Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 12:11 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.comwrote: Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: or rather, why do nearly all intelligent people reject it. I know a lot about this, because I have access to the traffic data at LENR-CANR.org. The answer is: reply on wavewathing.net/fringe by popeye
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
Has there even been a single P-F DPd electrolysis cell running anywhere in the world in 2013? When was the last month and year that one was being run? When was the last month and year in which one showed any anomaly? About how much did these runs cost? How carefully were they described in public reports? Are any laboratory components and original records available? The attempts by many groups to replicate the SPAWAR codeposition results with CR39 film recording of claimed particle tracks seem to have floundered in confusion, a few years ago. within the fellowship of service, Rich Murray On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 8:03 PM, Kevin O'Malley kevmol...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 3:05 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.comwrote: To the Japanese in 1941, Americans seemed outlandish. To the skeptics who agree with Cude or Close, we are the ones disconnected from reality. We are illogical and even mentally ill thinking that we can fuse hydrogen in a mason jar. I do not think it does any good getting angry at such people. It is important that you understand their mindset. ***Okay, Jed. What we need as a group is a minimum set of facts that we agree are incontrovertible. I would think it is that Pons Fleischmann were careful electrochemists, the preeminent of their day. That the physicists who chose to debunk their findings were far from careful due to inexperience in electrochemistry and this led to their negative findings. That there have been 14,700 replications of the P-F anomolous heat effect. If not, then how many? 180, as per Storms and National Instruments? What are the base minimum set of facts that we all agree on?
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
Kevin O'Malley kevmol...@gmail.com wrote: To the Japanese in 1941, Americans seemed outlandish. To the skeptics who agree with Cude or Close, we are the ones disconnected from reality. We are illogical and even mentally ill thinking that we can fuse hydrogen in a mason jar. I do not think it does any good getting angry at such people. It is important that you understand their mindset. ***Okay, Jed. What we need as a group is a minimum set of facts that we agree are incontrovertible. Sure, but we cannot expect people like Cude to agree with any of them. A person can always find a reason to dismiss something. Cude says that the tritium results may all be mistakes or fraud. Jones Beene accused him of being intellectually dishonest, but I assume Cude is sincere. Bockris tallied up tritium reports and said that over 100 labs detected it. If I were Cude, this would give me pause. I find it impossible to imagine there are so so many incompetent scientists, I cannot think of why scientists would publish fake data that triggers attacks on their reputation by the Washington Post. What would be the motive? But I am sure that Cude, and Park, and the others sincerely believe that scientists are deliberately trashing their own reputations by publishing fake data. I would think it is that Pons Fleischmann were careful electrochemists, the preeminent of their day. Of course they were, but no skeptic will agree. Fleischmann was the president of the Electrochemical Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society, but Cude and the others are convinced he was a sloppy, mentally ill criminal. That's what they say, and I do not think they would say it if they did not believe it. That the physicists who chose to debunk their findings were far from careful due to inexperience in electrochemistry and this led to their negative findings. There were many reasons experiments failed in 1989. Some of the failed experiments were carefully done, but they used the wrong diagnostics. Most of them looked for neutrons instead of heat. That there have been 14,700 replications of the P-F anomolous heat effect. If not, then how many? 180, as per Storms and National Instruments? Those are two different tallies. The 14,700 is the number of individual positive runs reported in the literature for all techniques, including glow discharge. 180 is the number of laboratories reporting success. Some of those labs saw excess heat many times. If 180 labs measure excess heat 10 times each, that would be 1,800 positive runs in the Chinese tally. I do not know where the Chinese got their data. Presumably from published papers. I have not gone through papers counting up positive and negative runs. What are the base minimum set of facts that we all agree on? If we include the skeptics there is not a single fact we all agree on. Not one. Cude looks at Fig. 1 in the McKubre paper and says the peak at 94% loading means nothing. I think he says it is the result of random effects or cherry-picked data. I look at it and say it proves there is a controlling parameter (loading) that cannot possibly cause artifactual excess heat, so this proves the effect is real. I say that even if only 20% achieve high loading, the other 80% are not relevant. Even if only one in a million achieved high loading this would still prove the effect is real. Cude looks at the preponderance of cells that do not achieve high loading and he concludes that they prove this graph is meaningless noise. There is absolutely no reconciling our points of view. From my point of view, his assertion is scientifically illiterate. He does not seem to understand how graphs work, and what it means to say that data is significant rather than noise. From his point of view, McKubre, Storms and I have no idea what we are talking about and this graph is no more significant than a face of Jesus burned into someone's toast. I gather he thinks it is random noise that happens to peak at 94%, or it is fake data. I cannot describe what he thinks, because I have not read his messages carefully, but I am sure he honestly believes that Fig. 1 is meaningless. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
I wrote: Look, top admirals such as Yamamoto and our invincible soldiers have never lost a war in 6,000 years. . . . I meant 2,600 years. That was the claim, made in 1940. They held a big celebration, and informally named the zero fighter airplane after the last 2 digits (00). Supposedly. I do not want to exaggerate their irrationality. They had legitimate reasons to be upset with the U.S. They had entirely different notions about wars, and the scope of war. Their experience was with 19th century colonial wars in Asia, which were brief, with limited goals. They were not all-out wars like the U.S. Civil War or WWI. It did not occur to the Japanese political or military leaders that the only way they could win the war and avoid the destruction of every city in Japan would be for them to invade the continental U.S. and lay waste to every U.S. city and factory, from California to Washington and New York City, the way Sherman destroyed Georgia and the Carolinas in the Civil War. If you had asked a Japanese general or admiral if such a thing is within their power he would have said you are crazy. They were playing by different rules. As one of them remarked after the war, we had no concept of 'total war.' - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: or rather, why do nearly all intelligent people reject it. I know a lot about this, because I have access to the traffic data at LENR-CANR.org. The answer is: 1. Most intelligent people do not reject cold fusion, or accept it. Most people have no knowledge of it. They have no idea whether it exists or not, and no basis to judge. They sometimes repeat what they read in the mass media or Wikipedia, but that does not count. In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, many people repeated the assertion that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. These people had no knowledge of the situation, no experience in military intelligence, and -- in short -- no idea what they were talking about. 2. Taking the group of people who have read papers and who know enough about science to understand them, a large majority believe that cold fusion is real. I can tell this from the comments and requests for information that come to me as librarian. 3. Among people how done a formal review of cold fusion and written a paper, most believe it is real. They include people such as Gerischer and Duncan. The only exceptions I know of are Dieter Britz and some of the 2004 DoE review panel members. I consider that review a farce. The negative comments violate the scientific method in many ways, showing that these scientists do not know how to do their own jobs. (In every line of work you will find incompetent professionals, even at the highest levels. The creme de la creme of Wall Street tycoons and bankers triggered the 2008 crash. Gen. Colin Powell believed the Iraqi WMD intelligence.) 4. There are small number of hard-core opponents such as Robert Park, Huizenga, Close, Morrison and the editors of the Scientific American. These people jumped to the conclusion that cold fusion is wrong. They wrote highly unscientific papers and books to back this up, which shows that they do not understand the scientific method. Their arguments are easily refuted by grade-school level science textbooks. For example, textbooks say theory cannot overrule widely replicated, high-sigma data. Unfortunately, some of these people have a great deal of influence at places such as the Washington Post and the APS. There is tremendous opposition to cold fusion by the plasma fusion researchers and the DoE, because they fear losing their funding. Huizenga acted as their attack dog, a job he loved, which he described with glee, in his book and in discussions with me and others. These people have staked their reputations on cold fusion being wrong. They are emotionally blind to the facts. Huizenga and Morrison looked at the data, but -- as I said -- they made elementary mistakes. Others such as Park and the Sci. Am. editors say they have never read a paper, and it is clear from their statements they know nothing about this subject, so I assume they are telling the truth. Obviously, this means they have no right to any opinion, positive or negative. I summarized some of the extreme skeptics views here: http://pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/cf/293wikipedia.html You can see what they say in their own words. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 12:43 PM, Chris Zell chrisz...@wetmtv.com wrote: ** ** I believe that this lack of civility and fair play makes the 'extraordinary evidence' concept into nonsense. Civility has nothing to do with it. When evidence competes, the strongest evidence is taken more seriously. Keep in mind that the above *doesn't even begin to account for the distortion caused by entrenched moneyed interests. *Dr. Greer (of recent UFO exposure notoriety) referred to them as Petro-Fascists - which nicely sums them up. Anyone care to explain how an entire war costing hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives took place when it was entirely triggered by fraud? And hardly anyone seems to care? Not sure of your point. Academic scientists wouldn't give a hoot about Petro-fascists if an opportunity to win glory, honor and funding presented itself, as we saw in 1989. And the US government stands to benefit strategically against the petro-enemies if cold fusion were real. Fission and hot fusion were originally thought to be the final answer to our energy woes in the 50s and later, and the US pumped billions into both. Although it didn't work out the way everyone hoped, the incident shows that energy revolutions are not suppressed for petro interests or anyone else's. Any exception to generalizations - might always be inferior as to weightor strange, given lack of funding, Nonsense. High Tc superconductivity was instantly accepted. Quasi-crystals were ridiculed for a while but in a few years, they were embraced. Scientific inertia is no match for good evidence. If cold fusion were real, $500 M would be enough to produce similarly unequivocal evidence. A completely isolated device that can do some real work, or heat a large container of water, to prove its energy density is 10 or 100 times its weight in gasoline, would have the world beating a path to cold fusion's door …. again. attention or the outright prejudice that many encounter - in this circumstance of bias. The reality of cold fusion is in the interest of all but a very few researchers, so any bias in this area is more plausibly in its favor, as is obvious from 1989. The extraordinary goalposts might always be a distant illusion, especially if the desired effect is subtle or difficult to enlarge. This is true. If the evidence does not improve, it will come no closer to convincing the skeptics. Whatever his flaws ( and they are many) Rossi displays wisdom by attempting an end run around the biased. Godspeed to him in that. I don't know if Rossi will be able to maintain what is almost certainly a charade as long as Mills has (20 years) or if he will collapse as Steorn essentially has, but if it's the latter, he will have exposed many cold fusion believers like Storms, McKubre, and of course Rothwell, (but not all) as gullible fools. That will not help their cause.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 1:05 PM, Harry Veeder hveeder...@gmail.com wrote: When blood transfusions were first tried (in 17th century?) some were a success and some ended in deaths and nobody knew why. It wasn't explained until the discovery of blood typing in the early 20th century. Until then blood transfusions were prohibited, for good ethical reasons. I don't see that as an example of the mainstream rejecting an idea that was eventually vindicated. They rejected indiscriminate transfusions for good reasons. Indiscriminate transfusions are still rejected. Why must a community comprised of intelligent people demonise certain research interests? What you see as demonizing is just the natural consequence of scientists making judgements and expressing their views on it. When these are favorable, scientists are venerated. It's not wrong to express your opinion.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 1:27 PM, Chris Zell chrisz...@wetmtv.com wrote: ** [medical anecdotes] If you're on of those who rejects evidence-based medicine in favor of anecdotal tales of cures from a vague sense of unease, then it's no surprise you are sucked in to the cold fusion vortex.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 1:47 PM, Harry Veeder hveeder...@gmail.com wrote: However, if a minority of the intelligentsia judge the evidence is compelling it does not give the majority the right to portray the minority as stupid or delusional or as practicing pathological science. The right to express opinions is already present, as long as slander is not involved. That doesn't mean it's polite or good behavior, but usually these characterizations are implicit. And it really is appropriate for scientists to express their opinion that a certain pursuit is highly unlikely to be productive, and likely sustained by wishful thinking, just as it is to recommend other pursuits as inspired and viable.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 1:55 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: History is full of large groups of intelligent people who made ignorant errors leading to disasters. Especially military history. Examples include: Yet you insist it's impossible for a group of cold fusion researchers to make collective ignorant errors.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 2:29 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: The answer is that people often make drastic mistakes. Even intelligent people do. Even cold fusion researchers do. It was not obvious because these people were blinded by emotion. So are the people opposed to cold fusion, such as Robert Park and Cude. Facts, logic, analysis, common sense, education, the lessons of experience . . . all are sacrificed when emotions and the primate instinct for power politics take over the mind. The only plausible influence of emotion in the cold fusion controversy is the one that was on display in 1989 when people stood and cheered Pons, and thousands ran to their labs to try to be among the first to be associated with the revolution, and get their names up in lights. People really wanted cold fusion to be true. It was in their interest, and it was especially in the government's strategic and economic interest, so this claim that people are emotionally resistant to cold fusion is nonsense. Storms wrote: many of us were lured into believing that the Pons-Fleischmann effect would solve the world's energy problems and make us all rich. That's where the emotional pressure is. This is what history teaches us. Learn from it, or you too will make dreadful mistakes, as George Santayana said. History teaches that whacky ideas and fringe science are sometimes just wacky ideas and fringe science. There are degrees of certainty. We're all certain the earth orbits the sun and a rock falls to the ground, and proposals to the contrary would be dismissed with the certainty they deserve, regardless of how mistaken the Japanese were. The view that cold fusion isn't happening is not that certain, but I don't think the great unwashed, and some of the washed have any appreciation of how remote the possibility is. Almost like a rock being repelled by the earth. You've been singing the same tune for 2 decades. I predict you'll be singing it for another two.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 5:05 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: I would like to explore this dreadful history a little more, because I know a lot about it. Certainly not because it has any relevance. What you're saying is that two countries are at war, one claims they will crush the other, and the other doesn't believe it, and therefore cold fusion is real. But for me, I'd associate the US with cold fusion skeptics, and Japan with the true believers. (In truth, I don't think the episode is in the least instructive to this debate.) Anyway, what about when Napolean said he would crush the 7th coalition at Waterloo? The coalition didn't just accept that and roll over either, and they of course were Napolean's waterloo. Or how about Sonny Liston, the heavy favorite in 1964 against Clay (Ali)? He said on the eve of the fight: Cassius, you're my million dollar baby, so please don't let anything happen to you before tomorrow night. Ali didn't back down though, and the rest is history. Of course Ali was far more vocal in his predictions, but in war and fights, both sides usually expect to win, or there wouldn't be wars. Cude and others have often said: If there was any chance cold fusion is real, of course smart people would support it. Everyone wants to see zero-cost energy. Then they say, since smart people do not support this research, that proves there is nothing to it, and no chance it will result in new technology. Obviously, no one could say that many smart people rejecting something proves it's wrong. What it proves is that the evidence for it is not conclusive or unequivocal, which is what true believers claim. Scientists make their judgements based on the evidence, and the vast majority judge the evidence to be weak, and given the overwhelmingly strong evidence against it, they remain skeptical. It's true that most scientists have not kept up with the details of cold fusion research, or even of its broad strokes, but in 1989, nearly every scientist on the planet looked pretty closely at cold fusion, and concluded it was almost certainly bogus. Since then, the evidence has not gotten any better, and so there is no reason to revisit that consensus. What most scientists (at least nuclear physicists) learned when they considered the possibility, was that if the claims of cold fusion advocates had merit, unequivocal evidence would almost certainly be rather easy to produce. And once produced would be submitted to and accepted by a prominent journal like Science or Nature. That hasn't happened. Also, a panel of experts enlisted by the DOE met in 2004 and examined the best of the evidence up to that time, and 17 of 18 said that evidence for LENR was not conclusive. And if do sample the informed opinion, by looking at the results of peer-review in prominent journals or by granting agencies (like the DOE panel), or by the fact that the APS recently rejected the publication of the ICCF conference, then you find that the consensus remains strong that cold fusion is almost certainly bogus. The difference between 1989 and now is that then we had two believable (even distinguished) guys who seemed to have stumbled on (or intuited their way to) a revolutionary claim that would be hard to get wrong. Now, we've got much more distinguished people who claimed negative results, who have looked carefully at the positive results and found they don't stand up, and most importantly, we've got dozens or even hundreds of people who have spent a long time looking for results, and the evidence still doesn't stand up. And experiments are not better (or at least the results are not better), and the theories are no more plausible, except to True Believers. Every new claim that is no better than the previous claims makes it look more pathological, not less. Moreover, there's no one left working in the field with the distinction of Fleischmann; all that's left is a bunch of mostly senior, run-of-the-mill scientists. So what happened in 1989 fits the pattern for some physics discoveries, and that's why people took notice. What's happened since fits the pattern for pathological science, and that's why it's now being ignored. Cude, Frank Close, the editors at Scientific American and others are not worried that they might be holding back a valuable technology. [...] You wrote a lot of words to say simply that skeptics consider the possibility of cold fusion being real exceedingly remote. The additional verbiage replaced by an ellipsis (as well as the entire Japanese story) was intended to put this attitude in a bad light, but then you say: They are as certain it is wrong as I am certain that creationism is wrong. completely deflating your argument. Because none of it was specific to cold fusion, but to the general idea of being too confident that something is wrong. And here you are, certain that something is wrong. The truth is that there *are* varying degrees of certainty about
