On Sun, May 29, 2011 at 3:29 PM, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <[email protected]> wrote:
Cude> The core of my position has been stated many times. It's that cold fusion researchers have failed to demonstrate that cold fusion is real. Lost performative: "demonstrating to *whom*"? To the DOE panel. To mainstream science. To any scientist except a small fringe group of believers. That's to whom. > Cold fusion researchers have not demonstrated to the satisfaction of an imaginary, non-existent person called "Joshua Cude," that "cold fusion" is "real," whatever that means. No one interprets "have not demonstrated" this way. I don't believe you interpret it that way either. You just haven't got an answer to the interpretation everyone else understands by it. > >The evidence is simply lacking. > "The evidence" must mean "the evidence that would convince Joshua Cude." Because there are enormous piles of evidence, all of which means nothing without analysis, and analysis that begins with false assumptions is almost guaranteed to produce false conclusions. As soon as the analyst begins to approach a conclusion that contradicts the assumptions, the analyst will assume analytical error and back up and not go any further down that road. It's how humans think. A good description of how human cold fusion advocates think. But this is silly of course. Some evidence doesn't need analysis, only eyeballs. Heavier-than-air flight is an example. The claims of cold fusion advocates, if true, is another. > Let's concede this immediately: there are many knowledgeable scientists who remain skeptical. See. You do know what I mean when I say cold fusion researchers have failed to demonstrate that cold fusion is real. Now change "many" to "nearly all", and your concession will be complete. > There is this teeny little problem, but I'm sure he can find a way to dismiss it. The Nobel laurates who took the evidence seriously, and who didn't dismiss it out-of-hand as "impossible." I already have dismissed this problem, which you would know if you read my replies. It's one thing not to read my posts, but it's simply dishonest to reply to someone you are not listening to. You can find my examination of your Nobel laureates in another post. Here are the concluding paragraphs: So there are no laureates who have actually performed CF experiments, only one who has published on the topic, although the papers were rejected by APS journals, one who is rumored to have said positive things about it, but is actively researching competitive technologies, and one who is an advocate of cold fusion and other paranormal phenomena. That's supposed to get respect for the field, but it doesn't mean anything that virtually all other laureates dismiss the field out of hand, with explicit statements from many of the prominent ones with nuclear expertise, while still contributing to physics: Leon Lederman, Sheldon Glashow, Glenn Seaborg, Steven Weinberg, Murray Gell-Mann … > It was only a narrow student understanding of quantum mechanics and how it can be applied that led some to think that the experimental results reported by so many were "impossible." The nobel laureates listed above all rejected CF, and still reject CF, and they have more than a narrow student understanding of QM. > And that's what we are dealing with, here, experimental results. Not theories. No. The experimental results are all unimpressive. Some anomalous temperature readings and so on. The theory that the anomalies are caused by nuclear effects are the only thing that attract attention. That's what we're dealing with. Theory. >"Cold fusion" is, technically, a theory. Ah. You see. So you're contradicting yourself again. >> When P&F claimed they had evidence in 1989, the world leapt at the potential; journalists and scientists alike, all over the world, paid attention, and many got involved in experiments. When two scientists with respectable reputations claimed evidence for something revolutionary, no one wanted to be left behind. The world was giddy with excitement and anticipation. > Which was, of course, radically premature. So what? The point is, the world does not reject revolutionary results for fear of upsetting the apple cart. In fact, there are more examples in science, especially during the modern physics revolution, where new and unexpected results were widely embraced than where they were resisted because of inertia. >> But then, in the next weeks, months, and years, nothing came of the great excitement. > […] However, the 1989 ERAB report was partly based on negative results from Miles, at China Lake Naval Laboratory, who had been attempting replication and who had found no excess heat. Before the panel issued its report, Miles started to get results. He phoned the ERAB panel. They did not return his phone call. Miles, of course, went on to discover and demonstrate, conclusively, that the reaction was producing helium, that the FPHE is correlated with helium production. The next panel had plenty of time to see Miles "positive results" and didn't buy them either. >> Many excellent scientists did experiments and concluded P&F were incompetent or deluded or both; that there was nothing there. > […] Cude is describing it accurately here, except that "excellent" is not what they say. If A, an expert in a field, does an experiment using methods with which he is intimately familiar, and then B, an "excellent scientist" but not familiar with that specific field, and does not see the same results, is B justified in concluding that A is "incompetent or deluded or both."