Re: [Vo]:Shanahan paper and Krivit's response
We Americans are casual about such things.Hey, it sounds the same to us. Hey, I think I get it now, you mean like fusion and fission? :-) GB - Original Message - From: Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com To: vortex-L@eskimo.com Sent: Friday, May 07, 2010 11:44 PM Subject: Re: [Vo]:Shanahan paper and Krivit's response Michel Jullian wrote: . . .an idée fixe (French, meaning a complete meal of several courses, sometimes with choices permitted, offered by a restaurant at a fixed price). Only in US French then! Yes, that probably is a U.S. construct, but actually I borrowed the definition for prix fixe. I assume it means something like idée fixe. Close enough. We Americans are casual about such things. In Japanese we don't bother to distinguish between banzai and bonsai, and you can always call a jouro a jorou. Hey, it sounds the same to us. - Jed
RE: [Vo]:Shanahan paper and Krivit's response
At 07:06 PM 5/7/2010, Jones Beene wrote: -Original Message- From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax But his [Scott Little] standing offer is to use his fancy calorimeter, and I'm not searching for heat. Just neutrons. Neutrons are direct evidence of nuclear reactions ... That is a good strategy, and Scott is also an expert in radioactive species detection. He may be semi-retired however, but I'm sure he would be interested in helping at some point. I assume I'll eventually talk to him, if he's still active. I think he did some spectacular work with the RIFEX kits, though I haven't read a critical review of it; my impression is simply based on the fact that he didn't wave it away as impossible, but seems to have tried very hard to make it work, and then to analyze what he found. We need to understand that this field does not depend on any particular experiment being confirmed. There are lots of ways to make mistakes, and some of them might even be systematic. But any experiment that claims reproducibility should be carefully investigated. It's okay if it's investigated first by believers, because the skeptics have a point: if there is no reason to believe that a thing is possible, they can't be expected to check out every nutty report. So ... this is how science works: those who are sufficiently convinced or intrigued to think something is possible are naturally the first to check it out, and only when they start reporting confirmation -- establishing that there is *some kind* of reproducibility -- would we properly start to see serious attempts to debunk by *experimental* skeptics, as distinct from the armchair kind. It's an error, generally, to go for fully independent reproduction at first, when even dependent reproduction is found to be difficult. In 1989, the hot fusion scientists rushed to reproduce, but, I suspect, they weren't exactly hoping for success, for they were very quick to announce negative results as if it proved something other than failure to replicate. They pinned the failure on Fleischmann's sloppiness, without ever actually doing anything but come up with speculations as to what might have gone wrong. The sloppiness was, in fact, theirs. My 8-year old daughter got it immediately, when I explained the history to her, quite neutrally. I told her that this man, Martin, had found something by doing certain things, but that others tried it and it didn't work. She said, immediately and instinctively, But, Daddy, they didn't try hard enough! Sure, it was reasonable to think that there might be artifact, and that, thus, the failure to reproduce was because there was nothing to reproduce. But they jumped to that conclusion without ever finding the smoking gun, the actual error supposedly made by Fleischmann in his calorimetry. But, then, this error was compounded by not only an assumption of proof of bogosity, but, as well, active efforts by some to repress cold fusion research, efforts which seriously damaged the field for a long time. That's changing, as was practically inevitable. Barriers to truth tend to be leaky, they require constant maintenance, and it gets hard to recruit new workers. After all, if this thing is bogus, why do we have to put so much effort into keeping it down? BTW - aside for CR-39 film, another way of detecting neutrons which we have not mentioned before is possibly worth consideration for some specialty uses like yours, and that is the rare earth metal gadolinium, element 64 ... and it is not as rare as you might think, since it is a byproduct of high tonnage thorium mining and refining where they have to get rid of every trace, for the obvious reason. Cool. However. Whereas boron has extremely high sensitivity to low energy neutrons, as we all know - gadolinium is over 10 times higher ! (~50,000 barns) Truly remarkable. I don't know if you knew about Gd, but if not - it would be worth putting some thought into a way to use gadolinium in the testing procedure, as it may be superior to film at some level. Probably not, and I'll say why. I don't think it's penetrated how low the neutron levels are. It might be best used as an adjunct and alternative. Obviously if you detect these cold neuts in two different ways, then it eliminates the objections to film which have been voiced. Gd could be used with a simple GM meter, for instance, since it (presumably) converts low energy neutrons to gammas on adsorption. Again, if a cell is showing (cold) neutron production in two different ways, then that fact backs skeptics into a tight corner - and as for availability - I notice that it is being sold on eBay. This is what I expect to see: I'll be lucky if I register on the film one neutron track per several minutes, maybe ten minutes, average. The key to the film is getting the film very close to the source, so neutron levels on the level of one per minute can be accumulated. Now, if I have a gamma detector,
Re: [Vo]:Shanahan paper and Krivit's response
At 03:53 AM 5/8/2010, GeorgeBaldwin\(Gmail\) wrote: We Americans are casual about such things.Hey, it sounds the same to us. Hey, I think I get it now, you mean like fusion and fission? :-) You mean that new-kew-lar stuff?
