Talk:Cold fusion

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Lecture by Robert Duncan

lecture on cold fusion at the Missouri Energy Summit, April 23

Robert Duncan, the scientist who was asked by 60 Minutes to look at a cold fusion lab, gave a lecture at the Missouri Energy Summit on April 23 about the scientific method and cold fusion. A video of the lecture is here. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 23:08, 2 May 2009 (UTC) It's a 100 MB file, I downloaded it and watched it, the Duncan lecture -- which is quite good -- starts in the middle. There might be another way to access just the Duncan lecture, but I couldn't find it. Duncan is really emphasizing the scientific method, which is about an ongoing process and which does not involve fixed conclusions. Ever. He reports one incident after the CBS special where a physicist called him up and was very angry, and his report shows the problem. When he asked the physicist to sit down (metaphorically, I suppose) and go over the evidence, that was angrily rejected with a comment that summed it up: something like "We already did this (i.e., in 1989-90) and you charlatans won't give up." The physicist obviously was so angry he forgot who he was talking to. Duncan isn't a charlatan, he's a reputable physicist, and simply looked at the evidence (new evidence! plus, probably, a revisitation of the old evidence, which was never properly analyzed) and came up with conclusions that were already creeping up toward majority opinion in 2004. Our resident skeptics managed, for a time, to keep the fact out of the article that half the 2004 review panel considered the evidence for excess heat "compelling." One-third thought similarly (perhaps not so strongly) about evidence for nuclear reactions. This isn't "fringe science," at least not any more. It's "emerging science," breaking through, supported by a huge amount of research of increasing clarity. If we simply follow reliable source guidelines, and apply the concept of undue weight in a neutral fashion, as recommended, we'll be fine. But if we cleave to either extreme, we'll have an unbalanced article. Right now, it's unbalanced, in my opinion, toward the skeptical side, but I reverted the re-addition of the POV tag because I believe we are working on and can resolve those issues, and since the imbalance is simply a matter of delay in reporting a shift in opinion, it's not as serious as would be, say, imbalance in the other direction, treating cold fusion as if it were a proven and accepted phenomenon. It's not. It's emerging science, with controversy remaining, lots of it, and we can and should report the nature of that controversy as shown in secondary sources like Simon. And if this makes the "pseudo-skeptics" -- the ones who confuse their own negative certainty with skepticism (certainty is the opposite of skepticism) -- look bad, let them generate reliable source to defend themselves. I don't think it's there. Good example of a genuine skeptic: Hoffman (1995). --Abd (talk) 15:25, 3 May 2009 (UTC) The University of Missouri link above has apparently been edited to remove Dr. Duncan's lecture. Dr. Duncan's lecture is now available on Youtube in three parts, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Krellkraver (talk) 06:23, 12 May 2009 (UTC) The U. Missouri link is back, as cited by Coppertwig, above, and no explanation has been given, to my knowledge, of why it was removed, but it's easy to guess. The YouTube links appear to be up, still, and may be more convenient, in the place of downloading that huge file that is both speeches. --Abd (talk) 14:59, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Removal of Storms material.

Orinish removed the Storms material on theory with (far too much weight for such a single non-mainstream source; Abd, could you summarize your point in one paragraph?). I reverted this. Storms is reliable source, quite clearly. I'm going to insist that this material is usable. It can definitely be reorganized; if this is out of balance, then it should be balanced with other reliably sourced material. Storms examines, in some detail, the various theoretical considerations; most of what is elsewhere in the article as theoretical objections to cold fusion is also covered in his outline, more coherently. (Parts of the article have clearly been written by editors who were reading sources, all right, but didn't understand them.) These are mostly lists, and I don't see how to present them and extract from them what is significant without distorting them.

(I already condensed greatly, keeping his lists mostly intact.)

We could, indeed, reorganize all the theoretical material into one section that covers all the issues and notable theories, as well as theoretical objections to experimental results and objections to theory (those are two different things) but Storms is practically unique as a recent reliable secondary source that covers the field. Storms should not be presented as an authority on "general acceptance," but on what is notable and accepted within the field of CMNS or low energy nuclear reactions. Some of what he reports may be his own opinion and not generally held, which is why significant attribution was scattered through the text. Even more could be done with respect to this: Storms could be identified as a long-time Cold fusion researcher.

I would also be using the Low Energy Nuclear Reactions Sourcebook, from the ACS (mainstream enough?) but the damn thing is $175. (Amazon $140). There are also recent theoretical papers, at least one presented at ICCF 14 may be of considerable interest, but probably can't be used yet, until it's published under peer review or there is secondary source discussing it. --Abd (talk) 00:24, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

What does Storm mean by this statement? 12. Living organisms are able to host transmutation reactions. Is he implying that critters can survive environments where transmutation reaction occur, such as someone being treated with radiotherapy? Or is he implying there are critters whose biological function employees transmutation? No matter what its a really weird statement.--OMCV (talk) 02:25, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

He means that there is evidence some organisms may be able to "host" or cause transmutation. Yes, it's really weird, quite unexpected, but, dammit, there is also some striking evidence. See above, Talk:Cold_fusion#Living_organisms?. --Abd (talk) 03:02, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Seriously this Storm guy seems to be a nut or at least gone nuts like so many others cold fusion proponents, such as John Bockris and Rusi Taleyarkhan. He shouldn't get much weight in this article.--OMCV (talk) 03:20, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I.e., RS standards be damned, if you think he's a nut, he's not to be used? The question is whether or not an article on Cold fusion can have an adequate section covering theories that have been advanced. Without the Storms material, we can do it, but .... it will be much more difficult, much more complicated. Anyway, Hipocrite just reverted without discussion, removing the Storms material. To me, the question is really how long it's going to take, not what's going to happen. Obviously, I can't predict the exact form of the article, I'm hoping it will be better than anything I can imagine, but the days of excluding RS material because of divisive editor opinion are over.

Meanwhile I just watched the video of Robert Duncan. It's a bit of a nuisance, a big .wmv file and Duncan's lecture is in the middle, but ... he makes the point about the scientific method and about how it was interrupted in 1989, and it's time to restart. Quite a few anecdotes could be told from that lecture; the one that matches so much that I've read from Simons, from the accounts of Krivit of interviewing scientists, is how some physicist called him up after the 60 minutes show and was really angry with him. He asked the man to go over the evidence with him. My memory of his report of the man's response: "We did that twenty years ago and you charlatans won't give up." Obviously, there is something going on that isn't science and the scientific method. And there is something going on here that isn't about NPOV and RS. By the way, Simon notes (RS!) how Brockris was abused, how the research was starved of the labor it needed because graduate students were told that if they worked on Cold fusion, they would have no career, and the Teleyarkhan story has yet to be told here in proper depth as well, but .... I haven't specialized in those yet.

Tell me, OMCV, how you would explain that Mossbauer spectrogram? --Abd (talk) 03:53, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I added my comments on Mossbauer spectrometry above, Talk:Cold_fusion#Living_organisms?. As for Storm and Brockris it clear they are having breaks with the mainstream science if not reality. Its not as if this break is only along the dimension of cold fusion. These guys just got wacky regardless of the quality of work they did when they were younger. Spontaneous combustion? Seriously? The fact that Simon's heart goes out to Brockris reflects poorly on Simon. Borckris was losing his head back in 1982 well before cold fusion when he was talking up his "secret catalysts" that could split water without energy or his 1984 material that could convert light into electricity perfectly. Borckris was lucky that these "discoveries" were attributed to errors and not fraud. I think most of his luck was due to politics, people wanted to sweep him out as quietly as possible.--OMCV (talk) 04:38, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that we have hundreds or thousands of peer-reviewed papers and other reliable source that breaks with the mainstream science." Cold fusion was claimed to be "dead." However, again, the sources show that what is being alleged to be mainstream science is dead, i.e., not showing signs of life by normal review of experimental claims that contradict the prevailing view. So it's a prevailing view, all right, and our article should show that, but it isn't represented in recent reliable source. So, yes, there is entrenched opposition, and we haven't adequately told that story. It's entrenched, like unquestioned orthodoxy anywhere can be entrenched. Do we tell the story of Brokris in adequate detail (not necessarily in this article)? OMCV, Simon is also reliable source, and skeptics and critics use him in the article whenever it suits them. OMCV, your POV is showing through the rhetoric. Showing "heart" reflects poorly? It's "clear that they are having breaks with reality?" A sentence of speculation isn't a break with reality, it's a speculation. I went and read the article on spontaneous human combustion and it seems that there is something there we don't know. When we don't know, we, very properly, speculate, and anyone skilled at problem-solving knows that speculation isn't confined to "reality," i.e., to what we know. It must step outside that, and being able and willing to do so is a sign of mental health, not of being "wacky." Enough. I'm working on the article. All are welcome to help. If that change doesn't stand, it could be messy, because, unlike what I put in, there are a farrago of reliable sources to be asserted. Storms was neat and organized, so I expect I'll be putting in many tidbits of theory from many reliable sources. Simon, to give a little example, covers Mills' hydrino theory. There are many more theories published in reliable source, not reviewed by Storms.

This is the principle: balance is determined by the weight of reliable sources, with preference being given to peer-reviewed reliable source. Sources are not to be excluded on the basis that they are seen as "fringe." If you want to note that some claim is reliable source is "not mainstream," you will need a reliable source for that, but you can't take it out of the article if it's relevant and reliably sourced, though, occasionally, you can move it to a different article that is more specialized. We actually have an article that could hold much of that, Condensed matter nuclear science. It was protected into a redirect to Cold fusion by JzG, and that's one of the claims against him before ArbComm right now.... if there is any sentiment to reopen that article and put the more general theoretical stuff there, with summary here, that would be just fine with me! --Abd (talk) 13:40, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

As I commented a few days ago, Storms' book was only reviewed by the Journal of Scientific Exploration (which works as a journal to allow fringe theories to be published somewhere) and it was apparently not being cited by anybody. So not only the book is at odds with mainstream, but it doesn't seem to have had any real repercusion in science.

Also concerns about conflict of interest. Notice he is also mentioned in the "sourcing" section above as working for "Lattice Energy, LLC", and it appears that he is "[conducting] LENR research as an employee, senior scientist, and minority owner of a privately held company named Lattice Energy, LLC (...) Dr. Storms was a consultant to the company in 2003, became a senior scientist to the company in 2004, and continues to conduct laboratory experiments for the company on a full-time, exclusive basis." [1]. It appears that this company wants to commercialize cold fusion products, and that Storms wrote and published his book while working full-time for them, so there's a huge conflict of interest there in making cold fusion look viable.

So, it represents fringe views, it's not notable, it's not reviewed by any journal apart from a journal dedicated to fringe, it's not cited by other scientists, and it also has a COI. So, it can probably be used to represent the view of cold fusion proponents on the experiments, but it shouldn't be given much weight, and certainly no weight at all regarding the current state of the art in science, as being a fringe and probably biased source.

We already have RS talking about how CF scientists made their own journals and conferences to publish their own stuff away from mainstream because they weren't being accepted. This seems to be one of these cases. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:01, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) Enric, most scientists are employed in their field of research. If the book were self-published, or published by the company, the argument would be cogent. But it wasn't.

This is the publisher's list of works on physics: http://www.worldscibooks.com/physics/nppp.shtml This is not some fringe publisher. This is the publisher's blurb on the book: http://www.worldscibooks.com/physics/6425.html Storms is listed as "(retired from Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA)"

Yes, we have RS on the point about publication within the field, but the tenor of it isn't as is implied. It is about the effective blacklisting of research in the field, where the normal peer-review process is interrupted. In any case, you can suit yourself. If Storms lists a paper, it shows notability within the field, and I'll stand on that one. Storms is cited, but it's quite recent. Book publishing is slow. These arguments are typical coming from anti-fringe editors, who too often seek to exclude what would ordinarily be considered reliable source by any objective standard. However, I'll start, if we don't get Storms back in, or something better, by adding theories and discussion of theories from other reliable sources. As I wrote, it will be messier. It's about time that editors here start seeking consensus on the basic issues around the presentation of cold fusion in this article. I, for one, will start by asserting that reliable sources are reliable sources, and that text supported by reliable source shouldn't be removed based on editorial POV about "fringe." That's been rejected by ArbComm, quite clearly. So, now, we, as free and independent editors, will work out the consequences of that decision. --Abd (talk) 18:51, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I think you are missing the point Abd. The question is whether Storm and Simon are RS for main-stream science or even some form of fringe-science. Storm is seriously discussing spontaneous human combustion and Biological transmutation while he is totting cold fusion with a potentially serious financial conflict of interest. Even if he published a book though main stream channels should his scientific opinion be taken seriously? Even if he can "cite" evidence for these claims its not impressive. Anyone can come up with two three peer-reviewed sources to support any claim they wish. The peer review process isn't perfect, which has already been pointed out by both sides. Is Storm really the best that the pro-cold fusion have to offer? Moving on to Simon, he apparently sympathizes John Bockris a nut case in a bunch of different ways and likes the Mills' hydrino junk which is obviously fraudulent. I don't think Storm and Simon are appropriate RS for a scientific discussion even if they are perfect examples of most of the pro-CF community.--OMCV (talk) 21:29, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

–—I can't believe that you refer to Bockris as a nut. He is a giant in the field of electrochemistry. Also, in 1993, in my opinion he wrote one of the best written papers on the experiments and theory of "cold fusion". I don't have the reference right now, I will add it later. Also, he is a more reliable source than DOE or Scientific American. They have their own agenda's, and commenting on research is creating new data so it should also be treated as adding original thought, so it violates adding new research and the NPOV.Minofd (talk) 13:03, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Let me use an analogy. Just because someone is a police person it doesn't mean they can't brake the law or become corrupt. Borkris made substantial contributions to electrochemistry but his name is severally tarnished. This is not a minority opinion. Look to his work on secret catalysts and transmutation work to understand my position. An academic commite deemed some of his work on cold fusion incompetent rather than fraudulent but I'm not sure which would be worse.--OMCV (talk) 13:18, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Strawpoll

Link to diff - [2]

Abd's version provides too much weight to a single, unreliable source

1. Hipocrite (talk) 04:38, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

   Hey, who says the source is unreliable? Does that "who" understand that there are different sorts of unreliability? For example, Isaac Newton could probably be considered a Reliable Source regarding descriptions of various physical phenomena. However, Newton also put a lot of effort into thinking about various religion-oriented notions. It is likely he would not qualify as a reliable source in that field. So, with respect to cold fusion of deuterium in palladium metal, a particular Source could be very reliable about that, while simultaneously being unreliable about other matters that have nothing to do with this article. V (talk) 05:30, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

