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Question for the Wikilawyers

What about errors in RS?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

more detail about "new publications," by Abd

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

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

This refers to this sequence: I posted a comment, dividing it into two pieces, one open and the other collapsed for detail. Dr. Shanahan broke it up by posting a response to Judith in the middle of it.[1] Assuming this was inadvertent, I restored the original position of the collapse as a continuation of my comment. He just reverted that, also reverting, at the same time, my addition of a clarification to the collapse summary. My edit left his post easily visible and clearly as a response to Judith. His positioning concealed the nature of my continued comment and its timing (read the section in the permanent version as edited by him.) I have not "touched his post," and where "he wanted it" was in the middle of my comment, but not as a response to my comment. I have only restored and edited my own original post, restoring its original positioning. Dr. Shanahan is a single-purpose account and may not be familiar with discussion conventions. Further discussion of this, if it's necessary, should take place on user Talk pages. It has nothing to do with the substance here. --Abd (talk) 16:17, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

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

The comment in collapse below was part of my original response to Judith, posted as a continuation of it, but was chopped up by Dr. Shanahan as described above. Dr. Shanahan apparently wants to insist on this, to the point of revert warring over it.[2][3] I commented on his Talk page with [4], he has not, at this point, responded there. This extended comment was posted before the discussion above, and immediately after my direct response to Judith. (I added the additional signature above to allow interspersed response, i.e., response to my exposed comment, if desired, separately from what was in collapse, not to allow it to be split up with response to someone else. This is not a common practice, but it can improve readability of a discussion, if that intention is respected, which it was not, here.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One such error

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

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

The source cited is

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Measuring calibration constant shift

From above:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

List of recent sources (after 2004)

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

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

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

This compilation is intended for works published after 2004.

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

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

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

hyphen vs en dash in subject headers

resolved issue: Manual of Style stuff

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

Proposed Section Addition - Conventional Explanations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Abd, I was focussing more on claimed errors than actual errors, and I wasn't talking about calorimetry only, and I also should have specified something to the effect of "pro-CF experiments", distinct from "skeptics' attempted replication experiments" --after all, very few if any of that latter group has ever been claimed to have acquired data through procedural errors! Anyway, because that latter group, and because various retractions were done by the pro-CF experimenters, all of the pro-CF experiments became suspect to a degree that some mainstream researchers are only now realizing was over-done. The claims about errors overrode good science --and some are still trumpeting from that bandwagon, even today. V (talk) 05:12, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

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

Calorimetry

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transmutation

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

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

CR-39

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

Temporal Correlations

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

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

A General Problem

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

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

Comments about this proposal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Requests for editors of this talk page

I have a request for all editors. Before editing this talk page, please re-read the banner at the top of this page that includes this: "IMPORTANT: This is not the place to discuss your personal opinions of the merits of cold fusion research. This page is for discussing improvements to the article, which is about cold fusion and the associated scientific controversy surrounding it"

Then, if your edit does not (A) propose an edit to the article, or (B) discuss a PARTICULAR piece of proposed text, please think twice or three times about whether it is really contributing to improving the article. Olorinish (talk) 12:30, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

good advice. i've never started such threads, but i personally can't say i won't be tempted to correct factual errors, distortions, logical fallacies, or misinterpretations of policy. if errors like that are allowed to roam free, it doesn't much matter how content-specific discussions get, we still won't be able to make any progress on anything. Kevin Baas^talk 13:31, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Olorinish, thanks. However, some level of discussion of the topic will almost certainly continue here. Were I not COI, I'd be actively refactoring what wanders off the topic of a subject header. Perhaps you could help with that. I collapse my own comments when I consider that, while, at least mostly, they are on the subject of the article, and perhaps helpful for background or other important issues, they are not on the subject of the section. Certainly others may disagree about aspects of that, but I have never objected to a neutral collapse, and they can be very helpful in keeping things on-topic. They don't much help people who just read diffs, though, but just reading diffs misses all kinds of formatting that helps with organization and understanding of discussion. I'm mostly interested in establishing, here, the basis for article text, so that those who come along in the future understand why the article is why it is, and collapse and other refactoring -- such as starting subsection headers or new sections and moving some discussion there -- will help with doing that. --Abd (talk) 16:07, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Heat/helium correlation

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

Our article still says about this (my emphasis):

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vibrations. Vibration implies, in normal usage, something more than isolated "pops," and in context, to be meaningful for the effect Shanahan proposes -- causing leakage -- those pops would have to be, in addition, relatively powerful. What is shown in the reports? First of all, we have no reports of "vibration" as such, grossly detectable, all the reports were with a piezoelectric cathode which would be exquisitely sensitive, being itself the substrate for the active palladium deuteride surface. The area involved is not explicit, but more to the point is the data Gordon presented in [7]. I believe I've seen this from earlier publications as well. Shown are oscilloscope plots of voltage vs. time for the piezo sensor, which would be detecting sound from the entire surface. You can see the very sharp rise time of the "pops." I don't know what the rise time actually is, but these sensors are very high frequency response. I wrote 100 Khz, but that isn't shown by these graphs, it may be lower than that. However, the repetition rate of these pops is not high. The scale is 0.2 seconds/division. The right hand plot shows a series of events. It's looking like it is well under "dozens" of events per second. The hot spots may be seen in a video at [8]. Yes, it's hundreds or thousands of flashes per second. But "flashes" aren't "vibrations."

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

(unindent) I've been working on a seminar, Wikiversity:Cold fusion/Excess heat correlated with helium, which covers the helium evidence as found in peer-reviewed reliable sources, as well as Huizenga, who wrote some very remarkable things about this: "If it were true that 4He was produced from room-temperature fusion in amounts nearly commensurate with excess heat, one of the great puzzles of cold fusion would be solved! He expected, in 1993, that it would not be confirmed, but ... Mile's report, which he was commenting on, was actually a confirmation of Bush and Lagowski, earlier, which was a confirmation of Fleischmann's original helium report. Storms (2010) bases his conclusions on heat/helium on "twelve correlations and four quantitative studies," and he writes that "Many people feel that the correlation between heat and helium is the strongest evidence for cold fusion." There are other important pieces of evidence, but this is, indeed, the most well-established. For example, SPAWAR reports neutrons (tiny amounts of them, but above background and clearly sourced by the cathode), and neutrons are an unmistakeable signature of nuclear reactions, but those SPAWAR results are only weakly confirmed at this time. So ... if this is the most important evidence for cold fusion, why is not not even mentioned in the article that there is a correlation? (It's not there because it was reverted out, more than a year ago, in favor of the obvious error of the DOE reviewer, discussed elsewhere on this page.) Note that it is not the mere finding of some helium that is the evidence, it is the correlation. In particular, no heat, no helium. Period. This turns all the experiments with "dead cells," when helium was measured but not found, into control experiments. --Abd (talk) 23:00, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

About X-rays

Storms (2010) mentions that X-rays have been reported from cold fusion cells, but Storms comes down very solidly on the observation that the reaction produces helium as, by far, the most predominant reaction product, with only *tiny* amounts of observed radiation of any kind. The only fusion evidence readily observable from the reactions is heat and helium. (He writes about tritium and neutrons and other transmutation products being "roughly 10^10 less abundant than helium." Storms (2007) reviews the extensive evidence for X-radiation. He lists 10 sources or so. --Abd (talk) 22:40, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Time Out

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How about giving us the URL, Kirk? Thanks. --Abd (talk) 01:24, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

My mistake--on my Talk page. I don't have a Web page. Kirk shanahan (talk) 10:58, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

