On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 10:03 AM, Jed Rothwell <[email protected]>wrote:
> Vorl Bek <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> From reading the exchanges here and on other forums, I have the >> impression (my 'verdict') that the evidence for lenr is >> either: >> >> anecdotal ('all the water boiled out of the bucket!';'there >> was a terrific explosion!' - that sort of report), but that the >> events can not be repeated; >> > > As McKubre shows, the events have been repeated. See: > > http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHcoldfusionb.pdf > > It shows that many groups claim excess heat, but he admits in the paper that the experiments are not reproducible, in that some teams see nothing, different results are seen in different labs, and inconsistent results are seen in the same lab with similar samples. > > They cannot be scaled up safely because they cannot be controlled. > > > Implausible excuse. There are ways to protect yourself against hundreds of times more power or energy than observed in the biggest claims in cold fusion. The plausible reason they don't scale up, is because when they do, the effect doesn't get bigger. > > >> in fact, according to Cude, claims have been scaled down over >> the years. >> > > That is correct. The cathodes are much smaller, for various reasons. The > ratio of heat to the mass of the cathode is much higher, however. > > The main reason is because it gives confirmation bias a much better chance when small errors can represent large *relative* effects. > > >> Despite the cries here that nobody (I assume that means taxpayers) >> will give money to allow lenr enthusiasts . . . > > > We are hoping that funding will be made available to professional > scientists, not "enthusiasts." We would like to see a situation in which a > professional scientist with tenure can apply for a grant and not have > authorities call him up and threaten to shut down his lab or deport him. > Has this happened to Duncan, Hagelstein, Kim, Dash…? Because, if not, then we have such a situation. > In other words, we favor traditional academic freedom, and the freedom to > do research the other scientists and the public thinks has no merit. > > > This freedom exists, but if the other scientists you're talking about includes nearly all other scientists, it would be an insane system that provides public funding for something that has no merit by nearly unanimous opinion. There is competition for funding after all, and merit is the main criterion. > to do the job they could >> do if they had more money, I find it hard to believe that if there >> was anything to the lenr effect, that some way of exploiting it >> would not have been found since P&F in 1989. >> > > Why do you find it hard to believe this is difficult? Many other subject > are difficult, after all. > Because it's a small-scale experiment and the claim is a dramatically large energy density. That's the claim to fame, after all. > Billions have been spent on plasma fusion with not significant progress > towards commercialization. > But the proof-of-principle was established at the beginning. And this is a difficult, large-scale experiment -- its difficulty and scale being precisely the reason cold fusion is so attractive, if only it worked. > There has not been much progress in HTSC which was discovered at about the > same time as cold fusion, even though HTSC got a lot more funding. > >From the claim to acceptance of proof-of-principle required a tiny fraction of what has been spent on cold fusion, which still does not have acceptance of proof-of-principle. > > >> In fact, the Japanese gave P&F a lab and x million dollars and a >> couple of years to repeat their original supposed lenr effect, and >> they could not do it. >> > > That is incorrect. The achieved high reproducibility, routinely triggering > boil offs in 64 cells at at time. The work culminated with cells that ran > for weeks at boiling temperature, at 40 to 100 W. See: > > http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RouletteTresultsofi.pdf > > Nothing like "routinely triggering boil-offs in 64 cells" is reported in that paper. That paper reports excess heat in 2 or 3 cells out of 7, and it's a sloppily prepared conference proceeding with sentences that aren't finished, missing section headings, errors in the correlation between figures and the experiment number in the table, sketchy and incomplete information, absence of raw data in favor of processed excess power and so on. It's a pathetic example of a scientific report, and it is the *only* thing that came out of the tens of millions spent by Toyota. It's no wonder Fleischmann's name is not on it; he was probably ashamed. There's a reason people put more weight on refereed papers. It saves duplication of effort in trying to penetrate poorly presented results. In any case, Pons knew the importance of refereed publication, and so failure to achieve that is significant. The paper promises more papers on more careful experiments (taking account of recombination and so on), but nothing more was ever published, even though the lab was open another 2 years. The experiment uses inferior calorimetry with boiling water. In the counterpart experiment in the IMRA Japan lab, they used proper flow calorimetry and found no excess heat in 26 cells. > This project was terminated because of politics and disputes over money > between Toyota and other companies, not because the research itself failed. > Sure, and also because they wanted to spend more time with their families. Do you seriously think anyone believes that two capitalist companies would forfeit billions or more because of disagreement in how to split the spoils? This (including the idea that the Pd recipe died at JM) is one of many fantasies true believers have to maintain so they can go to their graves without admitting how gullible they were.
