At 09:05 AM 10/27/2009, Michel Jullian wrote:
Some of the Hyde parts, while obviously not always factual (Abd --I gather he prefers to be called by this name, which is why Mr Hyde called him Dennis-- is obviously not on a crusade against the WL theory) are interesting and informative though.
Thanks. Yes, Abd is fine for short. I'm not on a crusade against anything except arrogant ignorance and failure to respect and seek genuine consensus, which afflicts our society in many different ways; because I'm one person and I see numerous important issues worthy of "crusading" in at least some sense, I have to combine them! So I'm trying to resolve issues around cold fusion at the same time as I work on social structure.... there is no conflict.
Worse than infighting, my feeling is that what would reflect badly on the field would be to depict it as rosier than is natural for any field of science.
I have suggested that the cold fusion community would benefit by better communication and coordination process. Good process depends on honesty and openness (more accurately, repression of differences in hopes of "presenting a good face to the world" slows down the formation of genuine consensus).
I have today reread the 2007 Galileo Project Report written by Krivit. It's worth reading for anyone interested in these exchanges or in the Galileo project and its implications. http://www.newenergytimes.com/v2/projects/tgp/2007TGP/2007GalileoProjectReport.pdf
Krivit designed the Galileo project in certain ways to meet certain objectives, and there are implications from them. He wanted independent replication, but he also wanted participants who were "stakeholders." To define this, he said we should "Look at a candidate's track record to see whether the person has a clear interest in a positive outcome."
When I first read this, I agreed. And, indeed, as part of the process for developing a bulletproof protocol, good idea, I still agree. However, it should not stop there. He makes the analogy with alpha and beta releases of software, and implies that public release takes place only after beta testing is complete. Alpha testing will typically be within a company, and company employees are stakeholders. Beta releases are generally to a segment of the public, sometimes they are completely open, but these are people whose only "stake" is that the product works and that errors are found and fixed, and quickly. That is, they have no stake, per se, in positive results, and negative results from beta testing would be preferred by a sensible company to false positive results caused by wide-eyed testers who assume that the company could do no wrong. Negative results in beta from "spies" who are actually agents for competitors not only do no harm, but they help, if actual flaws are identified. Beta test results, released to the public, can do little harm, because everyone knows that beta testing is, well, *testing.* Only if a beta program is completely punk, stupid, useless, would beta leakage or attempt by unskillful users be a problem.
Because of the restrictions, the Galileo project, so far, was all alpha testing, even though he divided the groups into alpha and beta. The protocol was actually developed by SPAWAR, but then more thoroughly documented in a back-and-forth between Steve, Pamela, and two alpha testers.
Alpha testing is not fully independent, and if the goal is to convince skeptics, for it to be known that experimenters were selected based on a goal of "success," i.e., positive results, would be damaging to the goal. It's fine, though, for developing a protocol, but not for beta testing.
While Steve is a journalist, he's not neutral, he has formed goals as to the effect of what he publishes, and the Galileo project was clearly intended to be "successful," and he's clearly irritated that one of the beta groups didn't, he claims, follow the protocol, that they "rushed ahead" before the protocol was complete. This is rather obviously Earthtech, from the Earthtech report. Steve was also irritated that Earthtech published their work on the web. However, I don't consider the Earthtech work to necessarily be journal-worthy, perhaps because Kowalski beat them to the punch, so to speak. It's worthy of a conference presentation, perhaps, but ... I think that on-line publication is perfect for it. I think they failed to analyze their results adequately, however, and that's a shame, because it creates an unnecessarily negative coloring to their work.
Krivit neglects the implications of the Earthtech and Kowalski results. That's unfortunate. He reports verbal conversations with the Russians, but criticizes them as being contradictory, but he seems to explain his ignoring of the Earthtech work: he wanted it to be "published" seriously. He's got a goal of convincing skeptics. But I can say this from contact with real skeptics who can read what's on the internet: they claim that the SPAWAR work is overblown and that there is serious question about alternate explanations for the CR-39 pitting, and ignoring experiments bearing on this is hardly going to convince them! It's only going to convince them that Krivit is biased!