   V is correct. Actually, though, Newton would be a kind of RS in the other fields, as a notable individual whose opinions might be relevant; but his work or claims in the other field are irrelevant to his work or claims in the field of his recognized scientific expertise. Storms is widely recognized, published in peer-reviewed journals, as an expert in the field of low-energy nuclear reactions. The book is RS. Because of the nature of the field, claims regarding it must be attributed, they cannot be reported as simple fact, though some of the CF claims are rising to that point (but are not there yet). In this case, though, the article is setting out to describe the theories that have been advanced; at that point, it's necessary to describe theories that might be fringe, even wild, if they are notable, and that Storms discusses them is prima facie evidence of notability. Discussion in RS is the standard, period. There are other theories discussed in other RS, which should be added. Claims about the persons involved, alleged conflict of interest, all this is irrelevant to the basic determination of RS, only to possible balance, and balance is not reached by removal of RS material from one perceived side. Which is what is happening here. --Abd (talk) 11:07, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

2. I agree with Enric's assessment. Verbal chat 09:22, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
3. Any significant scientific discussion derived from the Storm or Simon book is unreliable. Agree.--OMCV (talk) 11:23, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
4. Support. Storms has some notability in the field, and may have something important to say, but adding all this text in the article gives an incorrect impression of the field. It is also partly redundant with the rest of the article. Remember that wikipedia is a service to readers who typically know very little on a topic, so we need to be careful to present the field accurately. I should add that Abd saying (in an edit summary) that he is unable to trim the length of the five paragraphs does not seem helpful. Olorinish (talk) 13:46, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

   The problem, Olorinish, is not that I can't trim them, it's that I can't trim them much without damaging the report. If a source states that there are N necessary characteristics of a theory, for example, the list can't be shortened to N-1 items without distorting the report. I definitely can still shorten the section, but without any confirmation that any of this would be accepted, why should I bother? I'll still try, a little, but ... I also have lots of other stuff to do, an ongoing RfAr, and kids to take care of.... --Abd (talk) 15:42, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

5. Support limitation. While Storms is certainly notable in the field, nothing we've seen yet by reviewers from outside of the believers' circle implies that his analysis is objective and critically balanced. (I use "believer" advisedly as an antonym of "skeptic". "Proponent" is the antonym of "opponent" and has been misapplied in this discussion for too long.)LeadSongDog come howl 14:06, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

   Thanks, LSD. I still claim that we "limit" undue weight by balancing, not by excluding what is in reliable source. "RS" doesn't mean only that a source can be used without balance, lots of RS requires attribution for various reasons. However, Storms' report is mostly quite plain as a neutral statement, and it's fairly easy to establish that. (Consider his very plain statement, "No published theory has met all of these requirements." That includes what appears to be his favorite theory.) It's simply a lot more complicated to get there. --Abd (talk) 15:42, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

6. As I argumented in the section above. --Enric Naval (talk) 08:43, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
7. As Enric ecellently argued in the section above. ;-) --Stephan Schulz (talk) 11:26, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

   Apart from removing tons of relevant and significant - and completely neutral and balanced - info - for no apparent reason. Kevin Baas^talk 14:12, 6 May 2009 (UTC) Opps - had it backwards. Kevin Baas^talk 16:40, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

   Notice that he didn't remove any actual info. The diff puts the text in red because of how it calculates what text was removed, it's still all there. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:55, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Abd's version should be used but balanced

1. "My" version over-uses a single source meeting WP:RS, but the remedy is not to remove RS material, but to balance it with other RS material, if that is available. The balancing could be in either direction; the sourcing for CF theories should be extended to show additional RS or more specific reference from within Storms, or if the Storms material does not cover criticism of CF theories, that should be added from RS. The repetitive removals are removals of reliably sourced material in violation of the ArbComm decision at Fringe_science#Prominence and Fringe_science#Advocacy. If balancing material is not available in RS, the claim that the apparent view of a source is not mainstream is questionable. --Abd (talk) 11:00, 4 May 2009 (UTC)
2. I will agree that regardless of how overweighted is the data that Abd used, the proper solution is to find RS data that balances it. Why don't those who think there is a problem here realize that IF THE DATA CANNOT BE BALANCED, then the data may be more true than not-true??? (And therefore there would be less need to strike a balance. Does the article on Relativity include contradictory data? If it doesn't, shouldn't it???) V (talk) 18:25, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

   Ironically, there's a whole bunch of relativity deniers. They are not mentioned in our article about relativity, though they have their own little corner of nuttery at Status_of_special_relativity#Alternatives_to_special_relativity. They have their own little journals and are absolutly certain that special relativity is bunk. Oh - and there's no recent peer reviewed paper refuting them, but they're still totally ignored in the article on Relativity. Hipocrite (talk) 18:39, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

   Yeah, but how much RS is there on this bunch? And especially peer-reviewed publications? The article you cited is totally unsourced on any side. It's a very serious mistake to lump Cold fusion in with ordinary fringe, it's quite an unusual case, it looks less and less like Polywater or N-rays every year. --Abd (talk) 03:27, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

   The references are in the target articles: emitter theory has two papers from Am. J. Phys., Aether drag hypothesis has one from Eur. Phys. J., and Lorentz ether theory has a ton of sources from many dutch, german and american RS. --Enric Naval (talk) 08:40, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

   I suppose I should say something about my question above being somewhat rhetorical. There is a reason why the relativity article doesn't have much contrary data: there simply isn't a lot of contrary data. Well, in the CF field, most of the contrary data is about 20 years old, and it has since been mostly explained in terms of insufficient loading of the palladium with deuterium. Also, some of the newer evidence might be called "startlingly compelling" --I hope you folks saw that video linked above, where the Robert Duncan who appeared on the 60Minutes broadcast was able to show some of the data gathered at that research facility in Israel. That "erupted palladium" image is awesome, with its microscopic spots of melted palladium (m.p.= 1554.9°C or 2830.82°F) (Hey, Kirk Shanahan! How does CCS explain that picture?) V (talk) 13:08, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

3. Kevin Baas^talk 16:40, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

Vysotskii and biological transmutation

Right now, biological transmutation isn't mentioned in Cold fusion and a See also link was just [removed by Enric Naval]. (He removed several things, all of which are okay except this one, so I'll put it back.)

(If biological transmutation isn't "Cold fusion," what is it?)

In any case, the most common researcher name that comes up connecting cold fusion and biological transmutation is Vladimir I. Vysotskii, who in 1997 was associated with Kiev Shevchenko University, Radiophysical Faculty, Kiev, Ukraine. So I thought I'd comment on what sources I find about him and his work.

[3] is a peer reviewed (mainstream journal) 1998 paper that might not, at first glance, seem to have anything to do with cold fusion. Except that the abstract begins with:

A general theory of controlling and changing the spontaneous nuclear γ decay is proposed. The phenomenon of nuclear decay controlling is a result of the interaction of the excited nucleus with zero-energy electromagnetic modes, which in turn interact with the controlling screen. In the general case the spontaneous decay probability with the presence of adjacent material bodies always differs from the corresponding probability for free space.

I was sensitized to this by a comment in Hoffman (Dialogue, 1995) pointing out that Be-7 is stable in free space and yet has a short half-life when absorbed on a surface. Hoffman points out that "If changes in charged particles orbiting around a nucleus can cause major changes in events within the nucleus, then there are chemical effects on radioactivity."

Vysotskii is proposing in his paper theory regarding the influence of chemical environment on radioactive decay. This is very much a Condensed matter nuclear science topic, but has nothing to do with fusion, directly.

So, we find Vysotskii presenting conference papers at ICCF conferences, for example: ICCF10 (2003): http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/VysotskiiVsuccessful.pdf Successful Experiments On Utilization Of High-Activity Nuclear Waste In The Process Of Transmutation In Growing Associations Of Microbiological Cultures

There are twelve conference papers in the lenr-canr.org bibliography by Vysotskii, or papers published by Infinite Energy which I'm not prepared at this time to assert as reliable source (!); the earliest I saw was presented at ICCF4 in 1993: On Possibility of Non-Barrier DD-Fusion in Volume of Boiling D2O During Electrolysis In 1996, an article appeared on Infinite Energy: Experimental discovery and investigation of the phenomenon of nuclear transmutation of isotopes in growing biological cultures

And at the recent ACS seminar in March, 2009: [4] Nuclear transmutation of isotopes in biological systems: History, models, experiments and perspectives (page 3 of the document with presentation summaries).

There is no doubt that Vysotskii's work is highly visible in the cold fusion field, thus it is no wonder that Storms would consider this prominent enough to include in a list of reported phenomena that a LENR theory should attempt to explain. Vysotskii isn't an isolated researcher, he appears to be a physicist and most of his papers have co-authors who are also academics.

The lenr-canr biblography page for Vysotskii is at http://www.lenr-canr.org/PDetail12.htm#3345.

Vysotskii appears to have done research sponsored by the U.S. goverment, see [5].

A book has been published, Nuclear Fusion and Transmutation of Isotopes in Biological Systems By Vladimir Vysotskii and Alla Kornilova author-provided description, Moscow, "MIR" Publishing House, 2003. The book is available though Infinite Energy's online store. Now, what is "MIR" Publishing House? This seems to be Mir_Publishers. This looks like it could be reliable source, though, obviously, the topic is controversial. And I'm not finding independent confirmation. Note, though, that there is earlier work reporting biological transmutation, by Kervran and Komaki; Vysotskii may be a more sophisticated confirmation of that earlier work.

Vysotskii is a heavily cited author at [6].

And, I shudder to note (antifringe editors, please avert your eyes), Vysotskii has written about possible physics behind Water memory.

mmmm... Here is a googlebooks result: [7] Metal Ions in Biology and Medicine - 1998 By Peter Bratter, Philippe Collery, Virginia Negretti De Bratter, Lylia Khassanova] The chart shown here is the same chart as is shown in Storms. This is Vysotkii's paper, and gives much more experimental detail than Storms reported (worth reading for those who have criticized Storms's report of this work). This was a collection of papers given at International Symposium on Metal Ions in Biology and Medicine organized in Munich in May 1998. There appears to have been some kind of review process for papers, but how deep that would have been, I could only speculate.

So: what do we have? We have some very remarkable reports, considered notable by Storms, and an apparently competent researcher, albeit one willing to challenge norms, working with established academic institutions. I'd say we have enough to include mention of biological transformations as an aspect of our topic, which was done in the material recently removed by Hipocrite, and to justify a See-also to Biological transmutation. Beyond that, the lack of independent confirmation makes it difficult to do more than mention the existence of the research.

The credibility of this research rests politically on the credibility of cold fusion research in general. While at first I was inclined to be extremely skeptical of the concept of biological transmutation, on reflection I've concluded that if CF can be pulled off by a surface effect with a palladium lattice, where it isn't actually the bulk palladium that manages the trick, and if CF effects take place with other systems (which apparently it does), it wouldn't, then, be so surprising at all that a biological mechanism could evolve, proteins can pull of some amazing tricks. My guess is that within a few years we'll have much better information all this. --Abd (talk) 08:10, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

There is no source for the biological transmutation thing apart from Storms, who only dedicates it a one-liner. The lack of relation to CF was discussed in the "Living organisms?" section above, and the problems with using Storms as a source are discussed at "Removal of Storms material." section above.

The biology book is about transmutation of Fe⁵⁷ and not about deuterium or lattice, and it makes no reference to cold fusion. You need to provide a source making a direct relationship between biological transmutation and cold fusion (one that is not Storms) if you want it mentioned in the article. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:58, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Enric, you seem to have missed something. Storms devotes more than a one-liner to this. The "one-liner" is where he cites explanation of the possibility of biological transmutation in his list of observed phenomena that a theory of cold fusion would profitably address. Elsewhere, he gives almost two pages to it, pp. 141-142. The research he gives the most ink to, reproducing the Mossbauer spectra, is cited above. Then there is the book published by MIR, which is a major, established Russian publisher. Then there are myriads of conference papers, not just Cold Fusion conferences. Then there are many non-CF related peer-review published papers by Vysotskii, and he's widely cited for these and they go way back. And from all this, I'm only suggesting that there is a relation between biological transmutation and cold fusion, which, by excluding having an article on Condensed matter nuclear science, which any biological transmutation would be, we force to be in this article. Do you get my drift?

Absolutely, in now way should we treat biological transmutation as an established fact. But there are books on it that predate 1989. It exists as an obviously fringe field, with a typical fringe phenomenon: because the possibility is considered preposterous, the research reports are not taken seriously, and neither refuted nor confirmed. There is enough to treat it as notable, and it's even notable enough to have its own article (which is more notable than necessary for a mention). How can you argue that Condensed matter nuclear science stuff belongs here, but Biological transmutation doesn't deserve a See also? --Abd (talk) 11:13, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

In that both are examples of pathological science perpetuated by fraud and bad experimental procedure? I kid. No, it does not. Hipocrite (talk) 11:59, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Since you are so concerned about fraud and bad experimental procedure, perhaps you can find some reliable source on significant fraud with respect to Cold fusion or the work of Vysotskii? Cold fusion is a field which, because of the huge potential market for inventions, is going to attract all kinds of parasites, and you can find quite a bit on hucksters on New Energy Times; as to "bad experimental procedure," again: researchers make mistakes and the normal publish/response cycle cleans it up. That cycle was interrupted, such that bad experimental procedure and interpretation, in 1989 or 1990, got published, and the responses were suppressed, normally considered a very, very rude thing for a publisher to do. Hipocrite, it seems you think you are supporting a scientific point of view, but you aren't. You are, instead, supporting non-science, i.e., uninformed opinion. I will be asserting, first here in Talk, a series of reviews of cold fusion, both in peer-reviewed publications and in media sources, showing the evolution of the field. But we could start with both DoE reviews. I presume you have read them? --Abd (talk) 13:53, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

If you cannot remain civil, I will not discuss this with you, except to say that consensus above states that your proposed sources are unreliable. Hipocrite (talk) 14:11, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I shall "call" you on that claim. The straw vote was about this statement: "Abd's version provides too much weight to a single, unreliable source" --the people who voted in favor of that are not necessarily all claiming that both parts of the statement are true. One part is about too much weight to a single source, and the other part is about the reliability of the source. Any crooked politician can tell you about wording something so that something bad for everyone can get included with a bunch of things that are good for most everyone. That's why when I saw the statement I immediately focussed on YOUR claim that the source is unreliable, when that is too broad; all we need is reliability with respect to Cold Fusion involving palladium and hydrogen only. Shall we have another straw poll SPECIFICALLY about that, just to see how right or wrong you really are, about Storms and Pd/H/CF? V (talk) 15:55, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Eh? Uncivil? Where? As to the alleged consensus, can you point me to it? Your version of the poll asked if my edit was unbalanced, and I agreed it was unbalanced, in fact, though not as to degree and comparison with your edit. You did not ask the single question of whether or not Storms was RS, so it cannot be determined if the answers were to that part of the question or the other, and it would be difficult for a mere poll, without adequate discussion, to determine that a book published by a major publisher is not RS, this cuts to policy and guidelines. Further, only Storms was considered, above I assert Vysotskii's book published by MIR. Where was it found that this wasn't reliable? In your imagination? Can you document that? --Abd (talk) 15:34, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

By the way, examining the comments with the !votes shows division on the RS question; the principal question answered was balance, which was actually a moot question. As to current status of the two polls: With some pile-on of editors who agree with you, with very recognizable names that would be expected to do so from consistent edit history: 7:3 in "your" favor (with similar predictability on "my" side. And "my side" is actually what guidelines suggest for the situation, what does that tell us?