RE: [Vo]:Shanahan paper and Krivit's response
-Original Message- From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax This is what I expect to see: I'll be lucky if I register on the film one neutron track per several minutes, maybe ten minutes, averageThe key to the film is getting the film very close to the source, so neutron levels on the level of one per minute can be accumulated. Now, if I have a gamma detector, how do I know that the gammas came from the source? Couldn't they come from cosmic rays? Consider how much background there is on an ordinary Geiger counter! Yes good point - the differential rate may be too low - i.e. to show anything significant above background. But we should be able to guesstimate that in advance. The variable to consider as to whether the effort would add anything - is the effective capture rate of the film vs. the meter. The film would have a known cross-section for capture, whereas a thin Gd plate of the same area size would capture essentially 100% of neutrons. It could even be placed behind the film to pick up those that passed through if the film capture rate was low. In general terms, if the background rate (due to cosmic rays etc) were say 10 counts per minute, and we estimate the cell rate at 5 counts, then 15 would show on the meter when the cell was operating, and that might be considered statically significant. If there were 5 counts/min coming from the experiment and only one was captured by the film, then the addition of the Gd + GM meter might be worth the efforts since it adds a confirmation - plus, it is all probably predictable in advance. IOW you would need more information before moving forward, but there is the likelihood that the information is 'out there'. Jones
RE: [Vo]:Shanahan paper and Krivit's response
At 04:06 PM 5/8/2010, Jones Beene wrote: -Original Message- From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax This is what I expect to see: I'll be lucky if I register on the film one neutron track per several minutes, maybe ten minutes, averageThe key to the film is getting the film very close to the source, so neutron levels on the level of one per minute can be accumulated. Now, if I have a gamma detector, how do I know that the gammas came from the source? Couldn't they come from cosmic rays? Consider how much background there is on an ordinary Geiger counter! Yes good point - the differential rate may be too low - i.e. to show anything significant above background. But we should be able to guesstimate that in advance. There have been lots of efforts to detect neutrons. The best efforts, with high technology, came up with results of low significance. But I'd sure like to be able to monitor neutrons in real time. I'm hoping, though, to find some other metric. After all, neutrons are not at all the primary signature of the reaction, they are rare byproducts, apparently. The variable to consider as to whether the effort would add anything - is the effective capture rate of the film vs. the meter. The film would have a known cross-section for capture, whereas a thin Gd plate of the same area size would capture essentially 100% of neutrons. It could even be placed behind the film to pick up those that passed through if the film capture rate was low. Of course. The film capture rate will be low. It's basically how many neutrons will be diverted by passing through 0.065 inch of acyrlic. There is another 0.004 inch of polyester, which is the LR-115. In general terms, if the background rate (due to cosmic rays etc) were say 10 counts per minute, and we estimate the cell rate at 5 counts, then 15 would show on the meter when the cell was operating, and that might be considered statically significant. If there were 5 counts/min coming from the experiment and only one was captured by the film, then the addition of the Gd + GM meter might be worth the efforts since it adds a confirmation - plus, it is all probably predictable in advance. Well, if that kind of increase takes place across many experiments, it could be enough. But I'm suspecting that 5 counts per minute is optimistic. To predict the number of counts, one could determine an estimated detection and diversion rate for the acrylyic and the film (more will be diverted than is detected, but my sense is that most neutrons will sail through the acrylic and film without significant interaction). I have to remember that I need to keep it simple, very simple.
