Murray wrote: Maybe you and Lomax have already long reached an impasse,
talking right past each other?


You are right. We have hashed this over several times, and ceased to make
any progress a long time ago. After all, the discussion is about results
mostly a decade or more old. It was hashed out here 2 years ago, and more
recently in moletrap. But since you ask, I can cut and paste and augment a
recent summary that expresses my view of the correlation situation.


*Heat Helium correlation*


A correlation between heat and helium is clearly an important and
definitive experiment for cold fusion. To justify a claim of such a
correlation, Lomax points to a Storms' 2010 review in Naturwissenschaften.
Unfortunately, the experiments that Storms cites represent a real dog's
breakfast of mostly unrefereed and marginal work, and the conclusions
depend rather heavily on Storms' own data interpretation, which does not
add confidence considering he takes Rossi's results seriously.


*Peer review*


Peer-review is a rather modest requirement for credibility, but Lomax seems
to think that a citation in a refereed review article confers upon the data
the equivalent credibility of peer-review of the original work, but that's
nonsense. The referees for a review paper cannot possibly be expected to
critically review each of the papers cited. And a look at some of the cited
papers makes it clear they did not.


The most recent peer-reviewed results that Storms uses to get a quantified
heat/helium correlation come from a set of experiments by Miles in the
early 90s. These were very crude experiments, in which peaks were eyeballed
as small, medium, and large, the small taken as equal to the detection
limit (which seemed to change by orders of magnitude over the years). The
correlation was all over the map, and barely within an order of magnitude
of the expected DD fusion value.


Miles results' were severely criticized by Jones in peer-reviewed
literature.  There was considerable back and forth on the results, and in
Storms view (of course) Miles successfully defended his claims, but the DOE
panel in 2004 agreed 17 to 1 with Jones, that there was no conclusive
evidence for nuclear effects. In any case, that kind of disagreement and
large variation in such a critical experiment simply cries out for better
experiments. So what else have we got?


*The replications*


Storms cites (and Lomax parrots) a dozen groups (including the Miles
results) that have claimed a heat-helium correlation, but a look at his
list paints a different picture.


Storms admits that one group (Chien) does not measure heat, so they can't
claim a correlation. Another group (Botta) also does not measure heat,
although Storms claims they do.


Storms cites Aoki's 1994 claim of a very weak helium signal, but fails to
cite their follow-up work in Int J Soc Mat Eng Resources 6 (1998) 22, where
they report no helium (nor any other products) above background, but they
do measure excess heat. That's an *anti-correlation*, isn't it.


The Takahashi results also suggest anti-correlation. They are not
completely clear about the various cells in the two different reports, but
as I read it, in the ICCF-7 paper about half the cells give heat, and half
show helium, and only one shows both. Likewise, in the ICCF-8 paper, only
one of the cells that showed helium also showed heat. And the amount of
heat was more than an order of magnitude below the expected value based on
the helium.


Then there is the Gozzi reference, one of the few in a readily accessible
(not Japanese) refereed journal. This is claimed as a replication, but in
fact Gozzi admits in the latest 1998 paper that the helium results are too
weak to be definitive. Maybe it's not anti-correlation, but it certainly
can't be counted as replication. Interestingly, Gozzi appears to have
gotten out of the field after that paper.


The Luch results from 1994 claim helium and heat but did not attempt to
quantify the ratio. The odd thing is that, as Storms says, their work on
essentially the identical experiment continued until recently (maybe the
present), but none of their subsequent papers refer to helium at all, which
is presumably why Storms does not cite them specifically. But if it is
generally agreed that the main nuclear product is helium, and if they claim
to have seen it early on, failure to mention it subsequently, let alone
attempt to quantify it, suggests they probably didn't see it, or have
abysmal judgment as to what's important.


That means 5 of the claimed replications do not support (or contradict) the
correlation, and one is questionable, which should shake anyone's
confidence in Storms.


Of the remaining 5, only Arata's results were published in refereed
journals. They are Japanese journals, but some are written in English.
Still, they seem quite cryptic and incomplete, as though Arata's reputation
trumped effective peer-review. In any case, although there are at least 9
papers, indicating extensive efforts, they stop short of reporting a
quantitative correlation. As best as I can make out, the claimed helium
level falls many orders of magnitude short of accounting for the claimed
heat. They exclude leakage based on the absence of Ne-22 in the mass
spectrum, but He is penetrates leaks much more rapidly, so that Ne-22 is
not a suitable control.


*Quantitative correlation*


The only results since Miles that Storms has deemed worthwhile (i.e.
cherry-picked) to calculate energy correlation come from conference
proceedings, and the most recent of them from year 2000. Nothing that
Storms considers adequate quality in this critically important experiment
has met the standard of peer review. And they're not good enough to allow
Miles' crude results to be replaced; Storms still uses some of Miles
results, one assumes because it improves the average.