However, the more to the point and simpler question I then asked, the !vote is 3:1 that your edit made the article worse, all things considered. And what does all this mean? Not much. I don't see enough support to assert my position with article edits, at least not yet. Rather, I will explore the issue in detail, make other compromises, use wider sourcing for basically the same thing, because it exists, etc. It's just more complicated and takes longer. --Abd (talk) 15:45, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Everyone who signed the "Abd's version provides too much weight to a single, unreliable source" called your source "unreliable." That your second confusing poll has failed to draw responses is because you can't phrase things that are easy for people to understand.

You are incivil when you call people "uninformed," or that they are supporting "non-science." Do not repeat this behavior.

If you intend to use Vysotskii as a reliable source to anything other than Vysotskii's tiny-minority opinion, I suggest you seek editiorial opinion on that, perhaps by having a clear strawpoll so that you can, yet again, be shown that your proposed content changes have no support from the vast majority of editors, and, in fact, aside from one editor, are supported only by what are now effectively single-purpose accounts (that would be you and Objectivist.)

Since you agree that edits you make are unbalanced, I suggest you review WP:NPOV. Making edits that are knowingly in violation of our core policies is a problem.

Finally, please attempt to stay on topic. Your stream of conciousness responses are dificult to follow and I will not continue to do so much longer except to say that any edits you make to the article should be proposed on the talk page before they are made. Hipocrite (talk) 15:57, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

mmm... and you? My "knowingly unbalanced" edit would have required twice as much work to balance, and it was more balanced than what it replaced. You, Hipocrite, removed reliably sourced material without adequate discussion. Your positions will ultimately have no support overall, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Not worthy of further response. No, straw polls are not necessary before asserting edits. Etc., etc. --Abd (talk) 17:02, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

As Hipocrite points out, the second poll covered the same point as the first one, which is why people didn't !vote there. To all effects the second poll is 3:7:1. It's only 3:1 if you refuse to take into account the results of the first poll. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:51, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm certainly not refusing to take into account the results of the first poll, but that poll suffered from a severe POV slant in the questions, such that even I didn't support the first poll alternate option, and had to create a third option. Nobody is questioning that the text based heavily on Storms is out of balance, the real question is whether or not it was out of balance more than the alternative of its pure removal, i.e., Hipocrite's action. Hence the second poll. The third poll is pure disruption. Do you support that, Enric? By the way, the result that you synthesized (essentially 7:3) was also stated by me, above, so how could you claim that I refused "to take into account the results of the first poll"? --Abd (talk) 16:34, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

You were saying that the polls made different questions, and that the 3:1 result showed that Hipocrite's edit was making the article worse. So, yeah, you weren't taking into account the result of the first poll. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:12, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Presenting contrary evidence is not the same as "not taking" other evidence "into account." The first poll presented two options, with the first option combining two independent questions, and without sufficient evidence being presented for people to base !votes on, plus no independent, neutral editors have been solicited. Later, that can be arranged. The second option, then, asserted a position that nobody was asserting, a straw man. That's an excellent example of an abusive poll, designed to produce a result. Enric, we've worked together long enough for you to know better. The first poll did not answer the question of whether or not the edit made the article better or worse, and that is, in fact, the ultimate question about a revert. If the revert made the article worse, it was out of line. If it made it better, it was proper. ("Worse" or "Better" are overall judgments that understand that defects exist in all text and, further, that content guidelines are not fixed rules but merely helpful general principles, to be applied with discretion by editors seeking consensus.) By asking about specific defects instead of the overall issue -- improvement of the article -- our process has been reduced to wikilawyering over source reliability, not the substance of the article, which was, and remains, missing any solid material on theories advanced to explain Cold fusion. Hence, indeed, I will largely ignore the polls, but see in them sufficient support for my position that I'm certainly not dropping it. I'm merely waiting for the day when conditions are right to clean up the mess. I'm not going to try to clean it up when more mess is still being made. --Abd (talk) 17:07, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Reliability of sources

(This poll was set up by Hipocrite)

Setting up a poll every time someone disagrees with you, without any new edit in controversy? This is disruption! --Abd (talk) 17:17, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

I am confused. Is this section a request for comments about the reliablility of these sources? If so, then it is a waste of time. The talk page is intended to be used for discussing EDITS TO THE ARTICLE. If you don't want to discuss edits to the article, the honorable thing to do is to refrain from editing this talk page. Those discussions should take place somewhere else. Olorinish (talk) 20:44, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

It looks like that to me, Olorinish. The first poll was set up by Hipocrite when I started discussing his revert of my addition of material on "proposed theories" from Storms, who is probably the most reliable source we have on what theories are proposed, aside from the pure experimental error that some seem to think is the only allowable theory. The questions asked were, in my opinion, if we are going to poll -- which is utterly unbinding, particularly when not preceded by adequate discussion, but which can sometimes be useful -- the wrong questions, stated to attract !votes in a certain way, so I first added a third option that represented the actual opposing view, not Hipocrite's straw man, which nobody supports, and then I added a poll that asked the fundamental question. Hipocrite had framed the issue as, essentially, "does Abd's edit have faults?," when the practical question should have been "was reverting this edit an improvement? or "is some other version even better?" So poll number two asks a real question that could give real guidance as to how to proceed. Then, when I began discussion of an issue raised as part of the discussion of Storms, and, only in Talk, pointed to some information on biological transmutation, which has, to my knowledge, two recent sources showing notability of the claims, Hipocrite opened up this third poll which wasn't based on any edit and was an attempt to establish source unreliability in the abstract, a doomed exercise. Source reliability is dependent on the text cited and the context of usage, once sources are within certain very broad categories. Abd (talk) 01:16, 9 May 2009

Storms

RE: Storms, Edmund (2007), Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction: A Comprehensive Compilation of Evidence and Explanations, Singapore: World Scientific, ISBN 9-8127062-0-8

A reliable source for scientific fact

1. Abd (talk) 17:17, 8 May 2009 (UTC) Sometimes. Depends on the text asserted. Inferior, generally, to source that is independently peer-reviewed.
2. Looks like more distorted wording to me. CF is not widely considered to be scientific fact, after all. However, as a source of DATA in the CF field (and only with respect to CF involving palladium/hydrogen, which is all that matters in this Wikipedia article), I would say that Storms is careful enough. V (talk) 19:48, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
3. What i have seem from storms have been compendiums, and pretty comprehensive ones at that. Kevin Baas^talk 15:08, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

A reliable source for notable minority opinion

1. Abd (talk) 17:17, 8 May 2009 (UTC) Absolutely.
2. I can agree with this, without reservation. V (talk) 19:48, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

An extremist or fringe source

1. Hipocrite (talk) 16:02, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
2. OMCV (talk) 03:41, 9 May 2009 (UTC) in terms of scientific material, fact and theory.

Are you saying that theory based on well-accepted fusion observations under certain physical conditions must always, absolutely, apply everywhere and all the time (all other physical conditions)? That any data that hints otherwise must automatically be discarded, even after a hundred replications? V (talk) 13:39, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

1. Enric Naval (talk) 15:44, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
2. Verbal chat 21:04, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Vysotskii

Re: Vysotskii, V., et al. "Successful Experiments On Utilization Of High-Activity Waste In The Process Of Transmutation In Growing Associations Of Microbiological Cultures". in Tenth International Conference on Cold Fusion. 2003. Cambridge, MA

An extremist or fringe source

1. Hipocrite (talk) 16:02, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
2. OMCV (talk) 03:41, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
3. Enric Naval (talk) 15:41, 9 May 2009 (UTC) To explain a bit: notice that Biological transmutation is a fringe field itself, that this is an unpublished primary source, and that the source making the link with cold fusion (Storms) is also a fringe source. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:13, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

A conference paper, not peer-reviewed

1. This source is not usable except for discussion in Talk, whether extremist, fringe, or whatever. Nobody has asserted this paper as a source for an edit, Hipocrite is wasting our time. --Abd (talk) 17:17, 8 May 2009 (UTC)
2. I can agree with Abd here, because the topic is not related to the Fleischmann-Pons experiments. V (talk) 19:50, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

   A technical point: this paper would be related to Low energy nuclear reactions or Condensed matter nuclear science. The latter is an article that was basically salted by JzG, it's protected as a redirect. There is, I believe, plenty of material for an article on the general topic of research into the possibility of differences of behavior in the condensed matter environment from behavior in a plasma or free space and there are known and accepted differences; Hoffman points out, for example, that Be-7 is stable in free space, with infinite half-life, but decays by electron capture when in chemical relationship; there is a page on this: [8]. The recent Vysotskii papers have been, in fact, on the use of bacterial cultures to accelerate decay of radioisotopes. While it sounded totally nutso when I first read the titles, the Be-7 example shows that something might be possible like that. Unfortunately, I know of no recent replications. (Vysotskii can be seen as a confirmation of earlier work, but those experiments were different, and I, for one, would be quite content with replication of the fairly simple and well-documented work that Storms cites, using Mossbauer spectroscopy. As far as I've seen, though, no replications have been attempted.)

   But as long as these articles are redirected here, the notable facts belong in this article, and we determine notability by independent publication. Storms isn't the publisher of his book, nor is Vysotskii the publisher of his book (Hipocrite did not pick the stronest source, big surprise), and both of these are general academic publishers; the books are both technical, academic works. If editors of this article want to fork off the more general field of CMNS, I'm sure it can be fairly easily done. --Abd (talk) 01:39, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

3. I'm not familiar w/this source, but if this question is here and it has a good fraction of votes on it, chances are it's a conference paper that hasn't been peer-reviewed, and I see no risk in calling a spade a spade. Kevin Baas^talk 15:29, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
4. The Vysotskii paper cited in this question was a red herring. Most of Vysotskii's work on biological transmutation has been published as conference papers that are probably not usable as reliable source except under very narrow conditions (which don't apply here.) However, there are quite a few exceptions, just not this one. Storms cites 6 Vysotskii documents, including conference papers and one published book, apparently. Storms is a secondary source, a review of the LENR field. Sources like this are the gold standard, except for one fly in the ointment: Storms is arguably not "mainstream." So if Storms is contradicted by "mainstream" reliable source, we must only use Storms with attribution and caution. So the question becomes, where is the contradiction? I haven't seen it, but I would not insist upon RS for it; rather, what I insist on is that we can use sources like Storms according to RS guidelines, and I would not object to text noting that this work hasn't been confirmed or accepted, even if that is not sourced. I looked extensively for confirmation of Vysotskii's work and I could find nothing either confirming or rejecting it (which is, to me, little short of tragic, but that's a tragedy that won't be fixed here). But it's notable, as Storms shows. There is all kinds of cockamamie stuff asserted at ICCF conferences, though I don't think most of that makes it into the proceedings. As Simon notes, once you are shoved outside the mainstream, you become much friendlier to all kinds of fringe stuff, since you now know what it's like to be unfairly rejected. Cold fusion researchers are acutely aware of the problem, but many of them don't want to imitate the mainstream a priori rejection of the previously unknown and unexplained, so they give these people a hearing. Vysotskii, however, is (or was) a mainstream scientist, reputable and widely published on other things. If the paper which is the subject of this poll were the one presented at ICCF11, instead of the ICCF10 one, I'd be bumping it up as "notable minority opinion." See how important the questions are in polls? In standard deliberative process, no poll is taken until a supermajority (typically two-thirds) has agreed that the question is in final form and that it's time to vote. --Abd (talk) 18:19, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

What is this, a vote?

Is this a discussion or a vote? Come on, people: you clearly know something about these sources, so please share your knowledge. Tell me about this Storms book, for example. What kind of publisher published it? What's the education, experience in the field and other credentials of the author? How extensive is its bibliography? To what extent are statements in the book based on the bibliography, with speculation indicated as such, and to what extent does the author present his opinion as fact? Are there reviews or citations of the book, and what do they say? What other criteria can it be evaluated by? How does the book rate according to the criteria at WP:RS? How does it compare for reliability with other books on the topic? Let's have some real information here; NPOV is not something that's determined by majority vote. If this information is given somewhere else on this page, please give a pointer to it. (This is not intended as a criticism of the person who started the poll, but as encouragement to participants to provide more useful information to the discussion.) ☺Coppertwig (talk) 22:41, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

The Storms book is a recent compendium of pro-CF references. Unfortunately it is biased. As noted in the D. Britz book review in J. Sci. Explor.: "There are some weaknesses...Some expert criticism of Storms' calorimetry (Shanahan, 2006) is not mentioned" And I might add, the book states that the Shanahan criticisms have been addressed, with the preceding paper by Storms which the missing 2006 Shanahan paper rebuts being used as the primary evidence of that. Not so. Further, the paper by Clarke on air leakage into cold fusion apparati still present in 2002-3 work is also not mentioned. Yet, excess heat and He-4 detection are chosen as the two most significant evidences of CF. The Shanahan 2006 paper rebuts any attempt by Storms to discredit the Calibration Constant Shift, and the Clarke paper proves CF researchers (McKubre in particular) _still_ can't keep air (and thus He-4) out of their apparati (a concern of the 1989 DOE review). So, as a listing of pro-CF papers Storms is a good reference, but as an unbiased overview of the field, it fails miserably. You decide if the book should be used in the article. KirkShanahan (talk) 12:05, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

From above, where I wrote, about Storms: This is the publisher's list of works on physics: http://www.worldscibooks.com/physics/nppp.shtml. This is not some fringe publisher. This is the publisher's blurb on the book: http://www.worldscibooks.com/physics/6425.html. The introduction can be read there, there are also some radio interviews with Storms.

