Talk:Cold fusion

The Cold fusion article was the subject of formal mediation from the Mediation Committee in 2008. Please visit its talk page before making significant changes.

So now that we're finished with WP:GAN

...you can tell me what you really think :) Feel free to give yourselves a round of applause; I know something about the early years of this controversy, and at that time, it was completely impossible to get supporters and skeptics working together. You guys did a very good job during the mediation, and that carried through into the WP:GAN, although a lot of people didn't speak up, I expect out of exhaustion. Feel free to take a break. After a while, if people seem to be interested in putting more work into the article, we could look at regaining Featured article status. We also might look at separate articles for other takes on the controversy, such as the role of government, or what the 19-year history of this teaches us about science and scientists that we didn't want to know. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 04:23, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your help, Dank55. Your feedback on the article was very valuable. I wish we had found a serious critique of cold fusion. Apparently, there isn't. Except for general statement that "it is impossible". Pcarbonn (talk) 10:21, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, it was a pleasure. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 19:21, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

What I really think is that the article should not have the "Good Article" label because that implies it is one of the best 10 or so physics articles. If the label was "Very Important" or "Recently Evaluated" or something like that then I would vote yes. Maybe if the article had 4 months of stability I would be in favor, but PCarbonn wanted that stamp of approval quickly, so here we are.

Sorry, I have never asked for a quick stamp of approval. I still don't know why Dank55 gave the GA while acknowledging that there were still outstanding issues. ~~

I worry that the article has too many partisans and will not remain stable. I just don't trust the people who have been working on this article to be reasonable and civil, and that includes PCarbonn. He does a lot of good for the article, but his frequent POV-pushing more than cancels it out.

Please no personal, unjustified attacks. I'm ready to amend myself if and when I receive positive suggestions. Thanks. Pcarbonn (talk) 11:15, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Apart from the GA status issue, I am glad that Dan has been working on the article because I think it has improved a lot since he started. I, for one, will keep checking on the article; I don't plan to be "moving beyond the controversy" anytime soon. 209.253.120.198 (talk) 00:08, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Echoing the other comments here, thanks for the great effort Dan! seicer | talk | contribs 03:18, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the Lead

"Since 2007, literature reviews have concluded that cold fusion has been demonstrated by experiments that result in excess heat production and nuclear reaction products such as helium-4. The reviews state that although many explanations have been proposed, several of which do not use new physics, none is yet satisfactory. There have been two peer-reviewed literature reviews since 2004 in support of cold fusion"

One of these reviews is mine, (CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 94, NO. 7, 10 APRIL 2008.) And I do *not* say that "cold fusion" has been demonstrated. Rather, I have written that evidence for anomalous nuclear energy and phenomena have been demonstrated, but not "cold fusion," whatever that is.

StevenBKrivit (talk) 20:55, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

I wonder if you could summarize the differences between your review and the 2004 DOE report. For example, it seems like your review (a) finds reports of excess heat more compelling than the DOE reviewers, and (b) relies on reports of transmutation published after the DOE report. Since the DOE report seems to be the most recent "negative" review, I'm trying to understand whether subsequent reviews have primarily disagreed with it or have relied on new evidence. Gnixon (talk) 21:25, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Hello Gnixon. You ask good questions. I'm happy to point you to data where I am aware it exists, or to published or self-published works of my own. But I'm hesitant to respond directly to your request on the grounds of OR. There are two things, perhaps, that I can point out that may be helpful.

If you look at my citations in Current Science, you'll see that these are from people working in the field, with experience in the subject matter. The DOE reviewers -to my knowledge- had no or little experience in the field.

Generally, the excess heat phenomena (if you accept it) is so profound that early acceptance occurred only by researchers who saw it with their own eyes. Why did they succeed where others failed? Please see pages 61 through 68 in my Princeton University presentation for answers. (http://newenergytimes.com/Library/2006KrivitS-PrincetonTheColdFusionStoryW.pdf)

As far as "reports of transmutation published after the 2004 DOE report," this is not entirely correct. See my references in Current Science as follows: 14(1998), 21(2002) 22(presented 2003, pub 2006), 23(presented 2003, pub 2006),25 22(presented 2003, pub 2006.

StevenBKrivit (talk) 01:52, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I don't think WP:OR prohibits you from answering my questions directly. I realize that the 2004 DOE panel wasn't composed of "cold fusion" researchers. Your slides (where at Princeton were they presented, btw?) don't seem to address the '04 DOE report, so I'm still confused about whether the important point is disagreement with that report or new research. Could you comment on that directly? Gnixon (talk) 12:11, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I suspect it's mostly "disagreement with the 2004 DOE report". In general, CF researchers disagree with the conclusion of 2004 DOE. See comments here. They continued research, and additional evidence has accumulated, such as those based on CR-39. Pcarbonn (talk) 12:39, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Pierre, that was a helpful link, it led me to http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/LENRCANRthedoelies.pdf, which says on page 1, "Evidence for the reality of LENR and Cold fusion has been accumulating for 16 years, but it has had practically no effect on the attitude of conventional science or U.S. government agencies." Can anyone point me to a similar quote in a book published by a large publishing house or any peer-reviewed journal? (Steve sent me some stuff in his book, but I couldn't find a suitable quote.)

Rothwell also points out that it's obvious that the DOE has contradicted the slightly optimist tone of their 2004 conclusion by failing to fund any related requests since then. That's the point I've been trying to make: this article still dances around the point a bit, the point being that while most scientists avoid saying anything at all about cold fusion, and the DOE was equivocal, it's not hard to figure out from their reluctance to get involved in any way what their actual opinion is. When I say this, I am in no way being "hostile" towards cold fusion; I personally wish the supporters all the luck and financial support they can get. But I'm not saying anything different from Jed Rothwell when I say that the support doesn't seem to be materializing yet, and as long as this article makes that clear, that deals with my concern. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 14:40, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't think this is accurate anymore, since DARPA has reportedly funded some projects. Pcarbonn (talk) 14:52, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

That proves my point rather than undercutting it, Pierre. Steve and I have looked for evidence that either DARPA or the scientists they are funding or have been funding are willing to admit it in a reliable source; we're hopeful that we'll have something later this year, but we can't find anything yet. If DARPA isn't even willing to admit it when they do fund someone, then that supports the idea that this is still a subject most scientists aren't even willing to discuss. It's obvious, and it would help the article to state it, we just need to find the statement in something Wikipedia considers a reliable source. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 15:23, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

That would be correct if Darpa was not a defense organisation. It can be secretive for many different reasons, not just because possibly "this is still a subject most scientists aren't even willing to discuss". So, no, it does not support it. Pcarbonn (talk) 15:36, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

In any case, our article already says: "As of 2007, the scientific community did not acknowledge this field as a genuine scientific research theme", and "Most scientists have met these reports with skepticism.". It would be fine with me to add other sources to the same effect. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:06, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

(There's no need to revert when someone de-indents, Pierre; not everyone likes to indent 9 times.) I support your logic; and I am just as disappointed as you are that various US government departments aren't willing to admit funding. But what might or might not be in their heads isn't relevant to UNDUE; we can only report on what they are or aren't saying in reliable sources, not why. Are there any government agencies, anywhere, that are currently supporting work in cold fusion, on the record? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 16:16, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Wait, strike that; I'm thinking we need to go in a new direction, I'll create a new section. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 16:31, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Would someone change "the modern report" in the lead? It's not good English. I'd rather not risk generating friction at the moment. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 22:50, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

"In 1989, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons reported producing cold fusion at the University of Utah."

No they didn't. The press release stated "N-Fusion." Pons' oral statement was "sustained nuclear fusion reaction."

See section 4 http://newenergytimes.com/Reports/Start.htm

StevenBKrivit (talk) 04:29, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Links to other cold fusion techniques

I see he's a German user; I'll talk with him about how de.WP handles these issues, perhaps I can learn something. I don't think we can have an extra paragraph in the lead discussing 4 or 5 different ideas about tabletop fusion because: 1. That's more paragraphs than usual in a lead section; see WP:LEAD. 2. Adding new links in the lead is an open invitation to what are called "POV-forks"; that is, it's common in contentious articles for people who don't like the result to add a link in the lead section to a brand-new page where they say the things that people didn't want them to say in the contentious article. That won't necessarily happen, and I don't know Edoe2 and of course I AGF, it's just a very bad strategy in contentious articles to have links to miscellaneous "other topics" in the lead. 3. We got consensus to remove the extra section that used to deal with some of these other topics. This article is just about cold fusion, and we're having a hard enough time with just that, without bringing in other topics that don't really enlighten the discussion (such as muon-catalyzed fusion) or might be contentious in their own right.

As always, feel free to revert me if anyone disagrees, but give your reasons here, please. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:29, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't see your point in stressing that postings were done by users from non-native-english authors. Correct the language if you feel necessary but don't mix it with the real arguments.

The articles I linked here about small-scale fusion - Muon-catalyzed fusion, Fusor and Pyroelectric fusion - are neither "brand new pages" nor do they point to "other topics".

The discussion about Fleischmann-Pons might be fascinating to some readers, but neither did F-P define the term "cold fusion" nor does the term imply only their specific approach - nor does it imply "energy production". Rather, the natural meaning of "cold fusion" does include any technique that produces fusion reactions without handling large scale temperatures.

If you want to reduce the "cold fusion" article to the F-P experiment and discussion then you should coin another term for "non-plasma-fusion" - or wait for the scientific community to do so. Until then, I propose to leave the links here, be it in the introduction or, if the "paragraph count" is a real problem, elsewhere in the article. --Edoe2 (talk) 13:25, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I just looked at the first 10 hits for "cold fusion" at scholar.google.com, and 4 of them involved experiments producing heavy elements (atomic numbers 104 and greater)...but all four of these were by researchers at German institutions. So it does appear that "cold fusion" is an English phrase sometimes used by Germans to refer to other experiments. All of the other hits concerned the topic of this article.

However, on the English Wikipedia, when someone says "you don't know what the phrase means", the standard reply (not just for this article) is NOTLEX: that is, there are a lot of people who are paid to put dictionaries and encyclopedias together and they generally do an outstanding job, so we have to take their word for it. Websters and AMHER are the two most frequently cited dictionaries by American journalists, but Websters lets us down on this one; they don't have it. AMHER says: "A hypothetical form of nuclear fusion occurring without the use of extreme temperature or pressure." That doesn't include muon-catalyzed fusion or the recent experiment cited in this article that actually did produce tiny amounts of fusion with a tabletop device by particle acceleration, because no one considers either of these reactions "hypothetical". Also, you can see in the references that Steve Jones (muon-catalyzed fusion) and the guy who created the tabletop acceleration device (Seth Putterman) are not at all interested in using the term "cold fusion" to apply to their experiments.

It's true that F-P did not coin the term "cold fusion", but it was coined to apply to their experiments and the attempts to replicate them, and that's still how it's commonly used among native English speakers. Note that there's a link to nuclear fusion in the first paragraph, and that would probably be the right article to fork to discussions of fusion reactions which are not part of the "cold fusion" controversy. I would be happy to add a more prominent link, and I don't have any preference how we do it; it could be in a See also section at the end, or the hatnote (the note right under the title) could link to a disambiguation page that directs people to nuclear fusion. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 14:10, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

New proposal

Krivit and Pcarbonn and many other well-read people say that people who are not cold fusion proponents have been incredibly reluctant to get involved since 2004, to say anything one way or the other. You would think that, with all the supporters and skeptics over the years who have been angry (respectively, happy) that cold fusion has received so little support from government agencies and schools and scientific institutions, that someone would have been willing to say this in a reliable source since 2004, and back it up by showing that they had done a little investigation. To my surprise, I'm finding that Krivit and Pcarbonn are right: I'm finding absolutely nothing.