Re: [Vo]:Shanahan paper and Krivit's response
Wait a minute. Why should I care about two people, who are both wrong, arguing with each other? :-) T On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 9:56 AM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: See: http://sti.srs.gov/fulltext/SRNS-STI-2009-00825.pdf http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2010/35/3566shanahan-jem-response.pdf - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Shanahan paper and Krivit's response
Terry Blanton wrote: Wait a minute. Why should I care about two people, who are both wrong, arguing with each other? :-) Who said I care? I report, you decide. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Shanahan paper and Krivit's response
I wrote: Wait a minute. Why should I care about two people, who are both wrong . . . Who said I care? . . . Seriously, let us grant that Krivit is right in this instance. Shanahan is smart but he went off the rails a long time ago, with an idée fixe (French, meaning a complete meal of several courses, sometimes with choices permitted, offered by a restaurant at a fixed price). - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Shanahan paper and Krivit's response
At 09:56 AM 5/7/2010, Jed Rothwell wrote: See: http://sti.srs.gov/fulltext/SRNS-STI-2009-00825.pdf Wow! Our friend Shanahan finally got published again. This is good news, actually, quite good. Shanahan is nuts, but he's the best the skeptics have at this point. I've been suspecting that peer-reviewed publications have been rejecting skeptical papers as of low quality. This is one that got through to the Journal of Environmental Monitoring, which had published a paper by Krivit and Marwan. I think at this point that we can assume that Shanahan's paper is the best they got. http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2010/35/3566shanahan-jem-response.pdf Thanks for pointing it out this response, Jed. It's generally good, except where he uses it as a platform to attack the heat/helium results based on his own unsupported analysis. And that may be where he ran into problems with getting it published, where he couldn't come to an agreement with the editor of the journal. Or it was in the attacks on Shanahan? How is it relevant how many words Shanahan has written on Wikipedia? Krivit is a sensationalist journalist, with an axe to grind. He's become a protagonist in this field and has lost his journalistic objectivity, he treats his own research as established fact. This would be a problem even if he was right.
Re: [Vo]:Shanahan paper and Krivit's response
At 09:56 AM 5/7/2010, Jed Rothwell wrote: See: http://sti.srs.gov/fulltext/SRNS-STI-2009-00825.pdf Wow! Our friend Shanahan finally got published again. This is good news, actually, quite good. Shanahan is nuts, but he's the best the skeptics have at this point. I've been suspecting that peer-reviewed publications have been rejecting skeptical papers as of low quality. This is one that got through to the Journal of Environmental Monitoring, which had published a paper by Krivit and Marwan. I think at this point that we can assume that Shanahan's paper is the best they got. http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2010/35/3566shanahan-jem-response.pdf Thanks for pointing it out this response, Jed. It's generally good, except where he uses it as a platform to attack the heat/helium results based on his own unsupported analysis. And that may be where he ran into problems with getting it published, where he couldn't come to an agreement with the editor of the journal. Or it was in the attacks on Shanahan? How is it relevant how many words Shanahan has written on Wikipedia? Krivit is a sensationalist journalist, with an axe to grind. He's become a protagonist in this field and has lost his journalistic objectivity, he treats his own research as established fact. This would be a problem even if he was right.
