At 06:52 PM 9/9/2012, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Jouni Valkonen
<<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected]> wrote:
What comes to cold fusion, there are no
established scientific point of view . . .
Yes, there is. It is the set of facts in the
peer-reviewed literature published in mainstream
journals. This is the definition of an
"established scientific point of view." There is no other definition.
These facts constitute overwhelming evidence
that the effect is real. The people at
Wikipedia, at Sci. Am. and elsewhere have
replaced this standard with a set of rumors or
nonsensical assertions made by people who know nothing about the research.
Rothwell is right. When he pointed this out on
Wikipedia, even though it was only in suggestions
on the cold fusion article talk page, he was
banned, with ridiculous and clearly false charges
heaped on top of the only real thing that could
be said about his writing. He was blunt, and thus possibly uncivil.
In fact, I learned about cold fusion because, as
a Wikipedia editor, interested in community
process and neutrality policy, I noticed that
lenr-canr.org was blacklisted. I intervened, and
eventually this went to the Arbitration
Committee. The Committee found that administrator
JzG had, being involved in the topic (as a
skeptic, based on what a friend, an
elecrochemist, had told him years before, and
which he very likely did not understand), used
his tools in violation of recusal policy. JzG was
actually an egregious violator, but he'd also
been a very helpful volunteer in certain areas. I
was told, before the case concluded, that he'd be
gently reprimanded. That was correct. However, I
was also told that he would then be on a short
leash. That was not correct. He was careful not
to use his adminstrative tools, *usually*, but he
used his reputation as an administrator to get away with lying about evidence.
I'd successfully gotten cold fusion removed from
the spam blacklist on Wikipedia, but as soon as
that possibility appeared, he went to the meta
coordinating wiki and requested a *global*
blacklisting. It was immediately granted, this
was their old friend, JzG. Contrary arguments
there were ignored. So while the Arbitration
Committee was reprimanding JzG for what he'd
personally done on Wikipedia, the same thing,
with broader consequences, was done on meta. And
meta was "outide the remit" of the Arbitration Committee.
The meta decision had been closed by a steward
who, I later found, was abusive in a lot of ways.
He eventually resigned, when he started losing
debates. I then requested a reconsideration of
the blacklisting decision. It was simple, but JzG
appeared and presented the same lies. You can
present a series of lies in a few words.
Demonstrating that they are false can take a lot
of words, and calling them "lies" can get you
banned. (Technically, it could be said that these
were merely errors, not lies, except that the
same issues had been considered many times by the
community, JzG's claims had been roundly
rejected, so *he knew* that there was a problem
with what he was saying. But he said it anyway, which is why I call it "lies.")
So, to respond, I needed to cover the evidence on
each claim. I did so, keeping it as concise as I
could reasonably manage with the time I had. (It
takes longer to write less, if one needs to be
complete.) Meanwhile, JzG requested, on
Wikipedia, that I be banned. There was a
discussion and the usual suspects collected and
voted for a ban. A few people pointed out the
lack of evidence, etc. An administrator looked at
the discussion and looked at the discussion on
meta, saw the "wall of text," and decided to ban
me for writing walls of text. Wikipedians,
typically, dislike "walls of text," which really
means anything longer than their attention span
for the topic. It doesn't matter how well the material is organized.
And then the request for delisting was granted by
an independent administrator. And that is why it
is now possible to link to lenr-canr.org. The
links are often removed, using the very same
discredited arguments that were considered *in detail* in many places.
Wikipedia does not build knowledge in the
community. The same issues get considered over and over and over.
. . . therefore it is impossible to write a
good Wikipedia article on cold fusion that would satisfy everyone.
You do not need to satisfy people. You need to
report the replicated, peer-reviewed facts of
the matter. Science is not a popularity contest.
For Wikipedia, editors need to insert neutrally
worded text that is referenced by the best
possible sources. The gold standard is a
peer-reviewed review of the field, published in a
mainstream journal (i.e., not a specialist
journal that might be leniently reviewed, the
CMNS Journal would probably not be accepted, but
Naturwissenschaften should be golden.)
Editors should remove unsourced or weakly sourced
material. The article is a farrago of material
from sources of many different levels of quality,
and much is quoted from very old sources as if
this was fresh. For example, it is claimed that
cold fusion theories are "ad hoc." I'm not quite
sure what that means, but conveys an impression
of something not deep, not thoroughly considered.
Takahashi's TSC theory is incomplete, for sure.
It assumes a starting position for deuterium
molecules that could be difficult to reach, but
the point is that it's not deeply difficult. It
might happen in PdD, or especially at the surface
(which is what Takahashi has most recently
proposed), and that's enough to start. He also
has not rigorously worked out how the energy of
fusion is dissipated, though, again, he presents
some ideas. But as to the fusion itself, he
*predicts* it from quantum field theory, given
his starting configuration. This is very much not
ad hoc. But "ad hoc" might have been true for many early theories.
Cold fusion advocates have failed to market
their ideas. Instead many cold fusion advocates
(such as Krivit) took seriously that there would
be evidence for Ni>Cu transmutations, although
scientific evidence was mostly zero. If
Krivit-level experts are doing such mistakes in
basic science, how it is possible that this
field could be taken seriously by Wikipedia?
Krivit is mistaken. He is not an expert at any
level. What he takes seriously has no bearing on
what is true. You need to look at journals and
professional scientists to judge what should go into an encyclopedia.