The book in question is Edmund Storms, The science of low energy nuclear reaction, a comprehensive compilation of evidence and explanations about cold fusion, World Scientific, 2007 (reprinted 2008). It's a scholarly work, heavily referenced, with 1394 citations. It's the only recent comprehensive review of the topic, and I'm not aware of any earlier review on this level.

Storms is a secondary source, a review of primary sources, secondary sources are highly desirable for referencing articles.

Wikipedia:RS#Scholarship

Wikipedia:No_original_research#Primary.2C_secondary_and_tertiary_sources

Note that source reliability refers to the publisher, not so much the author.

No unreliable statements have been identified in what was removed from the article. The statements did not contradict what other material we have from reliable source, beyond gross summarization as passing mention in books not on the topic of cold fusion (ie., Bird (1998) and Derry (2002); the former writing in Philosophy of Science, the latter is a superficial tertiary source, What Science Is and How It Works.

We also have Jan Marwan and Steven Krivit, editors, Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions Sourcebook, Oxford University Press, August, 2008. This latter book isn't a comprehensive review, but does include some reviews; it's a compilation of significant papers. The blurb from the publisher:

This book is a summary of selected experimental and theoretical research performed over the last 19 years that gives profound and unambiguous evidence for low energy nuclear reaction (LENR), historically known as cold fusion. In 1989, the subject was announced with great fanfare, to the chagrin of many people in the science community. However, the significant claim of its discoverers, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, excess heat without harmful neutron emissions or strong gamma radiation, involving electrochemical cells using heavy water and palladium, has held strong.

I mention this here because a paper by Vyosotskii is included, see a list of the contents at [9]: Vysotskii, Vladimir I. [1], Tashyrev, Alexandr B. [2] and Kornilova, Alla A. [3], "Experimental Observation and Modeling of Cs-137 Isotope Deactivation and Stable Isotopes Transmutation in Biological Cells," [1]Kiev Shevchenko University, Kiev, Ukraine, [2] Kiev Institute of Microbiology, Kiev, Ukraine, [3] Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia.

Further, the Sourcebook is "Sponsored by the ACS Division of Environmental Chemistry, Inc., American Chemical Society, Washington, DC" Unfortunately, this book is very expensive, I can't afford to buy a copy.

It is getting a tad oversimplified to claim that cold fusion is out of the mainstream. It's clearly still quite controversial, but acceptance is also obviously spreading. In prior years, there have been occasional one-day seminars on cold fusion at ACS conferences, and a scattered few at American Physical Society conferences, but this year it was four days at the ACS conference in Salt Lake City, with the ACS issuing a press release on research featured there and holding a televised press conference.

I'm not claiming that Storms should be used without caution; however, that research is cited in Storms shows notability within the field; likewise coverage in the ACS LENR Sourcebook. There are thousands of papers written on topics related to cold fusion; Storms and Marwan and Krivit didn't include or cover papers they did not consider notable; and it is on judgments like these that we based our inclusion policies. What's crucial is independent publication.

Storms was being used to source "proposed explanations" of cold fusion. The only proposed explanation that was allowed to remain in the article by Hipocrite was "experimental error," and gross generalizations from the 1990s, never accurate even when formulated, are being repeated as fact, because they are found in some shallow coverage in a book on, say, scientific controversies, like Derry. --Abd (talk) 02:51, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Some News of work with superdense deuterium

Discussion of some possible fusion claims by chemists working with superdense deuterium. Collapsed because it doesn't discuss improvements to the article, per WP:TALK
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Here's some news coming out of a university chemistry department, the essence of which somehow reminds me of the original Fleischmann & Pons news.... http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/05/university-of-gothenberg-making.html Enjoy! V (talk) 21:45, 11 May 2009 (UTC) How does that in any way remind you of Cold Fusion? Hipocrite (talk) 21:58, 11 May 2009 (UTC) Duuhhh, chemists talking about nuclear fusion. I suppose you will now completely ignore their data and automatically call them "fringe". V (talk) 16:01, 12 May 2009 (UTC) I see a few differences. It's laser driven nuclear fusion, not electrolysis driven. The end result is "dense deuterium", not excess heat. The energy is supposed to get stored in the material, not released, and it gets released again by applying another laser. I'm not even sure that it can be called "cold fusion", more like "high energy fusion" because you pump lots of energy through the laser. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:18, 12 May 2009 (UTC) It seems to me they are carefully not saying enough for anyone to be sure what they are talking about. For example, what if they are making hydrinos? If that stuff could be made, then of course hydrogen could get quite a bit denser than normal. On the other hand, they say they are applying energy to make their dense hydrogen, and hydrinos are claimed to be associated with energy-release, when/if they form. Then there is the fact that laser energy need not be associated with HEAT; it can be associated with other things. One of the things talked about in the linked article is "Rydberg matter", which if memory serves has something to do with ultra-cold temperatures and nearly-ionized atoms. So, start with some ultracold deuterium and apply a laser to pump electrons to a very very high orbit. If it's cold enough for such things as a Bose-Einstein Condensate, a high density of the deuterium might well become possible. (And I know of at least one speculation about "BEC Fusion" happening if those deuterium nuclei can be considered very close together in a Condensate.) V (talk) 17:59, 12 May 2009 (UTC) Please consider my comment again, their setup has nothing to with a typical cold fusion cell or with any cold fusion cell ever. The only things they have in common is that both use deuterium and that both claim to achieve nuclear reactions (not even the same reactions). About calling it "cold fusion", I'm sorry, I meant that it can't be called a "low energy nuclear reaction (LENR)" because it's a high energy reaction. Basically, they use a pulse laser that provokes Coulomb explosion which have as signature a "high kinetic energy release (KER)" of 630 eV, which I think has never been observed in any cold fusion cell ever. I suspect that the laser they use has quite a lot of energy (let's not confuse heat with energy). This needs a RS making the link between this experiment and CF (and explaining the link in detail, if possible) --Enric Naval (talk) 01:18, 13 May 2009 (UTC) Enric, please re-read my original post in this Section. It says, "somehow reminds me of the original Fleischmann & Pons news" --notice I did not use the magic words "cold fusion" there, and there was a reason for that. I'm fully aware that these guys are running a very different experiment. But STILL, they are members of the Chemistry Department talking about nuclear fusion. I had no intention of suggesting anything about this needs to go into the main article here; I just thought this piece of news was interesting and sharing-worthy. CF, after all, is supposed to be about nuclear fusion happening in an environment more typically suited to chemical reactions (and in which palladium is more often a catalyst than a reactant). Why IS a Chemistry Department reporting news like that, anyway? Because it's been done before, maybe? Heh! :) V (talk) 03:16, 13 May 2009 (UTC) Oh, doh, well, sorry if I was a bit obtuse :( if I see someone post something here then I expect that the poster wants it to go into the article, or wants to make a change to the article using it. I don't expect people to post stuff just to talk about it :-/ --Enric Naval (talk) 16:24, 14 May 2009 (UTC) No real complaint. On another hand, such data as this MIGHT in some oddball manner be related to CF. What exactly is "Rydberg matter"? Ah, I see we have an article about it. Hmmm.... What if some variant of it happens to spontaneously form inside a small region of a palladium metal lattice, say, because hydrogen and palladium have practically identical electronegativities? Sure, we couldn't talk about any such thing in the article NOW, but if the editors are kept up-to-date on developments, however remotely related those developments might be, the article will eventually benefit from it, one way or another. And with less arguing between editors, too! V (talk) 21:20, 14 May 2009 (UTC) If it doesn't remind an editor of cold fusion, that just goes to show. Sure, it's not the same. However, the really striking claim is this: we believe that we can design the deuterium fusion such that it produces only helium and hydrogen as its products, both of which are completely non-hazardous. Read my lips: b r a n c h i n g r a t i o. "Design" fusion? The major opposition to cold fusion was that the reaction apparently didn't match normal branching ratios, and these researchers are now claiming that they can arrange things so that there is some different branching ratio. They are working with condensed matter, and thus the behavior maybe quite different than in plasma. This may not be cold fusion (looks more like hot fusion), but the claim is looking like it in that the condensed matter state must somehow influence the branching ratio or possibly induce new kinds of reactions. Alternatively, though, they might be controlling the branching ratio through tuning the laser or other qualities of that excitation. The paper: [10] I don't know what you will see, I was able to read the whole paper. It's doi:10.1016/j.ijhydene.2008.10.024. The paper talks about High-density atomic hydrogen, which is believed to be a quantum liquid, can be formed by heterogeneous catalysis at the surface of hydrogen-transfer metal oxide catalysts. And then it goes into even denser forms of hydrogen. "Catalysis at the surface" really is reminiscent of palladium deuteride cold fusion: the reaction appears to take place in what Storms calls "NAE," nuclear active environment, which is only very small regions at the surface of the palladium lattice. The reaction doesn't take place deeper in the palladium, from various evidences, even though the palladium has soaked up deuterium and is essentially saturated with it, to the point of being very high density compared to deuterium gas. The required hydrogen density for laser-induced “fast ignition” fusion is estimated to be >0.3 kg cm−3 [14] and [15]. Using the bond distance of 2.3 pm for the dense atomic hydrogen (deuterium) material described here, its close-packed density is found to be >130 kg cm−3. In reality, the material may not be so dense due to filaments or fractal shapes of this quantum liquid. This ultra-dense material is however much denser than what is considered to be necessary for “fast ignition” laser-driven ICF (inertial confinement fusion). In the case of muon catalyzed fusion the average distance between the protons is approximately 0.5 pm. Thus, the deuteron–deuteron distance of 2.3 pm in the ultra-dense deuterium material described here is larger but comparable to the distance known to give spontaneous fusion in the muon catalyzed fusion process. The article even mentions cold fusion: Alternative approaches involving absorption of hydrogen as atoms in dense metals (so called cold fusion) have not been able to demonstrate fusion in the generally accepted sense. Of course, what do those approaches demonstrate? We know it's not fusion in the "generally accepted sense," that's been obvious from the beginning; the physicists essentially said, "This isn't fusion as we know it." Which was correct. --Abd (talk) 02:05, 12 May 2009 (UTC) Near the bottom of the article they say that by "ultra-dense deuterium" they mean a (theoretical?) Rydberg matter state they call D(-1) -- the "inverse" of D(1). Kevin Baastalk 20:43, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Undue Weight

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Discussing "Proposed explanations" for Cold fusion by reference Edmund Storms is providing undue weight to a fringe source. If Storms/Takahashi is a notable minority source, feel free to provide him weight in proportion to his notability. However, he cannot be used to say that things are true, accepted, or widely believed. The edit that Kevin reverted included Takahashi being used to source "our deuterons condense to make ⁸Be, which quickly decays to two alpha particles, each with 23.8 MeV." This, of course, is nonsense. The edit that Kevin reverted included Storms being used to soure "It is postulated that some atoms with an appropriate available energy level can catalyze the transition of electrons to this state." This, of course, is nonsense. Please don't attribute fringe nonsense to fact or theory. Thanks. Hipocrite (talk) 15:32, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Four neutrons, not "our neutrons," and this is reported as a "proposed explanation," not as a fact. What part of it is "nonsense."? Basically, I'd have to guess, the fusion part, because if, somehow, four deuterons did fuse, the rest would follow naturally and would explain the well-known experimental results. Thus instead of the "triple miracle," there would be only one. How in the world would four deuterons fuse? Why not two or three? I can think of ways, but I'm not a quantum physicist, I just know one. Nevertheless, I'll say it. The lattice creates a kind of channel at the surface, where deuterons congregate, so to speak. It confines them. Storms claims that the lattice cannot overpack deuterons, the chemical bond strengths don't allow it, but this analysis doesn't prevent transient effects from occuring. If two or three deuterons are found in a "channel," nothing happens. But with four, even though for a very short time, the fusion rate starts to go up. The rate is still very low. Fortunately! Highly unlikely that this is the story, but the point is that we don't know what is possible, we only know what has been observed, and we can develop theories to predict observations; when the theories successfully make new predictions as well as explaining prior ones, we begin to place some trust in them. However, that trust, in real science, never becomes absolute, such that experiment is out-of-hand rejected if it doesn't match theory. At some point, a theory is well enough established that isolated reports of some experimental anomaly won't receive much attention, but the phenomena involved in cold fusion have gone way beyond "isolated reports." That's why, even with a huge bias among nuclear physicists in general, the 2004 DoE panel was evenly divided on the reality of excess heat, and was roughly 2:1 against evidence for nuclear reactions being strong. Given work since then, plus better knowledge and analysis of what had been done before 2004, my opinion is that an overall panel review today would come out quite differently. However, what must be noted is that it is still possible that there would be no recommendation of massive funding. Just because there is a nuclear effect doesn't automatically mean that money should be thrown at it. This is, apparently, a fragile effect, difficult to control, it's taken almost twenty years to figure out how to do it reliably to show even small amounts of excess heat. Personally, I'd recommend better funding, but still not the Manhattan-scale project that Fleischmann opined it would take to make this commercially successful.--Abd (talk) 18:06, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

"Discussing "Proposed explanations" for Cold fusion by reference Edmund Storms is providing undue weight to a fringe source." --that is unsupported opinion. Do you know that there are "sources" and then there are "sources"??? If you don't, let me spell it out: A primary source is Original Research. A secondary source is a reporter. Into which category does Storms better fit? A reporter writing about something on the fringe is not inherently part of that fringe. Now, I agree that such a reporter cannot claim that something is true just because the Original Source made that claim, but the reporter CAN say that the Original Source made such-and-such a claim. And we editors of this article can make such statements, too, especially after someone like Storms said it first. That is, if Storms says that so-and-so claimed such-and-such, and we can verify that so-and-so did indeed claim such-and-such, then, to the extent that Storms was consistently correct, then Storms is RS for this article. All we have to do is ensure that various claims that are included in the article are properly labeled as being claims --and then only until enough other RS agree that the claims qualify as facts. (And should that day never arrive, the article will be fine, so long as claims remain marked as claims.) V (talk) 13:45, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Consensus on this talk page is that Storms is an advocate of Cold Fusion and an unreliable source for scientific fact. He may be a reliable source for his personal opinion, and that opinion may be notable. Because storms says x says y does not make either the x or the y notable or true. See WP:RS, specifically "Extremist and fringe sources." While storms may or may not be an extremist or fringe source (talk page consensus here appears to be that he is), many of the sources he references unquestionably are. You cannot backdoor hydrino fraud into this article because someone mentions it. Hipocrite (talk) 13:51, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

You have twisted what I wrote into an irrelevant direction. It doesn't matter how convinced Storms is that CF is real. What matters is his reporting . If he consistently did the type of job I described above, properly indicating that so-and-so claimed such-and-such, and we can verify that so-and-so did indeed claim such-and-such, then his report qualifies as an appropriate secondary RS source for this article. If he slipped up here and there, that could be understandable in terms of "flow of text" (it is possible to over-use a word such as "claimed"). If he mostly didn't describe claims as claims, then I will withdraw my objection to excluding his reports. The rest of my argument is below; you need not reply at both places (thank you). V (talk) 16:14, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

From what you write here, it appears to me that you are getting your opinion mixed up in the wikipedia editing process. Please review WP:NOR and WP:Verifiability. also note that the text abides by proper attribution of opinion as stated in WP:NPOV, contrary to what you say above. Also keep in mind that I did not write the material that you removed. I do not appreciate you accusing me of things that I am clearly not responsible for, and that - in fact - did not happen at all - as a review of the text and wikipedia policy of the text will show.

