At 10:13 AM 3/29/2010, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
Suppose there is a website, might even be
lenr-canr.org. Every common question or claim
about cold fusion is answered there, in a
presentation that is accessible immediately and
that is concise and focus, as well-written as
possible. So, someone comes up with a Standard
Stupid Statement in a blog, very quickly and
effeciently someone familiar with the web site
can quote the Stupid Stement without argument,
then point to the URL of the standard answer
that is utterly clear and fully evidenced
(possibly on subpages, citations, etc). And
this site, by the way, invites criticism, so
that if it's defective, it can be fixed. The
top-level page isn't publicly editable, that's
done by consensus with the approval of site
management. So it doesn't get cluttered with
discussions and arguments that can go nowhere.
We have things like that already. From least to
most detailed, we have: the Q&A section of my
book (originally by Mallove and Rothwell), the
Storms review papers, and Beaudette's book.
The arguments exist, but not organized and
readily accessible as I suggested. For any
Standard Stupid Statement, and for any common
Not-Stupid Objection, let's assume there are some
for the moment!, there would be a page, easily
locatable, that would explore that, in detail. It
would not be presented as polemic, but simply as
a clear exploration, so that readers can judge
for themselves. That is not necessarily easy to
do, but it would be the goal. Ideally, informed
skeptics, and there appear to be some, would
participate. The last thing we'd want would be
straw man anti-skeptical arguments (even if there
are a few deluded skeptics out there advancing
them, they should be included but certainly not
emphasized as typical of skeptics.)
The most common skeptical argument is Huizenga's
point 6 in the summary section of his book:
"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."
Which is, of course, brilliant. What is the
context? This argument practically would take
care of itself, all it would take is clear
exposition of it. Would anyone defend it? If I'm
correct, that argument depended on the absence of
independent evidence regarding other signs of a
nuclear reaction, and of only isolated reports,
at most, showing the excess heat effect. It is,
in that context, Not Quite So Stupid, provided
that the conclusion is tentative. The problem is
that the conclusion became, it was pretended, conclusive.
In other words, the fact that result is positive
is proof that it must be wrong. The underlying
argument is that the theory cannot cannot be
wrong, and therefore the experiment must be
mistaken, and no additional or specific reasons
why it is mistaken are called for.
Not necessarily. With some difficulty, I found
the statement, it is on page 285, which is where
Beaudette had cited it, I was misled by your
comment about "point 6," I assumed a numbered
list of points. Given the previous points (which
are errors, but that's another issue), and
translating "conclude" to "continue to assume,"
the statement is an ordinary description of
scientific process. The difference is what we
should emphasize. By rounding attacking the
argument as preposterous, we miss the validity
and proper application, alienating those who
would themselves make that translation of
Huizenga. The real problem is that "continue to
assume" was indeed read as Huizenga wrote it,
because that "continued assumption" was mistaken
for a "conclusion." A nailed-down, unshakeable
conclusion, highly resistant to re-examination,
even though Huizenga's overall argument can
easily be deconstructed into a collection of errors.
That conclusion follows this:
5. "If the reported intensity of nuclear products
is orders of magnitude less than the claimed
excess heat, then the excess heat is not due to a nuclear reaction process."
This is so clear and so powerful an argument that
I'd have to agree. Note, however, this is not the
same as his next point. The excess heat could be
real and due to something other than experimental
error. As an example, hydrinos. It might be very
difficult to detect the products, which should
not be true of a nuclear reaction, generally.
Back to this point, of course, helium was found
to be correlated to the excess heat at a ration
that is well within "orders of magnitude," is is,
with palladium deuteride experiments, within a
factor of two, everyone seems to accept, and some
measurements nail it down to the expected value
for deuterium fusion, quite closely. (Which
doesn't mean the reaction is deuterium fusion,
per se, just that the requirement of reaction
products commensurate with excess heat has been met.)
Huizegna is correct about at a number of claims,
but seems to have been very narrow in how he understood them.
1. The term cold fusion as presently used encompasses a mélange of claims as
discussed in previous sections of this chapter.
