http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2990888&postcount=17
Re: General consensus on Cold Fusion better known as "Low Energy
Nuclear Reactions" L
Originally Posted by Abd
Lomax<http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=2990858#post2990858>
Storms is quite conservative.
I don't think the following quote from his 2010 review paper can be
called "conservative:"
Starting in 1963, L.C. Kervran (1963, 1972, 1980) proposed that
living organisms could create elements they needed by transmuting
available elements. This idea was widely rejected for lack of
believable data and because it seemed impossible. In 1993, Thompkins
and Byrd (1993) expanded on the idea in the book "The Secret Life of
Plants". In 1992, Komaki (1992, 1993) at the Biological and
Agricultural Research Institute in Shiga-ken, Japan undertook a
study of molds and yeasts when the organisms were denied essential
elements in their culture. They attempted to determine if the
necessary elements could be created by transmutation. Using modern
analytical tools, these living organisms were shown to increase the
concentrations of potassium, magnesium, iron, and calcium in their
cells over the amounts available. Vysotskii and coworkers at Kiev
Shevchenko University, Ukraine (Vysotskii, Kornilova et al 1996;
Vysotskii and Kornilova 2003; Vysotskii, Kornilova et al 1996;
Vysotskii, Kornilova et al 2001; Vysotskii, Tashyrev et al 2008)
carried the work further by making Fe57 from Mn55 when a collection
of bacteria were grown in D2O. The Fe57 was detected using the
Mossbauer effect, which is uniquely sensitive to this one isotope
and could be used to monitor the reaction rate. The process also has
been found to accelerate radioactive decay of some elements.
Consequently, bacteria are being explored as a way to rapidly
decontaminate soil. While such claims are hard to accept, evidence
for them is mounting. If real, the claim adds one more process an
explanation must address. In particular, an explanation must account
for how the resulting large nuclear energy is released without
killing the organism; otherwise the claimed ability obviously could
not have been developed by evolution. Further simplification of an
explanation can be achieved by assuming the initiation process and
the method of energy release used by life-forms applies to all
cold-fusion reactions regardless of the products or experimental conditions.
The author realizes that many people find a claim for occurrence of
nuclear reactions in living cells hard to accept and that many more
replications are required before the claim can be fully justified.
Nevertheless, the evidence is growing and needs to be debated in the
context of cold-fusion.
A fuller quote of what I wrote:
Storms is quite conservative. The "evidence supports the claim."
That understates the strength of the evidence. It is not marginal.
That comment was not a general comment about Storms, but about the
specific statement made. This writer,
<http://www.physicsforums.com/member.php?u=211768>bcrowell, active on
Science Forums, has taken the statement out of context.
This particular argument has been alleged before about Storms on
Wikipedia, specifically because Storms mentions the work of Vysotskii
in his book (2007), and the arguments of bcrowell are very familiar
Wikipedia arguments, as if taken from a standing playlist.
However, that comment from the review is actually conservative.
Storms does not state that biological transmutation is real, but is
noting a rather obvious fact: we reject the concept of biological
transmutation because we reject the concept of nuclear reactions at
low temperatures. If cold fusion is real -- and it is -- then we
cannot quite so confidently reject it out-of-hand. Storms notes,
correctly -- I'm made the same point many times, that "many more
replications are required before the claim can be fully justified."
Let me explain that a little. Vyosotskii's claims are very well
supported by what he reports of experimental evidence. But major
claims like this cannot be given deep credence until and unless
verified independently. Until that happens, we cannot present his
results as fact, but it is standard scientific courtesy to report his
observations as if they are actual observations and not fraudulently
presented -- or totally bogus and the result of what bcrowell asserts below.
What bcrowell is doing is grandstanding, presenting arguments that
could be expected to produce knee-jerk responses, i.e., based on the
idea that any mention of biological transmutation must be totally
insane, kooky, not to mention fringe. It is fringe, to be sure, but
"fringe" is not a synonym for "bad research, bogus, fraud, or
complete idiocy." That's a pseudoskeptical position. It is not at all
scientific.
http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2990904&postcount=19
e: General consensus on Cold Fusion better known as "Low Energy
Nuclear Reactions" L
Originally Posted by Abd
Lomax<http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=2990891#post2990891>
(The erratic results may be due to unknown variables -- that's known
for the early negative replications, i.e., the variables have been
identified -- or they may be due to some chaotic nature of the
phenomenon itself, as would be the case with some kinds of
experiments even with known and understood phenomena.)