Re: [Vo]:Shanahan paper and Krivit's response
On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 2:02 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: Terry Blanton wrote: Wait a minute. Why should I care about two people, who are both wrong, arguing with each other? :-) Who said I care? I report, you decide. - Jed Well, I did find this rather amusing: Krivit: The credibility of Shanahan's criticisms is further weakened by his citation of and reliance on four references from a single source of allegedly scientific research that are neither peer-reviewed nor published. For 21 years, this shadowy source of private remarks about LENR — Earth Tech International, Inc. of Austin, Texas — has made strenuous efforts to experimentally discredit new-energy technologies and does not publicly disclose its source of funding. Discredit? T
Re: [Vo]:Shanahan paper and Krivit's response
Terry Blanton wrote: Well, I did find this rather amusing: Krivit: The credibility of Shanahan's criticisms is further weakened by his citation of and reliance on four references from a single source of allegedly scientific research that are neither peer-reviewed nor published. For 21 years, this shadowy source of private remarks about LENR Earth Tech International, Inc. of Austin, Texas has made strenuous efforts to experimentally discredit new-energy technologies and does not publicly disclose its source of funding. Discredit? That is hysterical. I'm not sure about discredit but I think we can all agree that despite his last name, Scott Little does cast a large shadow. Plus, he takes up a large fraction of the space in an elevator. Chris Tinsley remarked that it is standing joke in England to name large people Little, going back to the days of Robin Hood and Little John. - Jed
RE: [Vo]:Shanahan paper and Krivit's response
-Original Message- From: Jed Rothwell I'm not sure about discredit but I think we can all agree that despite his last name, Scott Little does cast a large shadow. Plus, he takes up a large fraction of the space in an elevator. Chris Tinsley remarked that it is standing joke in England to name large people Little, going back to the days of Robin Hood and Little John. What do they call fools? Shanahan? Aukshully, in Gaelic, methinks it is Amadan I am pretty sure that discredit is apropos of nothing, really ... Scott would probably love to see real proof of a robust energy anomaly as much as any of us. However, he does not suffer from the expectation effect nor inventor's disease and he does not cut corners. The fact that his standards of reproducible proof are high only increases the credibility of his positive report, once someone finally does take that bullet-proof experiment to Austin. My prediction is that it will happen before the end of summer 2010. A quick look at their website shows nothing new in the last year, so they can probably squeeze you in next week, if you have it ready. And you probably think this post refers to you. Jones
Re: [Vo]:Shanahan paper and Krivit's response
At 01:47 PM 5/7/2010, Terry Blanton wrote: Wait a minute. Why should I care about two people, who are both wrong, arguing with each other? :-) Because even a stopped clock is right twice a day Seriously, Shanahan, it must be realized, is the best the skeptics have at this point. He's raising, explicitly, the issues that can still be raised, with a sort-of straight face, with the experimental evidence for cold fusion. Further, notice that Shanahanan's paper was allegedly prepared pursuant to a DoE contract. It's badly written for that purpose, but there could be serious implications here. I suspect that the paper will not be published as-is by the Journal of Environmental Monitoring. If it is, it would indicate a serious lack of peer review, there is too much in the paper that isn't sustainable on examination. But I could be wrong, and we should be prepared to address the flaws in this paper. As to Krivit, he's mostly right in his response to Shanahan, though his response does not address the specific flaws in sufficient detail, and Krivit himself doesn't get some of the issues. Krivit is arguing with Shanahan and using the occasion to make some of his own points about the whole cold fusion community. Shanahan is arguing with the whole cold fusion community, not with Krivit. The issues that Shanahan raises should be addressed; many of them already have been, which is a problem with Shanahan, he distorts and misrepresents what has already been done. Shanahan is taking the lazy approach: the sit-back skeptic raises objection after objection about why some new result and conclusion isn't proven. A working scientist will be skeptical in the other direction as well. Shanahan is raising objection after objection, but never actually demonstrates that any of the objections are more than allegedly possible alternate hypotheses. At