? You're trying to make electrolysis and calorimetry sound more complicated than it is. Compared to building accelerators, it's a piece of cake. > It's claimed that F&P "were incompetent or deluded." Fine. Reproduce the incompetence, the experimental "errors* that make the effect appear. Why? I think Jenny McCarthy is incompetent and deluded with respect to vaccines, and because of that I would *not* consider trying to reproduce her activities on the subject. > What is really being claimed by Cude is that hundreds of researchers are "incompetent or deluded." Thousands actually. Researchers working on cold fusion, homeopathy, vaccine-autism connection, creationism, global warming denial, perpetual motion, and the list goes on, are all incompetent, deluded, or deceptive. > Because of the numbers involved, for his claim to make any sense at all, he must categorize researchers into "excellent" -- those who get negative results -- and "incompetent or deluded" -- *by definition* those who get positive results. No. Mediocre researchers could also get negative results. But also, it is quite possible for an otherwise excellent researcher to become deluded by enticing research and potential for fame and glory. This has happened of course in many examples of pathological science. Cold fusion is perhaps only different in degree. > The way around this impasse would be obvious: study and reproduce the "incompetent" techniques, then show, by controlled experiment, the prosaic cause (or causes, there could be more than one). People might be motivated to do that if there was any credence to the CF experiments, but there isn't. Most scientists simply dismiss it. So what would they gain by such a debunking? Most scientists would question their sanity for wasting time debunking something no one of any importance believes. >> CF was a bust. > Politically, for a time, yes. And this means *nothing* about the "reality* of it. It's about politics, pure and simple. What does that mean. What political sentiment opposes cheap, clean, abundant energy? Indeed, who opposes those things? No one. It's not like hot fusion research is a profitable industry. People doing the research would move on to other research topics; maybe cold fusion. You can't just sweep aside every objection you don't like by saying it was political. CF was a bust in the opinion of scientists, not politicians. >> It didn't help that P&F were caught in a really obvious error with respect to the associated radiation. > Of course. That was a political effect. It was a scientific error, and it damaged their scientific credibility. Worse than that, because the error supported their claims, their perceived integrity suffered too. Their credibility was the only reason anyone payed attention to the unbelievable claims to begin with. > They had no experience with radiation measurements, no understanding of the possible artifacts. Right, and when people began to realize that, they began to suspect the entire experiment. > And, by all routine and normal standards, the FPHE is real. Wrong. If that were true, Science and Nature and Physical Review would publish the results and the DOE would fund the research. They're not. > Rather, all that is needed to place the Cal Tech and MIT work into the overall picture are some simple things, and all this has been published. > 1. Cal Tech and MIT did not attain deuterium loading higher than 70%, almost certainly. At least we can say that they did not determine the loading ratio, and cold fusion researchers learned that this was a critical variable. This, by the way, dumps the "batch" issue. A good batch of palladium is *defined* as one which can reach 90% loading or more, which is where the FPHE effect starts to become significant. Except in gas-loading, where the ratio is far lower (~50%), but still they claim excess heat. > 2. So, from later work, Cal Tech and MIT would be predicted to show little or no heat, and, then, from what is known about the other results, no radiation -- since they produced no nuclear reaction or only a very little -- and no helium. The Cal Tech and MIT people were intrigued enough by P&F to try the experiment themselves. This later work you refer to does not similarly intrigue them. What has changed? I suspect they have come to realize it was delusion and not science that produced the results, and can't be bothered anymore. > 3. What Cude wants is a theoretical framework that discards a large body of evidence as "error" without actually demonstrating the error, but merely hypothesizing it. That is, a *theory* is being used to discredit *experimental evidence.* No. You're ignoring what I started this post with. What I want is evidence that is convincing. The evidence is all subtle, and it takes work to understand and appreciate, but the claims are grandiose and should be unambiguously demonstrable. Scientific results don't stay hidden behind hard work and obscure analysis and contrived experiments for 2 decades. Pathological results do.
