At 10:25 AM 2/9/2010, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax quoted Huizenga:
However, as is the case with so many cold fusion claims, this one
is unsubstantiated and conflicts with other well-established
experimental findings. First, the failure of Miles, Bush, et al.
to detect 3He in their experiments requires that the branching
ratio of 4He/3He from D+D cold fusion be increased by a facgtor of
more than a hundred million compared to low-energy (>=2 keV) and
muon-catalyzed fusion (a type of cold fusion). Hence, it is highly
likely that the 4He is a contaminant from the atmosphere.
Ah, that's like a stroll down Memory Lane . . . during which someone
jumps out from the boxwood there on Memory Lane and mugs you.
Beautiful, John. Too bad you aren't still cogent enough to
understand what you did. If, indeed, you ever were.
That's a low blow. (Huizenga is reportedly suffering from Alzheimer's.)
Yeah. If someone from his family asks for an apology, I will. On the
other hand, he did what he did, and the consequences fall, in the
end, based on his actual life. I certainly am not demanding that he
now defend his position. I'm outraged by what he wrote, personally.
It does indeed represent a bull-headed denial of the scientific
method, and, apparently, from what you say, Jed, it was even worse
than it appears.
But, anyway, he was always cogent enough to understand what he
said, and did. There was never any confusion in his mind about what
he meant. Many people, including me, spoke with him and asked him
specifically whether he meant that theory overrules experiment and
he said yes, emphatically, it does. Beaudette quoted the part of
the book that makes this claim explicit, which is in the 6-point summation:
"Furthermore, if the claimed excess heat exceeds that possible by
other conventional processes (chemical, mechanical, etc.), one must
conclude that an error has been made in measuring the excess heat."
The claim assumes that the possible "conventional processes" have all
been identified and ruled out. Further, sure, some major unexpected
anomaly, "error" is a reasonable hypothesis, but not a reasonable
"conclusion." That's not a conclusion, it's an assumption. A
conclusion would look at the evidence and consider, as well, that
possibly the circumstances were not completely understood.
The "conclusion" of fusion was also improper, certainly. But it was
also a reasonable hypothesis, and that's why Huizenga's DoE panel did
recommend further research to nail this down. But Huizenga,
obviously, was not prepared to take that seriously, he was forced
into it politically. And I'm suspecting that the mental problems
began much earlier than obvious symptoms of Alzheimer's, it would
explain the otherwise mysterious obstinacy.
Beaudette and I consider this a violation of the scientific method,
but here's the thing: Huizenga did not think it is a violation, and
neither do the many prominent scientists who agree with him. They
honestly believe that the theory is so well established in this
case, any experimental result that conflicts with it must be wrong.
Cool. However, what "established theory" is violated? Basically, the
established theory does not make detailed predictions in the
condensed matter realm, it's mathematically far too complex, and this
is what I learned directly from Feynman. One can make *assumptions*
that *might* hold. And might not. Absolutely, skepticism that D-D
fusion, straight on, was happening in the environment was pretty
solidly based, but they forgot to realize that there might be
*something else* going on, something not expected. The unexpected
does not violate established theory, by definition. It wasn't
expected! Nobody had examined the case and done the detailed and
difficult work of not only making the calculations (how do you
calculate the unexpected?) but also of verifying the results experimentally.
Fleischmann, as you know, if his memories are accurate, and I see no
reason why they would not be, thought that his exploration of the
Pd-D system would come up with a confirmation that the deviations
from the predictions -- which are *theoretically expected*! -- of QM
would be below measurement error. But he and Pons decided to test it,
and were surprised, then excited, by what they found. That
exploration of the boundaries is why I think that P and F deserve the
Nobel Prize for what they found, even if they made mistakes. This was
fundamental science, of a kind that is too rarely done.
No further proof or specific reason to doubt the experiment is
needed. You can dismiss it a priori the way you can dismiss a
report that a person flapped his arms and flew to the moon. (I
doubt they feel that all theory in all aspects of physics is so
well established.)
It's a classic error, actually, and one would think that it would be
totally obvious by now. It's remarkable, though, that Huizenga claims
that such and such a result would be revolutionary, then he dismisses
quite that result! (Heat/helium correlation, which isn't really
controversial any more, there have been so many reports; whether or
not the heat proves D-D fusion is quite another matter. It doesn't.
But it does prove two critical things, with a reasonable definition of "prove."
1. The calorimetry is confirmed by the helium results.
2. The helium results are confirmed by the calorimetry.
Entirely aside from the possibility of errors in both of those!
