscribe to the philosophy of “Never try to teach a pig to sing; it only wastes your time and annoys the pig.” Methinks your self esteem greatly exceeds your expertise.

  Similar battles are being fought between proponents and “mainstreamers” in other fringe-science fields, such as Homeopathy, which also suffers the same misfortune of Cold fusion and has a {neutrality} tag. Believers think the water is somehow imbued with special properties after being exposed to an active agent, even though, statistically, there is less than one molecule of the active agent in the bottle. Mainstream science embraces the principle that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence; such is lacking in cold fusion.

  And, yes, I have absolutely no doubt you will continue to edit as you always have—but you may well be banned if you persist at editing against the consensus.

  Finally, please don’t come to my talk page to tell me you’ve got a better response and are inviting me to rebut. Dealing with you reminds me of the shortcomings of Wikipedia, which is intrinsic to its wild collaborative writing environment. I prefer not to be reminded of you and this sordid conflict. Goodbye and good luck. Greg L (talk) 18:35, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I wish you the best too. Let's see what ArbComm has to say. Pcarbonn (talk) 20:13, 30 November 2008 (UTC)