That's a crass misrepresentation of WP:NOR, and plain wrong. We should, of course, always be careful to not give too much weight to single publications, no matter how reliable, but a peer-reviewed paper published in a well-regarded academic journal is not "original research" under our NOR policy. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 20:56, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Please be careful about "crass," it's rude. Now, on the point, you are correct, Dr. Schulz, technically. A more accurate description, based on WP:OR, is that an original publication in a peer-reviewed journal is reliable, but may be, in some aspects, a primary source and the guideline recommends caution in using such. I have never stated that such a source cannot be used, but is of limited utility. The most important issue here is what is in peer-reviewed or academic secondary sources. --Abd (talk) 00:46, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Please also look, Dr. Schulz, at the possible effect of your comment. This was about the author of several papers published under peer review, in which he criticized other papers, without any independent confirmation ever appearing under peer review confirming his criticism, proposing to add text to the article, basing it on his own papers as reliable source, and proposing to set this as superior to a later major peer-reviewed secondary source in the field, because the latter was a "mistake," with only his own opinion supporting that. Do you really want to encourage that? Thanks for thinking about this. --Abd (talk) 00:52, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Abd, the argument (by which I mean 'line of reasoning' as opposed to 'fight', just so no one interrupts with points about your editing restrictions) that you are running is a good example of the reasons for WP:SECONDARY being written as it is. That section of WP:NOR talks of distance from an event for cases like this. You seek to elevate Storms above Shanahan because Storms is a review, but you are talking about a review written by Storms about earlier publications by Storms, and that has exactly the same distance from the event as Shanahan talking about Shanahan. Storms (2010) is thus essentially a primary source on the topic of the Storms / Shanahan disputes, as they were / are both primary participants in the disputes. You seem to want to be able to use Storms (2010) as a trump card by casting it as a secondary source. Unfortunately, in a Storms v Shanahan, a trump needs to be written by someone with some distance from the event; when using them as direct authors, they are playing no trumps. EdChem (talk) 01:07, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Ed, forest for the trees. Do you think Shanahan should make the grossly POV edit he proposed? I'm not proposing to "use Storms as a trump card" on the matter of Shanahan, because Shanahan's criticism is only marginally notable, and, in fact, I'm not playing a card game, I'm trying to work on an article that meets our guidelines and policies. Storms does not "review" Shanahan in the recent paper, you imagined that. He mentions Shanahan as rejected. I mentioned this here because it actually is good news for Shanahan vis-a-vis Wikipedia, since it is "notice," and thus his theories might have a stronger basis for some kind of inclusion than without that. Nobody, however, has accepted Shanahan's idiosyncratic theories, and published it under peer review. And we have piles of theories about cold fusion on which we have multiple secondary sources published under peer review in mainstream publications, and no mention of them in the article, only a claim, sourced to a non-peer-reviewed opinion, that these theories don't exist. Talk about undue weight! --Abd (talk) 01:21, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

“Shanahan's criticism is only marginally notable” – please define what criticism you are aware of that is more than ‘margianlly notable’. Don’t limit yourself to the last few years, draw on all 21 of them.

“I'm trying to work on an article that meets our guidelines and policies” – without having any of that botehrsome and _clearly_ erroneous anti-CF in it. Kinda tuff to do and maintrain NPOV…

“He mentions Shanahan as rejected.” – Yes, in the middle of a long paragraph filled with unexplained references. I.e. he is tries to make the point that no serious opbjections have been raised without actually defending his thesis. Not a good critical review. As well, the subsequent two sentences carry implicit disagreement with what I have written (which states the opposite), but you’d have to know the field or go read the papers to know this.

“Nobody, however, has accepted Shanahan's idiosyncratic theories, and published it under peer review.” - Exactly my point. I present an idea that wipes out apparent excess heat with a 1% RSD change, and ‘nobody’ incorporates it. Of course, the only people who rationally could are those producing calorimetric results, which are only CFers, who have a vested interest in NOT seeing my explanation work.

With regards to the proposed theories, I suggest at most 3 lines stating what they are and describing where to get the papers (i.e. referenced). I also expect the current position on them to be stated, i.e. none work completely and none are accepted. You could also add there appears to be no mainstream notice of them.

The undue weight in the article comes from it being focused only on the nuclear explanation of the experimental results. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:06, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Widom-Larsen theory, added by IP editor.

I reverted, because I believe it will be consensus here that this edit isn't adequate without better sourcing, as well as clearer explanation. The edit was confused about Widom-Larsen theory, which proposes (per Storms, 2007) "neutron induced transformation through a series of events, starting with the formation of super-heavy electrons on an electrolyzing surface. These electrons make "cold" neutrons by combining with protons or deuterons. Next, the very low energy neutrons or dineutrons are proposed to react with elements (seeds) that are present and generate a range of transmutation products." Storms gives many reasons to doubt that this theory explains the cold fusion phenomena, and there may be some other secondary sources. The direct publication by Widom and Larsen (2006) isn't adequate, that's a primary source for the theory, even though peer-reviewed. Note that the denial of "fusion" by proponents of this theory (Steve Krivit of New Energy Times has been promoting it) is semantic only. It proposes, essentially, that superheavy electrons, through the formation of neutrons, catalyze the conversion of deuterium into heavier elements. Like ... fusion. Black box: deuterium in, helium, etc., out. That's a "fusion box."

Storms (2010) has, on this: Addition of neutrons, as several authors have suggested (Fisher 2007; Kozima 2000; Widom and Larsen 2006) is not consistent with observation because long chains of beta decay must occur after multiple neutron addition before the observed elements are formed. The required delay in producing the final stable element and resulting radioactivity are not observed. Storms covers these reasons in more detail in his 2007 book. --Abd (talk) 01:29, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

I thought it is better to have more alternative "cold fusion" theories in this page because the field has advanced and no theory explains everthing yet. Otherwise, it might appear that this field is deficient of any plausible theory apart from the extraordinary one in the eyes of the skeptical scientists. Also, I think the proponents are against the word "fusion" as in "nuclei fusion" and not against other types of fusion (e.g., between heavy and light particles). Cold fusion can be more broadly regarded as the nuclear process that fuses nuclear particles at room temperature rather than nuclei fusion even though this is the original proposed hypothesis by Fleischmann and Pons. I am also a bit uncertain whether nuclear fusion means fusion at nuclear level or nuclei fusion, although the latter is the common one. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wiki96bob (talk • contribs) 02:04, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Stick around, Wiki96Bob. You might learn something, and by learning something, you might be able to help us to explain the topic well. "Fusion" refers entirely to what you call "nuclei fusion," and includes all kinds of fusion of nuclei. Sometimes people don't consider neutron absorption to be fusion, it is purely a semantic distinction (others consider a neutron to be neutronium, a special element). After all, if a proton is hydrogen, an element, and it is, then why is a neutron -- which can be thought of as a proton plus an electron -- not also a slightly denser form of the same basic material (i.e., a hydrogen atom is a proton nucleus plus an electron in orbit; a neutron is the same "stuff" but the electron has entered the "nucleus," forming a neutron. Roughly. But neutrons, being neutrally charged, don't have any chemical behavior, which depends on electronic structure, so ... historically, neutrons, which weren't even known from chemistry, haven't been considered elements, which were known though chemistry before they even figured out "atomic number" and "atomic weight", and well before neutrons were discovered as an explanation of the difference between atomic number and atomic weight. If we were talking only about neutrons being absorbed, that's not ordinarily called "fusion," as I mentioned, but if you take a deuteron, and add an electron to it to convert it into a dineutron, you can then add this dineutron to a nucleus to add mass 2 to the nucleus. This will often decay by beta (electron) emission, causing the element number to jump up by one. (Because a neutron has been converted into a proton, and the element number is the number of protons in the nucleus, which then establishes the net positive charge on the nucleus, which then sets up the electronic shell structure and the chemical behavior.) The effect of this has been to add a deuteron to the nucleus! I.e., to cause fusion.

Widom-Larsen propose a mechanism to cause conversion of deuterium to dineutrons (or two individual neutrons), by capture of "heavy electrons." Don't ask me to explain heavy electrons today, some people claim that they don't exist, it is just a computational device. The result of W-L theory is fusion, of some kind, through a series of fairly complex processes, and, probably for political reasons, and to distinguish this theory from what practically everyone else in the field thinks, they say it "isn't fusion." It's really beside the point. Helium is being made. From deuterium. The details of the mechanism are not known. But that result is fusion. And, right or wrong, we are completely stuck with the colloquial name, "cold fusion" for the entire field of low-energy nuclear reactions. --Abd (talk) 03:06, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Fringe theories noticeboard post

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

you get used to it. or in any case you learn to live with it. it come with the territory, for the most part. from my experience, controversial articles tend to have a much larger talk page edit history to article edit history ratio. and they do tend to thread out as people work out the finer points. can get a little hard to follow sometimes. but with nuanced subjects come nuanced discussions, i suppose. anyways, point is, comes with the territory. (mushrooming clouds ... pardon the pun! nice.) Kevin Baas^talk 18:43, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

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

The substance for review

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

• Talk:Cold fusion#Proposed explanations.
  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Naturwissenschaften review paper

convenience copy released by Dr. Storm (preprint): lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEstatusofcoa.pdf (you can paste this incomplete URL in most browser bars, they will supply the initial http:// (there s still a global blacklisting on lenr-canr.org, with whitelisting of papers by request. lenr-canr.org is not a source, but a library of sources hosted by permission.) The issue has been published now. note added --Abd (talk) 02:27, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

There are more than 150 papers cited.

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

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

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

The introduction to the paper can be most easily read on-line at [9]. Only part of the "Introduction" is there. I just referred to a preprint and it continues with this paragraph; the linked copy should be read first. (This is not the end of the introduction.)