Here's the problem: UNDUE won't let us make the statement "Most scientists have met these reports with skepticism", which we all know to be true, and then follow that up with a long article that only gives sources that support exactly the opposite conclusion. We can "rebut, but not undercut". That is, we can't give the impression that we think that lots of scientists think X, but we think they're all idiots, because all the sources say Y. That's a real-world problem; that's not Wikipedia's problem. UNDUE gives us permission to split the article into a "pro" and a "con", which I'm thinking is the only thing left, and it wouldn't be much of a split: virtually the entire article is very useful for the "pro" position. I am personally disappointed in all the physicists who are willing to give negative opinions who aren't even willing to enter a lab with a running experiment and use films to measure for themselves whether energetic particles are being produced or not. How tough could it be to get the last image on the article page for themselves? But that's what we're stuck with; no one is willing to say yes or no, except for the supporters.

I propose that we dump this whole sorry problem of coming up with support for the "con" side on the physicists. Let's explain the problem to Wikipedia people who deal with mediation...maybe Seicer will help out again...and say that we are really having a problem with getting sources for one side of the issue, so we'd like to shift that argument over to nuclear physics or a link from that page. Let the physicists who want to support that side of things find their own sources; they'd be better at finding them, and at interpreting them. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:08, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

By "con" side, I mean the side that believes that all of the scientists who are reporting positive results either are lying or aren't competent in the proper disciplines or are using outdated equipment that can't support their conclusions or are just making honest mistakes. Skeptics have made all of these claims, many times. You can see how this is really a very bad fit with the AGF culture at Wikipedia. Even if we don't say these things explicitly, the implication in this article is clear. Now that I'm realizing just how little support there is in reliable sources since 2004 for any or all of these skeptical attitudes, I'm getting uncomfortable with leaving the implications hanging in the air. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:22, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Dan, please explain more about what you are proposing. Are you saying that this article, that you labeled as a "good article" a few weeks ago, needs a major change in its approach? One way to improve the balance of the article would be to include these 2006 Discover articles which provide a clear evidence from a reliable source that the field is still not respected by most scientists. [1] [2] Wouldn't that address your concerns? 209.253.120.198 (talk) 20:39, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

The only relevant thing I could find in the first source was "The UCLA team was determined to avoid a repeat of the 1989 'cold fusion' fiasco that promised unlimited energy but delivered little besides unrepeatable results." This is what WP:V refers to as "I heard it somewhere": an author is writing about what he believes was in the minds of UCLA researchers who are frightened about what happened 16 years earlier; it has no reliable information on what's currently happening in the field. I'll repeat the entire second source you're giving, I don't see how it helps, but maybe there's more that I don't know about:

In 1989 Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann made front-page news when they announced that they had fused the nuclei of atoms in a jar of water—a process that normally requires the heat of an H-bomb. In theory, room-temperature, or "cold," fusion could provide cheap, nearly limitless energy. No replication of the experiment could pass muster with critics, and most researchers dismissed the work as bogus.

Still, a few physicists keep the field alive and kicking. "There's something in the neighborhood of 20 basic experiments out there these days that are of interest," says MIT physicist Peter Hagelstein. In 2004 he and a group of fellow die-hard researchers tried to persuade the Department of Energy to reevaluate fusion research. A review panel found the evidence thin but saw some justification for further focused investigation.

The scientists who continue to work in the field claim that their experiments show minute, unexplained outputs of energy. Within the year, Hagelstein says, he plans to begin conducting cold fusion research at MIT, an institution that once held a ceremonial wake in cold fusion's honor. He aims to show that novel physical processes can trigger fusion without a significant input of heat. Hagelstein insists that those beyond the inner circle don't know the whole story. "People working in the field believe cold fusion is real and that the issue is settled," he says.

- Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 21:46, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't see how verifiability is an issue at all with those articles. They are articles published in a respected, major magazine (circulation>800000 according to Business Week). The only place on the verifiability page the quote "heard it somewhere" is mentioned is in a quote by Jimmy Wales where he is describing unsourced statements in articles. In contrast, these articles serve as verifiable sources which support the statement ("Most scientists have met these results with skepticism.") which is in the "Recent Developments" section. We should simply add them right there as additional evidence. Look at my recent edit of the article and let me know what you think.

I understand that Dan and Pierre are concerned that giving weight to these two articles may be unwise since researchers and journalists may not be aware of developments in the field, especially developments since 2004. However, we should give the benefit of the doubt to established magazines like Discover and assume that their editors are reasonably aware of such things, and not dismiss them because they don't give evidence (quotes) for the reason for the low status of the cold fusion field. In other words, I disagree with the statement "it has no reliable information about what's currently happening in the field." Discover magazine has the reporter labor available to keep up to date; if they didn't comment on post-1989 cold fusion experiments, it seems most likely that they were simply not impressed. If we can include multiple links to New Energy Times, I certainly think including these links is fair. 209.253.120.198 (talk) 03:24, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

The article wasn't about cold fusion, and it sounds like the writer isn't saying that the statement is true, but that Putterman believed it to be true, that that was Putterman's motivation, or am I reading it wrong? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 04:15, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

To answer your question about passing the GA review: that's exactly what I'm saying, and I'm not happy about it either, which is why I've been giving Pierre a hard time. I wish these issues had come up during the weeks that I spent on the review, but they didn't. The lead wasn't changed to take a more pro-CF position until the day after I moved on to the next article to review. I can't just say to the proponents, "You can't say that", since what they're saying is true; the only power I have, any of us have, is to insist on balance, that if more is said on one side, that we make it clear what the other side is saying in response. Only...the other side isn't saying anything (that I can find), which boggles my mind, and gives us an impossible job here. Even Robert Park, one of the most vocal skeptics since the beginning, has been hinting at nuclear processes now. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 22:15, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I would say rather that "cons" have not offered plausible alternative explanations for the observed phenomena, and have certainly failed to demonstrate any of their hypothesis via experiment, or even do any experiments to test them.

For example, contamination has been proposed as an explanation for the transmutation-like phenomena, but since 1) rare earth elements (lanthanides) showed up, and 2) unnatural isotopic ratios showed up, this explanation is not plausible - not to mention the fact that 3) the composition of the material was measured prior to the experiment! So after proposing an explanation that, given the circumstances(1 & 2), is highly improbable, and has already been scientifically ruled-out(3), those who proposed the explanation didn't perform any experiments to discover if contamination really was the source. (An experiment that they could have done: they could have split the source palladium into 5 samples, crushing one and doing a spectral analysis on it to determine it's original composition, then with the remaining 4 samples, doing the experiment with hydrogen-1(p), hydrogen-2(np), helium-3(npp), and helium-4(nnpp).) If contamination really was the source, they'd be able to scientifically prove it - but they haven't even tried to.

The end result is that we don't have any sources to cite to support their position - because they haven't produced any. Now I can understand the "burden of proof" argument -- it lies on the side making the extraordinary claim -- but when your hypothesis has already been scientifically ruled out, that makes your claim extraordinary. And I can understand them not wanting to take the time and effort on something that they didn't think fruitful, but it doesn't make for strong arguments on their part, and consequently leaves us with an unbalanced debate. Which is what brings us to this discussion.

Having said that, a "balanced" presentation, to me, is, to put it in confusing mathematical terms, one that minimizes the Kullback–Leibler divergence ("Q" being the article and "P" being reality). That is, one that "tells it like it is". I think the main area of difficulty for this article re:balance is that the weight of the popular viewpoint and the weight of the available scientific material are sorely out-of-sync with each other, yet we must present both aspects to the reader - who expects them to be strongly correlated - without confusing them. Kevin Baas^talk 15:31, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Dan says: "Here's the problem: UNDUE won't let us make the statement 'Most scientists have met these reports with skepticism', which we all know to be true, and then follow that up with a long article that only gives sources that support exactly the opposite conclusion."

UNDUE refers to the weight given by reliable sources. DOE is a reliable source, and provided an ambivalent view, as we all know. The article represents that ambivalent view with due weight. "Most scientist" is not a reliable source, because they simply do not publish. Hence, the article does not need to give due weight to their opinion. If we accept that, the riddle is solved. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:07, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

With respect to 2004 to the present, I agree with both of you. I like Kevin's last sentence. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 03:36, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

What about creating a sample page in userspace to flesh it out and see how it would stand? And what would the proposed title be? seicer | talk | contribs 02:08, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

The first step is to make a few more posts like the ones I made at WT:Chemistry and WT:PHYSICS. (I'll get to this in a week, but I'm hoping someone else will beat me to it.) If physicists and chemists are interested, then the logical place for the "con" position would be in sections of pre-existing pages, such as Nuclear_fusion#Production_methods, Calorimetry and/or Electrochemistry. (Nuclear fusion is already a long page, so if material is added to the Production methods subsection, it should probably be spun off into a separate page.) These arguments could then have a more positive and educational spin. This is a common technique in science journalism and science education: you bring up recent, or contentious, or even (at first glance) goofy topics as a way of generating and sustaining interest. You could talk about why there was so much confusion over the calorimetry for cold fusion experiments as a lead-in to methods of calorimetry or to energy storage and balance in electrochemical cathodes. You could explain why most physicists lost interest in cold fusion in the early 90s, as a lead-in to a discussion of when the instincts of physicists have tended to be right and wrong. There are plenty of areas where the predictions of physicists have turned out to be spookily accurate, but also many areas where they seem to be really bad at seeing the future. For instance, even with huge amounts of interest and money, they have often stumbled at predicting the behavior of electrons in crystals and macromolecules (hafnium alloys, carbon nanotubes, graphene), and who knows, maybe there are things about the behavior of electrons in paladium crystals they still don't get.

If we don't have and can't recruit content experts for these subjects, then I would still suggest splitting the article, and perhaps the "con" position could be called Critique of cold fusion. Now that there are regular sessions on cold fusion at the APS and ACS meetings, and plastic CR-39 plates showing tracks of energetic particles produced in labs funded by the Navy and DARPA are being passed around, the "con" position necessarily includes a government-funded bad behavior. One point that hasn't been made yet, that I recall, is that you've got major WP:BLP issues when you imply that researchers are charlatans and conspirators. That's another reason I think you want to break this article into two pieces rather than hopping back and forth; the "pro" page should focus on what people have reported and what the evidence is. The "con" page should not trash people; it should focus on what the science says, on the history of similar experiments, and on providing context. The "con" page could, if desired, discuss science policy and process in the Bush administration; this would not be the first time that DOE scientists got something wrong, you know. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 14:27, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

To be honest, I don't understand what the problem is, and where you are trying to get. No amount of wikipedia expert editors will solve the problem of lack of sources for the skeptics camp. To solve this, one would need to encourage skeptics to write articles in peer-reviewed journals, not in wikipedia (as examplified by the next discussion).

You say: "If we don't have and can't recruit content experts for these subjects, then I would still suggest splitting the article". If you don't have content for the skeptical side in the main page, how would you find content for a separate page ? Also, let's avoid a Wikipedia:Fork. Pcarbonn (talk) 19:28, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I personally think the 2004 DOE report is an adequate representation of the (degree of) skepticism of the community. However, I think we need more discussion about how to summarize that report. (For example, focusing on the "research proposals should continue to be evaluated based on their merits" as a positive response to the research is misleading.) Could we agree that the '04 DOE report is a good representation of the "mainstream" response? Gnixon (talk) 03:16, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Along with the '89 DOE report and a few papers published in '89 and '90, yes. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 04:17, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Gnixon, you say "focusing on the 'research proposals should continue to be evaluated based on their merits' as a positive response to the research is misleading". How could we be misleading, since we are quoting verbatim the conclusion of the 2004 report ? Pcarbonn (talk) 07:56, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Because it is not a quote from the conclusion of the 2004 report. It's a sentence taken from the body of the report that you have cherry picked, as has been pointed out to you several previous occasions. Was something about these previous discussions unclear? The conclusion section of the 2004 report is clearly labeled, and it is an objective fact that it does not contain that quotation. Why do you persist in mischaracterizing this?--Noren (talk) 14:16, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Hello Noren. I'm glad you are back. Are you refering to "research proposals should continue to be evaluated based on their merits" ? Indeed, it's not a quote from the 2004 DOE Report. It is nowhere in the article either. The article does quote the 2004 DOE report verbatim. Some sentence come from the DOE conclusion, others from the body of the report, because they convey the same message more clearly. That's not cherry picking. Nothing prevents us from doing it, does it ? Pcarbonn (talk) 14:25, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, where were you during the mediation?

