Joshua Cude <joshua.c...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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. > Most of them were right. Most of the papers were negative. As I recall, somewhere in his book, "Polywater" Felix Franks said that in the end only one other lab claimed to replicate. Some others claimed preliminary results that seemed interesting but they never claimed a positive replication. There were not 450 papers, according to Franks. The totals are shown on p. 120: U.S. 227 Russia 75 Others 210 Within the U.S. there were 115 research publications and 112 "vulgarizations," (Franks) meaning review articles in places like *Scientific American* without original research claims. Most of the 115 research papers were speculative theory papers. Assuming that ratio holds for the rest of the world, that would be 512 papers, about half of them research publications, most of them speculative. There were few laboratory research papers published in the end, and nearly all of them reported seeing nothing, or seeing an artifact caused by contamination. The key thing is, the effect was replicated, and the a careful examination of the replications showed that it was an artifact caused by contamination. Cold fusion was also replicated, but there is not a single research papers showing that the effect is an artifact. Several skeptics have claimed it is an artifact but they have never suggested specifically what artifact it might be. That does not count. The assertion that there might be some sort of artifact somewhere that no one has detected yet is not scientific because it cannot be tested or falsified. Not a single lab has published a claim showing an artifact as far as I know, but in my opinion some of them should have, since I think some labs are seeing artifacts instead of a significant effect. There were no false negatives in polywater, whereas there were some prominent ones in cold fusion, notably CalTech. Franks describes many aspects of poly water that are reminiscent of cold fusion for example, from page 185: "One of the most serious charges that can be leveled against a scientist by his peers is that of unscientific conduct. Such charges were certainly made in the poly water affair, particularly in the later days. The quote experts on quote were once again proved right, after they had arrogantly asserted all along the poly water did not and could not exist. These assertions were based more on hunch than on reasoned argument or study of the evidence. Even those who had worked hard and persistently to disprove Deryagin's claims were galled at by the high-handed way in which the members of the establishment dismissed at the experimental evidence and yet turned out to be right in the end. The members of the elite are far from infallible, but they are conservative, and in science conservatism pays off more often than not." Franks is sympathetic to the polywater researchers. In my review of the book, I pointed out what I consider a major difference between polywater and cold fusion: Beware of results that are difficult to measure. A result may be difficult to obtain, but it should be easy to measure. Polywater was thought to be extremely difficult to detect: "With never more than a few micrograms available, ingenious analytical methods had to be devised if definitive and quantitative results were to be obtained . . . The instrumentation required for much of this work was of the most advanced kind, only available at a few centers in the United States. In the end the analysts . . . [demonstrated] that polywater really contained little water, and that its composition was quite variable." (p. 87) Unfortunately many cold fusion experiments are also "close to the noise," and some of the latest ones in Italy are being conducted with small or even microscopic devices, which exacerbates the problem. But in several leading experiments, cold fusion effects are easily detected with ordinary instruments. - Jed