These reports are difficult to accept, especially when viewed as isolated experiences. But when a large collection of work shows similar and reproducible behaviors, the claims become more plausible even though a satisfactory explanation is still lacking. In some cases, individual studies were done with such care, credible evidence is provided without replication; although replication is required to give the final proof. Even though this is not a complete review of all known behaviors, enough compelling evidence is summarized to support the credibility of some claims, to justify further study, and to show a potential importance to science and industry. In addition, many proposed explanations can be eliminated from further consideration or given increased support by using this published collection of observations. This review is not intended to resolve the ongoing conflict within the field between the various explanations or which data set should be rejected or accepted. Much more information than is presently available is required to compile a picture most people in the field can agree is correct. Instead, this paper intends to show a fraction of what appears to be sufficiently well supported to encourage further investigation and new thinking about how the process might work. Of course, the opinions are those of the author and do not represent a consensus within the field. As expected, such a young and complex subject generates considerable controversy and debate even among people within the field. Skeptics of the general claims are not the only people who can recognize error and have strong opinions about the cause.

I hope this helps editors place this paper in context and give it the proper significance. --Abd (talk) 17:49, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

This is:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, Springer, founded in 1842, the publisher of Naturwissenschaften, founded in 1913, which calls it their "flagship multidisciplinary science journal covering all aspect of the natural sciences,"[10] (I recommend reading all of what they say about it), are going to risk their very substantial reputation by confining peer review to some fanatic die-hard "CFers," as Kirk calls them? Who is arguing here like the embattled proponent of some rejected fringe theory? Who is claiming that we should reject peer-reviewed secondary sources in favor of his own cherry-picked and isolated ones? Single one, in fact, his own! Who is claiming that the reviewers are "biased"? Sure. Reviewers can be biased, sometimes, as I've noted, as we can see in reliable source on this very topic. But Wikipedia depends on publisher decisions, as reviewed by our consensus. We then can, by consensus, deal with blatant errors, as described above. But they better be clear! We handle biased publications by balancing. Not from our own opinions or original research, but from other publications of similar or higher quality. --Abd (talk) 18:58, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kirk, there are a couple of problems with what you wrote. First, remember that just about all those electrolysis experiments are not taking place inside pressure vessels. So, deuterium released from heavy water via electrolysis is not being forced under pressure to enter the palladium electrode. It is entering simply because the two elements have some sort of weird affinity for each other (proved by the absorption of hydrogen by palladium being exothermic). You are on record indicating that hydrogen escaping from loaded palladium is monatomic and combines instantly with atmospheric oxygen. Together the two preceding statements basically make us realize that when molecular hydrogen enters palladium it becomes monatomic AND energy is released in the process --despite the opposite chemical reaction, 2H->H2, in the absence of palladium, being energetic enough to have been proposed for use in rockets. It means that for monatomic hydrogen to escape palladium and recombine to for form hydrogen molecules, energy has to be added. So where is the energy coming from to cause that reaction to happen, inside a defect inside the palladium? What keeps the deuterium molecules from breaking apart again (inside that defect) and reentering the palladium? How can significant pressure exist inside the metal when ambient atmospheric pressure is all around the electrolysis cell, and we all know hydrogen permeates palladium sort-of like water permeating a sponge? And finally (of course), even if what you say is true and the events you describe happen at half the melting point of palladium, you are still describing real heat that a calorimeter can detect without CCS being the explanation for that detection!!! V (talk)

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

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

I presume, Kirk, that you have read an eyewitness account of that incident? See Beaudette, [11], pp. 35-36. It's worth reading, this might give one a sense of why Pons and Fleischmann thought they were on to something. (Similar things, not so dramatic, happened to Mizuno and others, it is a major reason they persisted in spite of massive rejection and derision.) This was a one-centimeter cube of palladium, which had been loaded with deuterium for months, and the current was shut off in the evening. The next morning, a grad student, Kevin Ashley, witnessed the wreckage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

|}

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

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

Cover the recent Naturwissenschaften review paper in the article

I edited the lede, and self reverted with [12]. Any editor who considers one of these self-reverted "per COI" edits superior to the standing text may simply undo that self-revert. However, please note: I placed this in the introduction because it balances unsourced synthesis in the introduction, about "mainstream reviews." A better solution could be to place this new material in the section, Cold_fusion#Further_reviews_and_funding_issues, and remove the unsourced comments in the lede.

A link to the source is [13]. I have a preprint, if anyone has questions about the article. I left this out of the self-reverted edit, by mistake, I think.

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

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

On mainstream reviews

Studying balance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Added

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

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

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

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

Let's see:

• he is a longtime supporter, it would be misleading not to mention his involvement in the field
• we don't mention the journal name in other cites. I don't see any reason for mentioning it, apart from trying to make the review look better....
• Not a physics journal

. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:51, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Let's agree that Storms is a long-time researcher in the field, starting in 1989, when at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he had been since 1958, he heard the news, and with others, began immediate investigation. He's heavily published. Now, who else would you expect to write a major review? Some newcomer? The point is getting it past the peer reviewers. They aren't going to accept fringe nonsense!

It is better, as to notability, because of where it was published.

Please don't bring up this old canard about Naturwissenschaften. Cold fusion is a cross-disciplinary field. NW is a cross-disciplinary journal, one of the top such in the world, covering all the "natural sciences," which includes physics and nuclear physics. I don't know that there is any better place for an article like this.

But this is all pretty minor. That's a peer-reviewed secondary source, comprehensive, detailed, heavily sourced, and published under peer review in a mainstream journal. And it contains a whole lot of material that effectively contradicts our article. Don't you think we should start looking at that? Starting with what is in the abstract, some of which you chose not to include. Why? Do you have a better source to contradict it? There is no better source in the science of this field. That's the point. --Abd (talk) 01:09, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Let's agree to disagree. --Enric Naval (talk) 02:57, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

You don't get to pick your facts. And they certainly don't depend on you for survival. Kevin Baas^talk 13:33, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

(unindent) Above, Enric writes "We don't mention the journal name in other cites. I don't see any reason for mentioning it, apart from trying to make the review look better. Just before this mention, where Enric put the text, the review of the 2004 DoE report is attributed to Physics Today, not to Feder, the author. Was that just to make Feder's inaccurate report "look better?" That this review appeared in Naturwissenschaften, indeed, "makes it look better," because it is better. There have been sixteen peer-reviewed secondary source reviews in the last five years, in the same line as Storms (2010). None are mentioned in this section, but there is text that implies they do not exist . Yet a shallow news report by Feder in 2005 dominates that section, with its sensational title, yet Feder's lede contradicts his own text. And a peer-reviewed secondary source in a truly major journal -- yes, they explicitly cover physics -- is mentioned as if it were merely the personal opinion of a "supporter." Yes, there are personal opinions in the Storms review, presented as such, but the basis for those opinions is presented. Those aren't mere opinions. Perhaps it's time to actually read the thing. I believe I can arrange a preprint copy for those interested, on request. Email me. --Abd (talk) 15:16, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Question at WP:RSN

I requested review of the issue of the relative quality of this paper, at Does "fringe author" affect Reliable Source criteria?. Editors here may wish to look at that and comment. Thanks. --Abd (talk) 19:49, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Storms is "LENR editor" at Naturwissenschaften

I noticed that Steve Krivit, writing in New Energy Times, last year, said that Storms had been appointed "LENR editor" at Naturwissenschaften. Sure enough: http://www.springer.com/life+sciences/journal/114?detailsPage=editorialBoard. He's on the editorial board. Now, what does this mean? I don't know, but Full Disclosure is my middle name. --Abd (talk) 02:53, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