If you really think it's unbalanced, i would rather expect you to insist that we include an equal amount of material from the other two charges, as well.

In academia and the like, "conclusions" of reports are usually anything but conclusive. Usually "conclusions" say something like "In conclusion, we just reviewed what we told you we were going to review in the intro." And the 2004 DOE report is certainly no exception. Which is why I remain bewildered at your insistence to quote what is arguably the least informative section of the report, to the exclusion of anything meaningful the reviewers had to say about the three aspects they were assigned to review. And you do this, ostensibly, on account of the section's name alone, which is clearly a misnomer. Kevin Baas^talk 19:18, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Kevin Baas, Comment on content, not on the contributor. My whereabouts at any particular time are not an appropriate topic for this page.

The fact that the conclusion doesn't give the message that you want it to does not mean the conclusion is faulty. --Noren (talk) 01:43, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

I was trying to be nice - to make you feel missed; to make you feel that your input is appreciated. And in response you accuse me of attacking your character. Well that's the last time I'll ever try to pay you a complement.

Re: "The fact that the conclusion doesn't give the message that you want." Who ever said that the section titled "conclusion" didn't give the message that I wanted? Now you're just putting words in my mouth. (...again. At least this time they're not personal attacks.) I do not appreciate being made a straw-man out of. Kevin Baas^talk 15:35, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, in the past my opinion has been discounted based on the observation that I was insufficiently active during that mediation, though in fairness you weren't the person who did so. I do not discern any hint of warmth or welcoming in your statement "Yes, where were you during the mediation?" or in the rest of your comment- if that was your intent, you might want to consider phrasing such things differently in the future. Your claim that I was attacking your character is false.

I'm bewildered by your bewilderment, as I don't understand where you're coming up with the idea that I want the entire conclusion included. I never said anything of the sort. What I did do was point out that Pcarbonn had made the false claim that it had already been done, in spite of a previous dispute he had been involved in when passages were incorrectly referred to as part of the conclusion. You spent a paragraph discounting the report's conclusion, which was what led me to the impression that it did not give the message that you wanted it to give, as I stated.--Noren (talk) 03:05, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

"Your claim that I was attacking your character is false." - Your claim that I claimed that you were attacking my character is false. Yet another straw man. You should really read more carefully. I claimed that you accused me of attacking you - and my evidence is your link to WP:NPA (" Comment on content, not on the contributor.").

Now if a person writes "Hello Noren. I'm glad you are back. ...", and the next person writes "Yes, ..." most people would interpret that as to mean that that person is also glad to have you back. I really don't know how I could have been much more clear - there are practical limits. And this is by no means the only time there's been a communication problem. It seems to happen a lot. (For instance, just above you seem to have gotten the idea that I claimed you were attacking my character, when I did no such thing.) So I'd appreciate it if you met me half-way by trying to read what I write more carefully.

I never said you said anything of the sort. Pcarbonn never made such a claim. Passages were never incorrectly referred to as belonging to the section titled "conclusion". I never wrote anything discounting the report's conclusions -- I never disputed anything written in the report (save the appropriateness of the title of a section - in general academia) -- you're confusing the report's conclusions with a section in the report (misleadingly) titled "conclusions", but I've already explained this in the paragraph that you're referring to - this was in fact the entire point of that paragraph. Perhaps if you had read it more carefully and with more good faith you would have understood the point I was making. Perhaps if you had understood, you would not have had to make one up that's convenient for your perspective (and assumes bad faith). And might I add that that's where the "impression" came from. Not from me or anything that I wrote - but from your failure to understand the point that I was making, and your subsequent filling of that gap by pulling-something-out-of-the-blue that is consistent with your assumptions. Kevin Baas^talk 15:30, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

And now we have veered far onto the course of talking about talking about content and making accusations about each other and other people (and I apologize if my remarks have been a little ascerbic) - and though I hope it has helped us, at least, to more accurately interpret each other in the future, I fear it is diverging too far away from the matter to which it always must return -- and that is, ofcourse, the content of the article. Gnixon has made a suggestion below which I believe will help make the article more "balanced". Kevin Baas^talk 16:01, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Pcarbonn, I am referring to your claim that "How could we be misleading, since we are quoting verbatim the conclusion of the 2004 report ?" Please indicate where the article does so or retract your false claim. --Noren (talk) 01:43, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Easy. The lead quotes verbatim the report conclusion: "the field would benefit from the peer-review processes...", and "The 2004 panel identified basic research areas..." Section 1.6 of our article is verbatim the conclusion of charge element 3 of the report (It would be ok to add here "reached the same conclusion of the 1989 report", although this statement is very vague). Our section 3.1 and 3.3 quote verbatim the conclusion from charge element 1 of the report. The references are given at the end of the paragraphs in our article (instead of being repeated at the end of each sentence). Pcarbonn (talk) 06:53, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

(undent) I apologize if I confused the issue by making up that quote from memory. I thought it was a good enough paraphrase to get the point across without inaccuracy, but maybe not. Mea culpa. My point was that "no focused program" best represents the attitude of the reviewers, whereas "funding agencies should entertain well-designed proposals" is simply another way of saying that CF research shouldn't get any special attention (because that statement simply restates the SOP for funding). I suppose the latter statement could be interpreted as a caution not to blackball good new research simply because of an association with CF. Anyway, I think the statement is liable to be misinterpreted to imply approval of CF research if it's included here out of context. Gnixon (talk) 15:56, 13 June 2008 (UTC) To be clear,

Please be more specific and say where we are including statements out of context. The section on the 2004 DOE report fully includes one of the 2 paragraphs of charge element 3, which is concerned with the question of continued effort. If quoting verbatim one half of DOE's assessment is "cherry picking", I don't have an issue with quoting the other half (it says basically the same thing). The lead section also presents the same balanced view, and is the validated result of many discussion and the mediation. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:14, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Sure, sorry if I was a little vague. The lead seems okay, I think. I'm not happy with the 2004 DOE section. If we want to quote the report, we need to be clear that we're quoting it. One reason it's important here is that the style of the report is not appropriate to the style of this article. My interpretation of that paragraph is that "...individual proposals..." is a polite preamble to "...no focused program." The takeaway is "no focused program," which is all I think we need to include here. On the other hand, quoting the entire paragraph may be useful for indicating the tone of the report. Gnixon (talk) 16:01, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

If your take-away is "...no focused program", someone else's take away might be "reviewers were unanimous that more research and peer-reviews should be encouraged." So, it is best to include the full section and avoid introducing POV. I'm fine with making it clear that we are quoting the report. Pcarbonn (talk) 16:50, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

See, that's my issue. It's very clear that reviewers did not recommend a focused program. However, I think it's a misrepresentation to say they "encouraged" more research. One could just as well read those statements to say that agencies should not fund poorly-designed proposals that do not meet accepted scientific standards and do not undergo the rigors of peer research. That reading would be consistent with the following paragraph, which emphasizes using modern techniques in any further research, and says "experiments similar in nature to those that have been carried out for the past fifteen years are unlikely to advance knowledge." In any case, I think the quote from the report that is most relevant to this article can be found shortly before what we've been discussing: "The preponderance of the reviewers’ evaluations indicated that ... the occurrence of low energy nuclear reactions is not conclusively demonstrated by the evidence presented." (There has been no demonstration of LENR.) Gnixon (talk) 17:26, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

OK. I'm fine with adding the "preponderence" sentence to the article. Pcarbonn (talk) 19:46, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Me too. That's a good sentence -- very precise and informative. Kevin Baas^talk 15:51, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Please hang around and help us develop the "con" position, Noren, and thanks for the links. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 15:10, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Scientific discussion: energetic particles

The point is, the physical community is giving the cold fusion enthusiasts the benefit of doubt that some unknown physics might be happening, enabling fusion to happen. But why the hell is there no trace of the products of said fusion?

The 23.8MeV net energy potential of a D + D -> He reaction is very real and it needs to be somehow brought out of the nucleus. This is more energy than actually available in binding energy within the entire nucleus of Helium!

These are staggering amounts of energy excess energy within a nucleus that need to be shed off in some way:
The He nucleus instantly pops apart into He3+n or T+p (each 50% of happening) or in extremely rare cases very hard 23.8MeV gamma radiation (chance at 10^-7 to 10^-8) is released, killing everybody in the lab

Neutrons, Tritium as well as gammas can be measured blindingly easy to insane accuracy. Why isn't this being done? This is the reason why the physics community isn't taking the above "cold fusion" experiments serious. Actually, they are more like ROFL. No matter how the issue is turned and looked at, 23.8MeV of excess nuclear energy cannot be shed off in ways that are undetectable.

Edit:
The tracks of energetic particles within plastic CR-39 plates are without doubt due to micro cracks within the palladium electrodes causing localized extreme EM-fields and hence extremely high localized micro currents. These currents are sufficiently high to cause micro areas within the palladium to be turned into plasma. This is also the origin of the fabled "hot spots". --Dio1982 (talk) 15:54, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Dio, I don't mean to comment on whether or not your points are valid, but we're trying very hard to keep this discussion restricted to how we should represent the various published responses to cold fusion from the physics community. It's beyond the scope of our task to try and judge the research ourselves. Gnixon (talk) 03:10, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

This is not some kind of new argument. This is part of the standard "where are the neutrons/tritium?" argument. There is no D + D -> He reaction. My above explanation is why this is so, which is usually lost to the cold fusion enthusiasts.--141.31.183.68 (talk) 06:14, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Your theory about crack formation in CR-39 is original research. You may want to publish it on wikiversity, which accepts original research. See here. Pcarbonn (talk) 09:29, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I hope it's okay, I relabeled this section "scientific discussion". Some people will object to discussions about the merits, but for me, it's a hard sell to say that you can't talk about the content of the page on the talk page; that's what the talk page is supposed to be for. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 13:06, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

[[Wikipedia:Talk] says that "The purpose of a Wikipedia talk page is to provide space for editors to discuss changes to its associated article or project page. Article talk pages should not be used by editors as platforms for their personal views." Let's focus our discussion on the article, not on cold fusion per se.Pcarbonn (talk) 14:29, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

We're both right. Discussions should be about the content of the page, about whether the content comes from reliable sources, and about whether content from other reliable sources would be an improvement on what we've got. What I'm saying is that some people's eyes will glaze over as soon as we get technical, and we can't reject a discussion just because it bores some people. We can, however, label the section as a "scientific discussion" so that people who will get bored by it don't have to read it.

So: 141.31.183.68, how about it? I asked on your talk page with no response. Would you like to cite a source? Would you like to help us build a stronger "con" position, either on this page or, as I'm proposing, a different page? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 14:56, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Re: "The tracks of energetic particles within plastic CR-39 plates are without doubt due to micro cracks within the palladium electrodes causing localized extreme EM-fields and hence extremely high localized micro currents. These currents are sufficiently high to cause micro areas within the palladium to be turned into plasma. This is also the origin of the fabled "hot spots"." --Firstly, this isn't "without doubt", this is an untested hypothesis that you proposed. You thought, "hmm... maybe this could happen." and then instantaneously jumped to "that must be what is happening!" To me, that kind of illogical thought process stinks of pathological disbelief. Now if anyone were to actually do an experiment to test that hypothesis, there'd be many things that they'd have to explain. For instance, why doesn't this happen when you use hydrogen instead of deutrium? (or other solutions for that matter) Given that consideration alone, your hypothesis is extremely implausible. Perhaps that's why we haven't seen any citable sources make it (and thus we can't put it in the article.) Kevin Baas^talk 16:57, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Dio1982: You write "why the hell is there no trace of the products of said fusion?" I think your question deserves more attention than is given here, or is suitable to give here. It's obvious that you are very familiar with the three branches of dd thermonuclear fusion. I have begun to ask the same question recently, and it is a difficult question to answer, and for someone in my position, also a difficult one to ask. I refer you to my Bangalaore, India talk from January this year, and also to my forthcoming talk at ACS on 20 August at ~8a.m. In addition, I welcome your letter to the editor at New Energy Times for our September issue.