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial 2
On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 1:24 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: Cude wrote: That's nonsense. It's the believers who are forever using tritium and neutrons at ridiculously low levels to prove PF were right. [...] No one says that tritium proves that PF's claims of excess heat is correct. Tritium cannot prove that calorimety works. That's absurd. It does prove there is a nuclear effect, which is indirect supporting evidence for heat beyond the limits of chemistry. That's not the same as proof. I'll rephrase without weakening the point: It's the believers who are forever using tritium and neutrons at ridiculously low levels to give PF more credibility. Still conflating the two. Also the tritium is not at ridiculously low levels. You misunderstood the context. The claims are at ridiculously low levels compared to what would be needed to explain the claimed heat. Capiche? It is at very high levels, easily measured, typically 10 to 50 times background, sometimes millions of times background. Storms writes (in the book): Tritium production is also too small and too infrequent to provide much information about the major processes. If the evidence for tritium were unequivocal, people would not abandon the experiments, and the explanation of their production would become clearer, and experts would be convinced by them. But in fact, as with heat (or neutrons), the situation is no clearer now than it was 20 years ago. There were a lot of searches for tritium in the early days, when people thought there might be conventional fusion reactions, and many people claimed to observe it. Some of the highest levels were observed at BARC within weeks of the 1989 press conference, when people thought ordinary fusion might be taking place, but as it became clear that the tritium could not account for the heat, and as the experiments became more careful, the tritium levels mostly decreased, just like pathological science everywhere. And some early claimants, like Will, got out of the field. In 1998 McKubre wrote: we may nevertheless state with some confidence that tritium is not a routinely produced product of the electrochemical loading of deuterium into palladium. In the last decade, there has been very little activity on the tritium front, which again, fits pathological science, and puts those early results -- some already under suspicion -- in serious doubt. To my mind, if they can't resolve the tritium question in some kind of definitive and quantitative way, there is no hope for heat. Isn't it interesting that neutrons can be detected at reaction rates a million times lower than tritium, and that's exactly where they're detected. You can predict the levels of nuclear products because they are correlated to the detection capability more closely than anything else. Easily measured, high sigma levels of tritium are not low because they are lower than an irrelevant inapplicable theory predicts. They would only be low if they are hard to measure. We all get that low is a relative term, but in the context of my sentence, it meant low compared to levels required to explain the heat.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
By 'we' I mean Vortex minus debunkers. Small 's' skeptics are welcome, but debunkers are not. We need to know where to draw the line. Which facts do we consider so obvious that when someone denies them, they're a debunker rather than small 's' skeptic. Vortex rules: http://amasci.com/weird/vmore.html Note that small-s skepticism of the openminded sort is perfectly acceptable on Vortex-L. We crackpots don't want to be *completely* self-deluding. :) The ban here is aimed at Debunkers; at certain disbeleif and its self-superior and archly hostile results, and at the sort of Skeptic who angrily disbelieves all that is not solidly proved true, while carefully rejecting all new data and observations which conflict with the widely accepted theories of the time. On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 8:02 AM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: Kevin O'Malley kevmol...@gmail.com wrote: To the Japanese in 1941, Americans seemed outlandish. To the skeptics who agree with Cude or Close, we are the ones disconnected from reality. We are illogical and even mentally ill thinking that we can fuse hydrogen in a mason jar. I do not think it does any good getting angry at such people. It is important that you understand their mindset. ***Okay, Jed. What we need as a group is a minimum set of facts that we agree are incontrovertible. Sure, but we cannot expect people like Cude to agree with any of them. A person can always find a reason to dismiss something. Cude says that the tritium results may all be mistakes or fraud. Jones Beene accused him of being intellectually dishonest, but I assume Cude is sincere. Bockris tallied up tritium reports and said that over 100 labs detected it. If I were Cude, this would give me pause. I find it impossible to imagine there are so so many incompetent scientists, I cannot think of why scientists would publish fake data that triggers attacks on their reputation by the Washington Post. What would be the motive? But I am sure that Cude, and Park, and the others sincerely believe that scientists are deliberately trashing their own reputations by publishing fake data. I would think it is that Pons Fleischmann were careful electrochemists, the preeminent of their day. Of course they were, but no skeptic will agree. Fleischmann was the president of the Electrochemical Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society, but Cude and the others are convinced he was a sloppy, mentally ill criminal. That's what they say, and I do not think they would say it if they did not believe it. That the physicists who chose to debunk their findings were far from careful due to inexperience in electrochemistry and this led to their negative findings. There were many reasons experiments failed in 1989. Some of the failed experiments were carefully done, but they used the wrong diagnostics. Most of them looked for neutrons instead of heat. That there have been 14,700 replications of the P-F anomolous heat effect. If not, then how many? 180, as per Storms and National Instruments? Those are two different tallies. The 14,700 is the number of individual positive runs reported in the literature for all techniques, including glow discharge. 180 is the number of laboratories reporting success. Some of those labs saw excess heat many times. If 180 labs measure excess heat 10 times each, that would be 1,800 positive runs in the Chinese tally. I do not know where the Chinese got their data. Presumably from published papers. I have not gone through papers counting up positive and negative runs. What are the base minimum set of facts that we all agree on? If we include the skeptics there is not a single fact we all agree on. Not one. Cude looks at Fig. 1 in the McKubre paper and says the peak at 94% loading means nothing. I think he says it is the result of random effects or cherry-picked data. I look at it and say it proves there is a controlling parameter (loading) that cannot possibly cause artifactual excess heat, so this proves the effect is real. I say that even if only 20% achieve high loading, the other 80% are not relevant. Even if only one in a million achieved high loading this would still prove the effect is real. Cude looks at the preponderance of cells that do not achieve high loading and he concludes that they prove this graph is meaningless noise. There is absolutely no reconciling our points of view. From my point of view, his assertion is scientifically illiterate. He does not seem to understand how graphs work, and what it means to say that data is significant rather than noise. From his point of view, McKubre, Storms and I have no idea what we are talking about and this graph is no more significant than a face of Jesus burned into someone's toast. I gather he thinks it is random noise that happens to peak at 94%, or it is fake data. I cannot describe what he thinks, because I have not read his messages
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 9:06 AM, Alain Sepeda alain.sep...@gmail.com wrote: just delusioned and selectively blind like what roland benabou describe I think groupthink is a much better explanation for belief in cold fusion than it is for skepticism. Mainstream science is an extremely diverse and diffuse entity that actually encourages and rewards innovation and novelty and disruptive ideas supported by good evidence. But the True Believers in cold fusion are fairly tightly knit group that discourages dissent, and embraces cold fusion's many inconsistencies. It's the reason so many cold fusion advocates (though not all) accepted such an obviously unlikely claim as Rossi's with almost no scrutiny, and from someone with a history of fraud, but none in physics.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 9:12 AM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: Cude not only fails to see this pattern, he mixes up two numbers: The claim that high loading is correlated to claims of excess heat was made early on, but that bit of alleged intelligence has done nothing to help with the reproducibility or to scale the effect up. In fact, both Storms and McKubre emphasized the importance of loading, but reported only about a watt of power and around 10% excess heat, far below what PF had published earlier. Anyway, it is far more plausible that artifacts are correlated to loading (or to the procedure required to achieve the loading) than that nuclear effects are correlated to loading. Especially when you consider that high loading near the surface will occur well before bulk loading is achieved, and the current wisdom has it that it's a surface phenomenon. And especially since, as Storms points out, in gas loading such high loadings are not necessary. You say (elsewhere) it's impossible that loading can be correlated to artifacts, but when nuclear physicists say it's impossible to induce nuclear reactions in Pd with electrolysis, you say they are being closed-minded, and there may be some exotic reaction no one has thought of. Well, I say you are being closed minded by excluding artifacts, since there may be an exotic artifact no one has thought of. The reality is that the effect doesn't stand out (as you put it), it doesn't scale, and quality reports are becoming scarcer. That fits an exotic artifact better than an exotic nuclear reaction, of which no one can dream up a plausible example, and not for the lack of trying.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 9:47 AM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: The role of correlation and real-world control factors is often overlooked, even by supporters. This is critically important. Cold fusion heat with the Pd-D system is correlated with several control factors, including: * Heat appears with D but not H. * Heat only appears with high loading. In the first place, as Storms points out, neither of those are true. Even in electrolysis, there are claims of heat with H as well, and again as Storms says, probably the main reason the claims are scarcer is because far less effort has been put toward it, mainly because PF thought it was DD fusion. High loading correlation seems to be necessary in electrolysis but not in gas loading, and at the subatomic level it's hard to see why that should make a difference. Here is the critical thing about these control parameters: they cannot affect temperature measurements. They cannot cause an artifact that looks like excess heat. When nuclear physicists say nuclear reactions in that context can't produce measurable heat, they are called closed-minded. Has it occurred to you that you are being closed minded by excluding artifacts that might correlate with loading, or with the procedures required to produce the loading. I'm not saying I can identify a plausible artifact, but then you can't identify a plausible nuclear reaction that fits the observations either. And between them, nuclear reactions are far less likely, in the view of people who actually have experience with nuclear reactions. (Alain: You should use an English spell check program. I depend on one!) A logic and coherence checker would help too.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 10:35 AM, Jones Beene jone...@pacbell.net wrote: Cude: I missed the obligatory tritium is claimed to be detected, and no even if it's detected, there could be contamination, accidental or deliberate. That is an absurd cop-out. There are dozens of papers by four top PhDs at the top tritium facility in the World, LANL. Yet Cude wants to suggest that the hundreds of experiments at LANL where tritium is detected are all nothing but measure error - and furthermore that the management of the facility was deceived and continued to fund the researchers for many years. Dozens? Really? Storms lists tritium papers in table 6 in chapter 4 of his book. I count 8 papers from LANL, including two from Storms and Talcott. Rothwell has a few more, which Storms presumably skipped because of difficulty accessing them (e.g. Solid State Fusion Update, Los Alamos), or because they are only presentations (not papers) (e.g. NSF workshop). That's still pretty impressive, until you look a little closer. Most of the papers are conference proceedings, or highly obscure journals that don't even rate a calculation of the impact factor (e.g. Trans Fusion Tech, Infinite Energy). That doesn't exactly scream credibility for what would be a revolutionary result. Secondly, the same authors (Claytor, Menlove et al) also claimed to measure neutrons at levels similar to the SE Jones claims, and those claims were later explicitly retracted. So, working at LANL does not make you infallible. Thirdly, the most prominent of the authors' (Menlove) latest co-authorship appears to be 1991, so he appears to have lost confidence, or why abandon such a ground-breaking experiment. Fourthly, the levels really are very low. It's true that tritium can be detected at reaction rates orders of magnitude below those necessary to produce measurable heat, and surprise, surprise, that's where they are detected. The levels are mostly at a fraction of a nCi with one in the range of a nCi (far lower by the way than the BARC claims in 1989), with sensitivity (they claim) of 0.1 nCi. Higher yes, but why always so close. And they spend a lot of time explaining why the detected ionizing material is tritium rather than an artifact of the instrument or some other isotope. That kind of kills the point of looking for tritium, which was supposed to be at unequivocal levels. But just like heat and neutrons and helium, it too appears at levels that are not far from the noise. Finally, the latest paper from LANL on tritium seems to be 1998, even though they certainly hadn't answered any interesting questions about it, like what reaction produces it. I don't think it's clear how much support they got from management, but the stopping of the experiments without resolving anything, or even getting a decent publication out of it, suggests that either the experimenters themselves lost confidence, or LANL killed it. And isn't one of the usual arguments of mainstream suppression that LANL *didn't* support Storms' research? You can't have it both ways. You can't say: LANL supports LENR research so it must be real, and LANL doesn't support LENR research so they must be corrupt. Unless you are in possession of received truth and so you must fit all observations to fit that truth. If this is such indisputable proof, why is it that intelligent people don't buy it? Do they hate the thought of clean and abundant energy? We know that's not the case from the events of 1989. Once again you're trying to conflate tritium with heat. Good grief. It's the advocates that conflate tritium and heat. No one here would care a whit about tritium for scientific interest. The reason it's brought up is to make the excess heat claims more plausible. You yourself say the results crush skepticism about LENR, so that you can carry on believing excess heat is possible too. Did you read what I wrote? I delineated the two carefully, and explained why tritium would still be important to investigate. Here it is again: Its observation would of course have important scientific implications anyway, and since tritium and cold fusion are both nuclear, there might be some connection, so you would expect people to investigate it. Since it avoids the vagaries of and careful control and calibration necessary for calorimetry, and since tritium can be detected at reaction rates orders of magnitude below those necessary to produce measurable heat, the experiments should be vastly easier and more definitive. And one might expect that to be the main direction of research until at least the tritium question is understood. What factors affect it? How does it scale with the mass, shape, loading, and topology of the Pd, or with the electrolysis or gas-loading conditions, and so on. There's no conflation there. The idea is that if there is a connection (and you agree there is because you classify both as LENR), then it makes sense nail down