not needed for the article: on criticism of Storms by Krivit

By the way, Krivit criticizes Storms there; Krivit is promoting the fringe Widom-Larsen theory, which is notable enough that we should cover it, by the way, and part of his promotion has involved attacking many of the scientists in the field, trying to impeach their evidence, etc. He is increasingly isolated. (I could document all of this, but not with RS for this article, it would involve mailing lists as well as his own web site, and our article on New Energy Times was deleted during my vacation). Storms isn't really a theoretician, his primary interest has been experimental and the evaluation of experimental data. The recent proposed edit of mine summarizes Storms' understanding of theory, what Krivit points to reflects Storms' opinion that the actual mechanism probably will involve some kind of cluster fusion. I've discussed Takahashi's TSC theory, also covered in the proposed edit, with him. He's skeptical, he seems to think that larger clusters must be involved, and I do know that this is current thinking in the field, I've also discussed this a little with Hagelstein. Krivit: For the "transmutation reactions," Storms writes that up to 10 deuterons can enter a nucleus if they cluster together at the same place and same time and their nuclear charge is somehow hidden from the target nuclei. He does not explain how the deuterons appear to have a neutral charge (like neutrons) but writes that he will do so in future papers. Krivit has very little real understanding of the field, if one reads what he's written about it, he always acknowledges that he doesn't know the science, he's a reporter, and he depends on what "PhDs" tell him. So when PhDs told him that cold fusion was real, he believed it. When Larsen told him that it wasn't fusion, it was neutron activation by ULM neutrons, formed through a proposed process from deuterons, he believed it, and he has developed a whole story of suppression, claiming that the rest of the field is rejecting W-L theory because they are "stuck" on "fusion." The problem is that W-L theory is absolutely not detailed enough to make rate and quantitative reaction balance predictions, and the most obvious rate conclusions are completely wonky compared to actual results. (Krivit realizes that the 25 +/- 5 MeV heat/helium ratio (Storms, 2007 and 2010) is fatal to W-L theory, so he's been attacking that conclusion.) W-L theory proposes pathways that could produce transmutation products -- including helium -- all right, but, let's say, it is, at best, so inadequately explained as to make it possible to apply. And when Larsen has been asked pointed questions, as by Richard Garwin, he's claimed "proprietary information." So how would a cluster approach a nucleus? There is a relatively simple explanation, if Krivit really understood the science. These are proposed to be Bose-Einstein condensates, including the electrons. They would be neutrally charged, if they are formed. Nobody has proven this happens, though one could claim that fusion is the evidence that it does.... Storms has pointed out that -- contrary to what our article claims -- the problem is not a shortage of theories, the problem is too many. And too little experimental confirmation of any, beyond the vaguest, i.e., Preparata predicted that helium would be the main reaction product, and Miles confirmed that. Given that hardly anyone, at the time, expected helium, even ridiculed the idea that it could be helium (where is the gamma ray!), this was quite an accomplishment. Was Preparata right? Maybe partially, I don't know. --Abd (talk) 16:05, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

POV in presentation of Storms review

We have this in the article:

---

Responding to requests from cold fusion researchers, the DOE organized a second review of the field in 2004. Cold fusion researchers were asked to present a review document of all the evidence since the 1989 review. The report summarized its conclusions thus:

While significant progress has been made in the sophistication of calorimeters since the review of this subject in 1989, the conclusions reached by the reviewers today are similar to those found in the 1989 review.

The current reviewers identified a number of basic science research areas that could be helpful in

resolving some of the controversies in the field, two of which were: 1) material science aspects of deuterated metals using modern characterization techniques, and 2) the study of particles reportedly emitted from deuterated foils using state-of-the-art apparatus and methods. The reviewers believed that this field would benefit from the peer-review processes associated with proposal submission to agencies and paper submission to archival journals.

— Report of the Review of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions, US Department of Energy, December 2004

The mainstream and popular scientific press presented this as a setback for cold fusion researchers, with headlines such as "cold fusion gets chilly encore", but cold fusion researchers placed a "rosier spin"[1] on the report, noting that it also recommended specific areas where research could resolve the controversies in the field.[2] In 2005, Physics Today reported that new reports of excess heat and other cold fusion effects were still no more convincing than 15 years previous.[3] In 2010, a review by supporter Edmund Storms says that there are now plausible theories and supportive evidence, and that "research is continuing in at least eight countries".[4]

---

1. Feder 2005 2. US DOE|2004 3. Feder 2005 4. Storms 2010

---

This whole section has been slanted in its presentation, first of all in how it presents the 2004 Review, and then in how it relies heavily on Feder, not attributing his opinion to him, but to the publication, then attributing the Storms review to him and not the publication.

Many times, details from the 2004 DOE report have been removed from the article, and, as a result, the blatant contradiction between Feder's report ("no more convincing"?) and the actual DoE review -- half the reviewers considered excess heat evidence conclusive, and one-third considered evidence that the heat was nuclear "convincing or somewhat convincing" --, whereas in 1989 the panel had been almost unanimous in rejecting cold fusion -- isn't visible. Feder, like many editors here, simply followed a funding conclusion, instead of the coverage in the report of how the science was viewed. The funding conclusion was similar, absolutely. No special program, funding under regular programs. That was synthesized into "Claims of cold fusion are no more convincing today than they were 15 years ago," which is completely unsupported by the review Feder is supposedly reporting.

So, this is a bylined news report by Feder. It's not a report on the science, and it was blatantly biased. That many reviewers were convinced was played down. Feder actually does report this, but with diluted language, not in his lede. Reviewers were split on whether the experimental evidence for excess power production is compelling. Was that the case in 1989? That is what is implied by "no more convincing." Feder mentions not at all the significant opinion by six reviewers (one-third) that the evidence was convincing or somewhat convincing as to nuclear origin.

Feder's report was presumably subject to editing, but this is a news report, not on a par with a peer-reviewed secondary source review, "Status of cold fusion, 2010."

Then Storms is presented. Storms is attributed to a "supporter," which is synthesis. If we want to report that Storms has been a researcher in this field since 1989, that would be fine! We might also report that he's on the editorial board of Naturwissenschaften, if that isn't too much detail.

But Feder is presented with the cachet of the publication, not his personal reputation. Nothing in that Storms note indicates the significance of this "review." Did Storms put it up on his web site? If he's notable as a supporter of cold fusion, we could use such a thing, but such a self-published review by a "supporter" would obviously not be notable -- unless covered in secondary sources. After all, it would be expected. No, what is very notable about Storms (2010) is the place of publication, and "supporter" shouldn't be there, and it could be argued that even attribution to "Storms" shouldn't be there. "A review of cold fusion published in 2010 by Naturwissenschaften concluded that ...."

In no way would this be imbalanced, for the entire weight of peer reviewed secondary sources, since 2005, has been in this direction. This isn't "recentism." --Abd (talk) 14:21, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

It is, among the experts, over

According to Abd commenting to NewYorkBrad: Peer reviewed secondary review coverage of cold fusion has drastically increased since 2004, there are 15 "positive" review papers or books I counted, mainstream published. There are no negative reviews at all, recently. The opposition collapsed completely. I know that negative papers have been submitted, but they are being rejected. It is, among the experts, over. (emphasis added) I thought this worth highlighting because I am having trouble believing than anyone could assert that cold fusion is considered resolved science and in the scientific mainstream, yet that appears to be the assertion being made. What can I say but "Wow!" EdChem (talk) 02:37, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Remarkable claim, eh? Yet that's what I see by looking at peer-reviewed secondary sources published in mainstream journals since 2005. Take a look at Wikiversity:Cold fusion/Recent sources. Try to find a negative peer-reviewed secondary source that could be used to establish the contrary of my assertion.

I'll do the work for you. There are a couple of what are really tertiary sources, in 2005 and 2006, that take cold fusion as assumed to be pathological science. Then, after that, nothing. Yet positive publication has increased. You will also find media sources that, again, do what the media do: assume that what they published a few years ago is still true. And they repeat, in these stories, stuff that was widely said, but that wasn't true even by the early 1990s. (Like "not replicated.")

And then there is the response by Shanahan this year to the review by Marwan and Krivit in the Journal of Environmental Monitoring. And it's obvious why they published that. Your opinion, Ed, is not uncommon. Shanahan wrote what, I'm sure, many of their readers thought. But they didn't publish Shanahan's reply as if it were a mainstream response. They co-published it with a response by a phalanx of scientists who have, collectively, a huge pile of peer-reviewed papers published, including recently. And Kirk has affirmed that JEM has refused him the right of further response. They consider the matter over. Kirk is a very isolated critic, nobody has accepted his theories, there is not one positive reference to them, he's mentioned in footnotes, effectively, as having presented rejected theories.

That is it. Shanahan is apparently the last gasp of the extreme skeptical position. At least as far as the peer reviewers are concerned.

Will there be no more controversy? Probably some will continue. However, the weight of publication, total numbers of papers, actually shifted to the positive side by 1991.

What does this have to do with our work here? Well, for years, text has been excluded from this article on the argument that the sources were "fringe." Even when these were peer-reviewed papers, even when they were published in mainstream journals, even when they were peer-reviewed secondary sources. There are sixteen recent (2005 and after) reviews of the field, so published, shown on that Wikiversity page. How about we start deriving scientific fact in the article from what are supposed to be the preferred sources, and determine balance from the weight of those sources? Science moves on. You don't reject a recent peer-reviewed secondary source on the basis of a very old one that only covered the field as it existed then.

I just pointed to a peer-reviewed secondary source, explicitly labeled a Review, in a high-impact multidisciplinary journal, that covers the field of our article. There is no indication with the article that this is some fringe view being presented just for debate. Now, if this were the first appearance of such, I could certainly understand great caution. But it isn't. Storms (2010) simply confirms what has been appearing under peer review for about five years, with fifteen other such reviews, Storms is simply the most thoroughly documented and appearing in the most prestigious publication.