StevenBKrivit (talk) 06:46, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

I might add that there seems to be a lot of helium-4 showing up in many experiments, both released as gas and trapped in the cathode. This is quite unusual as the probability of this reaction pathway is extremely low. Traces of other products have been found here - so you argument is flawed by two false premises: 1. there are no traces of tritium - this is not true. 2. tritium is the only possible product of a dd reaction - this is not true. That aside, it is an interesting subject because you are, ofcourse, correct in the more general sense that we are not seeing the kind (and resp. quantity) of products one would expect form a conventional thermo-nuclear fusion process. And in this respect I agree w/Steven -- that this oddity (esp/in light of the unexplained heat) deserves more attention than can be given here. Kevin Baas^talk 15:47, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

I've got some real-life stuff going on and I have to tune out for a while. I'll unwatchlist (is that a word?), but feel free to contact me if I'm needed. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:26, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

- Dio says: "Neutrons, Tritium as well as gammas can be measured blindingly easy to insane accuracy. Why isn't this being done?" In fact this has been done many times. If the measured quantities was not consistent with the excess heat, they were still above any level that conventional theory would allow. Jones was the first one to detect neutron in 1989, and it was the basis for the rivalry with F&P. He confirmed his findings in 2003, and they have never been challenged, as far as I know. They are also over 60 reports of tritium, listed in Storms 2007. Storms also cites several anomalous gamma ray production.

Why aren't these measurements done more often ? Because of a lack of funding. Why is there a lack of funding ? I let you answer. Pcarbonn (talk) 20:13, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

This discussion is verging too far away from talk-page principles. We need to get back to discussing the article now. PCarbonn, if there is material from Storms that you can briefly summarise and add then please do so. Itsmejudith (talk) 20:30, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

What two peer-reviewed literature reviews?

I would ask that in an article this controversial, could the statements in the introduction please be sourced with footnotes to the citations? I see that DOE 2004 is the only thing cited there. I think I can gather from reading this talk page, but what are the two literature reviews mentioned in the last paragraph of the intro? 75.61.107.67 (talk) 23:58, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

As I mentioned above, it used to be that there was usually pressure at WP:FAC to take citations out of the lead except for quotations, but looking at the last few WP:FACs, citations in the lead seem to be fine now. I think on balance pulling in the citations would help, for the reason that 75.61 gives. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 03:39, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Some fixes

Hi everybody!

I came back to cold fusion to see how it went. It looks like the article is much improved. There were a few problems that I saw and fixed:

1. References to how many reports/experiments/groups etc. made claims are irrelevant to the encyclopedia and bog the reader down in needless details. Also they can be construed as soapboxing. I reworded those statements or sometimes removed them as all they served to do was to make a Project Steve point (meaningless).
2. Some of the wording was a bit over-the-top with respect to the reports of transmutation, excess heat, and fusion products. I tried to reword these statements to be as neutral as possible.
3. Sometimes the experimental results were reported in excessive detail for reasons that I can only surmise. It looked like soapboxing to me, but in any case I think my version is more concise and readable.
4. Sometimes the experimental results were worded as if the results had actually occurred. Of course, with a controversial topic like this, we cannot do that. I tried to attribute where possible.
5. There was some repetition in prose. Oftentimes those statements were throwaway or soapboxing anyway. I either got rid of both offending instances or changed one and deleted the other.
6. I added some categories. One that some people may object to is "pathological science". Note that just because we categorize a subject with a certain category does not mean that Wikipedia endorses that category. It's just that we have reliable sources which have called cold fusion a "pathological science" and so it is appropriate to put it under that category.

Here's the diff:

[3]

ScienceApologist (talk) 03:23, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

1. On the contrary, such counts of reports/experiments are relevant to the debate, and should be included, especially on a phenomenom that many people think has never been replicated. There are other examples of such counts in wikipedia: global warming ("These basic conclusions have been endorsed by at least thirty scientific societies and academies of science"). Many articles also say "large number", "many", ..., but we found during mediation that these are subjective words and we couldn't agree on which one to use, so it's better to give the count themselves. Also, the counts come from the quoted sources : if they found it useful to count them, why shouldn't we ? Pcarbonn (talk) 09:56, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

In a word, "no". The "counts" are irrelevant and problematic no matter where they show. We don't need to say "large number" or "many". We can simply say multiple or single as the case may be. Three is just as bad as sixty. We aren't writing a citation analysis after all. ScienceApologist (talk) 20:47, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. Please provide support to your view from a wikipedia policy or guideline. We have to choose between "Reports say that...", "Many reports say that", and "200 reports say that". The latter is the most informative. Again, such numbers have been picked up by reviews published in peer-reviewed journals. Pcarbonn (talk) 23:03, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Listen, it's simply a matter of summary style. The enumeration of reports is a constantly changing point. How do you decide what is a report worthy of including in the list? Should we count the number of articles in nature? Should we count reports that were rejected in high-impact journals but accepted in low-impact journals? These arguments are simply not worth having. Leave it un-enumerated and we have no issue. Otherwise, we should go through the list one-by-one and decide if their really "legitimate" reports (something I do not believe will be fruitful). ScienceApologist (talk) 17:44, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Summary style means representing secondary sources faithfully. If those secondary sources do state a count of articles, we should include them too. Making the count ourselves, as you imply we are doing, is original research, and would not be acceptable. This is not what we are doing here. Pcarbonn (talk) 21:39, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Let's go on mediation if this cannot be agreed. Pcarbonn (talk) 21:46, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

3.The reason they were included was to inform the reader on significant aspects of the results. Pcarbonn (talk) 09:56, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

"Significant" to whom? I say that we include the stuff that is clearly significant to everybody. The rest we should let fall by the wayside till it is picked up by outside sources.

Many of the statements come from secondary, peer-reviewed, reputable sources, not primary sources. Therefore, they clearly meet your criteria of 'being picked up by outside sources". Pcarbonn (talk) 23:10, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

No, you have to consider WP:REDFLAG. The things I removed were mentioned by advocates as obvious evidence. They are not mentioned by sources that are independently reviewing the evidence. ScienceApologist (talk) 17:44, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

There is no requirements for "independent reviews" in any wikipedia policies. Your argument has no validity. What counts is whether the sources are reliable and secondary. They are in this case. I'm ready to go in mediation on those points if needed. Let me know if you would accept it. Pcarbonn (talk) 21:39, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

4.Agreed. Pcarbonn (talk) 09:56, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

5.OK to avoid the repetition. Pcarbonn (talk) 09:56, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

6.Please provide a recent source that cold fusion is clearly an example of pathological science. On the contrary, there are many recent sources indicating that this is a valid field of enquiry, such as the DOE. This question was already debated here: I suggest you take a look at it. Here is what the guidelines for categorisation say: "An article should normally possess all the referenced information necessary to demonstrate that it belongs in each of its categories.". This is clearly not the case here. Pcarbonn (talk) 09:56, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

You miss the point. We have sources that say that cold fusion has been described as a pathological science. That is good enough. Please read WP:PSCI for more. Also note the principle of least astonishment in WP:MoS and WP:NAME. ScienceApologist (talk) 20:47, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

You have not yet provided a source for pathological science. Please do. Pcarbonn (talk) 23:03, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

Also, I could not find any reference to 'least astonishment' in WP:MoS and WP:NAME. Please clarify. Pcarbonn (talk) 23:22, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

The "principle of least astonishment" is explained in the guide to writing better articles, WP:MOSBETTER#Principle of least astonishment.--Gimme danger (talk) 23:52, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

What I remember is an article from a sociologist of science discussing CF as an example of pathological science. Of course as a sociologist he was not classifying CF himself but using it to illustrate how such a category is thrown up in the process of Science as a discursive practice. When we discussed it before the consensus was that an article from the sociology of science was not relevant to the article. But the question could be reexamined. As someone who is much more au fait with soc of science than with science itself, I don't mind having another look at the article and seeing what it yields for this page. In the meantime, please let us not war over cats and see also. It is the most tiresome kind of warring because it can never be resolved by reference to sources. Let's include path. sci. in mainspace or not at all. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:28, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't know what's meant by the last sentence there. But in any case, I'd certainly include cold fusion in the category "physics", i mean, is has to do with studying natural physical processes, doesn't it? I mean, it's certainly not "Biology". And it's not politics or religion. It's physics. That should be embarrassingly obvious. Kevin Baas^talk 22:15, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

I believe that itsmejudith said that "pathological science" should be clearly demonstrated in the body of the article (which it isn't), or should not be added as a category. I fully agree. Pcarbonn (talk) 23:03, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

From the CF article, "As of 2007, the scientific community did not acknowledge this field as a genuine scientific research theme." As SA has pointed out, WP:PSCI refers to an arbitration committee case in which it was decided that "Theories which have a following, such as astrology, but which are generally considered pseudoscience by the scientific community may properly contain that information and may be categorized as pseudoscience." Given this arbcom case and this recent statement from a reliable source, we should place this topic in the Pseudoscience category. I don't know if there are analogous guidelines for the pathological science category. --Noren (talk) 16:21, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

The phrase "the scientific community did not acknowledge this field as a genuine scientific research theme" does not imply that said field is "generally considered pseudoscience by the scientific community". (Although the converse may be true.) See Pseudoscience#Identifying_pseudoscience. Thus, the cited arbcom ruling is not applicable. Kevin Baas^talk 16:31, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Kevin. As already explained in the archived discussion mentionned earlier, "not saying P" is not the same as "saying not P". Pcarbonn (talk) 17:19, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

We have sources that state explicitly that many scientists, for better or worse, regarded it as pathological science. That is in the article right now! ScienceApologist (talk) 22:52, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Wrong. The article says that many scientists view cold fusion with skepticism. This is not the same as saying that it is pathological science. You are confusing skepticism and rejection. Please let's be true to our sources. We can't call something "pathological science" if there is no source for it. Pcarbonn (talk) 15:14, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

You may be thinking of "Indicators of failed information epidemics in the scientific journal literature: A publication analysis of Polywater and Cold Nuclear Fusion", E. Ackermann, Scientometrics 66, 451-466 (2006), which examines the publication histories of Polywater and Cold Fusion as examples of failed information explosions. It includes what is, in essence, a post-mortem analysis of the phenomenon of CF publication in mainstream scientific literature. --Noren (talk) 00:58, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

Please provide a quote from this source that explicitly presents cold fusion as pathological science. Pcarbonn (talk) 14:56, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

A premature post-mortem it seems, given recent developments, but I guess the author is entitled to his own opinion. Kevin Baas^talk 15:14, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

No, I wasn't thinking of the Ackermann paper, which also looks to be a possible source. It was actually a book: Bart Simon, Undead Science: Science Studies and the Afterlife of Cold Fusion. There is a link to its Google Books page in Archive 14 of this talk page. I haven't got the whole book. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:33, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

The Simon book does assume that it is carrying out a postmortem, and it is definitely premature, since it references few developments after 1990. The sociologist author does seem to have a physics background since his method was participant observation and he obtained a job in a laboratory. But his academic interest is really only in the sociology debates - Bruno Latour, Actor-Network Theory, social constructionism versus realism - that sort of thing. It probably doesn't matter for his argument that science went in a different direction after he finished his research. Itsmejudith (talk) 20:11, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Whether it is "premature" or not is irrelevant. The references to mainstream articles (such as those in Physics Today or Science Daily periodicals) reference this kind of thinking. Therefore we invoke WP:CBALL and wait for the big bad establishment to decide that they were wrong. ScienceApologist (talk) 22:52, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

You have completely misunderstood what I was saying. I am talking about a sociology book. We talked a while ago whether it was any good as a reference at all. The consensus then was not, but I now wish us to consider whether it might be possible to get some useful information from this book and another paper (Ackermann), which is also about CF as an example of how Science is/isn't conducted and not about the substantive findings of the science. The Simon book leaves off its description at about 1990. It is definitely no good as a source for how CF is regarded now but may be useful for how it was regarded in the 1980s. Itsmejudith (talk) 15:26, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

The people who study pseudoscience in the context of social networks are sociologists and therefore are qualified as reliable sources. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:28, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't disagree. I thought it was implicit in my post above. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:29, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Lack of reproducibility section biased

The lack of reproducibility section is biased. It basically is an attempt to make it sound like this is less of a problem than it really is, when it is the heart of the problem. It doesn't state that many independent attempts to reproduce the experimental results have failed historically, the reason for its rejection by mainstream science, and it tries to "John" it away by saying that that because the mechanism is unknown, it failed for some unknown reason. This is unacceptable. Titanium Dragon (talk) 19:00, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

TitaniumDragon, feel free to add any sourced material to correct the alleged bias. Pcarbonn (talk) 21:40, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

I extended the sentence describing the issues that the reviewers had with the submitted material with information from 2004 DoE. --Noren (talk) 01:15, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Great. Thanks. Pcarbonn (talk) 05:30, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

Re: "It doesn't state that many independent attempts to reproduce the experimental results have failed historically, the reason for its rejection by mainstream science," I thought it did. Hell, that's what the entire section is about, isn't it?