Now if you have more material to add on the topic of proposed explanations - which is a rather key aspect of the topic "cold fusion" - feel free to add them. If you feel that undue weight is given to anything, please discuss it on the talk page w/the other editors, focusing on the content and not the editors. And try to refrain from making bold, vague, and far-reaching claims like "fringe" and "nonsense". Such appeal to ridicule does not shed light on anything or aid discussion. Kevin Baas^talk 15:43, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

You're responsible for the changes you keep reverting in, regardless of who wrote them. I'm fully on board with WP:NPOV, especially the section on Undue Weight. Please review it. There's a whole strapoll up there about your edit and your sources, which basically rejects them. Please don't continue reinserting unbalanced material in the article and telling other people to balance it, thanks. The vast majority of notable opinion on explanations for Cold Fusion, as shown by the mainstream sources that discuss cold fusion is that its "experimental error or fraud." This article does not weight that opinion nearly enough as it yet, let alone with the addition of massive inclusions of tiny minority "explanations." Hipocrite (talk) 15:48, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the straw poll wasn't about Kevin's edit, it was about a much longer previous version. The version Kevin reverted back in was boiled way down to satisfy the concerns of some editors about undue weight. Now, be nice, Hipocrite. --Abd (talk) 21:04, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

In this diff you can see the differences between the diff shown at the first poll and the version reverted by Kevin.

The version reverted by Kevin still gives a lot of weight to Storm's book by placing it at the very first paragraph, and then citing it again to add Takahashi's theory of ⁸Be and Mill's hydrino theory. Both theories have failed to gain any sort of traction in mainstream science, and they weren't even mentioned at DOE 2004, so it's also giving undue weight to fringe explanations when compared to the weight given to the maintream explanation of experimental error. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:16, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

From what I've seen, that "vast majority of notable opinion on explanations for Cold Fusion, as shown by the mainstream sources that discuss cold fusion" are simply repeating conclusions that were reached almost 20 years ago, and except for recent news, have deliberately kept themselves ignorant of research that followed --at least some of which took to heart early criticisms. What is a valid basis for thinking that OLD data is superior to NEW data, when it is possible for new data to be associated with better tools (and a larger suite of tools)? What side of this issue really has "undue weight" given to it? V (talk) 13:16, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not the place to right great wrongs. If the bulk of reliable sources are failing to accurately report something, Wikipedia will, as well, fail to accurately report something. The way to fix that is not to fix Wikipedia, it's to fix the sources. Thanks. Hipocrite (talk) 13:36, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

What I wrote is not about "righting great wrongs"; it is about Wikipedia editors acting as if Generally Reliable Authority is identical to Always Reliable Authority, and that only the things they say can be included in articles here. It will seldom hurt an article to include off-the-wall claims that are marked as claims. --and inclusions of such, perhaps in their own section, could make an article more interesting to casual readers. That's because all sorts of History are about people, not just facts, and most people typically find the foibles of other people to be interesting. Is there no guideline anywhere about that? That is, is Wikipedia supposed to be "dry" or "interesting"? Or, from another angle, consider the cliche that "knowledge is power", and its logical corollary that ignorance is slavery. Thus those who would limit the spread of knowledge, in whatever manner, are in effect claiming some kind of right to have power over those who they would keep uninformed. It is therefore extremely important, in an encyclopedia , to include as much relevant data as possible. For example (I haven't looked yet as I write this), articles on Moon Landings can include claims/data/logic by those who say the events were staged and not real--and counter-logic can be included, too. The readers, of course, should be free to make up their own minds --and they should have the data that allows them to do it. Does Alexander of Macedon really deserve to be called "Great" when his actions appear to have consisted largely of large-scale theft of other rulers' territories? Winners may write the history books, but an encyclopedia (I haven't looked at that article either) doesn't have to restrict itself to the POV of the winners. I'm still waiting to hear about somebody on a witness stand, having sworn to tell the whole truth, object to the Judge that one of the attorneys is interfering with his/her ability to fulfill that oath. Well, with respect to CF, the "whole truth" includes a lot of claims that are not Officially Reliably Sourced. You do not deny that fact, do you? Yet your actions appear to be describe-able as attempts to suppress parts of that whole truth. Why? V (talk) 16:04, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Please remain civil. Examples of incivility are things like the in-genuine "thanks" you use. And again, it is not "my edit" and they are not "my sources". I only noticed your removal of material from the article when someone mentioned it on the talk page, and reverted it as I thought it unjustified. I did not contribute the any of that content, and I don't know - or care - who did. Please try to remember this so you do not continue to repeat the actions that I just told you I do not appreciate.

And no, I am not responsible for other people's actions, only my own. That is how responsibility works. If people would go to jail for other people's crimes by design, needless to say, we would have much bigger problems to worry about than this article.

Any ways, I'm not really interested in discussing this content - it's not that important to me -, and so far it hasn't been very productive anyways. I seem to be a distraction for you from discussing the content, anyways, so I'll leave this and let you discuss it w/others. Kevin Baas^talk 16:02, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, enough Talk. I'm not going to work to add material until the environment makes it reasonably safe, but that doesn't mean that I can't support other editors. Pudding. Proof. --Abd (talk) 18:21, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

I'd be able to put together additional sources for the Storms material, and additional material on "proposed explanations." For example, looking at the material on ultradense hydrogen mentioned above, the same journal had a Mills paper on hydrino theory, [11]. Given this paper, and Storms' description of prior work by Mills, can it really be claimed that this isn't notable? Storms is a secondary source, independent from Mills. In fact, Storms appears to be a critic of Mills, see http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l@eskimo.com/msg25595.html. Krivit, likewise, has published criticism of Blacklight Power, Mills' company.[12].

But I'm not going to put more work into actual article editing until we have some spirit of cooperation going here again. It's too frustrating to work for hours on a piece and see it ripped out without any attempt to find consensus on it, to improve it, to balance it, etc. --Abd (talk) 02:37, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Those sources have already been considered and rejected as not reliable. Hipocrite (talk) 02:43, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Hmmmm...so YOU say. Care to prove it? Also, please specify precisely in what way you are using the phrase "not reliable". Thank you! V (talk) 13:25, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Hipocrite mistakes his POV for consensus. There is no closure above; what's visible, if we set Hipocrite aside, is the existing camps of editors, !voting rather predictably, in dispute without resolution. There was, however, an operating consensus that was proceeding, slowly, with article improvements. My addition of Storms was intended as a contribution to this process, and I expected it to go back and forth, settling on agreed-upon improvements, as we have been doing for some time. Hipocrite entered with an outside agenda, quite clearly, and destabilized the situation, asserting, without restraint, an extreme anti-fringe position that is directly in contradiction with Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science, and his opposition to that decision is already well-known. I'm a tad occupied at this point, what with being a named party in an arbitration myself (going well, thank you very much), but I will support other editors as I see appropriate. When I have time, if someone doesn't beat me to it, the problems here will go to Arbitration Enforcement, for efficiency. What we are seeing is blatant exclusion of material from ordinarily reliable source based solely upon opinion that it's "fringe" and "extreme." In this case, what was being sourced was "proposed explanations," and to only source such proposals from critical sources, while excluding sources that might be friendly to them, solely on the latter basis, will maintain article imbalance. No specific errors have been alleged in Storms. When reliable sources are in conflict, we will typically report the conflict using attribution and framing ("due weight"). Storms is a cold fusion researcher and reputable scientist before that, as have been many CF researchers. His 2007 work is published by an independent publisher of science texts, not some fringe publisher. We have a similar work published (2008?) by the American Chemical Society and the only reason I haven't been sourcing from that is that I don't have access to a copy. Storms is, by objective measures, a reliable source. That doesn't mean that his material can't be impeached, but you will have to show contradiction, and no contradictions have been asserted that will hold up on examination. Instead, behind Hipocrite's objections is a belief that cold fusion is based on fraud and pure error. That is obviously a controversial position, given the level of ongoing peer-reviewed publication in the field, and a great deal of media attention recently showing respect for the research. The claim that cold fusion is a rejected field, to be given little weight in comparison to "mainstream scientific opinion," is based on old sources and persistence of popular opinion, and scientists, unless they specialize in a field, are typically reliant on media for their opinions on matters like this. Last time I noticed, the American Chemical Society was representative of the mainstream, it's the largest scientific society in the world, and the ACS clearly considers this a legitimate field of inquiry. (That's not equivalent to considering cold fusion a proven phenomenon, merely that a shift of opinion has taken place, the question is no longer considered closed.) --Abd (talk) 16:55, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

That's a very interesting take on the ACS position. Inferring from their willingness to listen that there is actually something worth listening to. I'm prepared to believe that someone performing death metal-gangsta rap-salsa fusion on the harpsicord might have novelty value, but that doesn't mean it will be good by any reasonable standard.LeadSongDog come howl 21:58, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

It's called Wikipedia:Notability. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 12:33, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

That's right, Coppertwig. LSD, one may infer "novelty value," or, perhaps, "collegial respect for the quirky thinking of minorities," from the occasional one-day seminars, hidden in a corner. Not from the four-day seminar, with a press release/press conference, announcing some historically significant research, the SPAWAR group (Mosier-Boss et al) finding of energetic neutrons, which were the original holy grail of both cold fusion researchers, and of the critics. What the SPAWAR group did was to confirm earlier reports of very low-level neutrons, with controls such that it can be concluded that they are not artifact, they are coming from what is happening in the cell, but the levels are so low that the predominant reaction must not produce them. Thus the findings explain (not without leaving behind a great mystery, what is the primary reaction?) why so many groups found no neutrons and concluded that nuclear reactions were not happening, since plasma branching ratios predicted copious neutrons. What I'm suggesting is that we start paying attention to current reliable source, and understanding that what is in reliable source twenty years ago about a scientific controversy isn't necessarily so reliable any more, it is of historical interest, but dangerous when used to determine "due weight." --Abd (talk) 13:27, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

With regards to the March 22-26 ACS national meeting sessions on cold fusion, first off the claim it was ‘four days long’ is erroneous. The program does list sessions for four days, but the ‘session’ on Wednesday was in fact an announcement of a single poster in the Wednesday night poster session. (One wonders where all the other author’s posters were. Normally, presenters will have posters too.) Examination of the Tuesday PM session indicates it had nothing to do with cold fusion. George Miley, a CF researcher, did present a talk, but it was on borohydride based fuel cells, not CF. Vysotskii presented a paper on memory effect in water (another pseudoscience field), and two potentially ‘normal’ talks were given. So, in actuality we have 2-1/2 days of talks, which could have probably been reduced since Steve Krivit gave two talks, and he is just a journalist (per his own abstract) and did not contribute new information (P.S. Krivit’s claim in his first talk’s abstract (“has engaged proponents and opponents alike”) is false as he has only had cursory contact with me and therefore has not seriously dealt with the primary outstanding criticism of excess heat.). Several ‘reviews’ were presented (Miles, McKubre, Gordon, Srinivasan (x2)), which in a scientific session such as this is somewhat suspect, as normally new research is presented (if the field is dynamic and growing). (The introductory one by Marwan would be considered normal.) A number of the other talks were not on ‘cold fusion’ per se. Bezhotov talked on ‘Erzions’, whatever those are. Vyotskii gave a talk on biological transmutation, which is CF only by a severe stretch of the imagination. Shestopalov talked on what is known as ‘fractofusion’. Stringham talked on what is known as ‘sonofusion’, as did Taleyakhan. Together these add up to at least a day’s worth of presentations, so the ‘new’ information presented here was really about 1-1/2 to 2 days worth of material tops, not significantly more than found in an ICCF. As well, it’s all the same folks that present at ICCFs, so I suggest that this ACS session is no more reliable than a typical ICCF, which are generally considered 'not reliable'. KirkShanahan (talk) 14:58, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Nice to see you stop by, Kirk. Did you see the video linked above, in the "Lecture by Robert Duncan" section? How does CCS explain several megajoules, boiled electrolyte, and melted palladium? V (talk) 16:47, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

(ec with below) "Careless Clumsy Scientists"? I'm more interested in those neutrons. I'm also more interested in how CCS can explain the very strong correlation between excess heat measurements and helium, specifically what Storms claims as 25 +/- 5 MeV/He-4. How, in an extensive series of P-F cells, set up and measured in the same way, helium was only found in the cells that also generated excess heat. No matter how many of these findings are developed, critics like Shanahan find ever-more-preposterous ways to explain them away. Shanahan, however, is practically alone at this point, the only scientist who is making specific criticisms, at least we have to give him that -- at least with regard to calorimetry. Nevertheless, the stretch gets greater and greater. For example, the long-maintained 4 degree C. temperature rise after the formation of palladium deuteride in the gas-loading experiments of Arata. I believe that McKubre has confirmed that. This is not an electrolysis experiment, there is no supplied energy, and only the natural heat of formation of palladium deuteride is involved: hydrogen shows the expected generation of heat as the gas is admitted to the cell, which then settles down, within hours, to ambient temperature. Deuterium shows the same kind of initial release, but then settles down to a steady generation of heat for thousands of hours, showing no sign of lessening.

