At 05:10 AM 5/31/2012, Peter Gluck wrote:
I have just published my answer to COLD FUSION NOW's
Ruby Carat question "What if?"
<http://egooutpeters.blogspot.com/2012/05/answering-to-ruby-carats-what-if.html>http://egooutpeters.blogspot.com/2012/05/answering-to-ruby-carats-what-if.html
My answer is not demonstrable but it can have some traces of realism.
The "What if" can be useful if it leads to a better understanding of
how to approach the situation today.
First of all, we must understand the quite strong reasons for
skepticism. We cannot blame anyone for being skeptical, then, or even now.
With each passing year, the skeptical position becomes both weaker
and stronger.
Weaker is obvious: the balance of publication in peer-reviewed
journals long ago flipped to positive. The core experiment
demonstrating the reality of cold fusion beyond reasonable doubt is
the heat/helium work of Dr. Miles, and this has been confirmed, and
most thoroughly reviewed by Dr. Storms in "Status of cold fusion
(2010)" (Naturwissenschaften.) That is a peer-reviewed review, and
the abstract is quite clear on the probable reality of cold fusion.
So why does extreme skepticism persist? Well, first of all, what are
the ways in which the skeptical position becomes stronger with time?
Most of these ways are "logically defective." I'll note that, but it
does not help us in "spreading the news" to call the extant arguments
"logically defective." We need to either directly address them, with
respect, or side-step them with something overwhelming.
1. The absence of a practical application or readily-available
reproducible demonstration that is not itself highly controversial,
in spite of hundreds of groups around the world that have worked on
CF. Logically defective.
2. The weakness of the heat/helium work. It is strong enough to be
considered prima facie conclusive, we may say, but someone attached
to the skeptical position will notice the weaknesses.
3. The continued lack of a "plausible mechanism." We cannot even
agree among ourselves as to the plausibility of any of the many
proposed mechanisms. Logically defective.
Notice that the only not-logically-defective criticism is about
something remediable through further work on heat/helium, which can
have value all of its own.
For more than twenty years, much experimental work in the field seems
to have been aimed at finding ways to improve the reliability of the
effect, or its amplitude. While that is quite understandable, it is
not what the *science* needed. Miles' work was so important because
he moved around the "unreliability," to a study of a correlated
result. In such a study, "unreliability," through "dead cells,"
becomes a control.
Further, many have attempted to invent mechanisms. Dr. Storms, most
recently, has proposed a mechanism that seems logical and plausible
to him, but that is tantamount, at the core, to proposing an entirely
unknown phenomenon, I could call it "gradual nuclear fusion." That
simply postpones the mechanism issue, though in a narrow and testable
way. Some of Dr. Storms' ideas can be tested, and what leaps out at
me is that some of the tests are things that involve experimental
data that well may have already existed, *but that was not
published.* It was considered useless, or even, in the context of the
attempt to convince the general physics community, "negative."
An example would be the production of tritium which was not strongly
correlated with excess heat. Miles apparently collected tritium data
for his cells, but because it was not correlated with excess heat,
because the levels were way too low, at least, to allow tritium to be
a part of the main reaction, Miles did not publish the data. Levels
of tritium are a clue to the mechanism, likewise neutrons, even
though the levels were *extremely* low to non-existent. Data on H/D
ratio in experimental cells is scanty, yet the ratio is known to have
a strong effect on results.
What is missing from the experimental record is thorough study of the
already-discovered effect. Each group, with few exceptions, invented
its own specific approach, so results cannot be easily compared
across various reports. There seems to have been no widespread
recognition of the value of a method that, with persistence, produces
results a substantial percentage of the time, that such a protocol is
quite adequate for the kind of work that was needed.
Dr. Storms has pointed out how even the simplest and cheapest
experimental techniques were often not used. For example, it would
seem that a careful investigation would include radioautography of
the cathode or other materials from the cells. And, of course,
complete work would include radiography of *all cathodes* in a
series. Is a radioautograph showing radiation from a used cathode
correlated with excess heat? With helium? With other effects?
Much work in the field represents little more than anecdotal
evidence. That's great as a basis for further exploration, but it's
lousy as a way of establishing a world-shaking effect. To be widely
and readily convincing, in such a context, such an anecdotal effect
must be wildly visible, not merely measurable.
So, there are five ways to proceed, given the situation.
1. Encourage and support experimentation to develop full analytical
data for methods known to work. This can be done, there is nothing
speculative about this approach. This is the kind of work that was
recommended by both DoE LENR reviews. This is also not expensive
work, and political support should be developed to make graduate
student labor available again. Discrimination against graduate
students who did good work on cold fusion, in the early days, was an
*outrageous* abuse and imposition of a kind of orthodoxy inimical to
science itself. That must not be tolerated. It will take bold
professors and bold graduate students, interested in real science, to
break this. Cold Fusion Now may be of great help.
2. Spread the news about what already exists with respect to cold
fusion research. The experimental record is adequate to establish the
reality of the effect by the preponderance of evidence. Most
skeptical arguments have become mere assertions of some unlikely
possibility without any experimental backing or confirmation. If cold
fusion was a medicine, it would be approved and would be routinely
prescribed. Cold Fusion Now, again, can help with this. However, I
caution Ruby and CFN not to support *unsubtantiated* reports, merely
because they know that LENR is possible. That LENR is possible does
not mean that every report of LENR is valid. Further, reality of an
effect does not equal commercial application, and an attempt to apply
an effect commercially will run into major issues of reliability, and
can fail for reasons not related to some underlying real effect. I
understand that we are impatient to see a solution to the world's
energy problems. But it was jumping the gun on this in 1989-1990 that
led to widespread rejection and cynicism.
