At 07:17 PM 6/2/2011, Joshua Cude wrote:
> "Reputable scientists" won't even look at the evidence!
Most looked a long time ago,
No. Most never actually looked at it, after
enough evidence had accumulated to allow some
kind of reasonable decision. That didn't happen
until something like the mid 1990s. The rejection
happened sooner, before there was adequate
evidence, but it was not based on proof of
absence, rather on absence of proof. A rejection
based on absence of proof must never stand when
proof appears; but that's what happens when
people become so convinced that they won't look
at new evidence -- or deeper analysis of old.
and are satisfied that if the claims (as I put
it above) were real, a convincing demo would be a piece of cake to design.
Really? Below I show why that's very wrong. It's
not the norm in physics, because physics, as a
field, generally deals with highly simplified
situations. It's more common in chemistry and
even more common in biology. Complex systems can
be difficult to set up in fixed, clearly established conditions.
What P13/P14 below showed was an effect that was
real, and which, in fact, is reproducible in that
similar results are seen by anyone who runs
enough cells, but which isn't specifically
controllable in such a way as to make it a "piece
of cake." At least not then, and my understanding
of the field, excepting now, Rossi, if Rossi has
really done what he's claimed, is that this situation remains.
I've described a reproducible cold fusion
experiment that actually shows strong evidence
that the reaction is not only real, it's fusion.
It is not a piece of cake, it's *difficult.* But
it's quite doable, and it's been done by about a
dozen groups. I'm not fully satisfied with how
much work has been done, I'd love to see more
extensive study, but this is expensive work, and,
since I see no particular commercial value coming
from it in the near future, who is going to do it?
As pure science, it is surely valuable, but
thinking like Joshua's shut that down twenty years ago.
We were talking about cold fusion in general, not
Rossi. Rossi could indeed design a "convincing
demo," it would indeed be, relatively, a piece of
cake. Which is why I'm noting that he has some
strong reasons not to do such a demo, and why I'd
think that Joshua is doing exactly what Rossi
would want. It serves his purposes, commercially.
Rossi is not operating for the advancement of
science, he's operating for profit. Now, he might
tell himself that, for the greater good, he has
to do it this way, and I'm not about to debate
that or blame him, I'm just pointing out the
obvious: if there is a really convincing demo
such that the media are all over him, his
competition will gain massive funding, and
rapidly, i.e. other researchers in a position to
investigate NiH. Do you think the U.S. government
would send Rossi a check if Rossi were to do a killer demo?
And then along comes Rossi, and all the
advocates are saying *this* is what the field
has been waiting for. *This* is finally the demo
Rothwell and Mallove had been wishing for. And
when you look at the demo, and see that it
proves nothing at all, one is forced to conclude
that the previous CF demos are even worse.
Which demo? When I saw the reports of the January
demo, I wrote to CMNS researchers and practically
begged them to not comment on it, because of the
consequences if it turned out to be fraud or
error. From the January demo, maybe error was
still possible, but even then, I was warning
about the possibility of fraud. The later reports
shifted the situation. Error became quite
unlikely and fraud seems unlikely too, for
reasons I won't detail now, I've expressed them
before. Hence I think Rossi is probably for real.
Frankly, there are things about that which I
don't like, but so what? The universe does not
revolve around what I like and dislike.
Fortunately, actually. It's better than what I'd
prefer, that's my general position about myself.
> So Huizenga knew it was important when Miles
confirmed helium commensurate with heat. With no gamma rays.
Does Huizenga believe in cold fusion now? No.
Uh, have you asked him such that you can
confidently proclaim what he believes? I'm not
going to repeat rumors I've heard. I was talking
about 1993, almost twenty years ago, when Huizenga was very active still.
> Okay, the experiment that will pull the rug
out from under my acceptance of cold fusion: [...]
So, you want a demonstration that heat-helium
are not correlated and that exposes the artifact
that produces what people interpret as heat.
That's right. A real scientist would simply say
that the attempt would be made to confirm or
reject the heat-helium correlation and to clarify
issues around the various measurements.
The 2nd part of that was done for Focardi, and
some people still kept believing, and now after
Rossi, I think the doubters believe in Focardi again. So that's not enough.
No, there was a single experiment done that may
be interpreted as being something like that, I've
studied the paper, but not enough to come to any
conclusion about that. I'm talking about someone
running many cells, to gain statistical
confidence in the results. That's where
correlation is determined, you know, not from
single measurements. The evidence for cold fusion
was always statistical, because of the variability in the results.
There are lots of problems in the field, caused
by what were or may be unwarranted assumptions,
such as an assumption that there is only one
possible reaction. If there is only one possible
reaction, then some of the variations make it,
again, look like there must be some mistake. I
mean, does this thing produce tritium or not?
However, from the heat/helium correlation, it
looks like simple PdD through electrolysis does
only involve a single reaction which takes
deuterium and converts it to helium. So the single experiment would check that.
First of all, set up the FPHE, which would mean
that some cells would show apparent excess heat,
well above noise, and some would not, reasons
unknown. Look, if they all show the same heat,
the FPHE, it ain't. *The variability, under those
conditions anyway, is a characteristic of the effect!*
But OK, you've given an experiment that would cause you to doubt CF.
You betcha.