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 1:50 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: Cude wrote: After 24 years, there is still not an experiment that anyone skilled in the art can do, and get quantitatively predictable positive results, whether it's excess heat, tritium, or helium (or an unequivocally positive result).” Yes, there is. It was published in 1996. See: http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEhowtoprodu.pdf It's not a description of an experiment, it doesn't predict a quantitative result, and it gives no indication the likelihood of success. In 1989, PF said if you do electrolysis of Pd in heavy water, and you have enough patience, you'll see excess heat. The Storms paper is a kind of collection of observations from many experiments, and he's a little more specific than PF, but basically he still says if you follow these instructions, some of which may not be essential, and there may be other factors, and you have enough patience (which he says explicitly), you'll see excess heat. That's no more of a quantitatively predictable result than PF offered. And of course, with the benefit of this paper, the quality of the results did not improve. Storms never claimed the kind of power PF claimed for example. (And he also recommends flawless crack-free palladium in that paper, whereas now the business is believed to happen in the cracks and flaws.) That's why, *after* this paper, you wrote After twelve years of painstaking replication attempts, most experiments produce a fraction of a watt of heat, when they work at all. Such low heat is difficult to measure. It leaves room for honest skeptical doubt that the effect is real. It's why an executive director at the Office of Naval Research, who had funded experiments by Miles and others said (from a NewScientist article in 2003): For close to two years, we tried to create one definitive experiment that produced a result in one lab that you could reproduce in another,” Saalfeld says. “We never could. What China Lake did, NRL couldn't reproduce. What NRL did, San Diego couldn't reproduce. We took very great care to do everything right. We tried and tried, but it never worked. It's why McKubre said in 2008 that there is no quantitive reproducibility nor inter-lab reproducibility. Even if the effect is small, if it is quantitatively reproducible, then it's possible to use systematic experiments to scale it up like Curie did, or Lavoisier did, and then it becomes credible. But again, a single really prominent effect (especially from an isolated device) would suffice if it were reliable enough so that it can be widely demonstrated, or so that anyone can follow a prescription and with suitable enough devices see the it in a reasonable amount of time. But cold fusion has neither a reliable indisputable demonstration (at any statistical level), nor a more subtle, but statistically reproducible effect that can be carefully studied, and so credibility eludes the field. See also: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/CravensDtheenablin.pdf This is a statistical analysis of all the experiments up to 2007. That's the opposite of what I was asking for; namely a single experiment that produces an expected result. I have respect for statistics, but this is nonsense. I'm sure Cravens and Letts could do a Bayesian study of bigfoot sightings and come up with a vanishingly small probability that it's not real, and it would be taken about as seriously. Probably someone's done it. Statistics have an important place, but I think this is sort of thing Rutherford was talking about when he said: if your experiment needs statistics, you should have done a better experiment.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 3:09 PM, Harry Veeder hveeder...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 5:45 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 4:54 PM, Alain Sepeda alain.sep...@gmail.comwrote: plate tectonics evidence where overwhelming much before they were accepted. there was explanation for the moving mechanisme decades before. Maybe much before they were universally accepted. Support grew with the evidence, as might be expected. Cold fusion has stagnated at essential rejection for 24 years. Obviously the controversy isn't over. I meant it is comparable to the time when plate tectonics was considered fringe science. It took about 45 years from the time continental drift was first proposed in 1912 to its acceptance. However, the concept is really much older and was first proposed in 1596. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift According to Wikipedia it seems the concept of continental drift wasn't firmly rejected until the mid 19 th century due to certain findings and the influence of James Dana, a prominent geologist of the time. It's not at all comparable because of the very different scales of the phenomena. Cold fusion is a table-top experiment, in which the experimenter is control of all the parameters, and the conditions (pressure, temperature, etc) are easily accessible. Fields like geology, paleontology, and cosmology, yield evidence on a much slower time scale. The big bang theory and black holes and neutron stars were also accepted rather slowly. But it's difficult to come up with a phenomenon on the scale of cold fusion that was rejected for decades and was later vindicated. There is, as described in Hagelstein's essay, Semmelweis, and to a lesser degree there is Ohm, but both of those go back 150 years, when progress was slower, and scientific thought was different. In any case, I'd be interested in a more recent example. People have cited the laser, and quasicrystals, but those were never dismissed to the same degree, and vindication came in a very short time. Van Neumann was skeptical of the laser, but he was persuaded over a beer with paper and pencil. Those large scale theories (big bang etc) represent ordinary competition of ideas, which are resolved as the evidence improves, or a new theory is introduced that accommodates all the evidence. One of the supporters of continental drift also proposed a theory that the earth is expanding. In this, he was wrong, and the mainstream thought was right. So what do these things tell us? That mainstream thought can be wrong. Of course, we know that from the Ptolemaic solar system, and absolute time, and continuous energy, and Lamarckism etc. But surely it doesn't say that mainstream thought *must* be wrong whenever a new idea is introduced, because that rapidly leads to a catch-22. So, can we predict whether mainstream thought is right based on previous phenomena? Well, scientists should obviously make their judgements based on the evidence. As for observers trying to decide what to bet on, the consensus of experts is surely the most likely approximation to the truth. What else is there? The consensus of plumbers? The consensus of your friends? The consensus of true believers of the fringe view? Your own preference? Should we accept creationism, homeopathy, dowsing, telekinesis? Wegener's theory is different from cold fusion in another way. In the case of Wegener's theory, the objections were based largely on gut instincts that forces to move the continents could not exist. There was no scientific evidence for this line of thought, and as you point out, it was kind of recent -- continental drift of some form had been considered much earlier. But with cold fusion, the alleged phenomenon is contrary to copious experimental results that are highly consistent with a robust description of subatomic interactions. Consider this analogy as a kind of reductio ad absurdum: Mainstream thought currently has it that the solar system is Copernican, with evidence so strong as to be as close to truth as one can imagine. If someone came along now and proposed that Ptolemy was right after all, he would be dismissed unless he produced evidence at least as strong as the evidence we have for the Copernican system. It wouldn't matter that the mainstream has been wrong before; no one would believe that they're wrong now. Just as no one takes the flat-earth society seriously just because their view is now opposite to the mainstream. Now, I'm not saying that nuclear physicists are as certain that cold fusion can't happen as astronomers are that the solar system is Copernican, but they are much more certain than most casual observers understand, and their certainty is justified by much more hard evidence than the rejection of Wegener was. And cold fusion will not be taken seriously until the evidence for it is at least as robust as the evidence that suggests it won't happen. And
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 3:42 PM, Kevin O'Malley kevmol...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 2:36 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: Doesn't answer the question. ***Of course it does. The question was why don't intelligent people believe cold fusion. If the mainstream believed it, then believers would not suffer derision. It just establishes the failure of the evidence. ***No, it establishes the real reason why intelligent people don't get involved in Cold Fusion. The reason for the derision ***Sneering is against the rules here. As important as this forum is, it does not have jurisdiction over mainstream science, which is where the derision I was talking about allegedly takes place. is because intelligent people don't buy your indisputable proof. ***Nope. It's because you're a skeptopath. Others just like to pile on and when we scratch the surface, we find they're utterly uninformed about the evidence. If the evidence were indisputable, the ones who do get informed on DOE panels or journal reviews would be convinced (they're anonymous), and then the masses would take note, become convinced, and it would be 1989 all over. If intelligent people bought it, the skeptics would be the ones whose careers would be dragged through the mud. ***You proceed from an odd form of idealism. Scientists are human. Nothing ideal about it. People that are skeptical of relativity would have no career in physics. People skeptical of evolution would have no career in biology. People skeptical of the mood landing would have no career with NASA.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 3:44 PM, Kevin O'Malley kevmol...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 2:35 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: interlab reproducibility is still a bitch. ***True enough, but that doesn't make it a pathological science. It makes it a difficult one. Something is not made pathological. Poor interlab reproducibility is characteristic of pathological science.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 3:56 PM, Kevin O'Malley kevmol...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 2:42 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: That's a reflection of what mainstream science thinks of cold fusion. It doesn't answer the question of why, if the proof is so obvious, ***Interesting little conditional you've inserted here. The proof is not obvious but the evidence is. With so much evidence, with 14000 replications, the evidence is compelling. This is far from a pathological science. There are a lot of claimed examples of excess heat. They are not replications, because many of the experiments are different, and the levels of claimed heat are all over the map. The question stands. If the evidence is so compelling, why don't intelligent people accept it? A graduate student in science would probably ruin their career by studying astrology or creationism too. It says something about the fields. ***If a grad student in physics were to study astrology, it's obvious they've stepped out of their core competence. But if they want to study Condensed Matter Nuclear Science and LENR, they're within their core competence. It says nothing particularly relevant about the field of astrology. Your ridiculous analogy says something about human nature. Is said science, not physics. A psychology student could propose to study astrology. And a biology student could propose to study intelligent design.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 4:05 PM, Kevin O'Malley kevmol...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 2:40 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: Mainstream does not believe the evidence for cold fusion. Therefore, it is not credible. ***What a ridiculous line of reasoning. It's what the words mean. Credible means believable. If something is not believed, then it is not credible. It can be credible to some and not others, but in the main, it is not credible.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 4:08 PM, Kevin O'Malley kevmol...@gmail.com wrote: So, Pons Fleischmann were careless researchers, eh? Yes, sadly. Then how is it that their findings have been replicated 14,700 times? They weren't How did they become 2 of the most preeminent electrochemists of their day before they took on this anomaly? Pons wan't, but Fleischmann was. Smart people can be careless, especially when they are also clueless about nuclear physics, and the potential prize is huge.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 4:12 PM, Kevin O'Malley kevmol...@gmail.com wrote: At least I know how to spell his name. ***Gee, that's about as semantically irrelevant as an argument can get. Lighten up. It was a gentle poke, since you were chiding me on not being as great as Arata. He has considerable stature, yes. I don't know how much of that is justified, but it is certainly not due to his work in cold fusion. ***It was due to his work in Nuclear Physics. Are those others representative of cold fusion debunkers?How many debunkers have won their nation's highest honor due to work in Nuke Physics? All the skeptics I listed won the *world's* highest honor for their work in subatomic physics. How many have buildings named after them? Fortunately that's not a criterion, or Donald Trump would be dictating scientific phenomena.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 4:18 PM, Kevin O'Malley kevmol...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 2:53 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.comwrote: It's self evident that there are images of an unknown physical entity. ***Wow, you put more credence into bigfoot than cold fusion. Who can deny that some of those photos are not explained? Therefore they are images of an unknown physical entity. It's also self-evident that there are unknown aspects to cold fusion experiments. It's a meaningless statement. But come to it, there probably is more likelihood of a large monster somewhere than there is for cold fusion. But I'm not familiar with the literature. You? Note that National Instruments DID NOT go out on a limb to say what you just did over bigfoot, Like I said. They didn't have to. It's self-evident.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 4:20 PM, Kevin O'Malley kevmol...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 2:57 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: Again with the semantics. I don't really care what word you use. To me, both polywater and cold fusion are almost certainly bogus phenomena, ... In my vocabulary ... ***Now that your position has been obliterated, you're moving onto Humpty Dumpty definitions. Yet another way we can all see you're full of shit. Sue me. I'm an anti-semantic. I'm not saying cold fusion is bad because it's pathological. I call it pathological because it's bad. Labels provide a shorthand, and allow more economic comparisons to previous episodes. I subscribe to a descriptive grammar, and pathological science has acquired a pretty recognized meaning. It is science of things that are not so, and its main characteristics are the lack of progress and the diminishing publication rate. It is usually contrary to well-established experimental evidence, and it helps if its reality would be a revolutionary advance, raining glory upon its discoverers. Cold fusion fits.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial 2
Rothwell wrote: Cude and others conflate many different assertions and issues. They stir everything into one pot. You have to learn to compartmentalize with cold fusion, or with any new phenomenon or poorly understood subject. That's nonsense. It's the believers who are forever using tritium and neutrons at ridiculously low levels to prove PF were right. The skeptics are skeptical of both, but are fully aware that even if low level neutrons a la SE Jones were valid, it wouldn't prove PF right. That's why Jones got into nature and PF didn't. Turned out, Jones retracted, until he made claims again. But they're marginal too. In this case, the tritium findings by Storms and soon after at TAMU and NCFI proved beyond doubt that cold fusion is a real, nuclear phenomenon. After they published that 1990 it was case closed. Every scientist on earth should have believed it. Unfortunately computer programmers don't get to tell every scientist on earth how to make scientific judgements. Morrison followed the field in detail until 2001, and he had the background and experience to make credible judgements and he was skeptical. So did Huizenga. And I'd put more credence in the Gell-Manns who considerd it briefly than the Rothwells or Storms who devoted their lives to it, but can't tell a likely charlatan (Rossi) from a scientist or inventor. And if the tritium was so conclusive, why were the results so variable, and given the variability, why has tritium research stopped before anyone settled anything about it? That's not the behavior of scientists. It's the behavior of pathological scientists. The excess heat results proved that it is not a chemical effect, in the normal sense. Perhaps it is a Mills effect. Again, there is so much evidence for this, at such high s/n ratios, it is irrefutable. The helium results support the hypothesis that this is some sort of deuterium fusion, at least with Pd-D. There is no doubt about the helium, but no one has searched for helium or deuterium from Ni-H cells. All the other claims are fuzzy, in my opinion. There is not as much evidence for them. All the results are fuzzy, and the levels are determined by the quality of the experiment. Heat levels comparable to inputs, or chemical background, or typical artifacts. Helium levels comparable to atmospheric background. Neutrons and tritium, for which instruments are far more sensitive, appear at guess what, far lower levels. The point is, DO NOT CONFUSE THESE QUESTIONS. Do not conflate them! Gee. Someone learned a new word, and is gonna get all the mileage he can from it.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
Going back to my corner of LENR, if it were not credible then the replication of Dr. Arata's work would not have been published in Physics Letters A. You are not credible. On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 4:48 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 4:05 PM, Kevin O'Malley kevmol...@gmail.comwrote: On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 2:40 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.comwrote: Mainstream does not believe the evidence for cold fusion. Therefore, it is not credible. ***What a ridiculous line of reasoning. It's what the words mean. Credible means believable. If something is not believed, then it is not credible. It can be credible to some and not others, but in the main, it is not credible.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 5:14 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: Who can deny that some of those photos are not explained? Therefore they are images of an unknown physical entity. ***You're trying to twist the original dispute, which is that National Instruments could have gone out on a limb and said such a thing about bigfoot, but they didn't. They DID say it about cold fusion. Note that National Instruments DID NOT go out on a limb to say what you just did over bigfoot, Like I said. They didn't have to. It's self-evident. ***Then it is self-evident that National Instruments considers the evidence for Cold Fusion to be more compelling than for bigfoot. I see you've dropped the argument that such people are not intelligent.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 5:17 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: Sue me. I'm an anti-semantic. I'm not saying cold fusion is bad because it's pathological. I call it pathological because it's bad. ***Now you're back to your own Humpty Dumpty definitions. On top of that, you're being semantic. Labels provide a shorthand, ***Humpty Dumpty definition I subscribe to a descriptive grammar, ***Humpty Dumpty definition. Of course it's going to fit your Humpty Dumpty definition.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 7:45 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 3:56 PM, Kevin O'Malley kevmol...@gmail.comwrote: On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 2:42 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.comwrote: That's a reflection of what mainstream science thinks of cold fusion. It doesn't answer the question of why, if the proof is so obvious, ***Interesting little conditional you've inserted here. The proof is not obvious but the evidence is. With so much evidence, with 14000 replications, the evidence is compelling. This is far from a pathological science. There are a lot of claimed examples of excess heat. They are not replications, because many of the experiments are different, and the levels of claimed heat are all over the map. The question stands. If the evidence is so compelling, why don't intelligent people accept it? Why are some intelligent people racist?