Go back and look at the 2004 DoE review. The balance then was still, but only slightly, on the "unproven" side. Not on the "fringe" side. I just found peer-reviewed secondary source, published by Springer-Verlag, that covers that 2004 DOE review, and that claims it was shallow, that if they had taken more time, they'd have been more positive. It was already far more toward the "emerging science" view of cold fusion than the "pathological science" view that has been so popular here. --Abd (talk) 13:30, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

That's looks like an application of the black-and-white fallacy that critics use so consistently. i believe by "it is over" he means the debate over whether there is some unusual phenomena being observed or it's all a bunch of b.s. / errors in measurements / bad experimental setups. that or whether "cold fusion" (more accurately "condensed matter nuclear science") is "pseudoscience" or a valid area of research. both or either. in any case, it's pretty obvious he doesn't mean that they've "solved the riddle", so to speak, as you nonetheless seem to have (intentionally?) misinterpreted. Kevin Baas^talk 13:26, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

That's correct, Kevin. Parts of the riddle have been solved. I'll be using Huizenga as a source for a proposed edit, because that's almost exactly what he wrote, in 1993. The ash is helium. That's over. It is also clear, there is no real dissent, the fuel is deuterium. Now, take some deuterium, put it in a black box, open the box, and you have some helium. Is this a "fusion" box? Widom and Larsen, effectively, supported by Krivit, say no. It's a "different nuclear process," and they propose a theory based on the (highly speculative) formation of ultra-low-momentum neutrons. But Storms (2010) comes right out and titles the article "Status of cold fusion (2010)." If I were writing for the media, the headline would be "Cold Fusion Comes Out of the Closet." --Abd (talk) 13:41, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

See Britz's statistics, no increase there. From his FAQ:

"On the other hand, the same people have been known to boast about how many papers there are in my collection, what with my strict criteria, showing what an active field cold fusion is. Actually, at the time of writing this, there are 1438 papers in the collection, and for an exciting field, this is not that much. I believe, for example, that high temperature superconductivity has tens of thousands of papers, and there has not been an exponential decline in the publication rate as there has been for cold fusion (see the statistics plots)."

--Enric Naval (talk) 15:16, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand why you presented this information. Nobody is debating it. Kevin Baas^talk 15:32, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

(unindent) Britz is a skeptic, and he makes a standard skeptical argument. If cold fusion is real, why aren't there tens of thousands of papers on it? Well, HTSC was easy to demonstrate, relatively speaking, all you needed was a precise recipe. Cold fusion, initially, was so hard to demonstrate that even Pons and Fleischmann failed when they ran out of their original material. It took years just to figure out how to fabricate the rods so that the nanostructure produced the effect. And it's still difficult and quirky. There are many, many non-obvious mistakes to make.

Britz shows a plot of papers published, per month. Given that publication decreased (exponentially, as he stated) until about 2004 or 2005, to six papers in one year (2005), if we are going to consider what's recent, we would start with that minimum. Something happened in 2005. The 2004 DOE review was out, and it was much more favorable than the extreme skeptics would have, they were forced to rely upon a misinterpreted summary to claim that "nothing had changed," It's true that nothing had changed in terms of the actual recommendation, but the underlying consensus had flipped radically, and that's obvious, if someone still wants to discuss that. Naturwissenschaften started publishing cold fusion research in 2005. The sky did not fall, and they continued, reaching the point where they published a major review just a few days ago. If you look at Wikiversity:Cold fusion/Recent sources, you can see the drastic increase since 2005.

The take-home message for this article: It is no longer tenable to assume, in judging independently published sources, that cold fusion is "fringe." It is very definitely, at worst, "emerging science." That is what the peer-reviewed secondary sources are in entire agreement on, in that they treat the field as legitimate and as showing confirmed results. Seventeen of these sources, published in the last five years. No contrary secondary sources of equivalent quality or better since 2005. So, from now on, I'm hoping that no more sources will be rejected on the basis of "fringe," no more assumptions will be made that the "scientific consensus is that cold fusion is pathological science," in order to reject what is reliably sourced, just because it is "fringe" and would create "undue weight." The response to undue weight, when produced by using reliable sources, is to balance with contrary sources of equivalent quality, and, with science, which changes, later reviews of otherwise equivalent quality take precedence over earlier reviews. You can still report the old stuff as of historical interest. It just needs to be dated. --Abd (talk) 15:59, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Above, Enric Naval states, pointing to Britz's graph, No increase there. And his edit summary was no increase on publications. That is incorrect, and seriously misleading, based on incorrect synthesis by Enric from his impression of two pieces of evidence. It's easiest to see this at Wikiversity:Cold fusion/Recent sources which presents the Britz bibliography as a list by year, so that in one place, you can see each year's publications. I've added one paper that Britz seems to have missed, in 2006, and Britz misclassified one book as to year of publication. I added the recent Storms review. I also eliminated a few papers that aren't about cold fusion (bubble fusion is not cold fusion, it's hot fusion, if it's real.) Monographs are below classed with "papers," So this is the data so far, and anyone is welcome to edit it to correct errors, Wikiversity is a WMF wiki, and your SUL should allow you to log in and edit there, if you have done the linking (see your Preferences):

• 2005: 6 papers.
• 2006: 11 papers.
• 2007: 8 papers.
• 2008: 22 papers.
• 2009: 24 papers.
• 2010: 18 papers so far. Extrapolate to 24.

There should be no doubt that publication of papers in this field has greatly increased since 2005, following Britz's standards for inclusion. (There is no doubt that Britz will include the additions I've made, this is mere updating.) --Abd (talk) 16:27, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Right, I'll wait until Britz updates his list.

Meanwhile, about cold fusion no longer being discredited since 2004-2005, you should check this:

