At 01:03 AM 2/23/2011, Rich Murray wrote:
Neither Joshua nor I are implacable doctrinaire skeptics.
Again, I am very impressed by the clarity and scope of Joshua Cude's
assessments. Now, it is clear that he has been monitoring cold fusion
adequately for many years.
You are not a "doctrinaire skeptic." You may have some screws loose,
but so do many of us. :-)
He is such a skeptic. Yes. He knows *some* of the evidence well. His
knowledge, though, is that of one who has made a diligent search for
anything he can present to create a particular impression.
Your position is different.
Cold fusion has always been a moribund field, as I observed carefully
from 1997 to about 2003 -- the image that comes to my mind now is that
of a random scatter of bird seed under the feeder, becoming a variety
of seedlings that never thrive, mature, or leave new generations.
In that period, cold fusion publication declined to a nadir in about
20004-2005. It has since roughly quadrupled.
There are many problems with the state of the research, problems with
how research is published and presented, but much of this is related,
as Bart Simon studies in Undead Science, to the effects of the
marginalization of the field in 1989-1990.
I like Jed, and I like Abd. Joshua's replies to their arguments are
convincing. Their debate deserves thoughtful and repeated study --
perhaps a classic clarifying contribution in the process of cold
fusion work since 1989.
Rich, Joshua's arguments are honed and refined to be "convincing" to
someone who is not intimately familiar with the evidence. If you
like, I'd suggest we go over some particular details, I trust that
you would give it your best shot at understanding. I also know,
however, that you invested a lot of time in studying this from a
skeptical point of view, and it's difficult to set that aside and
give it a fresh look.
You've noticed some things. For example, that the CF work of the
SPAWAR group, allegedly showing some kind of morphological changes
and enhancement of results by a supposedly strong electric field,
allegedly created by placing plates on either side of the cell, is
highly unlikely, because, as you pointed out, the field will mostly
be found across the acrylic cell walls, and the field in the
conductive electrolyte must necessarily be very low, because of very
low current.
I find the silence of the SPAWAR group on this puzzling, myself. CF
results are commonly chaotic, to really understand the effect of some
change, one must see it across many experiments, not just a few, but
performing these experiments takes a great deal of time. So people
publish what looks like interesting work, even if, in fact, what has
been found is of little statistical significance. Often the data we
would need to really judge significance is missing.
As an example, consider the ET SuperWave replication work done by
McKubre and ENEA, and published in the 2008 ACS Sourcebook. I think
you may not have that source, but don't worry, what I'm going to say
about it is pretty simple. McKubre shows a series of 23 cells in his
table of result, and it looks like this may be all the cells he ran.
Good. That gives us a clue as to relative success of the approach.
However, even with McKubre, he hasn't filled out the chart with his
actual experimental data, he only gives actual results for those
cells with 5% or more "maximum" excess power as a percentage of input
power. Then he gives total excess energy only for those 14 cells. In
presenting the "relatively dead cells" and their estimated loading,
he's done more than many CF researchers do. But in not giving us the
calculated excess energy, maximum excess power in mW, and the actual
calculated maximum excess power for the low-performing cells (He only
states "<5%" for some, or, no explanation, gives "1%, 3% and 4%" for
three," I cannot look at his data and perform good correlation on it,
it's a deficient correlation that I could do.
As to the ENEA results, the paper only gives summarized "results of
six successful ENEA replication attempts," three of which are
discussed in detail. There is no statement of how many cells were
"unsuccessful." Two cells showed over 100% excess power, one 100%. (I
find it hard to believe that the calculated results landed precisely
on multiples of 100%. The data has been rounded. Why?) One cell is
reported as 7000%, the largest excess power observed at ENEA. (Notice
that "excess power" is a very different result from "excess energy,"
which is integrated power. Lots of CF papers don't really make the
distinction crystal clear. Both results can be very significant, each
in their own way.)
Given that the paper is exploring the application of the SuperWave
technique, presumably to report on the very interesting question of
whether or not SuperWave improves results, making them stronger or
more reliable, the deficiency it reporting on the ENEA results, in
particular, stands out. Suppose ENEA ran a hundred cells. Their
SuperWave results would be lousy, even though they got that single
high power result. On the other hand, suppose they only ran ten
cells. Pretty good results! What is so difficult about reporting how
many cells were tried?
Basically, the field has focused on reporting the most dramatic
results. However, that, then, leaves the field vulnerable to charges
of cherry-picking and confirmation bias. From my point of view,
negative results are every bit as important as positive ones. I think
we need to start, collectively, being very aware of this and insist
on -- and support -- full reporting.
There are lots of reasons for a cell to fail to show heat, even for a
whole series to fail. I'm working on running my own replication of
SPAWAR neutron findings. There are many ways to do this wrong. If I
fail, it does not mean, necessariliy, that there is something wrong
with the SPAWAR work. Maybe my D20 got some light water in it, from
sitting around, on the shelf, for a year. Maybe, maybe.... But I
should report my results, with as much accuracy and caution as I can
muster. It might encourage someone else to try, maybe hewing closer
to the SPAWAR results (there are minor variations in what I'm doing,
which *should* not affect the results. But we all know that, with
cold fusion, a seemingly harmless change can toss a monkey wrench in
the works. If I fail, I'll be communicating as intensively with
SPAWAR as they will allow, to try to find out what's wrong, and I'll
try again, based on the advice I get from them or others. Or maybe
someone will offer to analyze my heavy water, etc. I'm starting out
*independent,* based on what's been published, common sense, and a
little advice. Which means I get to make my own mistakes, or maybe
improve the design a little. You pay your money and you take your choice.)