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial 2
Sidenote: I'm reminded of one of the great one-liners (and I believe it was uttered by someone on this list if I;m not mistaken: The difference between connecting the dots and conflation is spin On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 7:34 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: Rothwell wrote: Cude and others conflate many different assertions and issues. They stir everything into one pot. You have to learn to compartmentalize with cold fusion, or with any new phenomenon or poorly understood subject. That's nonsense. It's the believers who are forever using tritium and neutrons at ridiculously low levels to prove PF were right. The skeptics are skeptical of both, but are fully aware that even if low level neutrons a la SE Jones were valid, it wouldn't prove PF right. That's why Jones got into nature and PF didn't. Turned out, Jones retracted, until he made claims again. But they're marginal too. In this case, the tritium findings by Storms and soon after at TAMU and NCFI proved beyond doubt that cold fusion is a real, nuclear phenomenon. After they published that 1990 it was case closed. Every scientist on earth should have believed it. Unfortunately computer programmers don't get to tell every scientist on earth how to make scientific judgements. Morrison followed the field in detail until 2001, and he had the background and experience to make credible judgements and he was skeptical. So did Huizenga. And I'd put more credence in the Gell-Manns who considerd it briefly than the Rothwells or Storms who devoted their lives to it, but can't tell a likely charlatan (Rossi) from a scientist or inventor. And if the tritium was so conclusive, why were the results so variable, and given the variability, why has tritium research stopped before anyone settled anything about it? That's not the behavior of scientists. It's the behavior of pathological scientists. The excess heat results proved that it is not a chemical effect, in the normal sense. Perhaps it is a Mills effect. Again, there is so much evidence for this, at such high s/n ratios, it is irrefutable. The helium results support the hypothesis that this is some sort of deuterium fusion, at least with Pd-D. There is no doubt about the helium, but no one has searched for helium or deuterium from Ni-H cells. All the other claims are fuzzy, in my opinion. There is not as much evidence for them. All the results are fuzzy, and the levels are determined by the quality of the experiment. Heat levels comparable to inputs, or chemical background, or typical artifacts. Helium levels comparable to atmospheric background. Neutrons and tritium, for which instruments are far more sensitive, appear at guess what, far lower levels. The point is, DO NOT CONFUSE THESE QUESTIONS. Do not conflate them! Gee. Someone learned a new word, and is gonna get all the mileage he can from it.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 11:19 AM, Harry Veeder hveeder...@gmail.com wrote: The question stands. If the evidence is so compelling, why don't intelligent people accept it? Why are some intelligent people racist? Has to do with self-interest, I think. But it is in nearly everyone's self-interest for cold fuison to be real. And in any case, my question was really why don't *all* intelligent people accept it.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
or rather, why do nearly all intelligent people reject it. On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 11:44 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 11:19 AM, Harry Veeder hveeder...@gmail.comwrote: The question stands. If the evidence is so compelling, why don't intelligent people accept it? Why are some intelligent people racist? Has to do with self-interest, I think. But it is in nearly everyone's self-interest for cold fuison to be real. And in any case, my question was really why don't *all* intelligent people accept it.
RE: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
I believe there are documented, well attested cases in which some opponents of cold fusion actually refused to read or consider the evidence - or said that they would disbelieve anything reported in its support. This is not unusual. Sheldrake politely reports the same sort of behavior in regard to his treatment by Dawkins on the subject of telepathy. Much the same with O'Bockris.. and Halston Arp and others. I observed the same behavior in regard to Steins' movie Expelled. I accept evolution as fact. However, observing long diatribes against such a work that admit that they had never seen the movie is beneath contempt. I believe that this lack of civility and fair play makes the 'extraordinary evidence' concept into nonsense. Keep in mind that the above doesn't even begin to account for the distortion caused by entrenched moneyed interests. Dr. Greer (of recent UFO exposure notoriety) referred to them as Petro-Fascists - which nicely sums them up. Anyone care to explain how an entire war costing hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives took place when it was entirely triggered by fraud? And hardly anyone seems to care? As scientific thought moves along, the body of work that supports its conservative nature expands in volume. Any exception to generalizations - might always be inferior as to weightor strange, given lack of funding, attention or the outright prejudice that many encounter - in this circumstance of bias. The extraordinary goalposts might always be a distant illusion, especially if the desired effect is subtle or difficult to enlarge. Whatever his flaws ( and they are many) Rossi displays wisdom by attempting an end run around the biased. Godspeed to him in that.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 7:39 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: . But it's difficult to come up with a phenomenon on the scale of cold fusion that was rejected for decades and was later vindicated. There is, as described in Hagelstein's essay, Semmelweis, and to a lesser degree there is Ohm, but both of those go back 150 years, when progress was slower, and scientific thought was different. In any case, I'd be interested in a more recent example. When blood transfusions were first tried (in 17th century?) some were a success and some ended in deaths and nobody knew why. It wasn't explained until the discovery of blood typing in the early 20th century. Until then blood transfusions were prohibited, for good ethical reasons. But surely it doesn't say that mainstream thought *must* be wrong whenever a new idea is introduced, because that rapidly leads to a catch-22. So, can we predict whether mainstream thought is right based on previous phenomena? Well, scientists should obviously make their judgements based on the evidence. As for observers trying to decide what to bet on, the consensus of experts is surely the most likely approximation to the truth. What else is there? The consensus of plumbers? The consensus of your friends? The consensus of true believers of the fringe view? Your own preference? Should we accept creationism, homeopathy, dowsing, telekinesis? Why must a community comprised of intelligent people demonise certain research interests? Harry
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
In order to see things the way you do, you ask that 2 of the most careful electrochemists made fundamentally careless measurements. That the physicists who tried the experiments and had no colorimetry experience were able to be more careful than these 2 careful dudes. And that the effect has not been replicated 14,700 times as reported by another careful scientist. You're deluded. On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 5:09 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 4:08 PM, Kevin O'Malley kevmol...@gmail.comwrote: So, Pons Fleischmann were careless researchers, eh? Yes, sadly. Then how is it that their findings have been replicated 14,700 times? They weren't How did they become 2 of the most preeminent electrochemists of their day before they took on this anomaly? Pons wan't, but Fleischmann was. Smart people can be careless, especially when they are also clueless about nuclear physics, and the potential prize is huge.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 7:48 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 4:05 PM, Kevin O'Malley kevmol...@gmail.comwrote: On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 2:40 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.comwrote: Mainstream does not believe the evidence for cold fusion. Therefore, it is not credible. ***What a ridiculous line of reasoning. It's what the words mean. Credible means believable. If something is not believed, then it is not credible. It can be credible to some and not others, but in the main, it is not credible. And there you have itscience by consensus. Harry
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial 2
Cude wrote: That's nonsense. It's the believers who are forever using tritium and neutrons at ridiculously low levels to prove PF were right. You just conflated two unrelated things! No one says that tritium proves that PF's claims of excess heat is correct. Tritium cannot prove that calorimety works. That's absurd. It does prove there is a nuclear effect, which is indirect supporting evidence for heat beyond the limits of chemistry. That's not the same as proof. Also the tritium is not at ridiculously low levels. It is at very high levels, easily measured, typically 10 to 50 times background, sometimes millions of times background. It is lower than plasma fusion theory predicts, but no one claims this is plasma fusion. Once again you have conflated unrelated subjects, or redefined things in a way that makes no sense. Easily measured, high sigma levels of tritium are not low because they are lower than an irrelevant inapplicable theory predicts. They would only be low if they are hard to measure. The skeptics are skeptical of both, but are fully aware that even if low level neutrons a la SE Jones were valid, it wouldn't prove PF right. And no one, anywhere, ever said that. - Jed
RE: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
It is well that you bring up the subject of medical procedure (transfusions) because this area is loaded with egregious examples of verifiable facts that are ignored - often due to prejudice and moneyed interests. My doctor marvels at my dramatic improvement in blood chemistry but denies that is has to do with a low carb diet. They don't work Do a Google on Vermox and observe how a potentially dramatic treatment against cancer was dropped without explanation. You can read the background on Pub Med, if you have access. They halted production before large scale human tests were done and it was already on the shelf, used to combat intestinal parasites especially in 3rd world countries. It was cheap.. I can remember how the Japanese proved that simple extracts of seaweed can have powerful effects against tumor growth - 30 years ago. From time to time, you'll see the subject pop up in the news - but nothing will ever be done with it. Got Mononucleosis? Clinical studies show that huge doses of vitamin c can stop it in 2-3 days. I know because I've done this twice (swollen glands, low fever, etc) Give it time, we've only known this for a couple of decades! Shall I go on? (sounds like a rant, sorry)
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 12:44 PM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 11:19 AM, Harry Veeder hveeder...@gmail.comwrote: The question stands. If the evidence is so compelling, why don't intelligent people accept it? Why are some intelligent people racist? Has to do with self-interest, I think. But it is in nearly everyone's self-interest for cold fuison to be real. And in any case, my question was really why don't *all* intelligent people accept it. All intelligent people do not have to accept it. However, if a minority of the intelligentsia judge the evidence is compelling it does not give the majority the right to portray the minority as stupid or delusional or as practicing pathological science. Harry
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
Harry Veeder hveeder...@gmail.com wrote: The question stands. If the evidence is so compelling, why don't intelligent people accept it? Why are some intelligent people racist? Indeed. Willful ignorant often plays a role, as it does in cold fusion. Many of the people most stridently opposed to it take pride in the fact that they have read nothing and they know nothing. This is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance -- that principle is contempt prior to investigation. - Herbert Spencer History is full of large groups of intelligent people who made ignorant errors leading to disasters. Especially military history. Examples include: The U.S. Civil War, World War I, the Battle of the Somme, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the U.S. invasion of Iraq. See also the excellent document someone posted yesterday, covering the 2008 crash and other recent history: http://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers/Patterns%20of%20Denial%204l%20fin.pdf This has many telling quotes, such as Joseph Cassano, head of A.I.G. Financial Services: “It is hard for us, without being flippant, to even see a scenario within any kind of realm of reason that would see us losing one dollar in any of those transactions...” Looking back, you get the impression that hundreds of thousands of people simultaneously lost their minds on many occasions. I think that is a valid description of what happens. See: Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds http://www.cmi-gold-silver.com/pdf/mackaych2451824518-8.pdf Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one. See also: Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly - Jed
RE: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
Then there's Dr. Simoncini ( cancerfungus.com ) that cures cancer with baking soda, but that's too cheap to be credible :-) . From: Chris Zell [mailto:chrisz...@wetmtv.com] Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 11:27 AM To: vortex-l@eskimo.com Subject: RE: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial It is well that you bring up the subject of medical procedure (transfusions) because this area is loaded with egregious examples of verifiable facts that are ignored - often due to prejudice and moneyed interests. My doctor marvels at my dramatic improvement in blood chemistry but denies that is has to do with a low carb diet. They don't work Do a Google on Vermox and observe how a potentially dramatic treatment against cancer was dropped without explanation. You can read the background on Pub Med, if you have access. They halted production before large scale human tests were done and it was already on the shelf, used to combat intestinal parasites especially in 3rd world countries. It was cheap.. I can remember how the Japanese proved that simple extracts of seaweed can have powerful effects against tumor growth - 30 years ago. From time to time, you'll see the subject pop up in the news - but nothing will ever be done with it. Got Mononucleosis? Clinical studies show that huge doses of vitamin c can stop it in 2-3 days. I know because I've done this twice (swollen glands, low fever, etc) Give it time, we've only known this for a couple of decades! Shall I go on? (sounds like a rant, sorry)
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
Cude wrote: Has to do with self-interest, I think. But it is in nearly everyone's self-interest for cold fuison to be real. And in any case, my question was really why don't *all* intelligent people accept it. In 1941, U.S. Adm. Stark said to the Japanese envoy Nomura: If you attack us we will break your empire before we are through with you. While you may have initial success due to timing and surprise, the time will come when you too will have your losses, but there will be this great difference. You not only will be unable to make up your losses but will grow weaker as time goes on; while on the other hand we not only will make up our losses but will grow stronger as time goes on. It is inevitable that we shall crush you before we are through with you. This fact should have been self-evident to every intelligent, educated person in Japan. Why didn't *all* intelligent Japanese people believe this?!? The newspapers in Japan reported how many aircraft carriers and battleships the U.S. was building. This was no secret. The very first knowledge that modern Japanese people had of the U.S., as the country opened up in the 1860s was that the U.S. had just fought a Civil War with 640,000 people killed. It was clear that the U.S. is a militaristic society willing to take enormous casualties in a protracted war. In 1941 it was common knowledge that the U.S. industrial economy was 17 times larger than Japan's, and automobile production 80 times larger. Even if ordinary people did not realize this, why did nearly all Japanese admirals other than Yamamoto fail to see that their cause was hopeless? The answer is that people often make drastic mistakes. Even intelligent people do. It is human nature. They often do things against their own interests. In this case, their actions resulted in the destruction of every major Japanese city and the death of 1.7 million people. The fact that the war could only end with that kind of disaster (or earlier with an unconditional surrender) should have been obvious to every Japanese leader from the Emperor down to every town mayor. It was not obvious because these people were blinded by emotion. So are the people opposed to cold fusion, such as Robert Park and Cude. Facts, logic, analysis, common sense, education, the lessons of experience . . . all are sacrificed when emotions and the primate instinct for power politics take over the mind. This is what history teaches us. Learn from it, or you too will make dreadful mistakes, as George Santayana said. - Jed
RE: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
It usually transpires that, if some treatment is natural ( unpatentable) or inexpensive, it will never be investigated or established as factual within the medical community. I first caught on to this while reading thru Pub Med and Index Medica documents. It was suggested that polyunsaturated oils (linoleic) could reduce MS attacks. The idea was given one small, deeply flawed ( later admitted) test. Meanwhile, interferon therapies were repeatedly tested and managed to produce mere marginal results - leading to drug approval. It appeared that they were testing til they got an answer they liked. Observing this changed me because I began to understand how profit driven interest can distort science. Money often determines what is 'true' and by contrast, what is 'false' or at least non-credible to supposed experts. By the way, there may be evidence that large doses of vitamin D might be as effective as any of the highly expensive ABC drugs used in MS. MS patients can now take Tysabri but at least the drug company admits that the drug kills some patients ! Oops. Sometimes life reminds me of a Woody Allen sketch in which a man is caught in bed with another woman and persists in denial even as she puts her clothes back on in front of his protesting wife. After the woman leaves in haste, he starts saying, what woman?. The wife gives up.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
I wrote: The fact that the war could only end with that kind of disaster (or earlier with an unconditional surrender) should have been obvious to every Japanese leader from the Emperor down to every town mayor. I would like to explore this dreadful history a little more, because I know a lot about it. I have read books by people on both sides, and spoken with many Japanese people who lived through the war as adults. That is a vanishing generation so I'd like to record a few more thoughts about them. This is relevant to the history of cold fusion. First, there is no doubt that in 1941 intelligent people at all levels of society enthusiastically supported the war. Why? Because they were sure they would win. It never crossed their minds they might lose. (I am talking about 1941. By 1943, people began to wonder if they might lose.) Yes, some people later wrote in magazines, I was one of the few who knew we would lose right from the start. Most were liars, or kidding themselves. Honest, intelligent people who in later years become professors or captains of industry told me: I was sure we would win. I knew it would be tough, but I was sure we would win. They believed the propaganda. Even the people who wrote the propaganda believed it! Cude and others have often said: If there was any chance cold fusion is real, of course smart people would support it. Everyone wants to see zero-cost energy. Then they say, since smart people do not support this research, that proves there is nothing to it, and no chance it will result in new technology. This is scrambled logic. There was a similar group dynamic in Japan. People said, in effect: Look, top admirals such as Yamamoto and our invincible soldiers have never lost a war in 6,000 years. We crushed the Russians in 1905. If there were any chance of defeat, our Emperor would not lead us into war. Trust the experts! Defeat was unthinkable. Cude, Frank Close, the editors at Scientific American and others are not worried that they might be holding back a valuable technology. They are not afraid they will become a laughingstock, or portrayed as evil people in history. I cannot read minds, but I can read what people write. I am confident that thought has *never crossed their minds*, any more than most Japanese people stopped to wonder if they might lose the war. Not once, since 1989, have the hard core skeptics stopped to wonder whether they might be wrong. If they had, they would hedge their bets, as some skeptics have done, saying: Well, I don't think it will work, but if others want to research it, let them have some funding. If they had any doubts, they would not risk the damage to their reputation or the damage to society that derailing cold fusion has caused. They are as certain it is wrong as I am certain that creationism is wrong. They are sure it is fraud and error, and that allowing any research, at any level, is wicked. It would be a disgrace to science. (I don't go quite that far in my opposition to creationism!). They are serene in their assurance, the way Sam Harris is in this video, Not Being Indoctrinated Into Christianity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxTc_bpW0FA In 1941, most people in Japan felt that questioning the government or even feeling in your heart of hearts any doubt about victory was wicked. Disgraceful! The public supported the Military Police, which rounded up dissidents, imprisoned, tortured and killed them. There were not many dissidents. People thought those damned dissidents got what was coming to them. Many Americans felt that way about anti-war protesters during the Vietnam war and in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. Along the same lines, when Zimmerman and Park announced at the APS that they would root out and fire any federal researcher who tried to do cold fusion research, or even talk about it, they were met with a standing applause by a large crowd of PdD physicists. Those people were convinced this research is pathological, morally wrong, a waste of money, and a disgrace to science. It MUST NOT be allowed. They feel as strongly about this as I feel that it should be allowed. Not one of member of this audience raised a dissenting voice or asked a question such as Wait a minute . . . what about academic freedom? What if these people are on to something? It never crossed their minds they might be wrong. It probably still has not crossed their minds. They fully agree with the APS guy who wrote: While every result and conclusion [cold fusion researchers] publish meets with overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, they resolutely pursue their illusion of fusing hydrogen in a mason jar. . . . That is not hyperbole. They mean it. This is the mindset of the skeptical opposition. This is what they write, and say, at every opportunity. They are not pretending this is their point of view. Cude is not being disingenuous or intellectually dishonest in anything he has written here. He means every word, and he is
RE: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
Apparently, you have presented a true example (Park et al) of pathological science !