Absolutely, skeptics should give this every shot, but ... at some point skeptics need to do some experimental work themselves. N-rays were debunked through careful experiment that showed the origin of the "effect." Likewise polywater. That was never done with Fleischmann's excess heat, and, indeed, the excess heat has been verified in 153 peer-reviewed papers, I'll provide a link to a list of them. Many of these reports are not just selected experiments, only showing "success": they show a series of experiments, reporting "failures" as well as "successes." Where Fleischmann screwed up was in reporting neutrons. What we now know, quite conclusively, is that neutrons are rare, not normally produced in these experiments at levels sufficient to be considered anything more than a by-product (unless somehow they are efficiently "used"). What is produced is plenty of alpha radiation, starting with a Chinese group in 1990, and, again, how does Shanahan explain that?

Here is the press release: [13]. Low-energy nuclear reactions could potentially provide 21st Century society a limitless and environmentally-clean energy source for generating electricity, researchers say. The report, which injects new life into this controversial field, will be presented here today at the American Chemical Society's 237th National Meeting. It is among 30 papers on the topic that will be presented during a four-day symposium, "New Energy Technology," March 22-25, in conjunction with the 20th anniversary of the first description of cold fusion. Krivit received a lot of attention for his presentation, his comments were widely reported in the media. Journalists can be considered experts, though in a different way than scientists, as such. Shanahan's view of the field is highly biased. It's notable because it has been published, at least parts of it have. Some of the criticisms he makes are odd. The general field isn't "cold fusion," it is more commonly called "low-energy nuclear reactions," and Vyosotski's work with biological effects, which involve two different kinds of nuclear transformations, have long been of interest to LENR researchers as shown by the notice that Storms takes of it. (The forms are transmutation, as has been described above to some extent, and acceleration of radioactive decay, which is roughly possible in theory, i.e., chemistry is known to be able to affect decay rates under some circumstances.) I'm not surprised to see a session focused on reviews, because the goal of CF researchers there would be, not to present new research, unless it is truly striking as with the SPAWAR neutrons, a subject Shanahan notably avoids above, but rather overviews to "spread the word" to other chemists. The new research would be more likely to be presented at ICCF conferences.

No suggestion is made that the papers presented at this conference are "reliable source," in themselves, that is, they are not peer-reviewed, nor are they, by virtue of presentation, "published." Rather what was the subject of my comment was the notability of the conference, due to media coverage and due to the obvious increase in attention paid by the ACS. Conference papers are primary source, occasionally they are useable, more often not, unless they are cited in a reliable source, in which case the full reference would include the citing source as well as a primary reference. --Abd (talk) 17:50, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

The only notable point about the ACS meeting is that it is another tick mark n support of the comment "The field continues to be pursued by a band of dedicated fanatics' KirkShanahan (talk) 18:08, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Line-by-line response to Abd's silliness on my talk page. KirkShanahan (talk) 19:56, 18 May 2009 (UTC) - That's this talk page please - Kirk shanahan (talk) 19:59, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

The same it does the Letts-Cravens effect, which is the same way it does for any apparent excess heat signal. You should know that, you claim to understand the CCS enough to discredit it. I might throw in the problems Scott Little mentioned in measuring ultrasonic power input when he investigated the similar Russ George claims several years ago, which by the way, explain the 'melting' too (think 'cavitation jet'+'power mismeasurement'). KirkShanahan (talk) 17:34, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh and P.S., this isn't the place for your comment. Comments here are to be directed towards improving the article, as mine was. KirkShanahan (talk)

Kirk, I'm pretty sure it takes actual heat, not apparent heat, to melt palladium and boil the electrolyte out of an electrolysis cell. So, if CCS can't explain boiled electrolyte and that picture of melted palladium, then any mention of CCS can be moved to the "mere speculations" section (which if doesn't exist under that or an equivalent name, should), improving the article thereby. That's pretty simple logic, and should suffice to deal with Hipocrite's remark below. V (talk) 21:21, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Patently ridiculous claims, based on a total lack of understanding of mainline explanations. Also, not relevant to the article. Please stop this V. KirkShanahan (talk) 13:00, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

If it hasn't been done already, I'd like to see mention that Robert Duncan video (a presentation by a University counts as RS, doesn't it?) in the article. V (talk) 01:52, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

The video was taken down by the university, reasons still unknown. See [14]. In the video, Duncan talks about receiving an angry phone call from a physicist who called him a charlatan. I'm suspecting a great deal of pressure has been brought to bear. For some people, their beliefs become religious, and not in a good sense. --Abd (talk) 02:33, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

This all has nothing to do with improving our article. If you all want to chat about Cold Fusion, could you take it elsewhere? Thanks. Hipocrite (talk) 17:55, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

H, please see my comment immediately above yours here. The relevance to the article is in my prior comment, pre-V response, which is an explanation of why the ACS session is non-RS. Now, the bit V brought up isn't related I agree, so to honor your request, I will not respond to any non-article related point subsequently. KirkShanahan (talk) 18:03, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Hipocrite, Shanahan is a published expert, and his opinions are important. I'm very much interested in his views on the matters raised, with a goal of improving the article. I happen to think that it's impossible to work intelligently on a science article without some understanding of the science, so some level of discussion of the science is necessary. Don't want to read this, don't read it, there is no obligation. --Abd (talk) 18:11, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Tha's rich Abd! Wow! I can't believe you wrote that! For those following this, see my Talk page section 15 for more details. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:06, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I can't agree to that. This talk page is for discussions surrounding the article, not chatting about science. There are multiple other fora people can use to chit-chat about cold fusion. It needs to stop happening here. I'm blad Kirk has agreed to focus on improving the article. You should do the same. Hipocrite (talk) 18:23, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

On Improving the Article

Despite certain claims made by Hipocrite, the previous section did have a few things in it about improving the article. For example, I quote something I wrote to Hipocrite:

"... it is about Wikipedia editors acting as if Generally Reliable Authority is identical to Always Reliable Authority, and that only the things they say can be included in articles here. It will seldom hurt an article to include off-the-wall claims that are marked as claims. --and inclusions of such, perhaps in their own section, could make an article more interesting to casual readers. That's because all sorts of History are about people, not just facts, and most people typically find the foibles of other people to be interesting. Is there no guideline anywhere about that? That is, is Wikipedia supposed to be "dry" or "interesting"? Or, from another angle, consider the cliche that "knowledge is power", and its logical corollary that ignorance is slavery. Thus those who would limit the spread of knowledge, in whatever manner, are in effect claiming some kind of right to have power over those who they would keep uninformed. It is therefore extremely important, in an encyclopedia, to include as much relevant data as possible. For example (I haven't looked yet as I write this), articles on Moon Landings can include claims/data/logic by those who say the events were staged and not real--and counter-logic can be included, too. The readers, of course, should be free to make up their own minds --and they should have the data that allows them to do it. Does Alexander of Macedon really deserve to be called "Great" when his actions appear to have consisted largely of large-scale theft of other rulers' territories? Winners may write the history books, but an encyclopedia (I haven't looked at that article either) doesn't have to restrict itself to the POV of the winners. I'm still waiting to hear about somebody on a witness stand, having sworn to tell the whole truth, object to the Judge that one of the attorneys is interfering with his/her ability to fulfill that oath. Well, with respect to CF, the "whole truth" includes a lot of claims that are not Officially Reliably Sourced. You do not deny that fact, do you? Yet your actions appear to be describe-able as attempts to suppress parts of that whole truth. Why?"

Hipocrite failed to reply to my question at the end of that, tsk, tsk. If Hipocrite was really interested in improving the article, instead of skewing it one way or another, an answer to my question should have been posted.

Then there is Kirk Shanahan wanting us to believe that a small amount of chemical heat from hydrogen-oxygen recombination can throw off a calorimeter designed to register lots more than a "small amount" of heat, and throw its calibration off to the extent that if it measures a lot of heat while an electrolysis cell boils its electrolyte away and melts one of its electrodes, we have to pretend it didn't actually happen; that it was all an illusion associated with a temporarily uncalibrated calorimeter. I agree that that speculation should be in the article, for entertainment purposes if nothing else! I disagree on giving it any more weight than claims that hydrinos can explain cold fusion. V (talk) 15:24, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

More ad hominem from V. I will post a reply on my Talk page immediately. KirkShanahan (talk) 15:54, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

( Partly because his talk page does not have a reply there yet)... More bad logic by Shanahan. My paragraph above contains a description of the CCS hypothesis, admittedly written to blatantly expose its most fundamental flaw (excess heat can possibly be detected by means other than a calorimeter). Since CCS is "pushed" and defended by Shanahan, there is nothing faulty in writing about "Kirk Shanahan wanting us to believe" it. NOR is there an inherent fault in, generically, Person A wanting Person B to believe something-or-other (sometimes that desire is even vitally important, like when Person A discovers the house they are in to be on fire). But somehow Shanahan has concluded that my statement somehow describes a flaw in Shanahan; by definition the statement "More ad hominem from V" can only be true if my statement describes a flaw in Shanahan. WELL, WHERE IS THAT DESCRIPTION??? I'm fully aware that THIS paragraph is not properly relevant to immediately improving the CF article, but I'm also aware that the only way to discourage people from injecting wildly flawed remarks like the one in the immediately-previous paragraph...the only way to get them to stop is to expose the wild flaw as publicly as possible. I explain my stance in more detail in the "ways and means" section near the bottom of my own talk page. And after they stop, then this page will be improved thereby (along with, in the longer run, the main article) --which means this paragraph (and any others like it in the future) might not be such a waste, after all. V (talk) 19:28, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, your description of the CCS is woefully inadequate. It is the fact that I have said this to you many times (now repeated on my Talk page, again...) that brands you clearly as a fanatic who repeats what he reads/is told by the CF advocates, and doesn't think for himself, i.e. a fanatic. Kirk shanahan (talk) 19:54, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Tsk, tsk, look who's really doing the "ad hominem" thing, instead of answering my question about where **I** supposedly did the ad hominem thing. So, your ad hominem statement is another obvious example of bad logic presented by you, Kirk (read the article to see why). Care to attempt it yet again? V (talk) 21:50, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Ummm...'check my Talk page' - What is it about that you can't understand. Especially note the answer to Abd I posted in response to his 'chastisement'. Why is it you can't focus on improving the article here? (Note to others: the current CF article has no significant description of the mainline reasons why 'CF' is not nuclear. I would think an interested reader hitting that page would like to know that. I came here to add such, and have been repeatedly blocked (note that I don't add edits unless there is consensus first, so the 'blocking' has occured primarily on the Talk pages. However my original edits of Sept. 17, 2008 and before were block deleted by Pcarbonn)). Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:46, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I do not object at all, to there being a section in the article about non-nuclear explanations for the evidence. I might note, though, that your POV is showing, in your description above, "mainline reasons why 'CF' is not nuclear", since the phrase "is not" presumes itself to be fact, when that is not known to be fact. Regarding your talk page (haven't yet studied the stuff that's now there), I am remembering that some time ago Abd asked you to write an "idiot's guide to CCS", and have been wondering where that is, just so I can see how different it is from the impression I already have of it. The longer you take to write it, the more I'm going to think I understand it well enough. For example, I'm encouraged by your description above, "woefully inadequate" of my description above that, simply because you did not say outright I was wrong (nor in what way I was wrong). V (talk) 13:30, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

OK, outright: You are wrong. Actually, that's difficult to say since you have never responded to the standard scientifc challenge I issued to any of you to prove you understood any of my comments by repeating back what I was trying to get across and then by discussing the implications of that. Abd started but fizzled out. You haven't even tried. What you write implies strongly that you have no understanding of what I am trying to say (and get into the article somewhere). Prove I am wrong by successfully answering my challenge and I will be happy to recant my assessment of you.

P.S. For teh record, rspond to my challenge on my talk page, not here. Kirk shanahan (talk) 14:12, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I have written the "idiot's guide" several time here and on my Talk page. You (and Abd) didn't understand it.

I don't recall ever seeing something described as an idiot's guide to CCS. And if Abd saw one and didn't understand it, then I would tend to think that you didn't describe it well enough; it wasn't written for the really uninformed person (as little as one word of specialists' jargon can lead to misunderstanding). Fixing that could mean going so far as to define all terms used, plus defining all the key terms in those definitions, just for starters. For Examples of How To Do It Right, read lots of nonfiction by Isaac Asimov. V (talk) 17:01, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I have a POV. It is a 'mainline scientist' POV. It needs to be in the article for balance. I have no intention of contributing to a pro-CF POV. BUT, I DO NOT BLOCK SUCH AN ADDITION TO THE ARTICLE. Pcarbonn blocked my additions. I tried to gain consensus on this page. He never agreed. Others supported him. He was then banned. Next, up pops V and Abd to take his place (with kevin Baas chipping in through all ot this). I do not 'POV-push' as you imply by bringing this up (another indirect ad hominem) since I FREELY ALLOW THE ALTERNATE POSITION TO BE EXPRESSED. Who else do you know who will defend my CCS proposal and the deceased Brian Clarke's work? The mainline gave up on the field years ago, they usually don't care. It is only because I work in this field that I do. If you want mainline thought in the article for balance, I am it. But, it is obvious from your vehement objections to everything I write, that you don't. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:54, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

You may have misinterpreted what I wrote above about POV. Ideas and facts associated with a particular POV are completely allowed, but the wording used to describe them needs to be non-POV in any place where ideas and facts are in contention. That means one cannot describe an idea in terms that assume the idea is True, when the idea is not certainly known to be true. Also, it helps if the idea makes logical sense. So far, from your descriptions of CCS that I've read, it does not, as I've pointed out here and there. But it's been a while since the last time I examined it; perhaps your descriptions have improved. We shall see.... V (talk) 17:01, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't respond to people who ask me why I'm beating my wife ("Yet your actions appear to be describe-able as attempts to suppress parts of that whole truth. Why?") The "Whole Truth" for the purposes of Wikipedia includes only claims in Reliable Sources. Wikipedia cannot solve the GREAT WRONG that mainstream science has perpetuated on Cold Fusion. You'll have to get it published elsewhere. Hipocrite (talk) 19:57, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

"The "Whole Truth" for the purposes of Wikipedia includes only claims in Reliable Sources." --that is a false statement, as proved by the existence of articles on completely fictitious things such as Star Wars, Dracula, etc. The WP:Verify rules are what allows those articles to exist. And in a contentious science-oriented article, while RS may be preferred, there is no rationale to give it a monopoly. For a less extreme example, consider the high temperature superconductor article --there is no argument about the existence of that phenomenon, but there is plenty of speculation as to how it happens, even plenty of RS speculation. As soon as one of those guesses emerges from the debate as the "winner", all the others, despite the fact that they are currently RS, will have to be "demoted" at the least. Should they be deleted as irrelevant, and the winner be given a monopoly on the article? Why? The presence of those other ideas would stand as a testament to the creativity exhibited in tackling the problem; there will be historical value there.