source dump

2006 "A literature review uncovered six distinctive indicators of failed information epidemics in the scientific journal literature: (1) presence of seminal papers(s), (2) rapid growth/decline in author frequency, (3) multi-disciplinary research, (4) epidemic growth/decline in journal publication frequency, (5) predominance of rapid communication journal publications, and (6) increased multi-authorship. These indicators were applied to journal publication data from two known failed information epidemics, Polywater and Cold Nuclear Fusion.", E. Ackermann, "Indicators of failed information epidemics in the scientific journal literature: A publication analysis of Polywater and Cold Nuclear Fusion", Scientometrics 66, 451-466 (2006) 2007 "The claims of cold fusion and excess heat are not generally accepted today" page 56, "Understanding voltammetry", Richard G. Compton, Craig E. Banks, illustrated, World Scientific, 2007, ISBN 9812706259, 9789812706256 2007 "Seventeen years after the announcement [of cold fusion] the scientific community does not acknowledge this field as a genuine scientific research theme." Biberian 2007 2007, "Although a few researchers still believe in the feasibility of cold fusion, the majority have long dismissed it as mistaken.", S. Perkowitz, page 113, "Hollywood science: movies, science, and the end of the world", illustrated, Columbia University Press, 2007, ISBN 0231142803, 9780231142809 2008 "Recent such examples (of pathological science) are the polywater and cold fusion controversies. (...) In 1989, Fleishman and Pons claimed to have carried out fusion reaction between deuterium nuclei within a platinum electrode in an electrochemical cell under rather mild conditions. It gained immediate attention, as this could solve all the energy problems of the world. Even though the results were ‘reproduced’ by some other workers, eventually it was found that there was no evidence in support for cold fusion." Editorial in issue dedicated to Irving Langmuir, Resonance journal 2009 "Chemists Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischman claimed in 1989 to have discovered nuclear reactions at low temperatures: cold fusion. (Frank Close, Too Hot to Handle : The Race for Cold Fusion, 1991.) But their claim could not be reproduced , and their reputation suffered." [The Scientific Enterprise 6. The Methods in Science], also Resonance Journal, by a Emeritus Professor of Physics and Humanities. 2010 "Numerous theories have been proffered to explain a possible nuclear process, while just as many have been proposed to give a non-nuclear chemical explanation of these observations. Presently the majority of nuclear physicists are skeptical and believe that spurious observations of "cold fusion" are due to nuclear background interactions such as cosmic rays, or because of inaccurate and/or inadequate measuring instruments. To date no absolute scientific proof acceptable to most physicits has been provided yet for PF-like cold fusion phenomena. nevertheless cold fusion research is still pursued by believers." page 134, Jeff W. Eerkens, "The Nuclear Imperative: A Critical Look at the Approaching Energy Crisis (More Physics for Presidents)", Volumen 16 de Topics in Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality, edition 2, Springer, 2010, ISBN 9048186668, 9789048186662 (citing a 2008 book, [Sun in a bottle: the strange history of fusion and the science of wishful thinking], by Charles Seife) 2010 "Since then, more that 1,000 papers in the field of cold fusion have been published. Theoretical models are unable to describe these anomalies. The scientific community still rejects the interpretation of cold fusion experiments. (...) Most scientists are dismissive of these [replication] efforts, but the researchers have managed to gain some attention in recent years. In 2006, both the American Chemical Society and the Physical Society devoted sessions to low-energy nuclear reactions. However, skepticism about the existence of cold fusion remains the default position of most scientists. Two issues with current cold fusion research are cited as being problematic: the lack of consistency reproducible results as well as theoretical acceptable mechanism. Recently [the 14th cold fusion conference took place]. The evidence was reported showing that the excess heat can be reproduced. The conference organizers attempted to change the manner, avoiding the terminology "cold fusion", and referring explicitely to above-mentioned work as the Fleischmann-Pons Effect (PFE). Presently, imperfect reproducibility, lack of a theory, inadequate funding, and limited communications still challenge what is intrinsically an interdisciplinary and quite complex subject. Despite such difficulties, there has been remarkable scientific progress in studies of the FPE in the past two decades.", page 275, Sultan B. Dabagov, Luigi Palumbo, "Charged and Neutral Particles Channeling Phenomena: Channeling 2008, Proceedings of the 51st Workshop of the Infn Eloisatron Project", The Science and Culture Series - Physics, A Zichichi (editor), World Scientific, 2010, ISBN, 9814307009, 9789814307000 2010 "Pons and Fleishman thought that they had achieved cold fusion using a palladium catalyst, but their discovery was based on a mistaken interpretation of their data. Other cold fusion has been reported from time to time. Although there is no proof against it (after all, Alvarez did see a kind of cold fusion [using muons]), most people are pessimistic. The reason is that there are no other suitable replacements for the muons used by Alvarez, and that other chemical process typically has energy per atom that is a million times too small to allow the nuclei to approach each other. The whole field is distorted by the fact that anyone who discovers cold fusion will soon (1) win a Nobel Prize, (2) become a multimillionaire, and (3) be known in history as the person who solved the world's energy needs. As a result, when someone sees something that looks like cold fusion (but isn't), it is so exciting that there is a strong tendency to want to believe that a real discovery has really been made, and to keep allthe details secret - but that means that they can't be checked by other scientists." Richard A. Muller, "Physics and Technology for Future Presidents: An Introduction to the Essential Physics Every World Leader Needs to Know", Princeton University Press, illustrated, 2010, ISBN 0691135045, 9780691135045 Thanks for this 2010 source, Enric. However, this is not a peer-reviewed secondary source. It's academically published, true, but it is not a review of the field and what you have shown is only what has all along been acknowledged: when the topic of cold fusion comes up, among those not familiar with and given an opportunity to examine the evidence, the general rejection of 1989-1990 colors it, and what was assumed then continues to be assumed. This source has all the marks. "Their discovery was based on a mistaken interpretation of the data." That was never established, it was assumed. "There are no other suitable replacements for the muons used by Alvarez," assumes that the reaction is d-d fusion, and, even that could not possibly be known, it's an impossibility proof depending on ignorance. The evidence was strong that the reaction wasn't d-d fusion, anyway, so claiming that it couldn't be d-d fusion is redundant. The issue is what about some other kind of "unknown nuclear reaction"? Now, we are now finding that, indeed, a nuclear reaction was discovered, and, indeed, it was fusion (it produces helium, and at the right energy for any reaction that produces helium from deuterium, even if it doesn't go through "d-d fusion"). (And this is reflected in about sixteen peer-reviewed secondary sources in mainstream journals, independently published, since 2005. You have contrary source that can overrule these recent publications? You think that the casual mention of cold fusion in the source above is a contradiction of equivalent quality? And nobody got rich. This is the classic argument that. "If you are so smart, why aren't you rich?" It simply doesn't necessarily follow. People tried, indeed, hundreds of millions of dollars were put into attempting to make the reaction more reliable and more efficient, and they gave up. It's hard. That doesn't have anything to do with whether or not the science is good. The engineering problem, which is what the money is about, is made very difficult because it is not known what the mechanism is. Without knowing the mechanism, engineering research is a stab in the dark. This is why the 2004 DOE review recommended more basic research. Funding a massive engineering program, they quite correctly understood, would be premature. It is not known if practical applications will ever be possible, and it's probably impossible to determine that until we know what the mechanism is. Now, what does this have to do with the science itself? And with what experts understand? Or do we think that "mainstream scientific opinion" means that we grab a set of random scientists, no matter what their specialty or knowledge, and without giving them the evidence to review, and ask them what they think? No, Enric, this is why we depend on peer-reviewed secondary sources reviewing the field, not off-hand mentions like this, to report on science. Your sources here report on the sociology, and history That's great, for an article on the history of cold fusion! Not for the present state of the science. Frankly, it won't all fit in one article. --Abd (talk) 20:40, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Now I'll go and follow Olorinish's advice below. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:34, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

The additions are three papers, and Britz just announced on the CMNS list that he's added the Storms 2010 Review, that's one down, two to go. This is immaterial to the conclusion, which is massive. What Enric Naval has posted in collapse is the material covered at Wikiversity:Cold fusion/Controversy. It shows that (1) Cold fusion was rejected. It was. No contest. (2) Many in the field believe that it was rejected, and many think that it is still rejected. I discuss this with them all the time. But that's not shown as current by the decisions of the peer reviewers at mainstream journals. The blanket rejection, the conclusion of "fringe," hasn't been viable since 2004. To go more into this, we should be considering actual text. --Abd (talk) 18:01, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Tell Dritz to update his FAQ. If his stats show an increase in publication, then he should say so in his FAQ. --Enric Naval (talk) 07:24, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

He has been collecting that data since very early on. He reports that publication drastically slowed down from the 1989-1990 levels. That's true. What he says in the FAQ was true, and even complete, if it was written earlier. I'll pass your comment along as a suggestion, eh? Britz, not Dritz. And this has to do with our business here? --Abd (talk) 15:34, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Let's see. I just did a Google Scholar search on "high temerature superconductivity" restricted to between 2005-2010, and got 5,420 hits. Let's assume 50% of those are redundant, that leaves ~2700 papers, books, etc., in the last 5 years. And you have, what, about 100 for CF in the same time frame? That's the difference between real science and pathological science. Yup, a few squeak through, but there is NO evidence of any success associated with the field. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:13, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

That's A difference. however, it does not distinguish the two. ducks fly south for the winter. my grandparents fly south for the winter. therefore my grandparents are ducks. It doesn't work that way. 17:21, 27 September 2010 (UTC) This comment was added by Kevin_Baas

Your logical construct is inapplicable because we are not talking about things as diverse as ducks and grandparents. We are talking about well known patterns of publication in the scientific literature. Fields that are producing reliable results produce increasing numbers of papers as the concepts defined early on get applied and expanded. The CF publications fit another well-known pattern, that of a mistake. Thsi patern was well known when Langmuir gave his famous talk in 1953. The only difference today is that he didn't know the impact of the 'Information Age' and the ability it gave to pathological scientists to persist in the literature. Kirk shanahan (talk) 14:10, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

firstly, that is neither "mine" nor a "construct". It is a well-known logical fallacy known as Affirming_the_consequent. And like all logical fallacies--and all logic for that matter---the particular context/subject matter, it's diversity or lack thereof, etc. is all completely irrelevant. It is still just as logically invalid. (in fact, in many cases that may amount to piling yet another logical fallacy on top of the original: namely, non-sequitur.) if you disagree or doubt any of these assertions, refer to the relevant cited articles. Kevin Baas^talk 16:15, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Re: terminology - whatever. What is not at doubt is that publication statistics are always viewed as telling an important part of the story, and it has been that way a long time (which is why Langmuir used it as a way to detect pathological science in 1953). I posted stats for HTSC since someone posted stats for CF. The interpretation of these stats is that the CF field does NOT show any signs of being a 'mainstream' field of endeavor, while HTSC clearly does. I also, for fun, checked on polywater, and for 2005-10, it had 214 hits. The first 10 or so included primarily philosophical discussions of bad sceince with polywater shown as the example. It is also always recognized that this is a generalization, and that there may be an exception or two. But CF has not shown up as that exception yet. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:33, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Talk about cherry-picked data! I responded to this thread with a detailed section on #Cold fusion and pathological science. --Abd (talk) 21:54, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Subsections of "Proposed explanations" aren't

Does it bother anyone else that the subsections of the "Proposed explanations" section aren't proposed explanations, but instead are "reasons that fusion is an unlikely explanation for the experimental results"? Should those reasons be moved out to a different section named to identify them as such, and actual proposed explanations be included in the Proposed explanations section? I think so.