Right. And there just might be a melange of
reactions. "Cold fusion" refers to the
hypothesized nuclear reactions underlying the
excess heat results, taking place at very much
unexpected low temperatures. Were we still at the
stage of needing to prove "nuclear," we'd want to
focus on repeated experiments, preferably done by
multiple research groups. However, with the
central result, heat/helium, it actually only
matters that these be palladium deuteride
experiments, under "normal cold fusion
conditions," i.e., roughly reproducing the
conditions of the Fleischmann experiments. Given
that, there is a constent set of results, and the
actual techniques may vary: if no heat is found,
no helium is found. If heat is found, it is found
at the roughly expected ratio. That's utterly
conclusive, as such evidence should go.
2. The more avid proponents of cold fusion continue to argue that the excess
heat in many experiments is so large that the source of energy must be nuclear
fusion or some other unknown nuclear reaction (sic).
"Avid proponents" was an insult. Negative points
for Huizenga. "Sic" is interesting. He apparently
thinks that the idea that it might be some
reaction than fusion is preposterous. Definitely,
Huizenga is into not allowing anything unknown to
exist. Huizenga is reporting a fact. It's argued.
And, in fact, those are common results now. But a
red herring. His general argument on excess heat
(expectation bias, biased reporting of results of
a large number of experiments, only the positives
are reported, or some undiscovered systemic
error) is not compatible with the variety of
research reports, including large series of
experiments where every result, excess heat or
not, is reported, the hypothesis of "unidentified
systemic error" gets old after twenty years of
work." Shanahan does claim such an error, but
I've never seen why it would be systemic across
many different methods of measuring the heat, and
how it would explain the correlated helium
results, which, in fact, validate the heat
results, just as the heat results ultimately
validate the helium results. That's the power of correlation.
3. A fraction of these proponents takes the more conventional point of view
and admits that if the process is truly nuclear, there should be a commensurate
amount of nuclear ash.
Like, duh, the sane fraction. Note "should be."
And note, as well, the reaction product may not
be what was expected. Helium was very much not
expected. Except by Preparata, I think, perhaps
some others. Helium was expected to be
accompanied by gamma emissions, which were not
found (at anything like the expected levels). But
gammas were not required by conservation of
mass/energy, only by an assumed mechanism (direct
deuterium fusion) and conservation of momentum. A
different mechanism, still fusion probably, could
produce helium without the gammas.
4. The task for these advocates is clear cut: find the nuclear products.
And that task was taken on and was successful by the mid-1990s.
I think that Huizenga's argument is great, except
for the one word, "concluded," which can be
glossed as meaning "tentatively concluded."
We should emphasize Huizenga's closing argument.
It should lead to a conclusion that cold fusion is a reality.
The cold fusion hypothesis predicted, at a time
when it was not known from experiment, that a
reaction product would be found that would be in
an amount commensurate with the excess heat, and
the "commensurate" argument was used, quite
appropriately, to argue against processes
involving neutrons, tritium, and gamma rays as
products. But once helium was found in the right
amounts, it should actually have been over. Fifteen years ago.
Jed, assuming that an opponent in an argument is
dead wrong is dangerous, it closes off the
possibility of finding agreement. Huizenga was
probably not reachable, but a skeptic reading his
argument isn't going to find fault with it (until
the helium results are known), because the bulk
of the argument is quite cogent. The problem was
not that argument, in itself. It is where it was
taken. And, indeed, once the "conclusion" was
taken as "conclusive," even though it was
actually a challenge that was met, i.e., the
"conclusion" was a conditional statement that you
can quibble with (as could I, certainly), future
skeptics considered the matter closed.
How did Huizenga react to the helium evidence?
That would be interesting! I don't know when he
lost his ability to consider these issues (I've
heard that he did, though he's still alive, I
understand), but he should still have been around
and somewhat competent, at least, long after the
helium results were actually conclusive. If he
continued to argue in spite of them, he was, in
fact, being disengenuous, proposing standards
that would allow the question to be opened when,
in fact, he had no such intention. His rigidity,
in fact, might have been an early symptom of his disease.
The 1989 DoE report supposedly, in the
conclusion, encouraged research into questions
like the reaction product. But no research was
funded, and the rumor is that this was very much
because of the steadfast opposition of Huizenga,
who, then, if this is true, must stand exposed as
a hypocrite. But that's another question. The
rational skeptical position is not impeached because advocated by a hypocrite.