some point, when piece of evidence after piece of evidence arises, all with independent objections, one must start to wonder what is *really* happening. And real debunking of real pathological science requires actually showing that artifact is artifact, not just that it might be artifact, when we are looking at thousands of independent reports of a phenomenon. Let me put it this way; is this a civil or a criminal case? In a criminal case, if cold fusion would convict someone and send them to life in prison, I'd have to vote against conviction, maybe, but it would be tough. The evidence is quite strong, overall. In a civil case, if cold fusion would award a huge settlement to a plaintiff, I'd award the settlement, because in civil cases, the standard is preponderance of the evidence. The issue before funding agencies should be preponderance of the evidence, not proof beyond a shadow of doubt. Preponderance of the evidence is now clearly on the side of cold fusion, and Shanahan is desperately reaching, as an attorney for the defense of traditional theories, to find every possible pretext for dismissing it all. It won't work.\ I've now glanced over the rest of the paper. He drastically misrepresents the triple-track issue. Triple-tracks are definitely dramatic and interesting, and they are not what he claims they might be, simple coincidence of pits, because in some of the images, three grooves at the base of the pits can be seen leading to a common point of origin that is quite small. Shanahan is looking at a piece of elephant dropping, and missing the elephant, the proton knock-on tracks found abundandtly on the back of wet CR-39 and missing from the front. These tracks are spatially located opposite the cathodes. Shanahan is creatively coming up with various alternative hypotheses, such as mini-explosions that can pass through mylar to cause pits. Why mini-explosions would happen without fusion he assigns to an oxygen bubble reaching the cathode, I believe. But that would not cause an explosion, it could cause a burn. The shock waves reported were not terribly energetic; in those experiments the cathode was a piezoelectric detector used as the substrate for codeposition, maximally sensitive to what was going on on their very surface. He's got an image of some kind of focused energy transmission -- from a chemical explosion that wouldn't happen, that requires a stoichiometric mixture, which would not exist at the cathode -- that passes through, not just a 6 micron piece of mylar, but through a 1/16 piece of CR-39 to pit the back. Or he has oxygen bubbles causing pits on the back, but explains not why these pits would be aligned with the cathode wires. I'll write more with a specific critique. he doesn't understand that the mylar used in the wet configuration by SPAWAR was the protective mylar that comes on rad-detection CR-39, normally peeled off to start detecting. It was accidentally left on, and that's when they started to see that there was something going on besides alpha radiation. Proton
Re: [Vo]:Shanahan paper and Krivit's response
2010/5/7 Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com: I wrote: Wait a minute. Why should I care about two people, who are both wrong . . . Who said I care? . . . Seriously, let us grant that Krivit is right in this instance. Shanahan is smart but he went off the rails a long time ago, with an idée fixe (French, meaning a complete meal of several courses, sometimes with choices permitted, offered by a restaurant at a fixed price). Only in US French then! Michel
Re: [Vo]:Shanahan paper and Krivit's response
Michel Jullian wrote: . . .an idée fixe (French, meaning a complete meal of several courses, sometimes with choices permitted, offered by a restaurant at a fixed price). Only in US French then! Yes, that probably is a U.S. construct, but actually I borrowed the definition for prix fixe. I assume it means something like idée fixe. Close enough. We Americans are casual about such things. In Japanese we don't bother to distinguish between banzai and bonsai, and you can always call a jouro a jorou. Hey, it sounds the same to us. - Jed
RE: [Vo]:Shanahan paper and Krivit's response
