At 12:07 AM 6/18/2011, Rich Murray wrote:
Say, you two, what do you mean by, "Well, Rich, your underpants are
showing." ?
I asking, because I don't get it...
It means that your personal bias is visible, what's underneath your opinions.
I meant that I'm sure there's no excess heat in the Rossi devices, and
I mean it when I said I regret that.
I prefer to state that I'm sure, rather than hedge my bets.
You imagine that your own certainty is about the thing rather than
about yourself. "Sure" means "certainty."
Given how little information we have, certainty is much more a
product of expectation than of observation. Certainty, in this
environment, reflects internal closure of issues.
Internal closure is placing a bet. Nothing wrong with placing a bet,
it's a choice. If you are not "hedging your bets," then you are
betting without hedge, i.e., placing all your eggs in one basket, the
basket of Bad Science, Bogosity, Error.
I imagine that Rossi and associates are genuinely, innocently self-deluded.
I can imagine all kinds of things, but as soon as I treat my
imagination as if it were observation, I'm sunk, stuck. I might
happen to be right, on occasion, as to ultimate fact, but
procedurally I'm wrong. My approach will miss things, important
things, transformative things, things that break the boxes we live in.
Skepticism at this point, about Rossi, is quite understandable, and
is not pseudoskepticism when it is not based on certainty of
impossibility. Pseudoskepticism is "pseudo" because it forgets to be
skeptical about itself. A real skeptic is skeptical about his or her
own skepticism, which is why real skeptics are curious, at least to a degree.
They may not put a lot of energy into investigation, that's a "bet"
that we all must consider, and we put significant energy into what we
imagine might be fruitful. It's an error, though, to take the
necessity of this kind of betting and turn it into an accusation
against others, which is one of the things that pseudoskeptics do.
"Not only is the field completely bogus pseudoscience, but anyone who
even thinks, for a moment, that it might be real, even gives someone
else a forum to explain the evidence they have found, is
"self-deluded." With no evidence as to *that* other than the
pseudoskeptics own certainty.
Skeptical certainty is an oxymoron.
So, the parade leads to the moment when a little boy, underpants
showing, cries, "The Emperor has no clothes!"
I've been wanting to believe, too.
Maybe that's part of the problem, Rich. You are looking for a reason
to believe, but prematurely judging the evidence, because you want
answers. Genuine skepticism requires high levels of patience,
requires accepting that one may never know.
The Fleischmann-Pons effect was extremely difficult to set up. We now
know a lot of reasons why this was so, and with what has been
elaborated, the entire body of experimental evidence fits together
like a giant jigsaw puzzle. But to see this can take massive exposure
to the data, without classifying it into "junk" and "good." Or, for
that matter, "negative" and "positive." Experimental results are just
experimental results, what happened. Where we get into trouble is in
the interpretation. What does this "mean"?
As we read the reports, if we classify them into Positive and
Negative, we then build up some kind of voting system, and we look
for a majority winner. But that's not science, it's politics, and has
little to do with truth. The truth is the experimental results, we
get no closer to truth than that. Theory and "meaning" are human
inventions, supplied by us, they are not a part of reality itself. As
I'm hearing frequently now -- Rich, you probably know where I'm
getting these ideas -- "human beings are meaning-making machines."
It's what we do, and we are good at it.
However, it also can trap us, when we confuse the meanings we have
created with what actually happened. If we think that there were 500
"negative papers" and 600 "positive papers," what's our conclusion?
Easy: "preponderance of the 'evidence' is positive."
But what if there is a possible interpretation that all the papers
confirm? Isn't this much more likely to be "the truth," i.e, of
higher predictive value, as well as higher value in organizing data
and experience?
That kind of interpretation becomes possible when one becomes
familiar with the entire corpus of work, and the entire effort at
theorizing regarding it. I found, at the LANR Colloquium last
weekend, that I heard a number of theorists discuss the physics of
cold fusion, each with his own approach. And they were dovetailing,
all leading toward the same conclusions, a picture of what happened,
with experiment and theory.
Peter Hagelstein presented some theoretical analysis of models
regarding deuterium loading in SRI experiments. He pointed out that
the models classically used by electrochemists -- and the
electrochemists, at least some, still consider these models valid --
failed to predict actual loading. The classical models don't allow
loading to go above about 70%. Yet cold fusion appears to require
over 90%. The early "negative replicators" appear to have been
satisfied with 70%, since, after all, that's what theory predicted
would be maximum.
But the electrochemistry was extremely complex. One of the major
early errors was the idea that an F-P experiment was a "simple" one.
I still see it presented that way, in media, just put a jar on the
lab bench with some heavy water in it, and connect power to a
platinum anode and a palladium cathode, and presto! -- cold fusion.
And, of course, almost everyone who did just that saw nothing,
because, in fact, practically nothing happened. Those experimental
reports were *true.* Do what they did, you will also get nothing.
What was so puzzling and frustrating was that even those who reported
positive results frequently got nothing. They would do the same
experiment, as far as they could tell, three times, and the first two
times, nothing. The third time, something that was not down in the
noise, it was very clear. Later, they try the same experiment,
nothing, again. I presented a report on SRI P13/P14 at the LANR
Colloquium, maybe it will be published. Stunningly clear experiment,
when you look at the full data.
This is a sign of one of two situations: either the experimental
conditions are not as controlled as we are imagining, there is some
additional variable, possibly many additional variables, or there are
chaotic conditions, perhaps with some threshold involved. (Or there
could be both.)
From what Peter described, we have many uncontrolled factors. As the
palladium lattice is loaded (and unloaded), defects appear in the
lattice and propagate. Defects of particular kinds may enhance the
reaction, but too many defects, and the palladium "leaks" deuterium
and the high loading isn't possible. Perfect palladium doesn't work,
not at first, apparently. There are "surface poisons" that stop the
leaking of deuterium, allowing much higher loading.