Most of the results come from McKubre's experiments, which include
experiments described in the 1998 EPRI report, where McKubre himself is
quite cautious about the results, saying the correlation is apparent but
not definitive: He writes: "it has not been possible address directly the
issue of heat-commensurable nuclear product generation". His confidence in
the results seems to have grown since then, but Krivit claims to show (with
considerable evidence) that some data points seemed to migrate over the
years. McKubre's credibility is questionable anyway with his interest in
the Papp engine and willingness to support likely cons like Dardik and
Godes and Rossi.


And then there's this from the review: "The paper provided insufficient
information to check the claimed values, so the values in Table 3 are based
on detailed information communicated to Storms by Bush in 1998 (Storms
1998)." Translation: The results didn't fit, so I called Bush up, and
suggested adjustments, which he accepted. Talk about an opportunity for
confirmation bias.


*Helium in the headspace*


The correlation value is based on measurements of helium in the gas in the
headspace, instead of in the solid Pd. Detection of helium in the gas is
much more susceptible to uncertain contamination from the atmosphere;
leaks, outgassing, permeation, and so on all complicate the
interpretation.  This is especially the case if you want to contain the gas
and send it to different laboratories for independent testing. Interference
from D2 is more severe and more difficult to mitigate in the gas.
Measurement of helium in the Pd requires no increase in the complexity of
the cold fusion experiment itself, since the Pd is analyzed off-line. This
means one can take advantage of existing facilities, which already have the
means for accurate helium detection with D2 suppression. One can wait until
a highly successful cold fusion experiment is claimed, and then analyze
only those rods, after the fact, in comparison to suitable controls.
Partitioning solid samples of Pd for measurements at multiple independent
labs is much easier, and less prone to error, than partitioning gas samples.


Abd has argued that early searches of helium in the Pd were negative
because the helium is implanted near the surface, but this objection does
not apply to most of the analyses, which *did* look for helium near the
surface. In fact, in the cases where controls were used, the helium was
implanted within 1 micron of the surface, and produced extremely strong
signals.


The more error-prone measurements of helium in the gas fit the needs of
cold fusion scientists, who rely on confirmation bias for positive results.
Even there, it should be easy to produce helium levels orders of magnitude
above ambient, based on some claims of excess heat, but so far the reported
levels are mostly below or near ambient levels.


Isn't it an amazing coincidence that of all the possible products of
nuclear reactions, the only one claimed to be commensurate with heat is the
only one that is present in the background at about the right level? All
the more plausible products that can be detected easily at levels orders of
magnitude lower, are found, surprise, surprise, at orders of magnitude
lower. Nature is toying with us. (The transmutation situation is similar:
all the precursors and products are stable, when of course, changes in
concentrations of unstable nuclei would be far easier to identify, and only
a tiny fraction of radionuclides are stable.)


*Assessment*


This is what passes for conclusive in the field of cold fusion. This is
good enough that no measurements of helium-heat in the last decade entered
Storms' calculations. No serious scientists would be satisfied with this
state of affairs if they thought there was anything to cold fusion. Real
scientists obsess about details, especially in critical experiments like
this, and would not rest until far more definitive results with a much more
accurately determined correlation factor were obtained. Millikan's
experiment was not accepted as good enough, but was repeated endlessly.
Scientists are still toiling to reduce the limit of error on measurements
of Einstein's time dilation, and improve the value of the gravitation
constant, and so on.


The results used by Storms were all available to the 2004 DOE panel, and
they were left unconvinced that nuclear reactions were taking place. Lomax
claims they didn't understand the evidence, but if the leading cold fusion
experts could not explain the results to an expert panel with written and
oral arguments, then that demonstrates the weakness of the evidence or the
incompetence of the researchers. Lomax thinks they needed a college dropout
to help with the argument. I remain skeptical.


Regardless of the reasons, it is clear that the results have so far failed
to impress the scientific community, and it is clear that far better
results could be achievable, if the effect were real. So, why are so few
pursuing correlation experiments? It seems likely that cold fusion
scientists are not pursuing it (or not admitting it) because they're afraid
that more careful results will be negative, and they would rather remain
ignorant than to have to admit they wasted 2 decades of their life chasing
wild geese.


So, an objective look at the heat/helium results does not provide
convincing evidence for cold fusion. And given the extraordinary nature of
the claimed phenomenon, that means it is almost certainly not happening.


On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 7:22 PM, Rich Murray <rmfor...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Joshua Cude,
>
> Seems you might end up being the last person standing...
>
> May ask you to offer a few decisive critiques to refute Lomax's claim,
> much repeated for a year or longer, that heat and helium are correlated in
> standard cold fusion experiments, some years ago -- for instance, have
> there been any attempts since then that fail to show this correlation?
>
> Maybe you and Lomax have already long reached an impasse, talking right
> past each other?
>
> What would have to happen for you to be curious enough to join Lomax in
> proposing new tests for this correlation?
>
> within the fellowship of service, Rich Murray
>
>
> On Sat, May 4, 2013 at 4:26 PM, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Edmund Storms <stor...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Consequently, I for one will not continue the discussion.
>>
>>
>> Me neither! I promise to shut up.
>>
>> - Jed
>>
>>
>

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