I am going to try to add the X-rays section which has been in discussion for months today, and hold off on this new proposal until sufficient discussion has occurred. Ura Ursa (talk) 20:40, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

It's been noticed before! Above, please see #Proposed_explanations. What's been proposed is just two explanations, besides the default "experimental error." There are many more, both those that may have been historically important or notable (the theory of Julian Schwinger, for example, and others). As to current thinking, Storms (2010) focuses on cluster fusion, but also mentions other theories. Hydrino theory was mentioned in the edits that established the version referenced above simply because it had additional reliable sources, not because this is considered likely by researchers in the field. Storms (2010) is copiously referenced.

This "fusion is an unlikely explanation" thing was based on assumptions that "fusion" would mean "d-d" fusion. Huizenga (1993) follows just about every piece of evidence for cold fusion to helium with, "But, of course, the 23.8 MeV gamma ray was not observed." Which simply assumes that if it's fusion, it must be D-D fusion. Given that it is now known -- very well known, if we look at the evidence, which Storms does in detail in this latest paper -- that helium is indeed being produced in amounts commensurate with the excess heat -- some kind of fusion is now extremely likely. Just not d-d fusion! (Storms covers the argument I started making here a year ago, that the correlation, which is quite tight, validates both the excess heat and helium measurements. I was not then proposing this for the article but for background, but there is now peer-reviewed secondary source for it, if we start using what is supposed to be the gold standard for science articles.) --Abd (talk) 22:26, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

I think the idea of the proposed explanations section is for explanations of any sort, whether they be nuclear of chemical or what have you. But of course blanket "explanations" like "it's all a conspiracy", or "it's all measurement error" don't belong. The explanations should have some scientific evidence behind them, not just be pure speculation.

But if there's anything like "it doesn't follow expected nuclear reaction pathways for plasmas based on cross-sections.", well that kind of thing doesn't belong in that section as it doesn't explain anything. (though it certainly belongs in the article somewhere, and i believe it is) Kevin Baas^talk 14:02, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

For the record, my alternate chemical explanations sections is targeted for that section, so it will have some actual chemistry in it shortly, and I make several other suggestions about that section elsewhere on this page. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:52, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

There is an issue here: is this proposed explanations for excess heat or other experimental phenomena, or proposed explanations for "cold fusion," i.e., nuclear reactions at room temperature? If the former, if we are going to address proposed non-nuclear explanations of experimental results, we should first have the actual experimental results covered, wouldn't we think? What are they? The recent Storms review covers that fairly thoroughly, as to the most notable results. We don't, not yet.

But there is a whole topic of its own, proposed explanations for how nuclear reactions might take place at low temperatures. For that topic, the kind of explanations that Kirk will present would be inappropriate. This is merely a classification issue, i.e., where Kirk's non-nuclear explanations -- and those of others, as well -- are placed.

On the other hand, there is also a problem as to the notability of Kirk's work. It's been noticed, but only to reject it. Explaining it in detail will probably, at an article of this level (on the whole topic of cold fusion), give it too much weight, but perhaps we can find sufficient information in the rejections -- is there any other review of it? -- to put up something. The best source for this, in fact, will probably be the paper just published by Marwan et al, which is a specific response to Kirk's arguments in JEM. I don't have a copy of that yet. I'll ask for one, but if someone has it, it would be appreciated.... --Abd (talk) 02:44, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

It is my understanding, and my opinion, that the proposed explanations section should be for proposed explanations of the empirical observations, be they excess heat or helium ash or what-have-you, be them some or all or simply one observed phenomenon. Having said that, yes, it would then make the most narrative sense that the empirical observations that the proposed explanations propose to explain are stated prior to said explanations (so that people know what is being "explained". Ideally such things would be in immediately or very soon before said section, and for logical clarity in their own section. Kevin Baas^talk 14:05, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

On the topic of the proposed explanations section, i'd personally find the article more interesting / valuable if it included good logical rebuttles to the explanations (in proportion to the respective available quantity and quality (sourced), of course). Though i'm not exactly sure how one would go about formating something like that; how practical that would be. Kevin Baas^talk 14:09, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

It is difficult to know where to start. Over a year ago, I concluded that a major rewrite was needed. That could easily be done at Wikiversity, and an article -- or more than one alternate article -- could be written there, making it possible to run an RfC on the best version. This could also be done in user space on Wikipedia. However, short of a rewrite, anything that is in peer-reviewed secondary source should start going into the article. Where it is something that could be date-specific, it should be dated. If the source is significant, the facts should be attributed facts.

Right now, the article is a farrago of facts and alleged facts taken from sources of widely disparate quality. Material from peer-reviewed secondary sources has been excluded on the argument that it is "fringe" and would therefore lend undue weight. But undue weight is frequently misapplied here. This is an article on cold fusion, not on nuclear fusion as an entire topic. We have lots of material here based on non-peer-reviewed secondary sources, basically opinions, that are not attributed to the author, but when there is a peer-reviewed secondary source, in a mainstream journal, an explicit "Review" of the field, extensively sourced (150 citations), it is given short shrift, attributed to the author, calling him a "supporter," implying that, of course, he'd have this "opinion."

But imagining that a major review of the field would be written by someone with no interest in it? Isn't that a bit crazy? There is no better source, at this time, on cold fusion, than Storms (2010). Nobody is suggesting that other views, reports, reviews of the field, from other sources of equivalent quality should be excluded. Indeed, they should be included. But if they are very old, as would be true with any science, science moves on, so the references should be dated. Cold fusion was massively rejected in 2989-1990, that is a very well-documented story, in reliable source, *and we are not telling most of it.*

Anyway, bottom line: start by using peer-reviewed reliable sources on the science. Clearly separate the historical information from the science. That so-and-so rejected cold fusion in 1993, say, is about an opinion in 1993, which cannot cover the subsequent literature and science. Huizenga explicitly rejected the heat/helium evidence in 1993, not because the data was flawed, per se, but he's quite explicit: he claimed it wasn't confirmed. Yet. He wrote that "one single careful experiment" that confirmed this would resolve the issue. There was such an experiment, performed by McKubre later in that decade, it was the subject of the Appendix to the Hagelstein review paper presented to the DoE in 2004. And it was misunderstood and misreported by at least one reviewer, and summarized even more incorrectly by the bureaucrat who prepared that summary. And what do we have in the article?

The error of the bureaucrat, that is blatantly contradictory to the actual review paper which it is supposedly describing.

This error was pointed out more than a year ago on this Talk page. At that time, my analysis was rejected as "original research." I wasn't proposing that the analysis be put in the article, merely that when we know that a source is in error, when this is completely clear, as it is in this case, we aren't obligated to use that source as being factual. We have two choices: we can report what it says, attributing it, and point to the error directly, without synthesis, letting the reader make the choice, or we can exclude it. We can sometimes synthesize an absence. For example, in this case, "However, the series of sixteen cells in the Hagelstein review were not electrolytic cells, they were Case cells, gas-loaded. Data on excess heat, temporally correlated with helium, was only presented for one of these cells. The report does not state how many cells showed excess heat, but other accounts of this work [cite] show that many did not s how excess heat."

The error seems to have been overlooked by those in the field, except for me. (They were far more concerned with what seemed to be a kind of blindness to the evidence, in general, on the part of some reviewers. But nobody picked up on the error. I found it by trying to locate, in the review document, the basis for the claim of 5 cells showing helium out of 16 cells showing heat, since that was contradictory to all other evidence on this issue.) We do have, I just found it, peer-reviewed secondary source that covers the DOE review and considered it shallow.

How about we start by fixing that error! I'm working on heat/helium at Wikiversity:Cold fusion/Excess heat correlated with helium, if anyone cares to help. This is currently a listing of some of what exists in reliable sources on this topic, and some comments. There is more, much more. Miles, in particular, published in the early 1990s, and has been reviewed and cited extensively.

This is the most conclusive evidence regarding cold fusion. The correlation, as Huizenga realized, validates both the excess heat and helium measurements. No objection notably raised, covered in a secondary source, has addressed the correlation. Instead, doubts are simply raised about the calorimetry and the helium levels (which are often below atmospheric helium, but not always, and the measurements don't behave like leakage). No explanation for why they'd be correlated with each other, at a very significant ratio, the ratio expected from deuterium fusion to helium. --Abd (talk) 15:37, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

There's an idea for how to format a proposed explanation section: have a subsection for each phenomena, followed by proposed explanations for it. If an explanation has significant good-quality sourced rebuttles, we can put that in there right after the explanation, (a brief sentence or two, cited and attributed). If a phenonema has few explanations for it, well then the articles will show that fact as it is, neutrally. And so on. Clear, organized presentations are the most conducive to neutrality and proportional weighing. Kevin Baas^talk 16:03, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I'm creating a page, User:Abd/Cold fusion/Proposed explanations to work on this, because it's probably impossible to work on it piecemeal in mainspace, and creating this page in Talk space won't allow a Talk page to be attached directly. I'm not doing this to try to control the page. I and others can create subsection there on the various reported phenomena, give, first, the evidence for the phenomenon, then proposed explanations, and evidence or notable speculation about prosaic explanations, then covering the controversy, if there is adequate source, which there is in some cases.