Electrolytic cathodes are like magnets for any cations floating in
the electrolyte, which includes silicon from glass cells, platinum
from the anode, and lithium, say, from the electrolyte. Even without
any "transmutation," a huge complication itself, the cathode surface
becomes monstrously complex, with every kind of gunk showing up
there. Palladium itself dissolves in the electrolyte and is then
plated back onto the cathode, forming codeposited palladium deuteride.
And on and on.
Cold fusion is still a heavily experimental science, getting results
more of an art than a science, we know that X works, but we don't know why.
But if you want to know something about cold fusion, look at helium,
don't be distracted by the rest. Become familiar with the entire body
of helium work, and how helium correlates with the FP heat effect.
Start with Storms, "Status of cold fusion (2010)".
This is what I predict you will see: you will see that there is,
indeed, a correlation. When there is no FPHE, there is no helium.
When the FPHE is larger, the helium found is larger. The helium found
tends to be about half as much as predicted from the d-d fusion
value, which was, early on, recognized as a sign of a surface effect.
(The other half of the helium is apparently found within 25 microns
or so of the surface, assays of the bulk palladium found little or no
helium, which was, at first, considered a "negative" result, another
example of the hazards of classification of results into negative and
positive. Once we understand what it happening, all results -- or
almost all -- become "positive.")
And, again, a possible hazard of interpretation: Storms estimates the
heat/helium value, factoring for estimated uncaptured helium, at 25
+/- 5 MeV/He-4, which compares with the theoretical value for d-d
fusion of 23.8 MeV/He-4.
This does not demonstrate much about the mechanism, all it shows is
evidence, by default, that the fuel is deuterium and the product is
helium. How the deuterium is converted is thermodynamically
irrelevant. There are lots of reasons to be highly skeptical about
d-d fusion being the mechanism, if we think of "d-d fusion" in the
classical way, as a plasma phenomenon. Something (else) is happening,
and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?
Picking up my printout of the ICCF 16 abstracts, I was surprised by
such specific evidence as presented, for instance, by John Dash for
transmutations in micro pits in Pd and Ti cathodes via D2O
electrolysis (page 94) and Andreas Petrucci et al re neutrons and
transmutations in iron bars via ultrasound (page 87) -- I'd like to
have free copies of these papers to consider in my usual painstaking
detail. If these simple setups can be independently replicated, then
we would have proof of unknown physics, resulting in immediate global
research stampedes.
No, Rich, it doesn't happen that way, obviously. If you are looking
for that, you might as well not look! Because those papers have
already been published, and it didn't happen!
(Okay, okay, rereading the above, you might be right, and this is my
approach, in fact. I just have to do it. Actually Doing It is a major
obstacle to lots of stuff! So ... how about today? I ask myself.)
Once your vision of the field reaches critical mass, you'll "get it."
CF is real, and this has been clearly demonstrated by the evidence,
easily by the year 2000. I'll repeat: look most closely at the helium
evidence. That is the ash that was supposedly missing. Huizenga
understood the importance of Miles' work, he reported this in his
second edition of Cold fusion, scientific fiasco of the century.
Huizenga, though, opined that Miles would not be confirmed, for,
after all, there were no reported gamma rays. And we can see, then,
how assumptions about the nature of the reaction, if there were a
reaction, confined the interpretation of results. Helium is being
produced without gamma rays, get over it!
In hindsight, it was colossally stupid. Evidence for an "unknown
nuclear reaction," which is what Fleischmann and Pons actually called
it, in their paper, was rejected because it didn't behave like a
known nuclear reaction, and the known behavior was solidly aligned
with theory. You can't apply theory to an "unknown reaction"!
("Nuclear" is pretty vague, and assumptions made that "nuclear
reactions" would necessarily produce this or that product were
unjustified. But, to be fair, there were a number of red herrings.)
If helium were produced by d-d fusion, then conservation of momentum
requires the gamma -- or some other process, such as Mossbauer-like
transfer of momentum to an entire crystal lattice, in which case the
magnitutde of the transfer was enormous compared to anything ever
observed. It was, indeed, highly unlikely, and remains so. So ....
instead of concluding the obvious -- unknown reaction *or* artifact
--, in a way that remains consistent with experimental data, it was
concluded that the experiments were "wrong," but without ever showing
exactly how they were wrong.
Heat was rejected as error, though, in fact, many analyses showed
that the calorimetry was sound, with margins of error inadequate to
explain the results. And helium was explained away as leakage, though
leakage was inconsistent with the actual results (helium above
ambient was reported and confirmed, such as the SRI Case results, and
Violante), and leakage would not explain strong correlation with heat.
(One skeptic has asserted that a hotter cell would leak more helium,
say if seals were disturbed by the heat. As is common with
pseudoskeptics, the explanations are fabricated and asserted as
facts, when, for example, SRI used flow calorimetry, which maintained
cell temperature at a constant value, so the "excess heat" is
measured by the reduced power needed to keep the cell at constant
temperature. Thus this would not be expected to have any effect on
helium. In most PdD cold fusion, the temperature rise is small.)
I'll repeat again: look at the helium. Understand the helium results,
and how they relate to excess heat results. Remember that some of the
early "negative replications" also looked for helium, and found none.
That is *confirmation*, not disconfirmation. No heat, no helium.
Why didn't SPAWAR present there?
At MIT? Forsely was scheduled, but couldn't make it. We did have Fran
Tanzanella from SRI, which was very nice. I see there are now some
pictures at http://world.std.com/~mica/cft.html I'm wearing what
might be called a Muslim hat, visible in two of the photos. I always
sit in the front, when I can, because I ask lots of questions....