"and it tries to "John" it away by saying that that because the mechanism is unknown, it failed for some unknown reason" - If you read this italicized text carefully you'll see that it's basically a truism - you can't reliably reproduce something unless you know the mechanism behind it (i.e. the neccessary and sufficient conditions). this is just reality at work - it holds true for all things, science or not. The mechanism for polywater was not known for a while and thus the phenomena could not be reliably reproduced. As soon as the mechanism was found, it could be reliably reproduced with ease. Now for cold fusion, the mechanism could just be a mis-calibrated calorimeter or other experimental error. And then as soon as everyone mis-calibrates their calorimeter the same, they'll all get the same results. But that's not the case right now because we don't know the cause (whether it be present or absent in an experiment). So you see, the cause of the mysterious phenomena is irrelevant -- the statement holds true regardless. One might even say it's a tautology. When the mechanism for something is unknown, the cause of it's "failure" or "success" is, by implication, also unknown. Now if the article gave the contrary impression, that would be cause for concern. Kevin Baas^talk 15:37, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

And from what I recall this material is attributed per WP:NPOV and it serves to provides neccessary WP:BALANCE. But like P said, feel free to add sourced material to correct the alleged bias. Kevin Baas^talk 16:02, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

scientific method

Having dealt with electroplating issues such as Hydrogen Embrittlement (similar to the effect desired here, HE is unpredictable in practice), there has been little mention in literature of electrode configuration and environment. Although Electroplating is considered an old industrial technology, getting the product wanted is sometimes more of an art than science. One inch by .25 inch? Read the literature critically. The DOE morons refer to equal distribution of He3 and H3 using ballistic deuterons, yet Jones' muon induced fusion is by tunneling between two H2/H3 nuclei brought together for very short periods of time (half life of muon 2.2 msec gives several hundred fusions, less reaction inefficiencies). Tunneling of one nucleon would promote equilibria favoring lowest energy (total nuclear binding energy), likeliest proton transfer D + T > He4 + n in muon reaction. Discount two nucleon tunneling as less likely. With D + D, He3 is more favorable. Does anyone think it is odd that instead of acid solution that would promote hydrogen activity, that the "successes" are using strongly alkaline solution? And specifically Lithium Hydroxide? The higher overvoltage in alkaline solution would promote deposition/diffusion of Lithium. "The absorption cross section of deuterium for 2200-m/sec neutrons has been related to that of boron by intercomparison with lithium. A value of 0.57±0.01 millibarn for deuterium, based on a measured value of 755 barns for boron, has been obtained"[ http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v87/i5/p785_1] The neutron absorption cross section of Lithium6 (and Boron-10 = 5333 barns; reports of improved "success" with Boron contamination) may point to something other than D+D reaction. By the way a link to Palladium Hydride should be in the wiki. Shjacks45 (talk) 10:46, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Better version

I have reverted to a better version [4]. My arguments, above, for why this is a better version have not been substantively refuted. I find Pcarbonn's edit summariey "per talk" to be relatively misleading. It is also clear now that

ScienceApologist (talk) 23:13, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

ScienceApologist, we disagree. The normal way to resolve this is mediation. I'm ready to go for it. Would you accept it ? Pcarbonn (talk) 16:28, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll accept it if you find a mediator who can answer Filll's AGF challenge questions to my satisfaction. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:37, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Pls clarify what is "Filll's AGF challenge questions". Pcarbonn (talk) 20:21, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

ScienceApologist, I looked at the diff and i don't understand why you insist that your version is better. The only arguments i recall you making are regarding putting numbers of experiments in there. I really don't see why you think this is such a big deal. I don't see how it's "special pleading" - the numbers can be just as damning as they can be supportive, so putting them in doesn't support a POV - they are objective. But that's not a big issue for me, anyways; i could go either way and for the sake of compromise i'll agree to leaving them out. But that's the only arguments i've seen you make. I haven't seen anything that justifies removing "In addition, the isotopic ratios of the observed elements differ from their natural isotopic ratio or natural abundance." - which is very significant and very important. Also, I don't see any justification for removing "Arata and Zhang said that, in one typical run, they observed excess heat power averaging 80 watts and output heat energy equal to 1.8 times input energy over 12 days.", which is also interesting and important. That ain't no calorimetry error. Now if we are going to present the POV the observed excess hear is due to calorimetry errors -- which we are -- we must, in accordance w/WP:NPOV, balance it with an existing counter-point. Preferably something that gives the reader some objective measurement so that they can have a better sense of what's being debated. What better to do this than an example of a typical run from reputable scientists? Also, "say is" -> "believe to be" seems to be an introduction of weasel-wording to me. "Say is" is direct, objective, factual, and attributed. "believe to be" is indirect, subjective, and speculative. So there are at least three different ways in which the previous version is better than the one you're proposing. Kevin Baas^talk 18:05, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

The enumeration is essentially original resesarch and not factual (you have to make a lot of evaluative considerations to come up with those numbers and they aren't reliably vetted). They are very far from objective in a controversial article like this. The claim that the isotopic ratios differ from natural ratios does not source any attempt to characterize the significance or the confidence level on this claim: in fact the claim itself is suspect due to low-number statistics. You might think it is very significant and very important due to you conflict of interest, Kevin, but there is no outside evaluator who has said as much. The excess heat measurements are just excessively detailed and needlessly pedantic. There is no attempt to characterize how "typical" the run is nor is their any way for the reader to evaluate the numerical claims. Ain't no calorimetry error is your opinion, it's not one that can be imposed on Wikipedia. In other words, the counterpoint can be something along the lines of "Cold fusion believers think that they have calibrated their calorimeters well, but critics disagree." But simply making this controversial "measurement" statement is problematic and not necessarily believable since replication is, as always, the key in this article. Finally the "say is" point is wrong: they actually don't "say" that. They do imply that they believe it. So I've dispatched your "three different ways". Thanks for playing. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:37, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

SA, I beg to disagree with many, if not most, of the statements you make.

• "The enumeration is essentially original resesarch and not factual". It would be if we, as editors, came with them. Instead, they come from reliable, secondary sources, which we should represent properly. If we don't mention these enumerations, we are not presenting the secondary sources properly. This argument apply to most of your following statements too, such as "The excess heat measurements are just excessively detailed and needlessly pedantic. ". If reliable sources choose to make those statements, who are we to judge ?
• "Replication is, as always, the key in this article". Wrong. The 1989 DOE clearly said it wasn't. Please read the section on reproducibility.
• "the 'say is' point is wrong: they actually don't 'say' that". As far as I know, this is not true. Please be specific if we missed something, and we'll correct it. Or would you prefer to use "they wrote" ?

By the way, you have not yet produced a source that says cold fusion is an example of "pathological science", with those exact words.

Pcarbonn (talk) 20:20, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Sheer number of published studies is irrelevant except in context of a statement that CF research continues to be conducted. I will not categorically state that it would always be improper, but the removed instances seemed of rhetorical rather than encyclopedic value. We should also be careful not to make this a wikinews article reporting every new paper and minor fluctuation in the field.

Also, Huizenga (1992) establishes the relevance of pathological in at least a sociohistorical context. - Eldereft (cont.) 21:25, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Browne (1989) might also be supplemented with this Morrison (1991), which states "Cold Fusion is best explained as an example of Pathological Science." - Eldereft (cont.) 21:39, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Again, I disagree to delete the number of published studies, and I ask that you accept mediation on this issue. Wikipedia should present both cases of a controversy, and the disputed statements are important according to the proponents.

The sources for pathological sources that you propose are more than 15 years old. It certainly was considered pathological science back then, and these sources are included in the article. If it were still considered so, how come that there is no such recent references ? No editors have found a post-2000 source yet. All post-2000 references talk of skepticism, not rejection. Therefore, the pseudoscience tag is not justified anymore. Pcarbonn (talk) 07:19, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

To SA: The numbers (not "enumeration" - you misused that word) come from external sources and therefore are not original research. The numbers are factual and reliably vetted insofar as they satisfy WP:VERIFY (remember, wikipedia is not about "Truth", it's about verifiability).

As regards isotopic ratios - whether or not the confidence levels are measured and evaluated in any paper is academic and last i checked, not part of WP:CITE or any other policy for that matter, and last i checked, not a single figure from a skeptic notes any confidence levels, but i don't see you saying we shouldn't include any of their material on that account -- looks like a double standard to me - and one that, if it were applied consistently, would turn this (and many other wikipedia articles) into a stub very quickly.

Now assuming that i have a conflict of interest is a show of bad faith, in addition to being an ad hominem circumstantial fallacy based on an unsupported assumption.

And "...there is no outside evaluator who has said as much." is false on it's face: where do you the information came from? From outside evaluators. Ones that said it was significant. And they're certainly not alone. Any competent physicist will tell you that. I would go so far as to say that it qualifies as common knowledge, if not common sense.

Yes, "Ain't no calorimetry error is [my] opinion". I thought I had made that obvious. But thanks for pointing that out to anyone who might have missed it. My point was that the example of the amount (and duration) of excess heat observed constitutes a counter-weight to the opinion that it was a calorimetry error, thus fulfilling the requirement for WP:BALANCE. My point was that the fulfillment of this requirement is what makes the example (or an equivalent) essential. The word "typical" was taken (I believe) directly from the paper cited. Said cited paper provides a way for the reader to evaluate the numerical claims. You hypothetical statement "Cold fusion believers think that they have calibrated their calorimeters well, but critics disagree.", as you mention, would have issues with it. What stands out in it to me is "cold fusion believes think.." and "...critics disagree" could be worded better, and it could benefit from more specific information than simply pointing out that there's a disagreement somewhere.