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial 2
On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 6:19 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: There are differences of course. Identical analogies serve no purpose. I think they're the most powerful. :) I assume we all agree that homeopathy and polywater and perpetual motion are bogus. And so when someone makes an argument that applies equally to all of them, then the comparison shows why it is not persuasive to someone who also thinks cold fusion is bogus. That makes sense. If you want to convince skeptics that cold fusion is real, arguments that apply to perpetual motion won't work. Again, this makes sense. Eric
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 3:05 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: To the Japanese in 1941, Americans seemed outlandish. To the skeptics who agree with Cude or Close, we are the ones disconnected from reality. We are illogical and even mentally ill thinking that we can fuse hydrogen in a mason jar. I do not think it does any good getting angry at such people. It is important that you understand their mindset. ***Okay, Jed. What we need as a group is a minimum set of facts that we agree are incontrovertible. I would think it is that Pons Fleischmann were careful electrochemists, the preeminent of their day. That the physicists who chose to debunk their findings were far from careful due to inexperience in electrochemistry and this led to their negative findings. That there have been 14,700 replications of the P-F anomolous heat effect. If not, then how many? 180, as per Storms and National Instruments? What are the base minimum set of facts that we all agree on?
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 3:01 PM, Edmund Storms stor...@ix.netcom.com wrote: Of course it is erratic. The only question is: Is it erratic because of random error or because the required conditions are not created every time. We now know that certain critical conditions are required, which are not created except by guided luck. So what? This problem is typical of all new discoveries before they are mastered. *All* new discoveries? It was not the case for fission reactors, the photoelectric effect, blackbody radiation, atomic spectroscopy, Rutherford scattering, electron diffraction, superconductivity, and so on. Low probability of success is characteristic of some developments like cloning or transistors, but in the latter case, a working transistor could be shown to work by anyone. And within a few years of the first demonstration of amplification, transistors were used in commercial products. If there were a working hunk of Pd that you could send to anyone, that would be another story, but as admitted by McKubre and demonstrated most recently by the MFMP, interlab reproducibility is still a bitch.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 4:07 PM, Kevin O'Malley kevmol...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 12:16 PM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.comwrote: If this is such indisputable proof, why is it that intelligent people don't buy it? Do they hate the thought of clean and abundant energy? We know that's not the case from the events of 1989. ***because intelligent people don't like having their careers dragged through the mud. Doesn't answer the question. It just establishes the failure of the evidence. The reason for the derision is because intelligent people don't buy your indisputable proof. If intelligent people bought it, the skeptics would be the ones whose careers would be dragged through the mud.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 9:44 PM, Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 12:28 PM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.comwrote: You need positive credible evidence to convince people that cold fusion is real. And there isn't any. It's a little painful to watch this thread, Joshua. This may come as a surprise, but I'm not trying to make it painless for true believers. Also, no one's holding a gun to your head. Here you assert that positive, credible evidence has not been provided, after people have provided positive, credible evidence The statement about positive credible evidence is a summary, not an argument. I've written a lot of words to support that summary. Mainstream does not believe the evidence for cold fusion. Therefore, it is not credible. It's really an observation, but like I said, it's not meant to stand on its own as a compelling reason to reject it. The evidence for cold fusion is a dog's breakfast of inconsistent claims of excess heat and various products of nuclear reaction. After 24 years, there is still not an experiment that anyone skilled in the art can do, and get quantitatively predictable positive results, whether it's excess heat, tritium, or helium (or an unequivocally positive result). That's why the number of refereed positive claims has dwindled to one or two papers a year, and why the claims become ever more lame. Many of the papers in the last decade are about the SPAWAR's CR-39 results, which have been challenged, and which SPAWAR itself has shut down.The few claims of excess power are in the range of a watt or so, when PF claimed 10 W in 198, and 140 in 1993. All the internet excitement results from larger but unpublished claims, and from people looking for investment, and using methods of calorimetry shown to be fallible more than a decade ago. It's not pretty. -- not all of it, but some, it seems to me; sufficient evidence, at any rate, to build a prima facie case that we should all go do some more reading. I've done a lot of reading, and like most people who are not emotionally invested in cold fusion's success, I have become more skeptical as a result. Later on will then no doubt go on to assert once more that positive, credible evidence has not been provided. If you mean as a result of more reading, then yes. Because I'm pretty familiar with the body of evidence. But if later on some better evidence, as described several times, came along, I'd be thrilled to change my mind. I believe the chance of that happening is vanishingly small.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 5:05 PM, Alain Sepeda alain.sep...@gmail.com wrote: any real-life scientist claiming that you can work on cold fusion without ruining your career is... LYING. That's a reflection of what mainstream science thinks of cold fusion. It doesn't answer the question of why, if the proof is so obvious, mainstream science holds that view, including when they are enlisted to study the best evidence. A graduate student in science would probably ruin their career by studying astrology or creationism too. It says something about the fields.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 5:45 PM, Harry Veeder hveeder...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 4:10 PM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: Plate tectonics were accepted when the evidence became overwhelming, particularly the fossil and seismologic evidence. Yes, it took a a long time, because geology yields its secrets greedily, but it had nothing to do with attrition. The same is true for cold fusion. All except for the part about it being accepted; oh and about the overwhelming evidence; oh and the part about the scale of the experiment making progress necessarily slow. Otherwise, same thing.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 4:54 PM, Alain Sepeda alain.sep...@gmail.com wrote: plate tectonics evidence where overwhelming much before they were accepted. there was explanation for the moving mechanisme decades before. Maybe much before they were universally accepted. Support grew with the evidence, as might be expected. Cold fusion has stagnated at essential rejection for 24 years.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 4:30 PM, Kevin O'Malley kevmol...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 1:18 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.comwrote: In Storms' book I think there are 180 positive excess heat studies. Each one typically reflects several excess heat events. A few were based on dozens of events. Fleischmann and Pons had the best success rate, running 64 cells at a time several times. Every one of them worked. On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 8:39 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.comwrote: Until they didn't. ***Then you acknowledge those 64 cells did work. Pursuing this finding is not pathological science. You like semantic games I see. Sure they worked, where by work I mean they appeared to give off excess heat, to a careless researcher.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 4:25 PM, Kevin O'Malley kevmol...@gmail.com wrote: Going by peer-reviewed literature, it's almost stopped now. ***I see you're changing your stance. Earlier you said it had stopped. Always be careful of context, semantics, and qualifiers. In the context of giving credit for debunking, I said the field was already dead, and the credit had been given. So, yes, in the perception of the mainstream, the field is dead. But, going by the peer-reviewed literature, there is manifestly still some activity, but it has almost stopped. Happy? What's left now are only the mentally feeble and the scammers. ***Dr. Arrata is a mental giant compared to you. At least I know how to spell his name. He has considerable stature, yes. I don't know how much of that is justified, but it is certainly not due to his work in cold fusion. Anyway, compared the Gell-Mann, Weinberg, Glashow, Lederman, Hawking, Seaborg, he doesn't stack up so well.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 4:19 PM, Kevin O'Malley kevmol...@gmail.com wrote: I'm glad to hear that NI donated a PCMCIA card. Did they go out on a limb and say (as with Cold Fusion) There is an unknown physical event? Nope. It's self evident that there are images of an unknown physical entity. I trust physicists who are skeptical. I don't trust physicists who are pathologically skeptical, … where the difference depends on whether they agree with your preferred truth or not. who refuse to look at the data in the same way that Galileo's detractors refused to look through the telescope. Skeptics have looked at the evidence in 2 formal DOE panels, and every time they're asked to review papers or grant proposals. We know they'd love for it to be true from the events of 1989, and if it were, it would provide an opportunity for fame and glory, and it is the business of scientists to be aware of credible work in their field of interest. You do know that Galileo's detractors were religious, not scientific, and that the modern physics revolution was embraced as quickly as it could be developed. You don't seem to be very familiar with the body of evidence from the 90s. You just want cold fusion to be true, and you see some scientists saying it is. I think that's pretty characteristic of many of the unwashed groupies. Like the LENRproof web site that contains no proof at all. Instead it argues: look at all the people who think it's true, so it must be, and isn't that swell. And yes, I do think it's because of their greed, self-interest, hubris and various other things. Which remains implausible to me because cold fusion is in virtually everyone's interest, and because of the explosion of interest and activity in 1989. Greed ought to work the other way, as is evident from Storms' statement: …many of us were lured into believing that the Pons-Fleischmann effect would solve the world's energy problems and make us all rich.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 10:57 PM, Kevin O'Malley kevmol...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 12:42 PM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.comwrote: You're right. Polywater is different from cold fusion in that it was debunked to everyone's satisfaction. That may or may not happen in cold fusion, but it hasn't happened yet. ***Then by your own reasoning, LENR is not pathological science. Again with the semantics. I don't really care what word you use. To me, both polywater and cold fusion are almost certainly bogus phenomena, they followed similar publication trajectories (if on somewhat different time scales), made essentially no progress after the alleged discovery, and kept a following long after the mainstream had largely dismissed them. They're not identical. Cold fusion got far more attention and love at the start, but polywater got more legitimacy for a longer period (with publications in Science and Nature etc). Since the polywater debunking has been mostly accepted, it can be used as an example of how a large number of legitimate scientists can all make similar blunders, or interpret erratic data in a similarly bogus way. It makes the bogosity of cold fusion much more plausible. In my vocabulary, both are examples of pathological science. Your mileage may vary. (By the way, if you look at another thread here, you'll see that even polywater has not been completely dismissed by everyone. It's the nature of pathological science…)
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
2013/5/9 Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com don't cite semiconductors. or please re-read the history of the conductance anomalies or Germanium. One of the many reason that make me accept the LENr papers is Germanium histpry (and please, read the real history, not the wiki-revisionist history) Germanium is exactly in the theory of Thomas kuhn. it was accepted only when the theory was ready, not when it was proven.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
please read. what have stagnated is your knowledge. illiteracy is a serious disease. ok i'm joking, you are clearly literate, just delusioned and selectively blind like what roland benabou describe http://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers/Groupthink%20IOM%207p%20paper.pdf you are not alone, it is a common pathology http://www.princeton.edu/~rbenabou/papers/Patterns%20of%20Denial%204l%20fin.pdf 2013/5/9 Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 4:54 PM, Alain Sepeda alain.sep...@gmail.comwrote: plate tectonics evidence where overwhelming much before they were accepted. there was explanation for the moving mechanisme decades before. Maybe much before they were universally accepted. Support grew with the evidence, as might be expected. Cold fusion has stagnated at essential rejection for 24 years.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
It is well-known that people engaged in wishful thinking often see patterns where there are none. This is why a gambler believes in a lucky talisman. It is less often noted that people in extreme denial sometimes look at a clear pattern and fail to see it. Any reasonable person looking at McKubre Fig. 1 can see that high loading is a control factor for excess heat, and that the results are not erratic or random: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHcoldfusionb.pdf Cude not only fails to see this pattern, he mixes up two numbers: 1. The number of tests that fail to achieve high loading and therefore do not meet necessary conditions. These never produce heat, which is good evidence that high loading is necessary. 2. The number of tests that achieve high loading and produce high heat. Nearly all of them do. This is irrefutable evidence that high loading is necessary, but not quite sufficient. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
polywater artifact were proven... LENr is proven, tritium, he4, many factor are studied. don' use manipulation techniques, it is shameful of someone working in scientific domain. I work in corp and I know the techniques. LENr in hydrides is LENR in hydrides. it is proven, yen not understood. polywater is something else. papp is something else. I have my opinion, probably similar to yours... and maybe we are wrong... fact will say later... but that have no link with hydrides LENR. LENR in hydride is neither endangered by bad theories that shock me, using uncommon QM or hard to swallow hypothesis... It is experuimental anomalies, proven far below 50sigma, with many kind of anomalies proven, correlation with real-world factors and not with possible artifact source... Many realities have been discovered or supported by crazy people, like Kepler (an astrologist illuminated), Newton (an integrist), Colombus (a man that did not re-read ancien greek who knwos teh size of earth)... This is probably a rule according to Nassim Nicholas taleb, and this explain why I invented nothing, because I'm conservative and rational. I accepted LENr because there is no escape beside going to the the psychiatric hospital and living in a delusion. LENR is a reality, and it is as evident as Duncan, Dominguez, Celani, Gerisher (ex-sckeptics) have seen it. 2013/5/9 Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 10:57 PM, Kevin O'Malley kevmol...@gmail.comwrote: On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 12:42 PM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.comwrote: You're right. Polywater is different from cold fusion in that it was debunked to everyone's satisfaction. That may or may not happen in cold fusion, but it hasn't happened yet. ***Then by your own reasoning, LENR is not pathological science. Again with the semantics. I don't really care what word you use. To me, both polywater and cold fusion are almost certainly bogus phenomena, they followed similar publication trajectories (if on somewhat different time scales), made essentially no progress after the alleged discovery, and kept a following long after the mainstream had largely dismissed them. They're not identical. Cold fusion got far more attention and love at the start, but polywater got more legitimacy for a longer period (with publications in Science and Nature etc). Since the polywater debunking has been mostly accepted, it can be used as an example of how a large number of legitimate scientists can all make similar blunders, or interpret erratic data in a similarly bogus way. It makes the bogosity of cold fusion much more plausible. In my vocabulary, both are examples of pathological science. Your mileage may vary. (By the way, if you look at another thread here, you'll see that even polywater has not been completely dismissed by everyone. It's the nature of pathological science…)
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
