At 02:36 PM 12/4/2012, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Of course, what is required to be an expert is often a matter of
great debate. . . ."
That last point is true, but not so much for hard science. There is
a world of difference between someone who has done the work it takes
to get a PhD versus an amateur. I have met some very stupid PhD
scientists such as Nate Hoffman and David Lindley. They make
elementary logical errors. However, their technical knowledge is
miles above mine. I would never challenge their judgement regarding
their expertise (mass spectroscopy in Hoffman's case). In my review
of Hoffman's book, I criticized him because he thought Ontario Hydro
sells used moderator water in bottles. I suspected this was wrong,
and quickly confirmed this water is 100 million times too
radioactive to sell. I criticized him because he lacked common sense
and over the two years he was writing the book, he did not bother to
do what any newspaper reporter would do in the first half-hour: call
Ontario Hydro on the phone. That's stupid, but it has nothing to do
with spectroscopy. It is not technical stupidity. It is ordinary,
garden variety stupidity.
An expert outside his field is likely to be as prone to making
errors is anyone else is.
Jed, your general argument is very true, but with Hoffman, you are
stuck in an old error of yours. You did not understand what Hoffman
was doing in that book, so you concluded error. In fact, he agreed
with your position on the used moderator water.
The guy died some years back. I seriously recommend you simply give
it up, or even better, recognize the error you fell into.
This is about chapter 3 in his book, Radon and Natural Radioactivity
Artifacts. He is exploring, using his device of a dialogue between an
Old Metallurgist (who may generally be assumed to represent Hoffman's
views) and a Young Scientist, who is very firm in his views that cold
fusion is impossible. The OM is dismantling this, but he does so with
the reserve and caution of a scientist, giving full expression to
"prosaic hypotheses" before ... skewering them.
There are many brilliant exchanges in the book. For example, on page
32, we have:
YS: I can see that this field is no place for electrochemists to
play amateur physicist.
OM: Later on, I'll explain why this field of research is no place
for physicists to play amateur electrochemist....
Anyway, OM is covering possibilities for radioactive contamination of
cold fusion experiments. This entire debate is a red herring, in
hindsight, because cold fusion produces *little* in the way of
radiation, at least the kinds being considered. But the issue was
very much alive when Hoffman was writing his book. Anyway, he writes this:
OM: ... There are strong indications that commercially sold heavy
water may contain variable contents of used moderator water from
either CANDU-type nuclear reactors or Savannah River-type weapons
production reactors.
This is his offensive sentence, right, Jed?. It does not show that he
"thinks" that "Ontario Hydro sells used moderator water in bottles."
He explains why one might suspect some mixing in some commercial
sources, but he does not propose -- at all -- that straight moderator
water would be sold, by anyone, and for the very obvious reason.
He does have a reason for the suspicion, he gives it, but it really
doesn't matter now. (It's what he reports as "enormous" variation in
the tritium/deuterium ratio in "different batches of heavy water."
Because he doesn't really believe that heavy water contamination is
an issue, he doesn't even justify this statement.)
In fact, he's not seriously proposing that *any* such moderator water
is *actually* being sold, even diluted as he does describe as a
possibility. He is considering such contaminated heavy water as a
theoretically possible source of artifact, as only a "slight
possibility," and he certainly doesn't point a finger at Ontario Hydro.
He is, in a sense, raising a straw man argument. In the end, this is
what he says:
YS: Don't all these possible sources of artifact neutrons convince
you that the measurements are due to artifacts and not to any
anomalous nuclear effect?
OM: No, because the neutrons come on with changes in experimental
conditions. And these changes are conditions that vary with the
chemical environment or electronic state, not the environment within
the nucleus of the deuterium atom.
YS: But how can you be sure that the change in chemical or electronic
state isn't just altering how the radioactive impurities create
artifact neutrons?
OM: Now you have gotten to the heart of the matter. The scientists in
this field must do clever experiments to eliminate that possibility.
They go underground. They do many blanks where all is kept constant
except the variable of interest. They analyze chemically all the
solutions or gases used for chemical content in the parts-per-billion
range and all the feed-stock for radioactivity. They report all their
results in terms of statistical analysis. They discuss with panels of
experts possible artifacts associated with the particular variable
that is being changed. Most important, they characterize the
background that must be subtracted from the foreground data, even to
the point of designing neutron measurement instrumentation that
allows the signature of the background to be characterized.
YS: And you are positive that that makes the data real?
OM: Mind-set determines how any scientist accepts data as real. Why
do you seem to be positive the data are unreal?
YS: That is a very interesting question. I can't say anymore that it
would violate my model of nuclear physics reality. [OM has by this
time skewered the impossibility ideas.] But my mind is really set
against believing it ... and I guess that is your point.
OM: We have been concentrating on artifacts that give false-positive
results. There are as many ways of getting false-negative results as
there are of getting false-positives....
From our perspective today, the whole neutron radiation thing was a
huge red herring. It does appear that sometimes some cold fusion
experiments do produce a few neutrons. We still have no indication of
correlation with heat for neutron radiation.
But Hoffman was doing something that is still needed today, he was
summarizing and addressing the major skeptical arguments of his time.
His conclusion was ... we don't know what's happening. And that is
*still* true today, largely. We now know that in the Fleischmann-Pons
Heat Effect, deuterium is being converted to helium, with practically
no radiation or byproducts. How, we don't know. The heat produced
indicates that the *result* is fusion, but it is *mechanism* that is
unknown. Hoffman, after examining the whole set of issues, stopping
short of a discussion of Miles' heat/helium work (which may not have
been available to Hoffman as he was drafting his book, and he didn't
revise it; his contract may have been expiring....), comes down with
a strong "maybe."
He demolishes the pseudoskeptical position. Jed, he was a hero. He
stood for science, at a time when many were not doing that. God rest his soul.
You misunderstood him. I know you attempted to talk to him, and my
guess is that you confronted him about this preposterous Ontario
Hydro thing, and he did what I often do when people accuse me of
believing something that I don't believe. If they don't get it
immediately, if they try to argue with me that this or that thing I
wrote "proves" that I "believe" such and such, that I don't believe,
I dismiss them as a tad crazy.
You simply made a mistake, and here you are still insisting on it years later.
He did not "think" what you claim above, so he had no responsibility
at all to call Ontario Hydro. He was writing about a very general
possibility, and if moderator heavy water actually was being
introduced into the commercial heavy water or deuterium gas supply,
he would not find out by calling Ontario Hydro. They were not the
only possible source, he did not even mention them. Besides Savannah
River type reactors, he mentioned CANDU reactors, which were
Canadian-designed, but they are not only operated in Canada.
According to Wikipedia, "The reactor is also marketed abroad and
there are CANDU-type units operating in India, Pakistan, Argentina,
South Korea, Romania and China." Any of these reactors could be a
source of used moderator heavy water.
But, as I mentioned, it's *moot*. This was merely a proposal for a
theoretically possible source of unexpected radioactive material in
cold fusion work. And he thoroughly addresses the issue, and then
essentially rules it out.