At 04:23 PM 5/7/2010, Jones Beene wrote: I am pretty sure that discredit is apropos of nothing, really ... Scott would probably love to see real proof of a robust energy anomaly as much as any of us. However, he does not suffer from the expectation effect nor inventor's disease and he does not cut corners. Perhaps. I've only read in detail his Galileo replication, which he apparently went ahead with before the protocol was fixed. He rather irritatingly refered to some pits as SPAWAR pits when they were ... just pitting, probably chemical damage. He reported chemical damage to the acrylic cell, apparently, which is puzzling. Something about the water there? Or what? In any case, there are lots of reasons to not see results. For example, I'm handling cell materials with my bare hands, because it is simply too much hassle to do otherwise, so I'll have to clean the finished cathodes and other cell contents. Screw that up, and it might not be surprising if I get no results. Definitely, reading the Earthtech work was helpful. I've concluded from that and Kowalski that *some* of what has generally been attributed to radiation pitting is, indeed, some kind of chemical damage, and it's actually pretty obvious from the images. Scattered, separated clean pits aren't chemical damage, unless it is somehow concentrated to a very small area, isolated from other areas. I.e., something caused by an occasional oxygen bubble could conceivably be chemical damage, but not ordinary and actually quite unlikely. What looks like chemical damage is the massive connected damage right next to the cathode, sometimes called hamburger, though Krivit called it caviar. I think not. Radiation damage would not have a crisp edge, there would simply be a fall-off in pit density as one gets further away from the cathode. That's what's seen on the back, and it is what is seen in some of the SPAWAR experiments outside the central (along the wire) solidly damaged area. The fact that his standards of reproducible proof are high only increases the credibility of his positive report, once someone finally does take that bullet-proof experiment to Austin. At that point it won't matter. My prediction is that it will happen before the end of summer 2010. A quick look at their website shows nothing new in the last year, so they can probably squeeze you in next week, if you have it ready. And you probably think this post refers to you. Hey, why not? But his standing offer is to use his fancy calorimeter, and I'm not searching for heat. Just neutrons. Neutrons are direct evidence of nuclear reactions, nothing else produces them that would be easy to come by, except cosmic rays (i.e., nuclear reactions somewhere else or in the atmosphere from incoming high-energy Stuff (and Widom-Larsen's theory is simply a kind of nuclear reaction forming neutronium from electron capture by protium; but W-L theory supposedly will produce cold neutrons, which I wouldn't detect directly.) I've written about the Earthtech work on this list before. Since it's coming up, I'll write a short bit about it directly, again.
RE: [Vo]:Shanahan paper and Krivit's response
-Original Message- From: Abd ul-Rahman Lomax But his [Scott Little] standing offer is to use his fancy calorimeter, and I'm not searching for heat. Just neutrons. Neutrons are direct evidence of nuclear reactions ... That is a good strategy, and Scott is also an expert in radioactive species detection. He may be semi-retired however, but I'm sure he would be interested in helping at some point. BTW - aside for CR-39 film, another way of detecting neutrons which we have not mentioned before is possibly worth consideration for some specialty uses like yours, and that is the rare earth metal gadolinium, element 64 ... and it is not as rare as you might think, since it is a byproduct of high tonnage thorium mining and refining where they have to get rid of every trace, for the obvious reason. Whereas boron has extremely high sensitivity to low energy neutrons, as we all know - gadolinium is over 10 times higher ! (~50,000 barns) Truly remarkable. I don't know if you knew about Gd, but if not - it would be worth putting some thought into a way to use gadolinium in the testing procedure, as it may be superior to film at some level. It might be best used as an adjunct and alternative. Obviously if you detect these cold neuts in two different ways, then it eliminates the objections to film which have been voiced. Gd could be used with a simple GM meter, for instance, since it (presumably) converts low energy neutrons to gammas on adsorption. Again, if a cell is showing (cold) neutron production in two different ways, then that fact backs skeptics into a tight corner - and as for availability - I notice that it is being sold on eBay. Jones
Re: [Vo]:Shanahan paper and Krivit's response
On 05/07/2010 05:44 PM, Jed Rothwell wrote: Michel Jullian wrote: . . .an idée fixe (French, meaning a complete meal of several courses, sometimes with choices permitted, offered by a restaurant at a fixed price). Only in US French then! Yes, that probably is a U.S. construct, but actually I borrowed the definition for prix fixe. I assume it means something like idée fixe. Fixed price and fixed idea don't mean the same thing in any language I'm familiar with, but I wouldn't want to be obsessive about it Close enough. We Americans are casual about such things. In Japanese we don't bother to distinguish between banzai and bonsai, and you can always call a jouro a jorou. Hey, it sounds the same to us. - Jed