I don't have the time to look at if they "say" or not, nor do I really care all that much about that part. But in any case I would appreciate a less derogatory tone than "Thanks for playing". And I hope you can see that there are valid issues with some of the changes that you propose. Kevin Baas^talk 15:15, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

The cold fusion proponents here are engaging in article ownership, disruptive editing and tendentious practices. I will not engage with such nonsense. Plenty of people have pointed out the problems with their versions, but they put their heads in the sand. Sorry, it's clear that it's a waste of time to deal with these people and I don't think that this is worthwhile. ScienceApologist (talk) 03:50, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Mediation

Pace Seicer's edit summary, the reason SA didn't participation in the (excellent) mediation may have been that he was banned. Itsmejudith (talk) 14:28, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

SA agreed to mediation, but was not blocked for the entire duration. There were numerous, small blocks for various infractions, though. Or is this related to a topic ban? (Sorry, I don't keep up on SA's activities so I may be out of the loop a bit here.) seicer | talk | contribs 14:36, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

You can see the log of his blocks here. I don't think that the has been blocked for a long period of time, even specifically on the cold fusion topic. Pcarbonn (talk) 14:40, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

ScienceApologist, you use the same tactics that were used against Fleischmann and Pons. In March 1990, D. Lindley, editor at Nature, wrote: "All cold fusion theories can be demolished one way or another, but it takes some effort.... Would a measure of unrestrained mockery, even a little unqualified vituperation have speeded cold fusion's demise?" (Lindley, D., The Embarrassment of Cold Fusion. Nature (London), 1990. 344: p. 375). This is a parody of the scientific method. You may be an apologist, but not of Science. Science has never needed such tactics, and never will. Truth will prevail, sooner or later, and your side is not helped by your behavior. Pcarbonn (talk) 13:31, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Herein lies the problem. Wikipedia is not the place to right great wrongs. You are trying to use Wikipedia for that purpose. ScienceApologist (talk) 14:59, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

New Energy Times reported that mediation does work :) A short blurb but pretty cool nevertheless (caught this on SA's talk page). seicer | talk | contribs 13:45, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

It's generally good to get attention for Wikipedia in the press, but I don't think we should be happy about this article. It's not a good thing that Pcarbonn is publishing criticisms of his opponents here---justified or not, it probably tends to de-level the playing field, as it may intimidate SA or others who may argue with PC.

Even more disturbing is PC's published celebration of his success in causing this article to frame cold fusion as "a continuing controversy, not as an example of pathological science." It is especially revealing that he considers this success "a major step forward in the recognition of the new field of ... [LENR]" because it lays bare an extreme conflict of interest in his editing here. Editors here need to be interested in reaching an accurate, neutral portrayal of the topic, not in advancing their own agendas. Gnixon (talk) 14:16, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree totally. Thank you Gnixon. This was beginning to feel like I was in some sort of alternative reality Wikipedia talk page. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:11, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Seicer - I note that Pcarbonn has specifically thanked you, the supposed mediator, for helping him to win "the battle for cold fusion". I don't agree that that is "pretty cool". Cardamon (talk) 21:47, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Didn't know who the author was, but now knowing that (I hardly keep up on the drama that is Cold Fusion), I am remaining neutral on this subject. SA's on one fringe, PC is on the other, and there are very few in the middle. seicer | talk | contribs 22:33, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

You're not planning to make any more edits pushing a credulous point of view, such as this one? --Noren (talk) 05:34, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

And that was a result of incivil tactics that were brought up at WQA. Edit warring is never acceptable, no matter who is at fault; and violating 3RR will result in the page being reverted and the user blocked. That was the case there, if I'm not mistaken. seicer | talk | contribs 15:38, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Don't worry Seicer. A lot of folks were duped. What's really funny is that an article published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics called "Heretical Science - Beyond the boundaries of pathological science" actually mentions the New Energy Times as unreliable![5] (Edit note: it's possible they're not the exact same publication, COI still applies). Pcarbonn shouldn't have been been bragging, especially by some weird coincidence at this exact point in time. I had just used that source on a totally different article and a spark of recognition came when I saw his link on SA's talk page. There's an uncanny six degrees of separation on fringe topics. --Nealparr ^{(talk to me)} 05:37, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Seicer - I would say that SA's opinion about Cold Fusion is pretty in the middle of the mainstream scientific opinion, and not at any sort of fringe. Cardamon (talk) 07:41, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

And others have disagreed. There is very few in the middle of this, unfortunately. seicer | talk | contribs 15:38, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm glad that we are talking again about the article, not about editors. Editors should be judged on their edits, not their intent. I have always played by the wikipedia rules. I have never been blocked. I have always supported my edits with appropriate sources. If I have conducted a battle with the help of others, it is against the promotion of unsourced opinions, or incivility, or both, on wikipedia. Pcarbonn (talk) 05:14, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Extraneous lead sentence

I think this sentence:

It stated that the field would benefit from the peer-review processes associated with proposal submission to agencies and paper submission to archival academic journals.

should be cut from the lead. It's a long sentence, and I don't think it adds enough to the two other sentences about the 2004 DOE report to justify keeping it in the lead. In addition to generally cluttering the lead, I think it distracts from the more notable aspects of the report, which were that it did not recommend focused funding and that it recommended certain lines of research. I suggest moving the sentence to later in the article. Gnixon (talk) 13:57, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

It is unwieldy. I think the point of the statement is that Cold Fusion proponents have been notoriously unsuccessful at getting their work accepted by major peer review journals or normal grant-funding processes. This point ought to appear somewhere. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:13, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I think the point of the statement was to encourage CF researchers to pursue their research through normal channels, which could have a number of positive outcomes. I also think the words of the statement were chosen very deliberately, with concerns for political sensitivity, and it would probably be a mistake for our article to interpret them favorably or unfavorably---better to quote the statement in full if we consider it an essential part of the DOE report, but not in the lead. Gnixon (talk) 15:51, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I think it is long and doesn't add very much information. As Gnixon states, it's quite a neutral sentence so it doesn't really serve to provide much balance (on either side). In the context of the intro that sentence reads like a lacuna; after reading it, I think, "well that was a waste" - and that's after re-reading it because the first time I read it I though I wasn't paying attention and missed something. Kevin Baas^talk 15:56, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Article ownership issues at cold fusion

cross posted to WP:FTN

Hi all.

Currently there are a number of editors at Talk:Cold fusion actively working for New Energy Times to try to get our Wikipedia article to conform to a position that treats the subject with more favor than mainstream secondary sources give it. They are writing articles about editing Wikipedia and publishing them on-line, glowingly praising themselves for getting the article into such a state.

Now the article is protected right now by an administrator who sees the issue as a contest of equals (which it manifestly is not, but I digress). The current version up I think is better than previous versions, but there are some issues.

1. CF-advocates want to remove the pseudoscience category even though that is how it is generally considered.
2. CF-advocates are interested in repeating the claims of various CF researchers as fact and are willing to go into some detail to do it. For example, they want to include an enumeration of all the "successful" cold fusion experiments. Of course, we do not have any secondary sources confirming the analysis of how many experiments were successful, only the articles and books written by CF-proponents. What's more confirmation bias means that we cannot easily characterize how meaningful such enumerations are.
3. CF-advocates want to include "evidence" that has not been independently verified. For example, there is one experiment where a researcher used a mass spectrometer to determine the isotopic abundance of certain atoms. He reported a "non-natural isotopic ratio" that neither characterized its significance nor the confidence level to which this is accurate. No one else has reproduced his results. Nevertheless, the CF-advocates think that this "amazing result" needs to be reported in our Wikipedia article. WP:CBALL does not seem to phase them.

There are more issues, but this gives a decent overview. Basically, there are a number of users asserting ownership over an article which needs to be carefully vetted lest we mislead the reader into thinking there is more to Cold Fusion than meets the mainstream eye.

Thanks in advance.

ScienceApologist (talk) 15:08, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

This is a tricky article because it covers a very recent, very controversial branch of research that critics essentially regard as bad science. Hence it is difficult to find secondary sources that are up-to-date on the subject---I'm not aware of any. Under these circumstances, it's difficult to figure out how to represent the general opinion of the scientific community. The occasional publications that might be considered to represent the broader community are considered out of date by proponents of the rapidly-evolving field, which responds to any criticism on a much faster timescale than notable bodies release any new commentary. I frankly don't know how to handle the situation. I'm sure it doesn't help to have LENR proponents explicitly working for a favorable presentation of the field, although I appreciate their valuable help in identifying and interpreting relevant sources. Gnixon (talk) 15:31, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, they do a wonderful job of identifying sources for their positions. However, the issue is that when the mainstream doesn't take notice of the positions, Wikipedia is under no obligation to go to great lengths to get that information out to the public. In fact, just the opposite: we are under the obligation as explicated at WP:FRINGE to make sure that ideas that are not subject to critical review are not unduly discussed. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:35, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

This is an article about cold fusion, so even new research that may not merit weight at, say, Fusion, may be notable here. It should be possible to describe significant new research without implying that it has affected the mainstream opinion. Gnixon (talk) 15:57, 5 July 2008 (UTC) Also, all sources are potentially valuable, and we should be glad when they are brought to our attention. If someone is only finding sources supporting his side, it would obviously be useful for someone else to find other relevant sources. Gnixon (talk) 16:00, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

New research should be included when it is noticed by people who aren't cold fusion advocates. That's the sense of WP:FRINGE and that's how we should go about writing an article. There is no problem when things are brought to our attention. The problem comes in when people insist that every source brought to our attention deserves inclusion. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:27, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

WP:FRINGE seems to apply more to stuff like Face on Mars, as I mentioned below. I agree not every source necessarily deserves inclusion. Gnixon (talk) 18:40, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Fringe also definitely applies here. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:44, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Re: "New research should be included when it is noticed by people who aren't cold fusion advocates." I believe WP:NOTABLE, WP:VERIFY, WP:CITE, and other relevant policy pages cover the topic pretty well. And I'd hate to see this article degrade into something completely useless to the reader simply because someone decided that only stuff that everybody already knows should be in the article.

And I know that's not what you're suggesting - I don't mean to be making a dishonest argument (via fallacy of the excluded middle and straw man). Just to point out that it's more complex than that, and we should strive to be neutral, balanced, accurate, and informative, in the "sense" of an encyclopedia, and that we should take care not to over-interpret guidelines one way or another, but to make sure that our work is strictly within the literal meaning and faithful to the intent of policy (esp. core: WP:NPOV, WP:VERIFY & WP:OR). And by so doing create an article that gives the reader a broad and current overview of the subject along w/its more significant details and references for further research - and an article that beats the socks off of Britannica's in breadth, depth, and quality of writing. ;-) Kevin Baas^talk 15:08, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Requested edit

The page is locked, or I would remove it myself, but I request that an admin remove the "New Energy Times book index Extensive index of books on cold fusion", "Recent papers on cold fusion listed on New Energy Times", and "A student's guide to Cold Fusion: a technical introduction to the field by Edmund Storms" from the "Further reading" section immediately. It's highly inappropriate to link to one's own site or be self-promotional in Wikipedia articles.

Also, there are almost 10 citations in this article from New Energy Times. I'd like to review those for appropriateness as well. In the "Further developments (1989-2004)" section, it is listed in the line "A few periodicals emerged in the 1990s that covered developments in cold fusion and related new energy sciences (Fusion Facts, Cold Fusion Magazine, Infinite Energy Magazine, and New Energy Times)." I want that reviewed for appropriateness as well.

I'm having trouble finding anything [6][7] that establishes the periodical's importance, notability, or reliability, and the fact that editors from New Energy Times are demonstrably here editing, this may be at least a WP:COI issue and at worse a WP:SPAM issue.