That's an idea, but is actually mistaken about
what "should go into an encylopedia," and
specifically into Wikipedia. Material in the
highest quality sources (like those Jed is
mentioning), particularly secondary sources
(i.e., reviews, as an example), can be stated as
fact. Other material can be used, sometimes, with attribution.
One of the problems with Wikipedia is that much
of the project is sourced from news media. The
Arbitration Committee has ruled that science
articles should preferably be sourced from
peer-reviewed journals and academic publications,
but that often doesn't get out to the masses, and
the pseudoskeptics will use whatever they can find.
On RationalWiki, the cold fusion article states
that the findings of Pons and Fleischmann were
"never reproduced." That's a very common claim,
you can find it in many media sources. And it's
preposterous. My point is that you can find all
kinds of non-authoritative crap in media sources.
Someone wrote, in 1989, when it might still have
been true, that nobody could replicate it. And
then a whole generation of reporters repeated this "fact."
(And then pseudoskeptics, when you point out the
153 peer-reviewed reports of the Fleischmann-Pons
Heat Effect, will point out that those weren't
"exact replications." Of course not! SRI, for
example, wanted to use a different calorimetric
method, to answer objections raised about the FP
methods (which were sound, as later found, but
controversial). So they did it differently! But
they found the same Effect. Anomalous heat from
highly loaded palladium deuteride. They confirmed
that the heat was erratic, i.e., with P13/P14,
with P13 being a light water control, and P14
using heavy water, they found that the first two
times they ran a high-current excursion through
the cathodes, nothing unusual happened. The third
time, the heavy water cell showed very clear
excess heat, the hydrogen control nothing.)
(Many skeptics, hearing that cold fusion
experiments produced variable results, assumed
that the results must be close to the noise. No.
P14 was not close to noise. Rather, excess heat
either did not appear, or it appeared, often
quite strongly, far above noise. And then the
experimenter would try again and find nothing.
Cold fusion was famous for frustration. *It is a
verified characteristic of the effect,* which may
last until it is understood and experiments can be better designed.)
Although Abd is saying that there is good
correlation with helium and excess heat, somehow
I find it very odd, that if correlation is good,
why it is so darn difficult to replicate?
You are confused.
The quality of the correlation and the ease of
the experiment are completely separate
qualities. They have absolutely nothing to do
with one another. The correlation might be very
low with an experiment that is dead simple to
do; or the correlation might be high with an
easy experiment; or the experiment might be
difficult and the correlation nonexistent -- which the case with tritium.
Yes, I'd say he was confused. I hope he gets it now.
By the way, we don't know if tritium is
correlated with excess heat. I've looked into
this a bit. What happened was that Bockris, for
example, ran experiments looking for tritium, and
found some. But the levels of tritium were way
too low to explain the excess heat observed in
*other* experiments. If they measured heat at
all, in the tritium experiments, it's unclear.
They did not report any data on heat/tritium correlation.
So one of the fairly easy experiments to do is to
set up the FPHE, and measure heat, helium *and*
tritium. Also, the H/D ratio should be varied, to
determine the effect, particularly at low levels.
Essentially, I expect that tritium *is*
correlated with excess heat, under constant
conditions, and maybe with the H/D ratio. No
heat, no tritium (or very low tritium).
But we don't know.
The correlation is so difficult to understand
that even Krivit cannot understand it.
Understanding the correlation is quite easy.
Anyone can see it in the graphs. Krivit cannot
understand it because he often fails to
understand simple concepts such as scientific
notation. In any case, you should not gauge the
validity of the arguments by looking at Krivit's
understanding of them. This is a nutty metric.
Therefore I would say that Abd is exaggerating the quality of evidence.
You say this based on Krivit's
(mis)-understanding? I suggest you look at the data yourself!
Jouni could tell us what he finds difficult to
understand. A correlation between two variables
is fairly easy to understand. What may be
difficult is to determine the cause. Krivit
sometimes challenges results in this area,
finding this or that error or alleged error. But
he doesn't really challenge the fact of the
correlation, on the the specific values found.
The correlation establishes, with a strong
inference, that helium is a product of whatever
causes the heat. Krivit may not like the SRI
work, which is the most accurate to date, because
it implies close agreement with 23.8 MeV.
However, Widom and Larsen have supported a higher
value, over 30 MeV/He-4. The problem is that if
this is real, not merely the result of a little
lost or unmeasured helium, it would mean that
some other reaction is contributing *more* heat
per helium. Deuterium fusion has a very high
yield per He-4. Widom and Larson hypothesize a
farrago of reactions, but the problem is that
these reactions, in terms of measured products,
don't amount to much of anything. It's possible
to put together a theoretical series of reactions
that could produce some high level of heat, but
this, then, requires that reactions proceed
multiply, in sequence, and cold fusion is clearly
a rare process, so repeated reactions *on the
same target* would be rare upon rare. It doesn't
work. We would, then, expect the intermediate
products to be left. We'd expect their quantities
to be *greater* than helium. Nothing remotely qualifies as that.
Krivit has never presented a clear examination of
the issues. I hope that he will.
Jouni, the authoritative source at this point,
besides Dr. Storms' book, is his review in
Naturwissenschaften. You can read it on
lenr-canr.org. "Status of cold fusion (2010)." If
you don't understand anything, ask.