Alain Sepeda alain.sep...@gmail.com wrote: It is experuimental anomalies, proven far below 50sigma, with many kind of anomalies proven, correlation with real-world factors and not with possible artifact source... The role of correlation and real-world control factors is often overlooked, even by supporters. This is critically important. Cold fusion heat with the Pd-D system is correlated with several control factors, including: * Heat appears with D but not H. * Heat only appears with high loading. Here is the critical thing about these control parameters: they cannot affect temperature measurements. They cannot cause an artifact that looks like excess heat. There may be minor differences between the thermal properties of heavy water and light water, but they are not enough to explain excess heat measured with an isoperibolic calorimeter. Even if you insist could be a factor, it would be crazy to suggest the difference between heavy and light water might explain heat measured outside the cell walls with a flow or Seebeck calorimeter. There is no way cathode loading can affect the performance of any kind of calorimeter. (Alain: You should use an English spell check program. I depend on one!) - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On May 9, 2013, at 8:12 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote: It is well-known that people engaged in wishful thinking often see patterns where there are none. This is why a gambler believes in a lucky talisman. It is less often noted that people in extreme denial sometimes look at a clear pattern and fail to see it. Any reasonable person looking at McKubre Fig. 1 can see that high loading is a control factor for excess heat, and that the results are not erratic or random: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHcoldfusionb.pdf Cude not only fails to see this pattern, he mixes up two numbers: 1. The number of tests that fail to achieve high loading and therefore do not meet necessary conditions. These never produce heat, which is good evidence that high loading is necessary. And this behavior is exactly what would be expected. Deuterium is a reactant. Therefore, its concentration will determine the reaction rate. When the concentration is too low, the rate of power production drops below that which can be detected by the calorimeter, hence appears to be zero. Consequently, Mckubre observed exactly the behavior that must occur regardless of the explanation. Furthermore, everyone who made composition measurements while measuring heat, including myself, found the same relationship. As people keep pointing out, this and other correlations that cannot result from error support the FACT that cold fusion is a phenomenon of nature. If Cude wanted to make a contribution, he could ask questions that would reveal facts that he and others might not know rather than giving a counter argument to every support for CF. This discussion is exactly like one about the earth being flat or the Moon landing being a fake. Reality does exist. Cude is either playing games with us for fun, as he claims, or he is insane. In either case, this is a waste of time. Ed Storms 2. The number of tests that achieve high loading and produce high heat. Nearly all of them do. This is irrefutable evidence that high loading is necessary, but not quite sufficient. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On May 9, 2013, at 8:47 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote: Alain Sepeda alain.sep...@gmail.com wrote: It is experuimental anomalies, proven far below 50sigma, with many kind of anomalies proven, correlation with real-world factors and not with possible artifact source... The role of correlation and real-world control factors is often overlooked, even by supporters. This is critically important. Cold fusion heat with the Pd-D system is correlated with several control factors, including: * Heat appears with D but not H. This is not true. Heat has been measured when H is used. * Heat only appears with high loading. This is only true during electrolysis. Although loading is important, high loading is not required when other methods are used, presumably because a larger concentration of NAE is present. Here is the critical thing about these control parameters: they cannot affect temperature measurements. They cannot cause an artifact that looks like excess heat. True There may be minor differences between the thermal properties of heavy water and light water, but they are not enough to explain excess heat measured with an isoperibolic calorimeter. Even if you insist could be a factor, it would be crazy to suggest the difference between heavy and light water might explain heat measured outside the cell walls with a flow or Seebeck calorimeter. A calorimeter is not affected by the source of energy. A calorimeter simply detects and measures heat energy from any source. To think otherwise would be like claiming that the length of a pipe would be determined by its material rather than by the ruler used for the measurement. Ed Srorms There is no way cathode loading can affect the performance of any kind of calorimeter. (Alain: You should use an English spell check program. I depend on one!) - Jed
RE: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
From: Joshua Cude Kevin, You just drove a stake through the heart of one of the silliest arguments on record. Cude: Tritium is detected at levels below what is necessary to explain excess heat Who cares? TRITIUM IS DETECTED ! Get it? This essentially proves the LENR phenomenon is real. Cude: I missed the obligatory tritium is claimed to be detected, and no even if it's detected, there could be contamination, accidental or deliberate. That is an absurd cop-out. There are dozens of papers by four top PhDs at the top tritium facility in the World, LANL. Yet Cude wants to suggest that the hundreds of experiments at LANL where tritium is detected are all nothing but measure error - and furthermore that the management of the facility was deceived and continued to fund the researchers for many years. Preposterous! Get a life, Cude - you are so far off-base in your strained attempt to salvage a bogus stance, that you risk pushing yourself into some kind of mental illness. If this is such indisputable proof, why is it that intelligent people don't buy it? Do they hate the thought of clean and abundant energy? We know that's not the case from the events of 1989. Once again you're trying to conflate tritium with heat. Forget 1989, take a deep breath and focus only on the tritium findings at Los Alamos. We will not let you get away with that kind of arrogant appeal to measurement error in this circumstance. These papers are about producing tritium using LENR, and that does not necessarily involve excess heat. You are clearly in denial of the tritium results, for the simple reason that it crushes the very foundation of your skepticism. What you really hate is that fact that tritium (with or without heat) absolutely proves the reality of LENR - since tritium is so unique and non-natural - it is the gold standard. You cannot tolerate the reality of LENR, even without heat - so instead of moving on to the issue of whether heat can be made in a commercially useful way, you have to resort to this kind of silly denial - by suggesting that all of this work at Los Alamos was nothing but measurement error. You should be ashamed of yourself for this kind of transparent intellectual dishonesty. Jones attachment: winmail.dat
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
Edmund Storms stor...@ix.netcom.com wrote: * Heat appears with D but not H. This is not true. Heat has been measured when H is used. Only a few people have detected heat with Pd-H. Fleischmann found marginal heat, and you reported some. Let me put this way: heat comes a lot more readily with deuterium. Since the choice of D or H cannot affect the calorimetry, that indicates something real is happening. * Heat only appears with high loading. This is only true during electrolysis. True, but again it is a control factor which cannot possibly influence the calorimetry, so it cannot be causing an instrument artifact. A calorimeter is not affected by the source of energy. Well, it is at least plausible that a calorimeter in which the temperature is measured in the electrolyte might be affected by the choice of heavy water or light water. I do not think there is any measurable difference, but there could be one. A gas calorimeter with the sample and temperature sensor surrounded by D or H gas will probably have a slightly different calibration curve for the two gases. In a calorimeter where you measure outside the cell, the cell components cannot affect performance. Except to a tiny extent, where the heat originates in different parts of the cell, especially the top or bottom, as shown by the Italians. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On May 9, 2013, at 12:20 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote: Edmund Storms stor...@ix.netcom.com wrote: * Heat appears with D but not H. This is not true. Heat has been measured when H is used. Only a few people have detected heat with Pd-H. Fleischmann found marginal heat, and you reported some. Let me put this way: heat comes a lot more readily with deuterium. Since the choice of D or H cannot affect the calorimetry, that indicates something real is happening. True, but only a few people have made the effort. Most people consider H2O to be dead, so why bother. In addition, H2O is not used to calibrate a cell using D2O. This is done using a Pt cathode or an electric heater. * Heat only appears with high loading. This is only true during electrolysis. True, but again it is a control factor which cannot possibly influence the calorimetry, so it cannot be causing an instrument artifact. True. My point is that the effect of composition is variable, as it should be based on any basic understanding. Nevertheless, as you say, the effect is real and in the right direction to be consistent with basic understanding of reactions of any kind. A calorimeter is not affected by the source of energy. Well, it is at least plausible that a calorimeter in which the temperature is measured in the electrolyte might be affected by the choice of heavy water or light water. I do not think there is any measurable difference, but there could be one. A gas calorimeter with the sample and temperature sensor surrounded by D or H gas will probably have a slightly different calibration curve for the two gases. In a calorimeter where you measure outside the cell, the cell components cannot affect performance. Except to a tiny extent, where the heat originates in different parts of the cell, especially the top or bottom, as shown by the Italians. Here the discussion is between a good calorimeter and a bad calorimeter. A bad calorimeter has all kinds of potential errors. A good calorimeter measured only heat, nothing else. Yes, some bad calorimeters were used. Nevertheless, most data was taken using good calorimeters, which continues to be the case. Making a good calorimeter requires skill, which had to be learned. Apparently, many skeptics have still not learned how to tell the difference. Ed Storms. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
Cude said “The evidence for cold fusion is a dog's breakfast of inconsistent claims of excess heat and various products of nuclear reaction. After 24 years, there is still not an experiment that anyone skilled in the art can do, and get quantitatively predictable positive results, whether it's excess heat, tritium, or helium (or an unequivocally positive result).” Response: I want the LeClair effect debunked. I have yet to be satisfied. It uses polywater to produce cold fusion, how simple a debunking job could this be? I don’t mean just words, I mean conclusive debunking evidence. There is a whole class of cold fusion claims that involve cavatation, please turn your considerable debunking expertize to this area of cold fusion. Are you a one trick pony show? You need to expand your horizons if you want to aspire to world class debunking. Many vortex members think LeClair is crazy. You will have some support here and an eager audience from some quarters, or do you only relish the center of attention as a lone rebel voice of sanity crying bravely and heroically in the wilderness of unreason and irrationality. As an object lesson, show them that they are no better than you in their cynical and closed minded behavior. Always be mindful that debunking is not a selfish endeavor that only serves your personal needs and compulsions, it is a social responsibility that you owe to society in general. Cynics' propensity to spot setups and snow jobs before the rest of us also makes them socially valuable. Infamous cynic Maureen Dowd, for instance, did a Pulitzer-winning job of highlighting tragic flaws in the Clinton administration. Cynics deserve more respect than they get, Bayan says. You need naysayers who will shout down ideas that are extreme or just plain foolish. Some men must put in the work, unheralded and unsung to protect society from the ravages of pseudo-science. For some as of yet unknown reason, fate has chosen you out of the uncaring masses to undertake this thankless effort. On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 5:40 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 9:44 PM, Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 12:28 PM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.comwrote: You need positive credible evidence to convince people that cold fusion is real. And there isn't any. It's a little painful to watch this thread, Joshua. This may come as a surprise, but I'm not trying to make it painless for true believers. Also, no one's holding a gun to your head. Here you assert that positive, credible evidence has not been provided, after people have provided positive, credible evidence The statement about positive credible evidence is a summary, not an argument. I've written a lot of words to support that summary. Mainstream does not believe the evidence for cold fusion. Therefore, it is not credible. It's really an observation, but like I said, it's not meant to stand on its own as a compelling reason to reject it. The evidence for cold fusion is a dog's breakfast of inconsistent claims of excess heat and various products of nuclear reaction. After 24 years, there is still not an experiment that anyone skilled in the art can do, and get quantitatively predictable positive results, whether it's excess heat, tritium, or helium (or an unequivocally positive result). That's why the number of refereed positive claims has dwindled to one or two papers a year, and why the claims become ever more lame. Many of the papers in the last decade are about the SPAWAR's CR-39 results, which have been challenged, and which SPAWAR itself has shut down.The few claims of excess power are in the range of a watt or so, when PF claimed 10 W in 198, and 140 in 1993. All the internet excitement results from larger but unpublished claims, and from people looking for investment, and using methods of calorimetry shown to be fallible more than a decade ago. It's not pretty. -- not all of it, but some, it seems to me; sufficient evidence, at any rate, to build a prima facie case that we should all go do some more reading. I've done a lot of reading, and like most people who are not emotionally invested in cold fusion's success, I have become more skeptical as a result. Later on will then no doubt go on to assert once more that positive, credible evidence has not been provided. If you mean as a result of more reading, then yes. Because I'm pretty familiar with the body of evidence. But if later on some better evidence, as described several times, came along, I'd be thrilled to change my mind. I believe the chance of that happening is vanishingly small.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
Cude wrote: After 24 years, there is still not an experiment that anyone skilled in the art can do, and get quantitatively predictable positive results, whether it's excess heat, tritium, or helium (or an unequivocally positive result).” Yes, there is. It was published in 1996. See: http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEhowtoprodu.pdf See also: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/CravensDtheenablin.pdf - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 5:45 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 4:54 PM, Alain Sepeda alain.sep...@gmail.comwrote: plate tectonics evidence where overwhelming much before they were accepted. there was explanation for the moving mechanisme decades before. Maybe much before they were universally accepted. Support grew with the evidence, as might be expected. Cold fusion has stagnated at essential rejection for 24 years. Obviously the controversy isn't over. I meant it is comparable to the time when plate tectonics was considered fringe science. It took about 45 years from the time continental drift was first proposed in 1912 to its acceptance. However, the concept is really much older and was first proposed in 1596. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift According to Wikipedia it seems the concept of continental drift wasn't firmly rejected until the mid 19 th century due to certain findings and the influence of James Dana, a prominent geologist of the time. Harry Harry Harry