At the New Energy Times website's "About" page, in the "Founder" section, it reads:

"He, or New Energy Times have been quoted in, or have contributed photographs for Wikipedia, Chemical & Engineering News, Chemistry World, Intute, Nature, Current Science." ([8] my emphasis)

No kidding. --Nealparr ^{(talk to me)} 19:10, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Concurred. If we have consensus, somebody please place an {{editprotected}} tag to attract the notice of an uninvolved administrator (or maybe we have some already dropping in, in which case go for it). - Eldereft (cont.) 19:15, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Some violations of WikiPhilosophy

Wikipedia is a place that stifles the free-thought and creativity of new ideas. To that end, there are a number of statements made by the CF-proponents here which I submit are problematic:

1. Wikipedia should present both cases of a controversy, and the disputed statements are important according to the proponents. This sentiment flies in the face of WP:NPOV: especially the WP:WEIGHT clause. Like it or not, cold fusion proponents are on the fringe, and while it is obvious that there work deserves mention in the encyclopedia, their perspectives need to be appropriately described as being as marginalized as they are in the research academic world. Looking at this as a "sides" issue tends to make people think that there is some sort of "contest of equals" going on here. There isn't. Cold fusion proponents are not equal to the detractors; the detractors have the upper hand and we need to make sure our article gets this across.
2. The sources for pathological sources that you propose are more than 15 years old. It certainly was considered pathological science back then, and these sources are included in the article. If it were still considered so, how come that there is no such recent references ? This is a debate technique which has no place at Wikipedia. The fact is that Cold Fusion had a lot more attention in 1991 than it does today. While CF-proponents think their project has progressed, there is no indication of outside sources that believe likewise. The DOE report indicated that they didn't see much progress, and just because you get two sessions at professional conferences doesn't mean that your subject material is being taken more seriously. No, in fact, the issue is that no one in the mainstream pays attention to the cold fusion junk anymore and that is why we don't have more "modern sources". Most of physics/chemistry consider the matter to be sufficiently settled to not deserve comment.
3. My point was that the example of the amount (and duration) of excess heat observed constitutes a counter-weight to the opinion that it was a calorimetry error, thus fulfilling the requirement for WP:BALANCE. I get the impression that the writer of this chestnut didn't actually read the wikiessay he is referring to, but no matter: this point is incredibly problematic from the standpoint of a mainstream encyclopedia. Our job is not to make sure that we "counter-weight" mainstream derision with the excitement of the CF-advocates. Our job is to write an encyclopedia article that is poperly WP:WEIGHTed to the mainstream understanding of the subject. Imposing opinions masquerading as fact is highly problematic and must be avoided.
4. i don't see you saying we shouldn't include any of their material on that account -- looks like a double standard to me - and one that, if it were applied consistently, would turn this (and many other wikipedia articles) into a stub very quickly. There IS a double standard on Wikipedia. It's called WP:REDFLAG. The mainstream gets a pass for their skeptical sources because their claims are no extraordinary. CF-claims are. They need to be exposed to more scrutiny and only the best sources can be used and only the points that are best supported by the preponderance of the evidence can be discussed in articles. It's not fair, but that's the way Wikipedia works. There are other Wikis where you can write all about cold fusion to your heart's content without having to worry about whether you are stepping over the line with respect to WP:WEIGHT, WP:FRINGE, WP:SYNTH, etc. Not here.
5. Truth will prevail, sooner or later, and your side is not helped by your behavior. This is more evidence that the CF-proponents view this article as a WP:BATTLEGROUND. Problematic. We need to write an article that presents cold fusion as it is considered by the mainstream. We welcome the inclusion of claims from the CF-proponents inasmuch as they clarify their position on the subject, but Wikipedia articles on fringe topics like this are not to be written as a parity of sides. In fact, the sides DO NOT have parity in this instance. Cold fusion is derided, not taken seriously, and generally ignored in the mainstream. These are all facts that even the CF-proponents agree to. Yet they seem to think that simply writing the article with these facts as the framework is problematic for their on-going battle to gain acceptance for their CF-beliefs. Wikipedia is manifestly not the place to engage in such activity.

ScienceApologist (talk) 15:17, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

While I don't think it's a good thing for proponents to advocate a favorable presentation of Cold Fusion, I also think the pendulum can swing too far in the other direction. We do not need to debunk cold fusion, nor do we need to make sure the article presents it as bad science, even if that is the opinion of mainstream science and I'm not saying whether it is. Representing the published responses of notable scientific bodies should be sufficient. We should strive for, and be able to achieve, an article that both proponents and critics of LENR will concede is accurate and unbiased. Gnixon (talk) 15:42, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

You are right. Debunking is right out simply because it should not be necessary if we are conservative in our approach to content inclusion. If we take WP:REDFLAG seriously, then there will be nothing we need to debunk because only the best sources will be used in the article. We also don't need to label it excessively as "bad science" or whatever, but we do need to mention that most people in the know consider it to be "bad" science. Keeping the pseudoscience category is one way to do this. I'm not sure if your last sentence is feasible. However, we can all dream dreams. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:52, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

You may sa-a-e-ay I'm a dreamer... but I'm not sure I'd agree.  :) Attributing "redflag" sources to CF proponents makes it possible to represent research considered significant by proponents without misleading the reader. Likewise, we should represent the opinion that CF is bad science iff it can be attributed to a notable source---otherwise we're engaging in OR and synthesis. It may be frustrating here that scientists generally don't publish opinions they discuss freely in the coffee room, but that's part of the profession. We have to be sure the article attributes all opinions to notable sources, although clearly our collective understanding of the sources will influence our subjective editorial choices. Gnixon (talk) 16:11, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, there is far more research that is considered "significant" by the proponents than we have time to include here. What we should do is look for sources that are considered significant by those who are not proponents. WP:SOAP is useful to think about. We have a guideline for how to cover marginal stuff like this. It's high time we started using it. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:25, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't see why we can't represent a reasonable sample of what proponents consider significant. We can do that without engaging in or allowing soapboxing. WP:FRINGE apparently applies more to stuff like Face on Mars than to this article. Gnixon (talk) 18:38, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

The key word there is "reasonable". Part of the problem is that the proponents are advocating for things like an enumeration of the positive results, pointless recountings of the claimed numerical measurements of excess heat, and discussion of amazing new isotopes. The problem is, none of these points have been vetted by outside sources nor are the strictly verifiable in the global sense. They are attributable, but the cherry-picking is being done in a way to skew the summary in favor of cold fusion proponents (because those are the things that they are most excited about). And WP:FRINGE DEFINITELY applies to this article. We cannot even begin to discuss if you disagree. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:44, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that WP:FRINGE offers useful advice for this page. Gnixon (talk) 18:56, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Then I'm not convinced it's worthwhile discussing things with you. This is a fringe subject. I encourage you to start a request for comment if you are convinced that the community would think otherwise. ScienceApologist (talk) 19:00, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

ScienceApologist, you keep dreaming. This is not a fringe subject, nor a pathological science subject until you have a recent source to support that view. On the contrary, most sources support the opposite view, such as the 2004 DOE which encouraged agencies to support further research. I suggest you start a request for comment yourself if you disagree. Wikipedia is here to inform, not to spread rumors and hearsay like the one you support. Pcarbonn (talk) 19:46, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

WP:FRINGE in its current form doesn't apply well to this subject, but neither did the 2004 DOE report "encourage" agencies to support further LENR research. It recommended that agencies consider proposals for well-designed experiments on specific, relevant topics, in the context of not recommending a focused research program. The most relevant Wikipedia policy for these recent discussions, by a longshot, is WP:NOTBATTLEGROUND. Gnixon (talk) 21:01, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Broken link

I'd fix this myself, but the article isn't editable (at least by me) at the moment.

The link to the 2004 DOE report is broken. Since that's a rather important source, that should be fixed. A link that currently works is:

www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/DOEreportofth.pdf

SarahLawrence Scott (talk) 17:05, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, we should fix that when the page is unprotected. Gnixon (talk) 17:51, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Not to that site, though. They aren't trustworthy. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:25, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Oh, come on. Any link that goes directly to the original pdf is fine. Gnixon (talk) 18:33, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

No, I don't think so. That site has been caught altering certain documents or providing commentary inappropriately. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:36, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

You're seriously afraid that the site will modify the DOE pdf?? I find that hard to believe. Gnixon (talk) 18:47, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

All I have to say is WP:RTFA. We've discussed the problems with this site before. ScienceApologist (talk) 18:48, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

A specific link would be a lot more helpful, and WP:RTA would have worked just as well. Gnixon (talk) 18:55, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

(undent) I cannot seem to find it on the DOE site anymore, but Mr. Peabody still has a copy. This seems like a reasonable candidate to be uploaded to wikisource, yes? I am presuming that it is public domain. - Eldereft (cont.) 21:34, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

ScienceApologist said that LENR-CANR.org is not trustworthy. Could some one explain to me why Physics World is using it as a source ? Or Wired (see the second link of the last paragraph here) ? What evidence is there that it is not reliable as a source ? Pcarbonn (talk) 21:22, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Use in Physics World's blog or Wired is neither here nor there. We are talking about whether it is OK as a convenience link. SA has challenged its appropriateness even as a convenience link on the grounds that it may have 1) provided inappropriate commentary and/or 2) interfered with the content. 1) can be verified in this case and if there is no commentary I don't think it is relevant whether there is commentary about other papers 2) I agree with Gnixon that it is unlikely they would have altered the pdf. I hope we will continue to be very aware of the potential for copyright violation, since there was a recent misunderstanding about the copyright status of journal articles. On the RTFA comment - the archives to this page are extremely long and no-one can be expected to remember what is in them. Nor should we have to re-read the whole lot every time we post. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:51, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

In December 2007, Guy reported that this site has in the past inserted editorial content into what sounds like the very pdf we are discussing. The discussion was repeated in April. So, yes, the possibility that www.lenr-canr.org would modify the pdf is a real concern. Linking to a site with copyright violations may also be an issue here. I think we should try to find the pdf at a more trustworthy site. Cardamon (talk) 05:02, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree that copyright violation is an issue for other papers, but not for this one. While it is true that LENR-CANR.org had introduced an editorial in the DOE report, it was clearly stated as such, and it has the full rights to do so. So, this is not as sign that the site is not trustworthy. Other reputable sources do consider it trustworthy, as stated above. A challenge to that trustworthiness would require sources of equivalent parity. Let's build wikipedia on facts, not opinions. Pcarbonn (talk) 05:31, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Pcarbonn - In principle, anyone using a link at the LENR-CANR site can edit the link to see what else was on the site, and gain access to the copyright violations. But, would this link http://web.archive.org/web/20070114122346/http://www.science.doe.gov/Sub/Newsroom/News_Releases/DOE-SC/2004/low_energy/CF_Final_120104.pdf from the Wayback machine work for you? (Thanks to Elderft for the idea, but for some reason the link s/he provided doesn't work for me) If so, we should probably ask Seicer to put it in; waiting for the protection to expire on July 19 seems too long a wait. Cardamon (talk) 07:40, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

The link to the wayback machine did not work for me yesterday, but works today. Let's see if it is reliable. Why don't we link to here ? We already use New Energy Times for other quotations. Pcarbonn (talk) 07:49, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

This time I'm glad to have been referred back to the earlier discussion because it has the solution. We just cite the DOE report. It's simply not necessary to have a web link to everything. Itsmejudith (talk) 14:53, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

I find it very convenient to have a web link, if possible, so I would be for including one in this case. Given the discussion, I prefer linking to an archive of the DOE website. Gnixon (talk) 20:16, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

RfC: Is this topic fringe?

Does the fringe theory guideline apply to this topic?

This topic is not fringe, but an area of exploratory science recognized by the 2004 DOE, the most notable source on the topic. This is extensively documented in our article.