In this article the primary subject has the major problem that the evidence, if it is to be regarded as real, needs to be explained in a way that appears to require some significant modifications or additions to certain well-verified facts. And the initial difficulty in replicating the original experiments did not help at all. So years have gone by while the experimenters kept trying different things, to isolate relevant variables. According to them, in non-RS publications of course, they can now fairly frequently replicate the original experiments. And according to one actual RS source, neutrons have been detected above the natural background level. Eventually that claim will be either verified or not-verified. For the moment, there is a good logical reason to include a fair amount of non-RS stuff in the article: There is currently no RS regarding neutrons-not-verified, and non-RS is the only place to find proposed explanations for HOW (detailed "how", not just "Duh, fusion did it") those RS-reported neutrons happened to appear during certain CF experiments. In other words, it would be a lie to say, in effect, by restricting the article to RS-only, "There is no detailed explanation for those neutrons." It is certainly true that there is no agreed-upon explanation, even in the non-RS literature. Very equivalent, that, to the high-temperature-superconductivity guesses.... V (talk) 21:50, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

If a claim is not made in reliable sources it cannot be used in Wikipedia. Period. End of discussion. Hipocrite (talk) 22:24, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Then you "lose" because speculations, such as detailed suppositions regarding how CF could happen, are not identical to claims, and therefore RS is not required for speculations, exactly as RS is not required for pure fiction. Only verifiability-of-publication is required, regarding that aspect of this field. V (talk) 13:06, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

No, I'm sorry, that's not how wikipedia works. Hipocrite (talk) 13:08, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Prove it. And just to spice things up, I might mention Chain Reaction (film), a movie which seems to have a variety of a cold fusion reactor in it. Verifiable/fictional stuff, that. (That article mentions bubble fusion, but the phrase never actually is used in the movie, leaving the audience to wonder.) How many articles are there in Wikipedia that talk about one aspect of science fiction or another? Anyone who wants to claim that "cold fusion" is fictitious science should be willing to accept non-RS stuff in the article. V (talk) 13:34, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

WP:V is a policy, which reads "Material challenged or likely to be challenged, and all quotations, must be attributed to a reliable, published source." I have no idea why you are talking about sourced information in fiction articles. Perhaps you should broaden your editing from just Cold Fusion to something else, also, to understand how Wikipedia works. Hipocrite (talk) 13:53, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

It is exactly because you have no idea why Wikipedia allows articles about fictional things, that you fail to understand my argument. The definition of "reliable" is the key point of contention here. If I have a reprint of "Frankenstein" (note the novel is in public domain) published by somebody selling old-fashioned computer printouts, and I quote text from it (in that article), will you automatically assume that the quoted text does not actually exist in any other editions, such as a reprint published by a major publisher? It seems to me that if you can grab a random copy from any publisher, and find the quoted text, then my computer-printout copy qualifies just as much as a "reliable" source for quotes, as any other copy. Or, how about the "reliability" of publishers like "New Energy Times" and "Infinite Energy", in publishing CF articles? You cannot deny that they are reliably publishing, when new issues become available at regular intervals, and they have been doing that for years. You cannot even deny that they can be relied on to publish artices about CF. And will those CF articles reliably contain claims about the subject??? Almost certainly!!! Therefore, if this Wikipedia article contains a claim, which is described in the article as being a claim, and it is easy to verify that that claim was indeed published in a source that can be relied upon to publish claims, then just exactly what is your problem about including it in the article???? V (talk) 16:21, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Our policy on reliable sources is clear. What part of "Extremist and fringe sources" and "Self-published sources" from WP:RS are you having a hard time grasping? Hipocrite (talk) 16:33, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Apparently WP:RS#Overview and WP:RS#Scholarship.LeadSongDog come howl 16:38, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, I see this: "How reliable a source is depends on context." Both of you know full well the context here is controversial. That means if the average highly educated CF-detractor eventually turns out to be wrong, the average highly educated CF-detractor suddenly becomes, by definition, an unreliable source on this subject. The mere fact that there is controversy over interpreting the data here means that nobody is truly the sort of Reliable Source you are talking about. Especially since the average "RS" in this field has, apparently, ever since the initial failures to reproduce excess heat, has turned a blind eye to improvements in experimental technique, that are claimed to more-reliably produce excess heat. When has ignorance ever been a valid Reliable Source???

Next, I see this: "if an article topic has no reliable sources, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." This does not explain why there are many thousands of articles on fictional things, which have no sources other than their original publications, for example Star Trek (film), which just came out and there has been no time for any ordinary/traditional RS material to have been published on it. So, the fact that such articles are quite-well allowed/tolerated (especially in light of the "Scholarship" section) means that there is leeway in interpreting the Rules -- and any claims by you to the contrary can be completely ignored!

Next, in the "Overview" section is this: "The following specific examples ... are not intended to be exhaustive. Proper sourcing always depends on context; common sense and editorial judgment are an indispensable part of the process." WHERE IS YOUR COMMON SENSE, HERE? A while back I wrote this: "Well, with respect to CF, the "whole truth" includes a lot of claims that are not Officially Reliably Sourced. You do not deny that fact, do you?" How do you expect to get away with claiming that Sources who are Reliable on other subjects are also Reliable on this one, when evidence is accumulating against the things they concluded more than a decade ago, and all they have done since is pretend that that evidence does not exist???

Just to spell out more completely what I'm talking about, Hipocrite, while I care not that you have chosen a handle that reminds one of double standards, I do care about the application of double standards toward Wikipedia articles. So I challenge you and LeadSongDog and anyone else who wants to insist that RS must strictly apply to this article ...I challenge you to see how far you really get, trying to strictly apply it to ALL the other articles in this encyclopedia. Because if you can't do it everywhere in Wikipedia, you have no basis to insist upon doing it here. V (talk) 13:10, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

So, untill we fix every other article on the encyclopedia, we can't fix this one? Hipocrite (talk) 13:13, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

PS - [15]. Hipocrite (talk) 13:26, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Straw man argument. He's saying that the same RS standards apply here as elsewhere. Otherwise, V is barking up the wrong tree, a bit. The problem isn't WP:RS, i.e., that "the whole truth" isn't found in RS, the problem is biased and POV-pushing application of the standards. We should and we must follow WP:V at all times; WP:RS is a documented way of doing that; other ways do exist, but they depend on consensus. --Abd (talk) 13:31, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

(Heh, and now to bring up the definition of "fix", as used in the classic phrase, "to fix the race"....) No, Hipocrite, I challenged you to see how far you get, trying to do that. I fully expect you to fail, for example, to be able to enforce a deletion of the article about the new Star Trek (film), since there is no scholarly RS for it anywhere, yet (although I admit I could be wrong about that finicky detail, given the nature of the Internet and the popularity of that particular fictional universe). Or, you would likely fail to enforce deletion of News articles on the front page of this site. I'm sure that with very little research quite a few articles could be identified, about fictional things, for which there is no Official Reliable Source other than the original publication of a fictional work. They exist for a reason, in spite of the RS rules. "Common sense" likely has something to do with that reason. Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, you only need to fail just once, to strictly apply the RS rules to another article, to lose any right to strictly enforce them here. V (talk) 13:36, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Abd, you are wrong about what Objectivist is stating - he has now said multiple times that it's ok to use unreliable sources in articles about Star Trek films (this, of course, is wrong), and that it's thus ok to use unreliable sources here. The article on the Star Trek film is reliably sourced to the following sources - the British Board of Film Classification, Entertainment Weekly, The Wall Street Journal, The Courier-Mail, MTV, the Los Angeles Times, TV Guide, IGN, Rotten Tomatoes, and scores of other reliable sources. That there are problems in the Star Trek article are undeniable. That I have any interest in fixing them is fabrication. Am I required to fix every article before I fix this one? I think not. Hipocrite (talk) 13:43, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Hipocrite, in what way are all of those publications more "reliable" than Infinite Energy or New Energy Times? V (talk) 13:52, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

That's easy! WP:V "Articles should be based upon reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." "Questionable sources are those with a poor reputation for fact-checking. Such sources include websites and publications expressing views that are widely acknowledged as extremist, or promotional in nature, or which rely heavily on rumors and personal opinions. Questionable sources should only be used as sources of material on themselves, especially in articles about themselves. Questionable sources are generally unsuitable as a basis for citing contentious claims about third parties." "Certain red flags should prompt editors to examine the sources for a given claim: 1. surprising or apparently important claims not covered by mainstream sources ... 3. claims that are contradicted by the prevailing view within the relevant community, or which would significantly alter mainstream assumptions, especially in science, medicine, history, politics, and biographies of living persons. This is especially true when proponents consider that there is a conspiracy to silence them." Hipocrite (talk) 14:04, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Nice try, but there are two flaws. The first is simple; the list of publications referenced in the Star Trek article are all second-party, not third-party. Likewise are NET and IE second-party publications. The second flaw relates to "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" --who decides what a reputation should be? Consider the evidence that the mainstream science publications have mostly ignored information published in IE and NET --how can those mainstream publications claim that NET and IE are not checking the data (and therefore are unreliable) when they themselves are not checking the data? (Please remember that that "CF" is one particular interpretation of the data about excess heat; the data deserves examination regardless of whatever interpretations are applied to it.) V (talk) 14:20, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

{unindent}The mainstream journals have not ignored cold fusion. As a reviewer for some of these journals, I have reviewed several submissions in recent years. I have found in all cases that they are technically inadequate. Obviously, other reviewers have agreed with me, because they don't get publshed until they hit IE and NET, and I am one reviewer out of 2 (if the other agrees with me) or 3 (if not). Also, we have the Goodstein reference in the CF article that states that CFers do not conduct critical reviews of collegues work. This negates the purpose of peer-review. So, if submitted papers are rejected by mainlne journals as inadequate, and are then published unchanged in IE or NET, what does this say about the 'fact-checking' that goes on at IE and NET?

Thank you; that's more than I expected to see, having read elsewhere about so many mainstream publications not even bothering to send submissions on this subject out for peer-review. And that is the mental place from which I wrote what I wrote above. On the other hand, what of papers by some of the acknowledged leaders in the field, such as Michael McKubre? (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54964-2004Nov16?language=printer) I'm such they wouldn't say he was among the best if his work was consistently "inadequate". If you haven't happened to have seen any of his preprint papers, what might you say about the paucity of his publications on this subject in the mainstream? V (talk) 19:11, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

The idea that journals reject CF papers out of hand is overblown by the CF advocates. All journals have topic definitions, and CF usually doesn't fit there. Then there was the position the nature editor took way back, which was also overblown, even if reasonable. What the CFers usually say is that their submissions are rejected for bad reasons, which may be true given the mainstream gave up on CF a long time ago.

Do you realize that McKubre may have published less in peer reviewed journals that I have? He has workd in the field since the beginning, he has 'published' via ICCF proceedings and the like. I know he published 1 paper in '93 that I studied, but I can't think of any more off the top of my head, I'll have to check into it. In any case, why would anyone ever use a newspaper's assessment of who is the 'best' in a field. The reporters ask the CFers "Who should I talk to, who is the best in the field?", and they get some names. Of those McKubre is definitely the smoothest. You figure out the rest. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:15, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I think I have seen McKubre described in more than one place as one of the best researchers in the field. Even if other workers had been asked, and had given his name, it would be reasonable to think those workers had plenty of names from which to choose, so picking him must mean something. So, if he actually is a good researcher, then it should logically follow that seldom would a paper he submits to an appropriate mainstream journal get rejected for being "inadequate". So all I'm saying is that the paucity of papers published by him (OR by any equivalently competent CF researcher; I would think there should be more than just one among hundreds worldwide) in the mainstream might be evidence of mainstream bias against anything/everything coming from CF researchers. I half-suspect that SpringerLink published that paper about CR-39 partly because it was so out-of-the-ordinary, for the field, and partly because evidence for neutrons has been requested by mainstream physicists since 1989 (how could they refuse to publish what they had been asking for?). V (talk) 21:57, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

One interesting reverse case is the paper by Szpak, Mosier-Boss, Miles and Fleischmann in TA 2005 that I wrote a comment on. That paper was originally 'published' at part of an ICCF Proceedings. Possibly due to reviewer comments, possibly due to the authors knowing they needed 'new' material to satisfy the standard requirement that a submission be new information, they added a section that discussed errors in calorimetry. It was in that section that they denigrated my CCS propsal based on my email to a collegue of theirs (a communication that I was not informed would be used as a reference in a publication). Clearly, the TA reviewers or editors (or indirectly via submission requirements) 'checked the facts' by requiring an attempt at reviewing the potential errors of the technique.Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:09, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

And as you know I would tend to denigrate the idea too, mostly for these two major reasons: (1) Calorimetry equipment has been used reliably for many decades, and only now this particular misbehavior manifests? (2) In control experiments using ordinary water, not heavy water, the excess heat basically does not happen, certainly nothing comparable to the heat measured when deuterium is used. Why would CCS occur only in the heavy water experiments and not in the light water experiments, when that is the only difference between them? V (talk) 19:11, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Re: (1) - Because never before had the particular experimental configuration been used. The heat redistribution causing the CCS is a unique feature of the F&P cells. That's why Storms should not lump them together (open and closed) with the other types of calorimetric data in his Table in his book. I don't know why the other types of apparati might have a CCS, I haven't studied them. But I know a CCS should be checked for, and isn't.