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 2:36 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: Doesn't answer the question. ***Of course it does. It just establishes the failure of the evidence. ***No, it establishes the real reason why intelligent people don't get involved in Cold Fusion. The reason for the derision ***Sneering is against the rules here. is because intelligent people don't buy your indisputable proof. ***Nope. It's because you're a skeptopath. Others just like to pile on and when we scratch the surface, we find they're utterly uninformed about the evidence. If intelligent people bought it, the skeptics would be the ones whose careers would be dragged through the mud. ***You proceed from an odd form of idealism. Scientists are human. On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 4:07 PM, Kevin O'Malley kevmol...@gmail.comwrote: On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 12:16 PM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.comwrote: If this is such indisputable proof, why is it that intelligent people don't buy it? Do they hate the thought of clean and abundant energy? We know that's not the case from the events of 1989. ***because intelligent people don't like having their careers dragged through the mud. Doesn't answer the question. It just establishes the failure of the evidence. The reason for the derision is because intelligent people don't buy your indisputable proof. If intelligent people bought it, the skeptics would be the ones whose careers would be dragged through the mud.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 2:35 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: interlab reproducibility is still a bitch. ***True enough, but that doesn't make it a pathological science. It makes it a difficult one.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 2:42 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: That's a reflection of what mainstream science thinks of cold fusion. It doesn't answer the question of why, if the proof is so obvious, ***Interesting little conditional you've inserted here. The proof is not obvious but the evidence is. With so much evidence, with 14000 replications, the evidence is compelling. This is far from a pathological science. mainstream science holds that view, including when they are enlisted to study the best evidence. ***There is simply far too much latitude granted to such studies. An example is the 2 times there were investigations into Space Shuttle accidents. The recommendations of the panels were that management wasn't to blame, but management was to blame. A graduate student in science would probably ruin their career by studying astrology or creationism too. It says something about the fields. ***If a grad student in physics were to study astrology, it's obvious they've stepped out of their core competence. But if they want to study Condensed Matter Nuclear Science and LENR, they're within their core competence. It says nothing particularly relevant about the field of astrology. Your ridiculous analogy says something about human nature.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 2:40 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: Mainstream does not believe the evidence for cold fusion. Therefore, it is not credible. ***What a ridiculous line of reasoning. The evidence is credible, just like the evidence for plate tectonics was credible. Just because others didn't believe it, there was no bearing whatsoever on whether the evidence was credible. It's easy to see that you aren't here to enlighten anyone, find any common ground, nor move the field forward. You're here to sneer. Your intellectual dishonesy is what makes you not credible. On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 9:44 PM, Eric Walker eric.wal...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 12:28 PM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.comwrote: You need positive credible evidence to convince people that cold fusion is real. And there isn't any. It's a little painful to watch this thread, Joshua. This may come as a surprise, but I'm not trying to make it painless for true believers. Also, no one's holding a gun to your head. Here you assert that positive, credible evidence has not been provided, after people have provided positive, credible evidence The statement about positive credible evidence is a summary, not an argument. I've written a lot of words to support that summary. Mainstream does not believe the evidence for cold fusion. Therefore, it is not credible. It's really an observation, but like I said, it's not meant to stand on its own as a compelling reason to reject it. The evidence for cold fusion is a dog's breakfast of inconsistent claims of excess heat and various products of nuclear reaction. After 24 years, there is still not an experiment that anyone skilled in the art can do, and get quantitatively predictable positive results, whether it's excess heat, tritium, or helium (or an unequivocally positive result). That's why the number of refereed positive claims has dwindled to one or two papers a year, and why the claims become ever more lame. Many of the papers in the last decade are about the SPAWAR's CR-39 results, which have been challenged, and which SPAWAR itself has shut down.The few claims of excess power are in the range of a watt or so, when PF claimed 10 W in 198, and 140 in 1993. All the internet excitement results from larger but unpublished claims, and from people looking for investment, and using methods of calorimetry shown to be fallible more than a decade ago. It's not pretty. -- not all of it, but some, it seems to me; sufficient evidence, at any rate, to build a prima facie case that we should all go do some more reading. I've done a lot of reading, and like most people who are not emotionally invested in cold fusion's success, I have become more skeptical as a result. Later on will then no doubt go on to assert once more that positive, credible evidence has not been provided. If you mean as a result of more reading, then yes. Because I'm pretty familiar with the body of evidence. But if later on some better evidence, as described several times, came along, I'd be thrilled to change my mind. I believe the chance of that happening is vanishingly small.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
So, Pons Fleischmann were careless researchers, eh? Then how is it that their findings have been replicated 14,700 times? How did they become 2 of the most preeminent electrochemists of their day before they took on this anomaly?How careless do you have to be to read a thermometer incorrectly? You won't answer because you can't. Your position becomes more preposterous with each post. On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 2:47 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 4:30 PM, Kevin O'Malley kevmol...@gmail.comwrote: On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 1:18 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.comwrote: In Storms' book I think there are 180 positive excess heat studies. Each one typically reflects several excess heat events. A few were based on dozens of events. Fleischmann and Pons had the best success rate, running 64 cells at a time several times. Every one of them worked. On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 8:39 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.comwrote: Until they didn't. ***Then you acknowledge those 64 cells did work. Pursuing this finding is not pathological science. You like semantic games I see. Sure they worked, where by work I mean they appeared to give off excess heat, to a careless researcher.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
At least I know how to spell his name. ***Gee, that's about as semantically irrelevant as an argument can get. He has considerable stature, yes. I don't know how much of that is justified, but it is certainly not due to his work in cold fusion. ***It was due to his work in Nuclear Physics. Are those others representative of cold fusion debunkers?How many debunkers have won their nation's highest honor due to work in Nuke Physics? How many have buildings named after them? His work stacks up just fine compared to those others. On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 2:50 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 4:25 PM, Kevin O'Malley kevmol...@gmail.comwrote: Going by peer-reviewed literature, it's almost stopped now. ***I see you're changing your stance. Earlier you said it had stopped. Always be careful of context, semantics, and qualifiers. In the context of giving credit for debunking, I said the field was already dead, and the credit had been given. So, yes, in the perception of the mainstream, the field is dead. But, going by the peer-reviewed literature, there is manifestly still some activity, but it has almost stopped. Happy? What's left now are only the mentally feeble and the scammers. ***Dr. Arrata is a mental giant compared to you. At least I know how to spell his name. He has considerable stature, yes. I don't know how much of that is justified, but it is certainly not due to his work in cold fusion. Anyway, compared the Gell-Mann, Weinberg, Glashow, Lederman, Hawking, Seaborg, he doesn't stack up so well.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 2:53 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.comwrote: It's self evident that there are images of an unknown physical entity. ***Wow, you put more credence into bigfoot than cold fusion. Amazing. Just amazing. Note that National Instruments DID NOT go out on a limb to say what you just did over bigfoot, but they DID over cold fusion. You conveniently just overlook that fact and move onto your other word salad. You're completely full of shit.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 2:57 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: Again with the semantics. I don't really care what word you use. To me, both polywater and cold fusion are almost certainly bogus phenomena, ... In my vocabulary ... ***Now that your position has been obliterated, you're moving onto Humpty Dumpty definitions. Yet another way we can all see you're full of shit.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
Jones Beene jone...@pacbell.net wrote: Once again you're trying to conflate tritium with heat. Forget 1989, take a deep breath and focus only on the tritium findings at Los Alamos. And a lot of other places too! TAMU and the National Cold Fusion Institute (NCFI) are good examples, and don't forget the other Los Alamos study by Storms. Conflate is the key word here. This is important! It is a mistake people on both sides make. As Jones says -- These papers are about producing tritium using LENR, and that does not necessarily involve excess heat. AND You cannot tolerate the reality of LENR, even without heat - so instead of moving on to the issue of whether heat can be made in a commercially useful way, you have to resort to this kind of silly denial - by suggesting that all of this work at Los Alamos was nothing but measurement error. Cude and others conflate many different assertions and issues. They stir everything into one pot. You have to learn to compartmentalize with cold fusion, or with any new phenomenon or poorly understood subject. You have to remember that some things are extremely well established, but others may be wrong. Facts may have limited applicability: there is no doubt that high loading is a control factor with Pd-D electrolysis, but it may play no role with gas loading. Most of all, you have to remember that proving one aspect of it does not prove another, although it may lend support. In this case, the tritium findings by Storms and soon after at TAMU and NCFI proved beyond doubt that cold fusion is a real, nuclear phenomenon. After they published that 1990 it was case closed. Every scientist on earth should have believed it. Many scientists do not believe it because they have never heard of these results, or because they irrational or unscientific. Their continued disbelief tells us nothing about the quality of the evidence, which is irrefutable. The excess heat results proved that it is not a chemical effect, in the normal sense. Perhaps it is a Mills effect. Again, there is so much evidence for this, at such high s/n ratios, it is irrefutable. The helium results support the hypothesis that this is some sort of deuterium fusion, at least with Pd-D. There is no doubt about the helium, but no one has searched for helium or deuterium from Ni-H cells. All the other claims are fuzzy, in my opinion. There is not as much evidence for them. Whether heat can be made in a commercially useful way is important. I say almost certainly yes. Others say maybe not. It hasn't been done yet, so obviously we can't be certain. The point is, DO NOT CONFUSE THESE QUESTIONS. Do not conflate them! Answering one does not automatically answer the others. Doubts about one do not automatically extend to the others. They are related but still separate. Yes, the heat is real, but no, that in itself does not prove the heat can be commercialized. Equally important, the fact that some researchers do lousy calorimetry does not call into question the calorimetry done by others. McKubre does not have to answer for work done by Mills, or Cravens, or Mizuno. No one has to answer for Rossi, except perhaps his collaborators at U. Bologna. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Thu, 9 May 2013 14:20:42 -0700 Kevin O'Malley kevmol...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 2:57 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: Again with the semantics. I don't really care what word you use. To me, both polywater and cold fusion are almost certainly bogus phenomena, ... In my vocabulary ... ***Now that your position has been obliterated, you're moving onto Humpty Dumpty definitions. Yet another way we can all see you're full of shit. Admin: any chance you can ban this fellow for a while? In several of his recent posts, he has descended far below the bar for decency you set up for this list.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
You mean you can't use that word? I did a search found it 128 times on Vortex-L. Does that mean that all 128 times, those people were given a timeout? I don't see evidence of it. On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 2:50 PM, Vorl Bek vorl@antichef.com wrote: On Thu, 9 May 2013 14:20:42 -0700 Kevin O'Malley kevmol...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 2:57 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: Again with the semantics. I don't really care what word you use. To me, both polywater and cold fusion are almost certainly bogus phenomena, ... In my vocabulary ... ***Now that your position has been obliterated, you're moving onto Humpty Dumpty definitions. Yet another way we can all see you're full of shit. Admin: any chance you can ban this fellow for a while? In several of his recent posts, he has descended far below the bar for decency you set up for this list.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
Vorl Bek vorl@antichef.com wrote: Admin: any chance you can ban this fellow for a while? In several of his recent posts, he has descended far below the bar for decency you set up for this list. Oh come now! Cude isn't that bad. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 2:48 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: Conflate is the key word here. This is important! It is a mistake people on both sides make. Yes, definitely -- conflation is a critical mistake, but it is most likely to occur when it is convenient for one's position. Throw perpetual motion machines, homeopathy, polywater and cold fusion all into the same category. It does not matter that there appear to be basic differences that make the comparison strained, at best. Conflation is less likely to occur when it is inconvenient to the position you're intending to tendentiously pursue: plate tectonics, semiconductors and cold fusion are not in the same category and should be distinguished. Often conflation is a mistake. It is hard, for example, to keep in mind that there are Pd/D experiments, Pd/H experiments, W/D experiments, Ni/H experiments, etc., and that the results do not necessarily transfer from one to another. In this way it is easy to conflate conclusions made about one set of experiments with another set of experiments. We do that unintentionally all the time here; I certainly do. But sometimes conflation is a rhetorical device employed to advance a purpose unrelated to mutual understanding. I think a person would have to be mentally unbalanced to doggedly employ such a tactic intentionally in any more than jest, but there is an area of gray here between a commitment to intellectual integrity and a commitment to pursuing a strategic end which can make it hard to avoid such a device and easy to overlook that one is doing so. Eric
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Tue, May 07, 2013 at 12:24:43PM -0600, Edmund Storms wrote: As for concentrating on problems of reproducibility and upscalability, I have tried to address these issues but with little support. Ed, since you claim you have running experiments with anomalous heat in your home lab, have you ever tried inviting other investigators to check your results, and make them reproduce in their own experiments? If yes, what was the result?
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Tue, May 07, 2013 at 03:08:07PM -0400, Jed Rothwell wrote: Table 6 shows many selected studies with tritium. There is some overlap. I regard tritium as proof that a nuclear reaction occurred. It is as Definitely, and at 100 W sustained power your experiment will soon breed enough curies to kill you without sufficient shielding. I must admit I have never heard of radioactive boy scout cases amount CF investigators. Are there any? convincing as excess heat far beyond the limits of chemistry. It is easy for experts to confirm that tritium is real. This is another type of evidence that people such as Cude never address.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
Eugen Leitl eu...@leitl.org wrote: Definitely, and at 100 W sustained power your experiment will soon breed enough curies to kill you without sufficient shielding. Not with cold fusion. The ratio of tritium to heat is not the same with cold fusion as it is with plasma fusion. The ratio is not fixed, either. That is also true of neutrons. There are very few, or none, whereas a 100 W plasma fusion reaction would produce enough neutrons to kill you. As far as I know, the only product of cold fusion that occurs in the same ratio to the heat is helium, and that may only be the case with Pd-D. I must admit I have never heard of radioactive boy scout cases amount CF investigators. Are there any? See: the dead graduate student problem. - Jed
RE: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ClaytorTNtritiumprob.pdf This paper from LANL (and dozens of other papers on tritium) should erase all doubts about tritium production - and also illuminate the major problem in LENR. Why doesn't Eugen avail himself of the online resources? This is 15 year old material. The interesting thing about table 1 in this paper is the order of magnitude increase in the same alloy. One batch was clearly superior to another batch of the same alloy. IOW there is an unknown dopant apparently - or other factor which makes the tritium rate go way up in two alloys which appear identical but were from different batches. Since they were melt-spun, the difference could have been in slight variations in the parameters of manufacturing. That unknown factor is emblematic of the problems in larger field of LENR. There is (or was) an unknown factor which is keeping the experiments unreliable - and a massive level of engineering is the only way to approach it. I doubt if the Rhenium alloy was chosen at random - but there are literally 10,000 other alloys which should be investigated. That is why Rossi is such a disappointment (unless he salvages something) - his results promised the robustness which had been lacking but sadly have not yet been proved. From: Jed Rothwell Eugen Leitl eu...@leitl.org wrote: Definitely, and at 100 W sustained power your experiment will soon breed enough curies to kill you without sufficient shielding. Not with cold fusion. The ratio of tritium to heat is not the same with cold fusion as it is with plasma fusion. The ratio is not fixed, either.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
Many people have visited my lab, Eugen. As for checking results, this can only be done after the data are made available in a paper, which I have done. Simply seeing a device making what is claimed to be energy is a useless experience. The device is complex and not easy to analyze simply by looking. The only evidence that is visible are lines on a computer screen. As for reproducing the effect, I and other people have published papers suggesting ways this can be done. Have you taken the time to read my book? Many of your questions are answered there. Ed Storms On May 8, 2013, at 12:43 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote: On Tue, May 07, 2013 at 12:24:43PM -0600, Edmund Storms wrote: As for concentrating on problems of reproducibility and upscalability, I have tried to address these issues but with little support. Ed, since you claim you have running experiments with anomalous heat in your home lab, have you ever tried inviting other investigators to check your results, and make them reproduce in their own experiments? If yes, what was the result?