From the Earthtech results, I consider it highly possible that they have shown that chemical damage looks like "ground beef" or even like "caviar" -- the Berkeley results look like caviar, actually; and there is the additional possibility that chemical damage can exaggerate charged particle damage, it would not be surprising at all. I.e., tracks in the area suffering high nuclear damage might already be cleaned out an etched to a degree. I find none of the analysis, so far, to be complete, though, putting together various reports, there is some very good analysis from SPAWAR team members. One point is clear: "hamburger" is not an experimental result demonstrating, with any clarity, nuclear radiation. Individual tracks, with clear plastic around them, are far more interesting and convincing this way. Hence the importance of the back side tracks, and I intend, as well, to look for neutron radiation just outside the cell wall next to the cathode, using LR-115.
There is, however a beautiful image in Krivit's report of a triple track from the student work at UC San Diego. The deeper-focus shows that the bottom of the pit is three tracks emanating from a point, three grooves. Almost certainly caused by a neutron. But one? Could be background.
Evidence of nuclear radiation will be most convincing if it is accompanied by other symptoms. While each of the symptoms might have another explanation, we are quite accustomed to diagnosis of disease through a characteristic constellation of symptoms. So what else can be seen? Accurate calorimetry might have been possible for some research groups, I believe that Earthtech has a very accurate calorimeter. If they got no excess heat, that would make their finding of no radiation quite understandable! And useful, in fact. Vary the parameters a little and you get no nuclear reaction! What did they do that was different? If I were them, I'd want to know, or, alternatively, I'd want to find out how to reproduce back side tracks as well and show that they aren't nuclear. A tad more difficult, eh?
I'm going to look for three additional symptoms: emitted light, characteristic pressure waves (sound), and hopefully temperature anomalies. I can change the external radiation detectors without disturbing the cathode, so I can determine what the activity in each phase of the run has been. If I get the other effects (light, sound, temperature), I can correlate this with apparent neutron radiation (since the external detectors should not be showing anything else.) It's not practical for me to look for helium. I'll be using constant current for each current phase, a known current, so I'll measure cell voltage, to determine power input. I'll record and document every detail and report it.
If there is no backside track detection on the CR-39 (as Earthtech reported, which is far from what SPAWAR reports), I will assume as long as possible that I've failed to replicate, that there is some unknown variable, and if I've been exact with replication, I'll want to know why my results were different. Earthtech seems to have assumed that they succeeded in getting the same results ("SPAWAR pits") and then showed that this must be chemical damage. Kowalski likewise proposed that explanation. Looking at images of his chip, I think he's right!
Krivit proposes that the dual-focus images made with superimpositions of top-focus and deeper-focus images, that show a bright center spot within a darker large pit, the bright spot coming from the bottom of the pit, suggest a nuclear track pit. That seems not to be established, to me. A pit that results from some very localized chemical damage would then grow from etching, forming a conical pit, the depth should equal the radius of the opening at the top, roughly. Such a pit would look like a nuclear track pit; the difference would be that a nuclear track pit would start with a track of some depth, the shape would be a bit different, the nuclear track pit would be deeper for the same etch conditions, and would be steeper, and would have an off-center location of the bottom if there was any deviation from vertical incidence.
Krivit is big on the experience of the replicators with electrochemistry. While this experience is invaluable in protocol design, and in analysis of results, it's probably a negative factor when attempting exact replication from a known protocol, in terms of evaluating the protocol. Someone with experience may automatically do certain things a certain way whereas someone not familiar will do them differently. People familiar with software are find for alpha testing, but not so good for beta! For a protocol to be complete, *nothing* should be assumed. That's not entirely possible, but should be the goal. Certainly for any kits I produce, everything must be accurately specified; my original goal was that the kits be ready to plug in and run, they would literally include everything. That's not going to happen for my own alpha and beta testing, I'm sure. But everything that can be documented will be documented.
