On 11-12-16 03:13 PM, Mary Yugo wrote:
On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 12:06 PM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:Mary Yugo <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Robust and credible results would not require anyone to read long and convoluted papers numbering in the thousands. So you are looking for short, well-written, and highly convincing papers? Most people I know would say these two fit the bill: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/WillFGtritiumgen.pdf This describes the work at the National Cold Fusion Institute, which was established by the state of Utah. In the mass media, this institute has been widely portrayed as a waste of money and a mistake, but in fact, under Will's leadership, it produced definitive results. The work was superb. It was worth every penny. The state of Utah did a great thing. I hope it is recognized someday. http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHisothermala.pdf In my opinion, these two papers should have convinced every scientist in the world that cold fusion is real and that it is a nuclear effect. All opposition to the discovery should have ended when they were published. If you find these papers difficult, convoluted or unconvincing, perhaps the problem is at your end, rather than in the papers. People who know much more about physics and chemistry than you do, such as Gerischer, found this work convincing. You should consider the possibility that they are right, and you are wrong, and you have not put enough effort into studying these results, or you are incapable of understanding them. For that matter, there is no reason to think that important breakthroughs are inherently easy to understand. Although as it happens I had no difficulty understanding these two papers, or their importance. I do have difficulty understanding many other cold fusion papers. Most of the theory papers are completely over my head. Unlike you, however, I would _never_ dismiss a paper or a discovery because I have difficulty understanding it. Thanks, I'll look.
If you're looking for interesting CF papers, and if you're looking for papers that show evidence that the researchers knew what they were doing, you might take a look at this honker:
http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=epridevelopmen.pdf&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lenr-canr.org%2Facrobat%2FEPRIdevelopmen.pdf&ei=Xq_rTrXGEKjo0QGJq8TDCQ&usg=AFQjCNGCWQS7luczo8MaaKBigXcC6PessQ <http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=epridevelopmen.pdf&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lenr-canr.org%2Facrobat%2FEPRIdevelopmen.pdf&ei=Xq_rTrXGEKjo0QGJq8TDCQ&usg=AFQjCNGCWQS7luczo8MaaKBigXcC6PessQ>
It's over 300 pages, and you may find it less than conclusive, but it's a fascinating document, which makes it painfully clear just how difficult Pd/D CF experiments really are.
They describe, in detail, everything they did in the course of trying to get a clear, solid result. (One obvious overwhelming conclusion is that Pd/D cells are 'way too touchy to be anything more than a curiosity, regardless of how "real" the phenomenon may be.)
The process was excruciating; it's hard even to read about it -- "calibration was difficult on this run; when we disassembled the cell we found the electrolyte had leaked through the gasket into the bathwater...", lots of that sort of thing. (And these are ballpark hundred-hour runs they're talking about: in a sentence or two, they describe a couple weeks of work going down the drain due to failure of one of the hundred or so custom made parts in a cell.) They documented what went wrong, as well as what went right, and when they got a good result they tried hard to find an artifact which could account for it, rather than just taking it at face value... And their positive results were obtained with such difficulty, after identifying and avoiding so many pitfalls, that it's not even slightly surprising that there weren't six labs out there replicating right after the report came out.
McCubre, the lead author, is clearly the complete opposite of Rossi. They shouldn't even be compared, frankly.