Jed has rendered careful, responsible service for years by archiving
full papers on all aspects of the explorations, along with some good
critical work, for instance, on the Arata reports.
Yes. Invaluable.
Abd is devoting much time and effort to enable anyone to prove neutron
emissions with a small, low-cost deuterium-palladium electrolysis
cell. I suggest he supply a weekly post on his progress, sharing all
data immediately real-time, including full high-resolution views of
both sides of the sensitive plastic. Why not share duplicates of his
first cell with other researchers -- Ludwik Kowalski, Scott Little,
Pam Boss? Could more such scientists form a common public website for
this single device?
Thanks. I'm delayed, not by any intrinsic difficulty, but by the
details of my own life. I have made some updates at
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/coldfusionproject/?yguid=40611328,
subscribe by mail to [email protected], say
something about your interest so I know you aren't a spambot!
As soon as I have an experiment running, I'll announce that, with updates.
The current design has been documented, but if anyone has questions
or suggestions, they are welcome on the yahoogroup. All experimental
materials are available for sale, at prices which should be about
what you'd pay somewhere else for small quantities, but all in one
place, see http://lomaxdesign.com/coldfusion.
I think LR-115 is cool stuff, and it's a lot cheaper than CR-39. To
be sure, for charged particle work, one should know what Pam Boss
indirectly pointed out to me, that there is a particle energy
detection range, and when particles have too high of an energy, they
will not be detected. This is the opposite of what I, ignorantly, had
assumed. I was seeing what looked like little comets with tails, from
an alpha particle calibration. I thought the narrow part was the
low-energy part of the particle path, with the fat part being massive
disruption from high energy. It's the opposite. A particle comes in
with high energy, it leaves no track at all, but as the particle
slows from interactions with the electronic environment, it begins to
stick around long enough to disrupt, it starts to deposit more energy
to the detector material, until finally the track is very fat and ends.
I get by with a little help from my friends.
LR-115 has a thin detector layer, only 6 microns, so it will show a
much more detailed picture of what happened in a narrow depth,
whereas CR-39 accumulates tracks as the depth of etch increases. My
guess is that LR-115 will show much clearer and more definitive
images, from a narrower slice in space.
My cell is already a duplicate, other than using LR-115 and dry
configuration for neutron detection, of the Galileo protocol that was
designed by Pam Boss, and Kowalski was one of the Galileo
replicators. My differences are that I'm making cathode supports out
of acrylic rather than HDPE. Since the cell is acrylic, I hope this
won't bollix things up. I was originally going to go with a smaller
cathode, to allow lower current, saving on heavy water, but realized
eventually that there are so many interacting variables that I needed
to keep the cathode length the same, roughly two inches of wire. I'm
wrapping that around two edges, on the inside, so that I can have my
SSNTD stack on the outside of the cell wall, next to a length of
cathode on the inside, and I can observe the cathode with a
microscope on the adjacent edge. The SSNTDs are a stack, 2 sheets or
more, pin-registered, opposite the cathode, (so they are 1/16" inch
of acrylic away from the cathode, plus 100 microns of polyester
base), with my idea being that a stack, if assembled only as the
experiment begins, can discriminate between experimental tracks and
accumulated background, as well as provide other information about the tracks.
The chemistry is identical to Galileo, except that the cathode is
gold, since later SPAWAR publication reported vastly increased
neutron results with gold in the place of the Galileo silver cathode.
During a long meditation today, I wondered about the floor under
Rossi's demo -- is there a space under it that could allow wires or
thin metal tapes to carry 15 KW electric power from public electric
power on a different meter than that for the building, with provision
for delivery of the power up the table legs to the device -- that
would be about $1.50 per hour -- the justification for this
suggestion is that all ideas have to be aired in trying to assess this
perplexing drama -- well, if it turns out to be a hoax, Rossi can make
a bundle selling the movie rights -- but I would prefer him to be
revealed as totally right on, so I can be a "wrong off" floating brown
shiny object...
Forget about the floating shiny bright objects. I do recommend trying
to become a little more teachable....
My opinion is that a skilled con artist could fake about any demo,
given sufficient control. And, as well, that there is no way to tell
the difference from this distance, or even from being in the room.
Independent confirmation is ultimately essential, as to science.
Rossi is not really about science, it seems, he is more likely about
money. That's okay, to each his own. I'm simply not going to fall
over and play dead because of Rossi. There is one thing that I might
agree with Joshua Cude, about Rossi. I'm happy to wait for the
promised proof. If he's right, I'm a tad nervous about details like
stability, and if we don't know how the damn thing works, how much do
we really know about stability? I would rather dislike it if my home
cold fusion hot water heat is hit by a shower of cosmic muons and
vaporizes my apartment and a few square blocks. Or square miles.
Wouldn't you? But ... all in its time.
How about coming on over to Wikiversity. Right now the place is
overrun with some rather weird people, duking it out, but I don't
think that will last. If you stick with the cold fusion Resource, no
problem! If you already have a Wikipedia account, you can use that,
or you can register one at Wikiversity.
Skeptics welcome. Useful, even. But ... be nice! The goal is
education, learning, exploration.
http://en.wikiversity.org/Cold_fusion.
This is *not* simply an article on cold fusion. That page linked is a
top-level resource, that links to many subpages that can be seminars
on very specific topics. Wikiversity is not like Wikipedia. Original
research is allowed, just as if you were participating in a seminar
at a university, you could write your own reports and share them with
other students/teachers in the seminar. I help keep everything in
line if there are problems, I should be able to manage that.