Nonetheless, the Fringe guideline provides helpful advise, such as the parity of sources: a consequence of this guideline is that, if a panel recognized cold fusion as a valid area of exploratory research, as the DOE did, it would take another panel to say it is pseudoscience before we would present it as such. If 2 reviews of the field published in scientific peer-reviewed journals have presented cold fusion as demonstrated, we would need other such scientific reviews, this time unfavorable, to present cold fusion as bad science. Pcarbonn (talk) 20:27, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

That's a total revisionist history you've adopted, Pierre. The 2004 DOE report reaffirmed the opinions of early reports that there was not much to cold fusion suggestions. If it wasn't fringe, it would have received recognition and funding. ScienceApologist (talk) 20:29, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Note that the guideline WP:FRINGE uses the example of Face on Mars as a "fringe theory." I think cold fusion is qualitatively different, given that a group of researchers has continued funded research for about two decades. The DOE hasn't seen a need to conduct two separate reviews on Face on Mars research. Gnixon (talk) 20:33, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

The Face on Mars is a good example of pseudoscience, not really a good example of a far out fringe topic within regular science. And anyway, it's the "Face on Mars" not the "LGM's Nuclear Fusion Reactor on Mars" :) Count Iblis (talk) 21:55, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, well I wasn't the one who put it at the top of WP:FRINGE!  :) Anyway, after looking over the guideline in more detail, I think it does apply to this article, and does offer useful advice. However, I think we should be careful in applying it. Cold fusion and "low energy nuclear research" are not the same thing as Time Cube. Gnixon (talk) 22:27, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

• Yes. "We use the term fringe theory in a very broad sense to describe ideas that depart significantly from the prevailing or mainstream view in its particular field of study." - Eldereft (cont.) 22:22, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

• Yes. The 2006 Discover Magazine references and the 2007 Wired Magazine reference indicate that mainstream scientists think cold fusion is "bogus," a "fiasco," and/or "discredited." Also, no academic physics department in the US is studying cold fusion in any serious way. Also, no pro-cold fusion data has been published in a major physics journal. In fact, CF is labeled as fringe science by wikipedia itself. Note that the 2004 DOE panel did not indicate that CF was not fringe; it simply said that the techniques had improved and that using better techniques would be nice. It is totally possible for something to be a valid topic for exploratory research and fringe science at the same time. So where does that leave us? Each editor should look at the article and ask, would a casual reader of this article think that cold fusion is a fringe science topic? If the answer is no, then we have not been doing our job. By the way, does anyone else think that Pierre looks like Imre Lakatos? Remember: AGF! 209.253.120.158 (talk) 23:17, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

• No. Prior to reading this article, I might have said yes. It is a minority, controversial position without doubt, but on Wikipedia, people feel like fringe allows them to create attack pages. The work by the US Navy (ref), the Indian gov't (ref), and others, e.g. Osaka University (ref), show that while is a minority position, it is not without scientific interest and (disputed) evidence. There are reportedly many articles in journals by physicists with positive results. When you have a number of prestigious physicists (Nobel Laureate Schwinger and Mallove; likely others) arguing for cold fusion and claiming fraud, and 3000+ papers in physics journals, nearly 500 positive research results (note), a layman cannot say that cold fusion is fringe per se. I'm concerned that giving someone an inch here might let them feel like they can go a mile. Cold fusion seems fringe to the public, and mainstream scientists, most of whom haven't researched its developments, will no doubt call it fringe, but it appears to be rather what Imre Lakatos would call a competing research program. Neutrally state what has been found, what hasn't, what concerns exist, ect. Even in 1989 the DOE stated that "it was not possible to state categorically that cold fusion has been convincingly either proved or disproved." The lead looks OK, but I'm not sure what "new physics" is. II 00:55, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

You could as well mention Brian Josephson, Nobel Prize in 1973. Here is a video of a recent talk where he says that Fleischmann and Pons should receive the Nobel prize. Pcarbonn (talk) 06:00, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Being researched by the Navy/Government and receiving kudos by a Nobel Prize laureate are not guarantees of "non-fringeness". Didn't the U.S. miliarty engage in psychic research at some point, for example? And even Nobel Prize winners such as Linus Pauling had some fringey ideas late in their careers. --Itub (talk) 12:13, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

The term "new physics" usually refers to concepts which lie outside the currently validated laws of physics. So if one could not find an explanation for, in this case, cold fusion using accepted theories then it would constitute new physics, or new laws of physics. This is not necessarily bad; the scientists at the LHC expect/hope to find new physics in that experiment. But I would stress that the LHC is qualitatively different then this case since the conditions involved (namely very high energy per particle) have never been studied before. In contrast, cold fusion is claimed to take place under conditions that are well-studied already (low energies per nucleon). Joshua Davis (talk) 23:44, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

• No. 3000+ papers in physics journals, nearly 500 positive research results. Vufors (talk) 15:31, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
• Yes, utterly, per these observations [9]. --Nealparr ^{(talk to me)} 03:57, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm afraid you are utterly mistaken. The article you mention talk of "New Energy News". This has nothing to do with "New Energy Times". Pcarbonn (talk) 06:07, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

:::Oversight on the author's part. They're the same, same publishing organization, same topic, etc. --Nealparr ^{(talk to me)} 06:09, 6 July 2008 (UTC) Remarkably similar, but might not be the same. The other stuff applies. Specifically what applies is that in your article for the New Energy News, you said it is currently an unrecognized field and that prominent scientific journals reject articles on the topic. I concur. That also happens to be the definition of WP:FRINGE. --Nealparr ^{(talk to me)} 06:18, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

• Yes. "Examples include ... ideas which purport to be scientific theories but have not gained scientific consensus ..." - it is clear that cold fusion has not gained scientific consensus, which is the standard the policy requires (though proponents do purport it to be scientific.)--Noren (talk) 05:13, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

WP:Fringe is not a policy, but a guideline. It does not require anything, it only gives advises. The requirements for articles are clearly stated in the only 3 policies of neutrality, verifiability, and no original research. Pcarbonn (talk) 06:13, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

• Yes. And moreover, I'd say that the article (as currently written) does a very good overall job of following that guideline. :-) --Steve (talk) 05:54, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I should mention that I concur with that. I didn't see any redflags while skimming it. All the important key points of WP:FRINGE, presenting majority and minority views as such, seem to be here. --Nealparr ^{(talk to me)} 06:08, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

• Yes it comes under the guideline because the guideline takes a broad definition. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:40, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

• Yes. I can only give anecdotal evidence that every physicist that I've ever talked to about the subject (not insubstantial number since I am a working physicist) have considered it bogus. That doesn't mean that they are right, but it certainly implies that it is not mainstream. But let me say that I'm not complaining about the article itself since I haven't looked at it carefully; I'm just answering the question at hand. Joshua Davis (talk) 23:44, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

• Yes. Insofar as it pertains to WP:FRINGE guidelines. Quoting: "We use the term fringe theory in a very broad sense to describe ideas that depart significantly from the prevailing or mainstream view in its particular field of study. Examples include conspiracy theories, ideas which purport to be scientific theories but have not gained scientific consensus, esoteric claims about medicine, novel re-interpretations of history and so forth. Some of the theories addressed here may in a stricter sense be hypotheses, conjectures, or speculations." Kevin Baas^talk 15:12, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Should the article be placed in the category of "pseudoscience"

;Note: This is not a properly filed Request for comment. Until it is filed as such, the opinions below should be considered in isolation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by ScienceApologist (talk • contribs) 23:17, 6 July 2008

This question has been debated many times in the past, but it seems that this question is not settled yet.

• No. Guidelines for categorisation say: "An article should normally possess all the referenced information necessary to demonstrate that it belongs in each of its categories.". As far as I know, among all the recent sources on cold fusion, none presents cold fusion as "pseudoscience", using that exact word. Why should wikipedia call it so ? Also, we should be wary of original research: we cannot combine 2 reliable sources in a new deductive reasoning to support the "pseudoscience" categorisation, unless that specific reasoning has been presented in a relevant article. So, we cannot say "it is pseudoscience because it satisfies one (of the many) definition of pseudoscience". Pcarbonn (talk) 07:44, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
• Yes, though Wikipedia:Categorization#Some general guidelines indicates that the subcategory Category:Pseudophysics is to be preferred. Even postulating a sudden reversal by the physics community regarding recent investigations, the article covers a history that is well-described in reliable sources by the term. The purpose of this article is to inform not promote. - Eldereft (cont.) 15:49, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Clarification and expansion: This case is problematic, as cold fusion grew out of the scientific community rather than invading or mimicking it. Let us suppose for a moment that the body of research since 2004 is somehow fundamentally different from that dismissed by the DOE panel and that physicists everywhere suddenly change their minds and state in reliable publications that it all makes sense now. In that case, we would have two halves to this article - one part for the old discredited (yes, discredited - this fiasco represents more than just another observation which failed to pan out in more rigorous experiments) work, and one part for the shiny new work. Of course, a more likely outcome for my little scenario would be splitting the article along those lines to avoid this problem, but bear with me here. People surfing Pseudophysics would legitimately expect to find an article on the history and impact of the discredited part listed; this work is not merely "obsolete" or "superseded", it cut to the heart of the scientific community with lies and pathological failure to perform due diligence. The fact that this fanciful article would also treat science would be irrelevant; c.f. boron, which is in Category:Neutron poisons despite the fact that the dominant isotope has a poor neutron cross section. In the case which actually obtains, wherein the CF community has not managed to separate itself from its origins, the case for categorization is even more clear cut; until mainstream reliable sources indicate a shift in attitude from regarding modern CF work as just more of the same old same old, such a separation should not be reported here. I will not claim policy-wonk status, and remain open to rebuttal of this line of reasoning. - Eldereft (cont.) 09:15, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Haven't you missed what the 2004 DOE said ? "Evaluations by the reviewers ranged from: 1) evidence for excess power is compelling, to 2) there is no convincing evidence that excess power is produced when integrated over the life of an experiment. The reviewers were split approximately evenly on this topic." "When asked about evidence of low energy nuclear reactions, twelve of the eighteen members of the 2004 DOE panel did not feel that there was any conclusive evidence, five found the evidence "somewhat convincing", and one was entirely convinced."

Would you call this "dismissed by the DOE" ? Would you see these statements as compatible with pseudoscience ? Please look at the evidence honestly. (I would agree that, if the article is split, the history one would be categorized in pseudophysics. Without a split, it would be misleading.) Pcarbonn (talk) 09:53, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

The 2004 DOE report says "The preponderance of the reviewers' evaluations indicated that Charge Element 2, the occurrence of low energy nuclear reactions, is not conclusively demonstrated by the evidence presented. One reviewer believed that the occurrence was demonstrated, and several reviewers did not address the question." That sounds pretty consistent with "fringe science" to me. I think the term psuedoscience is not as well defined, so it is not clear whether that label is correct. 209.253.120.158 (talk) 14:33, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

• No. Following the ArbCom decision that established four useful categories it is clear that cold fusion does not fall into the category "obvious pseudoscience". It is either "questionable science" or an "alternative theoretical formulation". It is very unhelpful to use categorisation to make points that cannot be made in mainspace due to a shortage of sources. Itsmejudith (talk) 20:13, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

For the sake of clarity, I believe you are referring to this decision of the Arbitration Committee. Pcarbonn (talk) 20:33, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, thank you. Itsmejudith (talk) 20:40, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

• No. Follow the sources, of course, but they probably reflect "Questionable science" from WP:PSCI, as in some critics may allege that it is pseudoscience, and the article may contain information to that effect, but the topic should not be characterized as such. --Nealparr ^{(talk to me)} 20:45, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
• Yes. It has generally been considered pseudoscience by reputable sources outside of the Cold Fusion community of believers. ScienceApologist (talk) 22:14, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
• Yes. Per Arbcom, "Theories which have a following, such as astrology, but which are generally considered pseudoscience by the scientific community may properly contain that information and may be categorized as pseudoscience.". Per Biberian 2007 from the article's references, "...the scientific community does not acknowledge this field as a genuine scientific research theme." It is clear that the scientific community generally considers this pseudoscience. --Noren (talk) 00:53, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

As has been said before, this is a non sequitur and Original research. This source does not say : "the scientific community says the field is pseudoscience". It just says that it remains uncommitted and skeptical. Pcarbonn (talk) 05:18, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

• No. By the way, it might be best to move the "Most scientists are skeptical..." to the first paragraph, where it will be more easily noticed. The lead is well-balanced, but the criticism starts at the third paragraph. Some may be concerned that fast readers might miss the criticism; in addition, "pathological science" does not imply for the lay reader dubious science. Just throwing that out there. II 05:41, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
• No. Cold fusion is pathological science or fringe science, not pseudoscience. --Itub (talk) 15:12, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
• No. per WP:Category. Kevin Baas^talk 15:17, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
• No. It has generally been considered science (good or bad is not the question as both are covered) with reputable sources.Vufors (talk) 15:26, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
• No. I agree with Itub, it's somewhere in the realm of fringe science, pathological science, and mediocre science. Calling it pseudoscience seems a bit off the mark to me. After all, you can open up any issue of PRL, and you'll see people proposing stupid theories that contradict known physical principles, doing poorly-controlled experiments, and misinterpreting their experimental results. --Steve (talk) 16:04, 7 July 2008 (UTC)