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 10:34 AM, Randy wuller rwul...@freeark.com wrote: ** What he can't explain is why anyone would run around the internet trying to stop people from investigating a phenomenon. I think cold fusion is a pipe dream, and I like people to agree with me. You can't seriously be unaware that all manner of trivial subjects are argued with equal or greater passion on the internet. The simple truth is that good argument can be invigorating. It makes no sense and is probably a symptom of the very negative period (I would describe it as the age of pessimism) we find ourselves living through. Other than in the field of cold fusion, progress in science has continues apace. Shechtman (who should be sensitive to inertia in science because his discovery of quasicrystals was ridiculed by Pauling) identified 3 surprising discoveries on the structure of matter in the 80s: quasi-crystals, fullerenes, and high temperature superconductivity. Conspicuously absent: cold fusion, which would be the most surprising of all. When the pendulum shifts pendulums swing, they don't shift and we enter an optimistic age, everything will seem possible and as such being for something will be much more productive (it always is) than being against something. Everything? It will be much more productive to be for perpetual motion research? You will find a lot less Cude's running around, thank goodness. I don't know. Skepticism of cold fusion seems to pretty common among the very best physicists. What has a cold fusion true believer done for the world lately? Personally, while he is obviously bright, Cude's position is just about the dumbest fool thing I have ever read. But shared by a lot of smart people like Gell-Mann. In answer to your question, of course we should investigate a phenomenon of the significance of Cold Fusion even if the chance of it being real is miniscule. Our main difference is in the magnitude assigned to miniscule. I also think it is absurd to believe we have an adequate understanding of physics today to rule it out. There is a reason lawyers are not consulted about the adequacy of current physics understanding.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
It is a waste of energy to be against scientific investigation no matter how you perceive the chance of success. It is a sign of the times, just like Parks book Voodoo Science. It smacks of Dogma and Religious belief and the lack of openmindedness. Go get a life. Sent from my iPhone On May 8, 2013, at 10:03 AM, Joshua Cude joshua.c...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 10:34 AM, Randy wuller rwul...@freeark.com wrote: What he can't explain is why anyone would run around the internet trying to stop people from investigating a phenomenon. I think cold fusion is a pipe dream, and I like people to agree with me. You can't seriously be unaware that all manner of trivial subjects are argued with equal or greater passion on the internet. The simple truth is that good argument can be invigorating. It makes no sense and is probably a symptom of the very negative period (I would describe it as the age of pessimism) we find ourselves living through. Other than in the field of cold fusion, progress in science has continues apace. Shechtman (who should be sensitive to inertia in science because his discovery of quasicrystals was ridiculed by Pauling) identified 3 surprising discoveries on the structure of matter in the 80s: quasi-crystals, fullerenes, and high temperature superconductivity. Conspicuously absent: cold fusion, which would be the most surprising of all. When the pendulum shifts pendulums swing, they don't shift and we enter an optimistic age, everything will seem possible and as such being for something will be much more productive (it always is) than being against something. Everything? It will be much more productive to be for perpetual motion research? You will find a lot less Cude's running around, thank goodness. I don't know. Skepticism of cold fusion seems to pretty common among the very best physicists. What has a cold fusion true believer done for the world lately? Personally, while he is obviously bright, Cude's position is just about the dumbest fool thing I have ever read. But shared by a lot of smart people like Gell-Mann. In answer to your question, of course we should investigate a phenomenon of the significance of Cold Fusion even if the chance of it being real is miniscule. Our main difference is in the magnitude assigned to miniscule. I also think it is absurd to believe we have an adequate understanding of physics today to rule it out. There is a reason lawyers are not consulted about the adequacy of current physics understanding.
RE: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
I am amazed that religious zealotry persists without religion. Just part of human nature, I guess. Or OCD. No one expects the Spanish Inquistion
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 12:36 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: Cude wrote: You should keep an open mind to the possibility that cold fusion is not the Wright brothers' airplane. Maybe it's Blondlott’s N-rays. It’s Fedyakin’s polywater. These things were never replicated. Only one lab briefly claimed to replicate polywater, and it soon retracted. According to Ackermann in 2006, 450 papers were published on polywater in 12 years, with more than 250 over 2 years. And i the very best journals. You're saying they're all from one group, or none of them are claimed replications? What would sustain the field? But of course, they're not from one group, and they are claimed replications. Here's 5 papers from the Garfield library (with excerpts from the abstracts) from different groups in the best journals, all claiming replication: 1. Page Tf; Jakobsen Rj; Lippincott Er,; Polywater . Proton Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectrum; Science 167(1970)51 Abstract: In the presence of water, the resonance of the strongly hydrogen-bonded protons characteristic of polywater appears at 5 ppm lower applied magnetic field than water. Polywater made by a new method confirms the IR spectrum reported originally. 2. Petsko Ga; Proton Magnetic Resonance Spectrum Of Polywater, Science 167(1970)171 Abstract: With the aid of a time-average computer, the proton magnetic resonance spectrum of anomalous water (polywater) is obtained. The spectrum consists of a single broad resonance shifted approximately 300 Hz down-field from the resonance of ordinary water. From the text: Samples of polywater, prepared in the manner described by Lippincott (2) in capillaries of … 3. Castelli.Ga Ra; Grabar Dg; Hession J; Burkhard H; Polywater . Methods For Identifying Polywater Columns And Evidence For Ordered Growth; Science 167(1970)865 Abstract: The refractive indices of polywater columns in glass capillaries have been rapidly and accurately measured with an interference microscope. Polywater has been detected by this method in both quartz and Vycor glass capillaries... 4. Middlehu. J Mv; Fisher Lr; A New Polywater; Nature 227(1970)57 Abstract: We have made a form of polywater (which we shall call fluorite polywater) with an infrared spectrum similar to that observed by Lippincott et al. [4] but with the frequencies of the peaks somewhat displaced… 5. Brummer Sb; Entine G; Bradspie.Ji G; Lingerta.H G; Leung C; High-Yield Method For Preparation Of Anomalous Water; Journal Of Physical Chemistry 75(1971)2976 Abstract: An experimental method for the preparation of anomalous water and its in volatile residue polywater in large glass tubes is described. […] In contrast to previously reported results, *every tube*, up to the largest explored (23-mm id), *successfully produces material* [emphasis in original]. The material thus prepared has an IR spectrum similar to that reported of polywater … Summary and Conclusions: The present data indicate that the erratic nature of the polywater phenomenon may be overcome by use of large flamed and sealed glass tubes… There are many more, but that should be enough to make the point. Many different groups in dozens of papers reported not only the preparation of polywater, but measurement of its properties, variations in the material, and in the methods of preparation. And look at the journals they published in: Science and Nature and JPC, but also Phys Rev and JACS and so on -- journals cold fusion can only dream about appearing in. So not only were a lot of people claiming a bogus phenomenon, but it was considered respectable among a large fraction of mainstream science. And still it was wrong. It wasn't that the specific measurements were wrong, but the controls on impurities were not as good as they thought, and the interpretations of the effects were wrong. Cold fusion has been observed at 20 to 100 W with no input power, albeit on rare occasions. It's claims like this that cause observers to distrust the advocates. One watt with no input would be trivial to prove, provided it lasted long enough, and was not a part of too large an apparatus. But to claim 100W, and not be able to convince the world? Outrageous. And then with claims like that, why would the community get so excited about 100 mW *with* input at MIT? And by the way, it was not only geezers who were skeptical of aviation. Wilbur Wright said in 1901, If man ever flies, it will not be within our lifetime, not within a thousand years. Meanwhile, Langley, a pioneer of aviation, started investigating aerodynamics as his second career. He was near 70 (and a strong advocate) when the Wrights first flew. Wilbur said that while returning home discouraging flight tests at Kitty Hawk. At that time the Wrights were already far ahead of all of their rivals, including Langley. Langley was not a supporter of the Wrights when they first flew. You missed the point. Langley was not a skeptic of
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 12:20 PM, Kevin O'Malley kevmol...@gmail.com wrote: ***Hagelstein wrote this editorial shortly after having his latest LENR experiment run for several MONTHS in his lab. How has the size of the claimed effect gotten smaller, and how is that consistent with pathological science? PF claimed about 10 W in 1989, and in 1993 they claimed 140W excess (with 40 W input), and they published in refereed journals. Hagelstein is claiming an unverified 100 mW, and they have not published the results. 100 mW is 1400 times smaller than 140 W. Hagelstein's experiment is shown to students at his course. He said visitors were welcome, but when someone visited and reported back in some forum, all he got to see was a closed tupperware box with wires coming out connected to stuff. Not really a convincing demo. Why doesn't he use the heat to do something really unequivocal, like heating a large volume of water. And if his COP is really 14, why can't he get more nanors, boil water, generate electricity and run the experiment on its own power. Why does a new source of energy still need energy input from the mains?
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 12:55 PM, Kevin O'Malley kevmol...@gmail.com wrote: I would estimate the chance of making a mistake that leads to positive result to be 1 in 4. You can use whatever estimate suits your fancy afterwards. That means 3 in 4 are genuine, mistake-free positive results, right? So let's be even more generous to the argument and make it 1 in 3. So if 3 independent labs generate positive results due to mistakes, it's 1 in 3^3 or 1 in 27 chance of happening. In my book, if there was a 1 in 10 chance of a professional scientist generating such errors, he should be fired; but that's just me. Since there have been more than 14,700 replications (see below), the chance of measuring errors or noise causing false positives in replication would be 1/3 ^ 14700, which is ~10^-5000 Wow. I had no idea. Now, why didn't they just do this bit of math for the DOE panel instead of trying to convince them with boring old scientific evidence. You can't dispute 10^-5000, so they would have all been convinced cold fusion is real, instead of 17 of 18 saying the evidence was not conclusive. And then all the funding they wanted would have been theirs. Have you contacted the DOE? But statistical analysis depends on the assumptions. Mine would go like this: There is an appreciable chance that calorimetric artifacts or errors would appear in cold fusion experiments. Rothwell writes: calorimetric errors and artifacts are more common than researchers realize. In some of those cases, the scientists would be convinced that apparent excess heat must be nuclear. For those scientists, if they keep at it long enough, the chance that they would see more artifacts or commit more errors supporting their ideas approaches 100%, influenced by wishful thinking and the huge benefit to man and themselves that successful results promise. So, then any number of successful claims are possible limited only by the time and energy true believers are prepared to invest, and the amount of funding they can find to support them. Storms wrote: ...many of us were lured into believing that the Pons-Fleischmann effect would solve the world's energy problems and make us all rich. Cold fusion is not the first phenomenon where this apparently unlikely situation of mass delusion has occurred.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 1:14 PM, Edmund Storms stor...@ix.netcom.com wrote: Of course, that is why science demands replication. No two scientists will likely make the same mistake. I submit all the scientists claiming dowsing, homeopathy, magnet motors, are making the same mistakes. For a century, all the scientists were certain electromagnetic evidence indicated the existence of an ether. As a result, the behavior, if repeated many times, becomes real. So, we can engineer nature, just by making mistakes? That threshold has been passed by cold fusion. That's your view, but believers have not been able to get the rest of the world to accept it. Now the challenge is to do studies that show why and how it works. Unfortunately, this takes money - money that the likes of Cude prevent from being applied. If a definition of crime against humanity is needed, this behavior would qualify. Good thing true believers don't make the laws. If cold fusion funding can be affected by mere argument in obscure internet forums, then the evidence is just too feeble. And for an extraordinary claim, feeble evidence that stays feeble, suggests it's almost certainly false.
Re: [Vo]:Hagelstein's editorial
On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 1:18 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: In Storms' book I think there are 180 positive excess heat studies. Each one typically reflects several excess heat events. A few were based on dozens of events. Fleischmann and Pons had the best success rate, running 64 cells at a time several times. Every one of them worked. Until they didn't. PF also published the highest claims, but their biggest published claims came early on. They claimed 140 W in 1993, just about when the Toyota lab opened and they were given tens of millions in funding. They never did that well again; in fact they hardly published anything after that. And in 1998 Pons went into hiding. Never, in the history of science and technology, has an effect been widely replicated which turned out to be a mistake. Never in the history of physics has so little progress been made on so simple an experiment after so much effort. I'd be interested in an example of a phenomenon from a bench top experiment, in which the experimenter controls the parameters, rejected for decades by mainstream journals and scientists as artifacts and pseudoscience, that turned out to be right. The closest I've seen is Semmelweis from 150 years ago, and to a lesser extent, ohm's law, around the same period. Cold fusion is a theory to explain erratic calorimetry results. There are many example of theories used to explain results that turned out to be wrong. The ether is one example, and it was believed for a century. But of course I shouldn't need to tell CF advocates that scientific ideas held by many scientists can be wrong. That's the bread and butter of their defense of the field. In fact, there are many examples of phenomena widely claimed to have been replicated, for much longer than CF, which are nevertheless rejected by mainstream science. Things like perpetual motion, UFO sightings, any of a wide range of paranormal phenomena, many alternative medical treatments, and so on. Most of these will probably never be proven wrong to the satisfaction of their adherents, but that doesn't make them right. Some arguments for homeopathy, sound eerily similar to CF arguments. Check out this one from the guardian.co.uk (July 2010) By the end of 2009, 142 randomised control trials (the gold standard in medical research) comparing homeopathy with placebo or conventional treatment had been published in peer-reviewed journals – 74 were able to draw firm conclusions: 63 were positive for homeopathy and 11 were negative. Five major systematic reviews have also been carried out to analyse the balance of evidence from RCTs of homeopathy – four were positive (Kleijnen et al; Linde et al; Linde et al; Cucherat et al) and one was negative (Shang et al). This is for medicine diluted so that on average less than one molecule of the starting material is present per dose. And while you incorrectly deny the claimed replications of polywater, it is quite similar.There were 450 peer-reviewed publications on polywater. Most of those professional scientists turned out to be wrong. There were 200 on N-rays; also all wrong. Cold fusion has more, but polywater had more than N-rays, and if you can get 450 papers on a bogus phenomenon, twice as many is not a big stretch, especially for a phenomenon with so much greater implication, and if an unequivocal debunking doesn't come along.