3. Increase awareness of the insanity of spending billions of dollars
on hot fusion research, which remains a long shot in spite of sixty
years of work, while denying even the smallest funding for LENR
research, which, if a practical route to implementation can be found,
could make hot fusion into a pile of very expensive but useless junk.
Cold fusion has, many times, produced far more energy than was put
in, the problem being that nobody has yet found a way to make this
reliable. Hot fusion has produced mere breakeven, rarely, at enormous
expense. Even if successful, it will almost certainly require
enormously expensive and dangerous installations. This is nuts, and
the insanity should be made very obvious to politicians. Use the DoE
reports to establish the advisability of this research. Why have
funding agencies ignored the recommendations of both DoE panels,
clearly unanimous in 2004?
4. Support continued research into new approaches to LENR, while, at
the same time, encouraging stronger standards for publication. There
is much published work in this field that is of low quality. It's not
that such work should not be published, it is that, when published
under peer review, but with inadequate review and editing, it damages
the reputation of the field. Preliminary reports, undigested results,
all this, can and should be internet-published. Indeed, as anyone who
attempts to replicate CF work will find, published articles typically
contain inadequate data. Some journals now publish appendices with
expanded data on-line. That practice should be encouraged.
5. Support extended peer review and criticism within the field. I
find it appalling, myself, that Takahashi can publish a theory that
might be a piece of an explanation of how CF might be happening,
based on known quantum field theory, as far as I can tell, but his
work is not reviewed and either confirmed or criticised by anyone
sufficiently knowledgeable in that quite esoteric field. Indeed, I
have no indication that the work was adequately reviewed before
publication (but that would not necessarily be visible). Kim's
somewhat-parallel, but, AFAIK, less-specific work was published by
Naturwissenschaften, and I assume that does mean competent review.
But Kim and Takahashi do not ordinarily reference each other.
And then, an idea: recruit physicists to review the theoretical work
that has been published. Encourage them to submit such reviews for
publication. What matters for choosing these physicists is their
dedication to science and to the scientific method, not their
position on cold fusion.
The pseudo-skeptical position thrives in an atmosphere of incaution
and inattention, of holding to assumptions while avoiding the hard
work of actually examining evidence, not to mention setting up
experimental demonstrations of artifact. If cold fusion had merely
been a few isolated reports in 1989 and later, it's understandable
that people would not want to waste time with it. However, it isn't
that. It has been so extensively corroborated that an attempt at
experimental refutation is very, very likely to fail. Such a clear
refutation was never done.
The early "negative replications" were entirely failures to
replicate, not *successful replication* of what has been widely
reported, with, then, demonstration of the artifact, as was done with
N-rays and polywater.
What stood as if it were refutation were *corroborations* of the
observed phenomenon, in a negative sense. I.e., a paper that showed
neutron radiation in cold fusion experiments must be below some quite
small threshold was considered a "blow" to cold fusion, but only
because of an assumption that fusion must produce neutron radiation.
The effect, per Storms (2010, produces no significant radiation of
any kind, as to what has been detected. Reports from "reputable
groups" that found no excess heat, and these reports were considered
very important in 1989-1990, where they looked for helium, also found
no helium. This *confirms* the heat/helium ratio, in part. No heat,
no helium. That validates both the heat and helium measurements!
It remains true that many approaches to cold fusion are difficult to
replicate. Even for the same researcher, what has worked last year
may not work this year, with the reasons being quite unclear. Great
persistence and patience is needed, and "negative" results should not
be deprecated. *All results should be published." Otherwise, the
field remains wide open to a possible criticism that I did not mention above:
4. Too often, only positive results are published. A research may run
a dozen cells and, say, three show excess heat. The researcher only
publishes the data for the three cells. But one of the crucial pieces
of information we need about a protocol is the *rate* at which it
shows results. Further, in such a series, if possible, helium should
be sampled (if this is a PdD experiment), or other likely nuclear
effects measured and correlated with the heat. All the data is
important. Note: had Pons and Fleischmann published their full data,
for their most recent protocol, in 1989, the whole field would very
likely have gone in a very different direction. If, in their press
conference, they had simply mentioned that only one out of six cells
exhibited the effect, and that only after months of electrolysis, it
would not have been possible to "refute" their announcement, as to
political effect, by a feeble effort with a few cells for a month.
And this leads to another recommendation:
6. Researchers and those with access to analytical resources should
cooperate. Standard analytical methods should be developed, and new
experiments designed to allow efficient use of these resources. If
any resource is overwhelmed with requests, the resource should be
"commodified," i.e., analysis should be available for sale, at
reasonable prices, but adequate to fully support the work (and the
difference between for-profit and non-profit here is typically only a
small margin). Then, those interested in supporting the field overall
may wish to subsidize testing for qualified researchers. Or for
students, the next generation.
I'd love to be able to send a vial of heavy water somewhere, with a
small sample, and get back an H/D ratio. I don't even know where to
start with that. Sure, there might be some lab service available, but
my guess is that there are institutional resources that could do it
for free, or for a small fee, and if we, collectively, arrange
something, even a for-profit service might offer this at a discount,
with coordinated submission of samples. It could be anywhere in the world.
