The interpretation (or in this case the mis-interpretation) of the metric can me more important than the metric itself.
For instance, as Rothwell says, “There are many reports of experiments that produced massive excess heat, easily measured, orders of magnitude beyond the limits of chemistry and yet which produced no measurable radiation.” What he should have said is “no measured radiation”. Otherwise that would mean that there is no connection between excess heat and radiation – if the heat can happen w/o radiation, but the logical error in that conclusion is in “measurable”. Not always are radiation measurements done as well as here, and even then it is all in the interpretation. Few experiments used the lead bricks that Alan had and not all of them have access to a sophisticated device with multiple channels to cover a wide spectrum. And an additional device is supposedly on the way. For instance, use of lead is one of the best ways to capture muons before they decay, and it so happened that when the present setup was moved further away, the fall-off was dramatic, as I recall - and consistent with muon decay, far more so than with inverse square. Yet if you do not believe in Holmlid’s muons, you would probably ignore this detail and try to find another explanation. Jones From: Bob Higgins As an experimentalist, I think you are wrong. It is extremely frustrating to run an experiment and have the outcome produce 0 useful metric. This is the usual case in early LENR development when the metric is heat COP because it is so hard to measure with precision and accuracy. Radiation measurement is capable of discerning whether nuclear events are being created. It could also tell if high energy supra-chemical events are happening (<509keV). Even in Pd-D electrolytic cells, CR39 studies show that these reactions are at least accompanied by high energy emissions - making such radiations a tag of the LENR. This is far better than having no useful metric, which is what most experimenters have when they begin evaluating LENR recipes. Also, I ask you, "Why does Rossi incorporate so much lead in his reactors?" (reportedly 5cm). It could be that all Ni-H LENR is accompanied by some form of radiation, perhaps high energy at startup, evolving to lower energy radiation that is easily thermalized in the reactor materials as the reaction is tuned to its sweet spot. Defkalion also reported radiation. Focardi and Piantelli have reported radiation. On Fri, Feb 26, 2016 at 8:39 AM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]> wrote: Bob Higgins <[email protected]> wrote: OTOH, radiation measurements are an excellent metric. I do not think so. There are many reports of experiments that produced massive excess heat, easily measured, orders of magnitude beyond the limits of chemistry and yet which produced no measurable radiation. That is the opposite of "excellent." What you are suggesting is similar to the joke about that drunk who looks for his keys under the streetlight even though he lost them in the shadows. Just because radiation is easy to measure, that does not make it a good metric, since it is often missing even when we know the phenomenon is occurring. - Jed