That's the power of correlation, and Huizenga clearly knew it, and
the real paradox is that he had just rejected what he said would be
of great significance. Sure, he'd want verification. So would anyone
reasonably skeptical. But there were already multiple reports by the
time Huizenga was commenting on this, and that only increased later,
with more precision, with McKubre et al.
Krivit is right that it doesn't prove D-D fusion, and his error is
only in assuming that others think it does. I haven't seen that claim
from the others, rather they claim quite what Huizenga also noted,
that the found ratio was "consistent with" D-D fusion.
The first step to understanding a disagreement is to clearly grasp
what people on both sides are saying, and in this case I am sure
that is what the other side is saying. It seems mind boggling to me,
but people often say and do mind-boggling things, after all.
Absolutely. And then this disagreement is directly explored. The
process breaks down when one side (or both) refuse to actually
communicate on it and to seek agreement, at least, on the nature of
the disagreement. Without that, dozens of issues get piled into one.
Interesting to see Huizenga's report on the publication ratios on
cold fusion. His chart (p. 239) shows positive publication declining
to almost zilch by 1992. He claims for the period of 1989-1992 (first
9 months of 1992) that there were, in the Britz bibliography, 86
papers were positive, 136 were null, and 34 were indecisive or contradictory.
Your paper on this, also based on the Britz bibliography, is at
http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJtallyofcol.pdf, and, reading
numbers (approx) from your chart,
year totals cumulative totals
pos neg neutral pos neg neutral
1989 43 92 22 42 92 22
1990 75 76 41 117 168 63
1991 47 28 18 164 196 81
1992 22 13 11 186 209 94
There is a huge difference between Huizenga's numbers and yours. What
happened? Pretty obviously, the Britz database was not complete at
that time, assuming that it wasn't cherry-picked, and the claim was
that it wasn't.
Huizenga tries to show that positive publications had almost ceased
by 1992. In fact, they continued, though certainly at reduced levels.
They did decline over time, later, but never to zero, and, in fact,
since roughly 2003 or 2004, they began to increase, and the numbers
for 2007 and 2008 in the Britz database are quite certainly not
complete. For example, there were many peer-reviewed papers published
in 2008 in the ACS Sourcebook, enough to practically dwarf the number
shown on the chart for 2008.
Huizenga claims that "all marginal papers" were included, i.e.,
papers with inadequate controls, etc.
Huizenga, of course, claims any finding of no neutrons as "negative."
From a scientific point of view, those findings were simply that
under such and such conditions, no neutrons were detected. If no heat
was detected, nor any other evidence of nuclear reactions, those
aren't "negative" findings, they are positive, showing that if you
don't get heat, you don't get nuclear products! They are only
considered negative if we assume that the conditions were *identical*.
Basically, looking at the evidence from a point of view of it being
"proof" or "disproof" of some theory warps the understanding of the
true significance of the evidence. Absent proven fraud or gross
incompetence, no experimental results should be rejected out-of-hand.
Rather, attempts should be made to *explain* them. And then to make
predictions from the explanation, that are then tested by further experiment.
That's the scientific method. It's absolutely true that a scientist
is not obligated to personally investigate every anomaly encountered,
but a collective failure to investigate anomalies, particularly
anomalies that have been confirmed by multiple independent
researchers, at least reasonably so, is, indeed, a failure. If a
scientist thinks that some result is contrary to "established
theory," it's perfectly legitimate for that scientist to continue
snoring, content with "established theory." But it is not legitimate
to reject experimental work as necessarily artifact, that's confusing
expedience with proof.
Generally speaking, nearly all the "negative" results confirm what
has become our collective understanding of "cold fusion." And with
re-analysis of data, which you know a great deal about, Jed, those
results were not always negative, they were positive, but at values
smaller than expected from the original announcements.
I'm sorry, but I have little respect for those who continued to
believe that the skeptical case was "proven," for that involves
swallowing and maintaining a whole series of beliefs and assumptions
that are directly contrary to clear fact. I do respect skeptics who
consider this or that positive claim "not proven," based on either a
paucity of clear confirmations, which is sometimes a problem, or on
their own ignorance, which is partially excusable as long as they
don't maintain it in the face of contrary evidence.
As to those who actively attempted to shut down further experiment
and study, they were and are the enemies of science, not its friends.
LENR research was *never* outside legitimacy, deserving of exclusion
from peer-review or from support through grad student labor, for
example. The repression was outrageous, and should not be forgotten,
so that it is not repeated.