One of the things that we will run up against very quickly. Much of the rejection of the experimental work has been based on an assumption that, if there is a nuclear reaction, it would be d-d fusion, and then the skeptic gives all the reasons why what is happening can't be d-d fusion; Huizenga must have said "no gamma rays" and "no neutrons" and "no He-3" a hundred times. But that is only an argument against d-d fusion, and the field moved on. D-d fusion is now extremely unpopular in the field, though there are still some who have proposed mechanisms for it. "No gamma rays" was never a reason to reject heat evidence or helium evidence, in fact, but only to reject a single possible naive explanation for it. So Huizenga gives "no gamma ray," in more than one place, as a reason to reject the helium evidence.... But helium can be produced by many different nuclear reactions, and Storms (2010) gives a partial list.

If you look carefully, you will see that the entire physics community, with some notable exceptions, rejected cold fusion based on this assumption of d-d fusion. Other theories have been proposed over the years -- including early on -- but they were mostly ignored. No secondary source has rejected the theory of "some other kind of fusion." Some, like Shanahan, perhaps most notably -- which isn't much! -- have rejected some of the evidence, based on hypothesized, and unproven, prosaic explanations. That, however, unless verified experimentallly, is just another theory, not evidence against. --Abd (talk) 19:14, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

For the 500th time... Abd is WRONG when he says I have presented "unproven, prosaic explanations". He is doing a very good job however, at sockpuppeting for the CF community's misguided attempt to justify ignoring my criticisms. Since Abd continually misstates the case, I feel it needs to be clearly stated here, so editors can assess the importance of the CCS problem. First, in 2002 I published a paper that reanalyzed cold fusion data presented by Ed Storms in 2000 at ICCF8 (or maybe 9) as showing cold fusion excess heat peaks, with a maximum signal of 780 mW. That reanalysis showed (i.e. PROVED) that Ed's data could be 'zeroed out', i.e, analyzed as having no excess energy at all, by varing the calibration constants by 1-3%. That is a fact. These changes are trivial and similar changes are routinely observed.

Second, everyone realizes that using the wrong calibration equation to translate experimental signals to power will give the wrong answer. Third, combining (1) and (2) PROVES it is possible to interpret the Ed Storms data differently, i.e. as showing no excess heat. This is published, established, and unarguable. It is worth nothing that the CCSs observed in the reanalysis were highly patterened, i.e. non-random, i.e systematic.

Next, using inductive reasoning (not the syllogism that J. Marwan, M. C. H. McKubre, F. L. Tanzella, P. L. Hagelstein, M. H. Miles, M. R. Swartz, Edmund Storms, Y. Iwamura, P. A. Mosier-Boss and L. P. G. Forsley claim I use) it is reasoned that (a) any form of calibration equation will suffer the same problem, i.e. changing the constants will produce different numeric answers from the same measured values, and (b) any calibrated instrument of any kind can suffer from the same problem (only uncalibrated equipment, i.e. direct, absolute reading equipment, would not). I submit these two points are trivial and obvious.

Combining it all, all cold fusion calorimetry to date has occurred with calibrated calorimeters. None have reported varing the calibration constants to examine the impact of minor variations in those constants. Ergo, the possibility that what was observed with Ed Storms data could also be observed in any other work remains largely unexplored (largely because I have commented in 2005 on the possibility with respect to the paper I was commenting on, Szpak, Mosier-Boss, Miles, and Fleischmann (2004)). The conclusion is that it is possible that most or all of reported excess heat events were in fact nothing but calibration constant shifts.

Finally, no amount of handwaving can change the above conclusions. They are all either trivial and obvious, or derived from unchallenged algebra. The conclusions above are not unproven, but they are prosaic (definition: Straightforward; matter-of-fact).

Given that the CCS problem can logically affect every excess heat determination and possibly negate all such claims, I feel the CCS problem represents the greatest challenge to date for the largest and most important block of data purporting to prove 'cold fusion'.

In an ideal world, where cold fusioneers are 'good' scientists, Abd's concerns about 'notability' might be rational. But as we all know, cold fusion has a reputation for pathological science that must be taken into account. One symptom of pathological science is the refusal to participate in the normal scientific process, and the cold fusioneers evidence this symptom by the way they try to ignore their critics (I also include Clarke's work on He detection here) and following that by the way they grossly misinterpret those critcisms when finally forced to note them. Also folding into this 'notability' concern is the well-known problem that the mainsteam lost interest in the field long ago. Thus I submit that the editors here need to consider what would be expected in this situation as opposed to a 'normal' one. As described above, the CCS problem is applicable to every excess heat claim, which should assure its 'notability' given the above concerns. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:39, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Most of this is completely divorced from what we need to discuss here, i.e., even if Dr. Shanahan is correct, it is, for us, moot. Dr. Shanahan proposes that there is, not merely some random calibration error, but a proposed systematic one, due to unexpected hydrogen/oxygen recombination at the cathode, through a speculated mechanism, circulating oxygen bubbles, causing heating at that location, not anticipated and tested in the calibration, which then throws off the measurement of heat. How and why this would systematically affect all systems including those using recombiners is, and using flow calorimetry, is, as yet, beyond me, but I assume I'll be studying Shahanan's work in more detail.

The calorimetry showing excess heat is, in fact, verified by helium measurements. Each of these measurements may be questioned, and they were. What I have never seen questioned in peer-reviewed reliable source is the correlation. Huizenga, a polemic source, but academically published, doesn't actually question Mile's helium data, directly, but notes how important it would be if confirmed. Helium data has been questioned repeatedly and notably, but always on a proposition that helium found was due to leakage from atmospheric helium, which is implausible given the data (especially the temporal data shown in the Case study by McKubre), but even more so by the correlation with heat. This correlation was noted by Huizenga in 1993, it was published before that, and I've not seen it challenged, but I certainly haven't read everything! I'll be presenting an edit on heat/helium, based on multiple reliable sources, including peer-reviewed studies and reviews. I will include critical sources, to the extent that I can find them. Dr. Shanahan is welcome to make suggestions as well. --Abd (talk) 18:12, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Abd is at it again. He misstates the calorimetric issue, by presenting the details of a speculative mechanism as if it were presented as a certain fact. The correct way to present the issue is to first present the fact that trivial changes in calibration constant have been shown to zero out what has been called an excess heat signal, and that there were very clear signs of the systematic nature of the shift. Next, one should point out that there is no logical reason why such couldn’t happen in any calorimeter (I know the CFers say it can’t happen in such-and-such a calorimeter, but they are wrong and I can cite references). Then, one can mention that, oh, by the way, a speculative mechanism for how a shift can occur has been proposed and debated somewhat, but still reamins untested.

And also, the calorimetry is not validated by detecting air inleakage via He measurements (the conventional explanation given here, vs. the unconventional). That should be obvious to all. So, until data are supplied demonstrating the detected He does not come from leaks, and claim that it validates anything is premature.

“What I have never seen questioned in peer-reviewed reliable source is the correlation.” – That’s because Abd hasn’t bothered to read my JEM paper. I question it directly. And yes, the response to that attempts to invalidate the question (note that it does not supply any reason to think the question has been answered experimentally). However, their comments are based in their fallacious understanding of my comments and proposals, so the matter certainly isn’t settled.

“due to leakage from atmospheric helium” – No, ambient He concentration. The difference is that in a lab, the ambient He concentration can be much higher that the 5.22 ppm normally stated as atmospheric He concentration.

“especially the temporal data shown in the Case study by McKubre” – challenged directly in my JEM paper, thus not conclusive at this time.

"Most of this is completely divorced from what we need to discuss here" - Then why do you keep harping on it. In fact, you concsitently try to establish that my comments are either wrong or irrelevant, so they can be discounted and my proposed edit to the article stopped. Unfortunately, you do so with faulty logic and clear bias. Thus, your proposed edits and such should be viewed with great caution, as you are unable to handle opposing opinion. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:11, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Interesting, yeah, the sections are in the order i described, but ironically i don't see any proposed explanations in the "proposed explanations" section.

another interesting thing is "reported phenomena" are such precisely because they are unlikely (a fact, ironically, noted in the "proposed explanations" section.)

those sections and the material in them definitely need to be reorganized / reworked. when did they get like that? geez. Kevin Baas^talk 19:49, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

I've made a workspace, too: User_talk:Kevin_Baas/workspace/cold_fusion_refactoring#unorganized_stuff. So far just a refactoring of what's in those two sections so that the section titles actually reflect the content. Kevin Baas^talk 20:07, 28 September 2010 (UTC)