It's highly unlikely to happen, because even the
people who believe in CF don't seem to be doing
quantitative heat-helium experiments.
Not any more. They did them in the 1990s. Look at
how much research funding it gained them.
Skeptics would not waste their time until
someone produces evidence that impresses them --
that at least passes peer review, but probably
it would need to be more than that.
Chicken and egg, and this isn't science, it's
politics. Tell you what, Joshua, I'll sit here in
my apartment and see if I can generate a few
neutrons with some chemicals and some
electrolysis. The U.S. Navy, as you know -- that
wild-eyed fringe bunch -- has reported them, with
experiments that I can put together for what I
can afford, which isn't much. Just a few
neutrons, mind you. And I'll report what I find,
period, and the conclusions will fall where they
fall. Unfortunately, there are hundreds of things
that might go wrong, even aside from there being
no effect to observe. Frankly, however, I just
don't see how those tracks the Navy observed
could get there, on their CR-39, and I'm not
talking about their earlier ordinary
charged-particle results, I'm pretty solid with
Earthtech that there is reason to strongly suspect chemical damage for that.
I'm talking about triple-tracks on the back, and
other tracks on the back, the side away from the
cathode, clearly correlated with the cathode
position, plenty of them (but only plenty because
they are accumulated over maybe three weeks.)
What do you think I'll see, Joshua? Do you have
any idea what might be causing those tracks, or
do you simply not believe that they saw anything?
By the way, the neutrons tell us nothing about
the reaction in the cells, they are not the
normal product of FPHE fusion, which appears to
be helium and only helium, plus, of course, heat.
But what they do, and which was widely recognized
when those results were announced, is demonstrate
that some nuclear reaction is taking place in the cell.
So you can have fun poking at "believers,"
imagining that it shows how smart you are. I'll
be having fun in a different way.
For you, yours, for me, mine.
>>> And from what I can tell, that's exactly what Rossi wants at this time.
>>Fine. But I if even Rossi agrees that his
demos don't give evidence of excess heat, why
exactly should I think there is excess heat?
>You shouldn't.
Good. I don't.
> But neither should you think that there is no
excess heat, unless you have, yourself, clear evidence that there is not.
Everywhere? I should think there is excess heat
in every possible experimental situation?
No, you should not. Have you no sense, Joshua?
Isn't it obvious what I'm saying. I'm saying that
you should not believe a proposition, which
includes "absence," unless you have clear evidence.
I think it's reasonable to use previous
knowledge to make reasonable predictions about
certain configurations, and change them when
evidence justifies it. Otherwise, progress would
be impossible. I think you said this yourself.
Yes. we use previous knowledge, quite precisely,
to "make reasonable predictions," but it is
another step to believe in the predictions so
strongly that we discard evidence without due
caution, allowing for error in predictions.
> [
] What I know is that LENR is possible, that's not in question,
>> Hmm. I thought you said belief like this is
not a scientific position. It's religious. [
]
Nope. I'm not attached to it.
But you don't question it.
No, I question everything, to some degree or other. Now, this gets interesting:
> To give an idea of what it took, take a look
at page 7 of
<http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHcoldfusion.pdf>http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHcoldfusion.pdf,
a graph of results from P13/P14. I must have
seen that graph dozens of times before I
realized what it implied. Does McKubre really explain it in this slide show?
> No. Nor have I seen him explain it in a way
that will convey the point I'll be making. He
knows the point, he'll recognize it
immediately, I'm sure, but I don't think I've
seen it explained by anyone anywhere, except for me, in a few discussions.
[proof of CF because it is not reproducible]
That's his summary, not mine. Lack of easy
reproducibility is a presenting characteristic
which this set of experiments shows. That's not a
proof of fusion, for sure. It's a proof that the
effect is an unknown one. The proof of fusion
comes in later work correlating the heat, which
is variable with each run, with helium produced,
which varies with the heat produced.
It is obvious from the analyses presented with
the 2004 U.S. DoE report that this evidence
didn't sink in. They simply didn't understand it,
they did not understand it and then refute it.
The evidence was garbled when described by the
bureaucrat summarizing, and I tracked that down
to a misunderstanding by the bureaucrat of one of
the reviewers, who likewise clearly misread the
report. It's an amazing little piece of business
that those documents show, once looked at carefully.
So, the best evidence you have for CF is from an
experiment in 1994, in which the excess heat is
a few per cent, in which the author is unable to
explain it as convincingly as you can. It seems
to be Rothwell's best evidence too since he uses it on his front page.
And Hagelstein used it in the 2004 report. It
seems to me that it was not explained well, but
I'm not sure why, or how that happened. I've
heard researchers say various things about it,
but, I could put it this way: they did not hire
experts at communication. I've met Hagelstein,
and if you asked him the time of day, it seems
like he might look at a watch, at his phone, at a
wall clock, and then, very quietly, say, "I think
it might be about 3:00." It may be an excellent
trait in a theoretical physicist, but not
necessarily in someone charged with moving the
state of politics around cold fusion. People are
good at different things. That, in fact, is a good thing. But....
No, this is not the best evidence. Miles is the
best evidence, if we want to look at a single
report. Heat/helium, and this evidence does show
fusion, as a strong conclusion, though fusion
only in the sense of fuel/product, not mechanism.
There is some interesting stuff further on, but it will have to wait.