I think the erratic results are due to different levels of
competence and incompetence, skepticism and credulity.
That was bcrowell again.
You know, if bcrowell were a cold fusion fanatic, pretending to be a
pseudoskeptic, he couldn't do a better send-up.
He has just been presented with a summary of strong evidence that the
measurements, made by a dozen independent research groups, around the
world, showing that when excess heat is produced, helium is produced
in amounts commensurate with the heat and a hypothesis of some kind
of deuterium fusion, made plausible through the value of the
correlation. Not only has this been published in a review in a major
mainstream journal, it is also confirmed in many other reviews
published in mainstream journals, and there is no contrary
publication. It's solid. It essentially proves that whatever is
behind the variability in results, it is not "credulity" or the
implied "incompetence." With Miles, the helium measurements were made
independently, and the analytical lab did not know which samples came
from heat-producing cells, and Miles' data alone, in an earlier,
less-complete form, knocked over Huizenga in 1993, who wrote in the
second edition of his book, that these results, if confirmed, would
explain a major mystery of cold fusion. He then wrote that he did not
expect them to be confirmed because there were no "gamma rays."
But they were confirmed.
There are no negative confirmations of this result. The so-called
negative confirmations were of a hypothesis that the Pons-Fleischmann
design would reliably produce excess heat, which actually wasn't
claimed, and Pons and Fleischmann, with five years of experience
trying to get these cells to produce heat (after having seen a
dramatic demonstration that melted the apparatus down, and which they
were unable to approach experimentally again), were only up to, what,
one cell in six?
It's obvious why this made many people skeptical. But finding a
corrrelated effect should have cut through that problem.
So, we still don't know how to get this thing to be reliable (it
might have been thought by 1995), but ... we now can tell, by the
correlated product, that the effect is real. We just don't understand it!
bcrowell's position is pure arrogant incivility, as characterized
much of the rejection of cold fusion, and it violates the accepted
protocols of science.
It is pure rejection, based on belief in theory and what are simply
failures to replicate by some groups, not all, enshrined as if
science were an impregnable structure, not allowing any sort of
contradiction or mystery. That's a religion, not science. Even if it
calls itself "skepticism," it has forgotten to be skeptical of itself
and its own beliefs.
The video I cited describes true scientific skepticism well, it's a
part of the method, where the scientist attempts to falsify his
hypothesis (or, the equivalent, to prove or support the null
hypothesis). This is part of experimental work, but the pseudoskeptic
does not do experimental work, or, if it is done, it is done to prove
bogosity, which has been assumed from the start, this is a well-known
problem with any scientific research, that if there is something to
prove, it can be done, there is always some way to set up conditions
and interpret -- or worse, cherry-pick -- data to support it. Biased
research may be useful, but only to suggest further research to
confirm -- or reject.
The pseudoskeptics assume that all cold fusion research is producing
phony results because it's biased in intention. They assume that cold
fusion scientists are blinded by dreams of boundless energy. While
some may be motivated by this dream, many are not. They are simply
interested in the truth, and fascinated by finding some boundary,
beyond which lies the unknown. That can be hard to come by! And the
reward of this is in finding what is actually there, not what one
might want to be there.
Pseudoskepicism, which attacks and ridicules anything contrary to
accepted wisdom -- according to the pseudoskeptics -- is the very
opposite of science. ScienceApologist, on Wikipedia, is pretty open
about this: he'd be on Galileo's case with the Inquistion, because he
is a "status-quo promoter, NPOV-pusher." He's radically confused
"status quo" with "neutral point of view." And, in practice, he does
exclude anything that seems to conflict with the status quo, even if
it meets all of the Wikipedia guidelines for inclusion, which depend
on publisher decisions, supposedly, not on editor opinion. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:ScienceApologist&oldid=377773151
He is not an apologist for science, but for orthodoxy and stubborn
clinging to beliefs. The very opposite of skepticism, in fact.