I wasn't clear above. The CCS, if caused by my proposed mechanism, is a unique ... Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:05, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I can't properly respond to that until I have more information (requested at your talk page). V (talk) 21:57, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Re: (2) Actually there are many claims for light water cold fusion in the lit. They usually use Ni based materials though, as I recall. This eliminates your 2nd objection, but further, H and D are NOT the same. Usually their physical properties are different by about 30%. Their thermoneutral voltages are different, their viscosites (as water) are different, their thermal conductivities as gases are different, etc. One should never expect the same results with H and D under the same nominal experimental conditions. Again, the CFers set up 'controls' with only nuclear effects in mind, and never understand that the chemical effects mess up their attempts. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:03, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm aware that there were some reports of a very small amount of excess heat, proportionate to the natural proportion of deuterium in hydrogen on Earth, but have personally had some doubts about it (1/6500 implies a REALLY REALLY GOOD calorimeter is needed to detect that outside its error range!). If there are claims that might be connected to fusion between two ordinary protium hydrogen nuclei, I'd certainly like to know more about that. I'd MUCH rather build a reactor based on that reaction, than any other, with its fuel being the commonest stuff in the Universe.... I'm also aware that there are some significant differences between ordinary hydrogen chemistry and deuterium chemistry, entirely due to the doubled mass of deuterium, compared to protium. (For example, drinking heavy water exclusively, over regular water, will eventually lead to death; the body's chemistry is fine-tuned for protium reactions. A cup or two is certainly harmless, though.) On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that the energy released by protium chemistry reactions is slightly more than the energy released by deuterium chemistry reactions. This would imply that if CCS could happen as a result of heat redistribution from a hydrogen/oxygen recombination, it should be MORE likely to happen for light water than for heavy water, because there is more heat energy (from the recombination) to redistribute. V (talk) 21:57, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Another demo of V's lack of knowledge on the subject, which makes some wonder why he is participating here. Check Britz's bibliography, search on 'nickel'. I quickly found two refs. before I quit. One claimed 20-30 sigma excess heat signals and more reproducibility that heavy water experiments. The maximum power converted into electrolysis products is given by the current times the thermoneutral voltage (TV). H's TV is 1.48, D's is 1.54, thus D provides more power in its electrolysis products. Further, %recombination can vary from 0-100, so which gives more power in a given experiment is unpredictable. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:14, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

How exactly is the Wall Street Journal related to Star Trek? Do you know what third party means? The Wall Street Journal (and the other sources I listed) have a reputation for accuracy and fact checking. They also have no relation to cold fusion at all. New Energy Times and Infinite Energy have either no reputation for fact checking or a poor reputation for fact checking. They are very related to cold fusion (as advocates). I've finished discussing this. You can take it to the reliable sources noticeboard - please be clear that you are challenging the WSJ as a reliable source in your report. Thanks. Hipocrite (talk) 14:28, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps we are using different definitions of "third party". The WSJ is a news publication, right? Does it not subscribe to any news services whatsoever (the Associated Press for example)? Would it not receive, as a part of normal events, descriptions of upcoming productions from the movie studios? To whatever extent they send their reporters out to see a movie and write a review, they are second-parties to the production of the movie. An example of a third-party publication would be something like Storms' book, which reviews lots of data in the second-party publications. I'm almost certain there are none yet of that type, with respect to the new Star Trek movie (and therefore the current article should be deleted until true 3rd-party publications appear, regarding it, see?). Another example would be, even though it occurs in the second-party publication, someone who attempts to replicate a previously-reported experiment, and publishes the results. This is why the CR-39 data is interesting and frustrating, with respect to this article; we await 3rd-party results about that. But there are lots of equivalent 3rd-party results with respect to the older claims of finding excess heat. V (talk) 19:11, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

(The following part of this overal thread seems to have become orphaned from the message to which it was originally a reply. Please keep that in mind as you read it. V (talk) 21:57, 21 May 2009 (UTC) )

As to articles, and when they are under examination, this is true. Who is claiming otherwise? And as to neutrons, there is plenty of reliable source on neutrons; most recently, there is the peer-reviewed Naturwissenschaften paper of Mosier-Boss (2009), and there is massive media notice of it. There is, in the paper, some level of explanation of the neutrons, a reasonable hypothesis. By the way, it refers to the Takahashi theory so derisively tossed aside by Hipocrite, above, in beginning his Talk:Cold_fusion#Undue_Weight discussion. There is actually a huge amount of reliable source we could be citing, but if every individual sourced text is immediately reverted out by someone claiming it's not the "mainstream" view, when there is nobody named Mainstream to whom we can ascribe the view, and even though the view was attributed to reliable source, it's impossible to improve the article. I have no problem with attribution of cold fusion "claims." I'm not claiming that cold fusion is "mainstream." But it is, quite simply, no longer acceptable to totally exclude cold fusion research and reviews, it's probably time for Arbitration Enforcement.

As to lack of theory, there are theories, and Storms is quite clear that, as of 2007, there is no generally accepted theory, even among cold fusion researchers. However, Wikipedia doesn't require an interpretive theory to report facts. Rather, we require verifiability -- that's the actual policy, not WP:RS, which is a guideline, and this is a place where the distinction is important. I'm not rejecting RS standards, au contraire, but how they are interpreted is crucial, and they cannot be interpreted to exclude sources based merely on some alleged support of fringe opinion in them. Storms (2007) is RS, period, otherwise our RS standards have become totally subjective. Sure, if there is conflict of sources, then we consider source quality, with preference being given to peer-reviewed and academic sources. ArbComm has been quite clear on not allowing fringe reliable source to be excluded, and, no, that's not an oxymoron, so I'm thinking it may be time to take this up the ladder. Advice welcome. --Abd (talk) 00:04, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

To be clear, we have pits, not neutrons. And we have claims the pits come exclusively from neutrons, but there are at least two conventional mechanisms to get pits without neutrons that have not been addressed by the CF authors. If that is to go into the article, we need to make the distinction and problems clear.

The 'massive media notice' is a flash in the pan because Mar. 23, 2009 was CF's 20th anniversary. The journalists needed _something_ to update their 'same old story'. This is the problem with 'recentism' in editing Wiki articles. Kirk shanahan (talk) 12:05, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Sure. With neutrons, we get pits in a characteristic pattern, not ascribable to chemical damage. It's already in the article, Kirk.

On 22–25 March 2009, the American Chemical Society held a four-day symposium on "New Energy Technology", in conjunction with the 20th anniversary of the announcement of cold fusion. At the conference, researchers with the U.S. Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR) reported detection of energetic neutrons in a palladium-deuterium co-deposition cell using CR-39,[60] a result previously published in Die Naturwissenschaften.[61] Neutrons are indicative of nuclear reactions.[62]

Absolutely, you can get pits without neutrons, but the paper extensively analyzes the difference between these triple-track pits and pits formed by non-neutron radiation, and, as well, the paper and prior published papers by the same group, cover with controls and analysis the other possibilities. For example, Kowalski criticized the "radiation" conclusion re the massive pitting (not the later neutron report), and there was response from the SPAWAR group back-to-back with the criticism. Note that Kowalski was reporting excess heat. What is now generally expected is that if there is no excess heat, there won't be any radiation, either. With co-deposition, excess heat has become reliable, apparently, so they do other forms of controls than merely looking for absence of heat, which was a common form of control in earlier work. (they would call these experiments those with "inactive electrodes," and this kind of control is in some ways even more convincing, because the experiments were as alike as they could make them. In other words, the difficulty of reproduction, that each experiment produced, even with attempts to keep conditions the same, different amounts of heat, becomes a tool of investigation, a maximized control; one is then studying, not the initial conditions, but correlation of effects.)

The papers do NOT extensively analyze the non-nuclear mechanisms proposed in 2002 (and well known to the CF community at the time since the proposal was indirectly (through Rothwell) responded to by R. Oriani.) They don't even consider other than nuclear sources. The papers are prime examples of the psuedoscience at work, in that scads of words talk about non-neutronic nuclear pitting, while shock wave or O2 induced pits are almost completely ignored (a grouped statement that H2, O2, and something else was tested is made, but with no data or references supporting it, i.e. supposition presented as fact). This is even when Kowalski himself has posted a picture of pits arising from a simple scratch, many of which look to me very 'tripletish'. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:38, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Kirks synthetic and improbable tale of the media coverage is pure speculation. While some reports may be ascribed to the 20-year anniversary, some of the reports clearly involved investigative reporting of a greater depth. Further, the CBS Sixty Minutes documentary was very much an investigative report, as we'd expect from them and that program, and Robert Duncan very much a mainstream physicist. It's just one example, to be sure, but it is looking like this: take a mainstream physicist, motivate him or her to read the research, to spend more time than it than a one-day seminar (as in the 2004 DoE review for half the panel), and to talk with the researchers, a skeptic is converted to a "believer." ("Believer" is offensive, actually, it implies that the judgment is biased based on prejudicial assumptions; technically, it could be applied to stubborn skeptics quite as well as to stubborn proponents. Stubborn skeptics, as distinct from natural and rational ones, are attached to rejection, are skeptical only about the views of others, not about their own.) --Abd (talk) 16:19, 20 May 2009

I didn't say the reporters didn't do some work. But what they did is get the 'newest' stuff, and bring out the 'oldies' like Garwan for 'tried and true' commentary, with precious little in-between. Can you look at their reports and what I have been saying here for over a year, an actually claim they did a good, comprehensive job?? Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:38, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

As I posted on Henry Bauer's blog, Duncan was a 'newbie'. The CCS is subtle since it lies further back up the chain of typical errors. Duncan had no clue about it. I can look at the papers from ET than Rothwell has up, and see clear signs of CCS activity. (P.S. ET doesn't seem to know the difference between flow and isoperiboic calorimetry.) I sent my papers to Duncan after the report, but have heard nothing back, and probably won't. His video shows he is 'convinced', like V and Abd, but he never considered the recent critiques of the work, as V and Abd don't. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:38, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Shanahan, it must be frustrating to see your work neglected, and I've tried to do my bit for inclusion, and I'd support the return of User:Abd/Calorimetry in cold fusion experiments so that adequate detail could be shown. There's lots of source on the calorimetry as actually used, experimental results in detail, and criticism, including yours. Sure, Duncan was a "newbie." That, indeed, was the point, someone neutral and not affiliated with one side or the other, except the general "side" of "physics."

I think you might consider being a bit more sympathetic, surely you can see the problem that research is neglected and there is difficulty getting papers published. I, for one, would like to see a really clear exposition of CCS, and how it applies to the various forms of calorimetry, and, I'm afraid, your expositions so far have been inadequate to explain the material to nonspecialists -- and maybe even to specialists --, and you haven't addressed at all the correlation problem of excess heat/helium. So I'll make up an explanation. CCS is due to some local heating effect, unanticipated, cause not stated, necessarily, though some are proposed (such as recombination). The local heating effect drives helium out of the palladium, thus raising helium levels in association with excess heat. Now I'll shoot down my own explanation. Helium isn't found in the palladium to an extent that would be necessary to explain the rise in helium. Further, excess heat from palladium deuteride in gas-loading experiments would have great difficulty throwing off calorimetric calibration with sealed containers that conduct heat well. Consider the Arata work where there is a cell inside a cell. The interior temperature of the inner cell is recorded, the interior temperature of the outer cell is recorded, and the ambient is recorded. They show a steady two degree C. increment, from ambient to outer and from outer to inner, both, after the heat from the formation of palladium deuteride settles down. With hydrogen, the cells both drop within a couple of hours to ambient. With deuterium, the temperature drops to the differential shown, and stays that way for thousands of hours. Just from a rough estimate, the energy generated in the later steady-state phase would be well over an order of magnitude greater than the energy released from the only known chemical reaction taking place in there. And helium is generated. I fail to see how anything like CCS could explain this. Further, the alpha radiation and X-ray radiation detected by the SPAWAR group, not to mention the neutrons, is hard to explain with CCS. Sure, I know what you do. You essentially claim that the pits aren't radiation, yet the controls used by SPAWAR pretty much rule out every alternate explanation, and the X-ray results from X-ray film are also pretty hard to explain. At some point, Kirk, you are working hard to find alternate explanations, and Occam's Razor collapses. Maybe if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it's a duck.

I'm sympathetic: you can't seem to get published, when you think you have a plain and simple explanation. But this is the exact problem that cold fusion researchers have faced for almost twenty years now. Some of the conference papers are junk, I have no problem assuming that. But some of them aren't, and yet they still face difficulty publishing in the major journals, they are rejected without peer review, based purely on the assumption that cold fusion research is, ipso facto, junk. And what you've done is cold fusion research. Leaving you out in the cold.

Your work is notable, though, because Storms responds to it on p. 41 and p. 172. The latter response is a bit more detailed:

Shanahan has proposed that changes in locations where heat is produced within an electrolytic cell could introduce error when flow calorimetry is used. This error is shown by Storms to apply to neither flow nor to Seebeck calorimetry, although the isoperibolic method can be effected. Swartz used a computer model based on hypothetical temperature errors to question the accuracy of flow calorimetry. No demonstration of the proposed mechanism has been reported. On the other hand, a potential error may occur when D2 and O2 gases are allowed to leave the cell. Jones and co-workers (BYU), and Shkedi and co-workers (Bose Corp., MA) observe the obvious, that an uncertain amount of recombination between D2 and O2 within a cell could introduce an uncertain error. Using this argument, Jones criticized heat reported by Miles, who replied in a series of exchanges. Miles answered by pointing out that he, as do many people, measured the amount of internal recombination occuring in his open cell, for which corrections were made. Accurate correctionss can be made as described in Appendix A [Storms' appendix A]. This error does not occur in a closed cell, which is now used by most people when anomalous heat is observed. [and he goes on].

Yes, Kirk, I notice that he's citing himself, and I would factor for that in any usage of this passage. I also just edited the Calorimetry article a little. Comments can corrections are welcome. --Abd (talk) 21:39, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

discussion of editor, not needed for work on article

Kirk's opinions here are actually not helpful; if he supplied us with reliable source on the objections, or even, for our purposes in Talk, specifics about the objections, the "other explanations," we could use it. Instead, we are seeing what comes from some experts: "Trust me! I'm the expert, you are ignorant." The attempt to discuss the Calibration Constant Shift at Talk:Kirk shanahan was a bust, he would not engage on the issues, kept claiming "ad hominem" attacks whenever his claims were criticized, and then asserted that if what the "teacher" is "teaching" is questioned, that's a personal attack. Yeah, some professors think like that. Not the good ones, that is, not the ones who know how to teach. They might be experts in their fields, but not in teaching. If developing true scientists is the goal, skepticism must be encouraged. Feynman had little respect for teachers who expected students to just copy down and study what they said, as if it were gospel, and little respect for students who followed that and didn't question. --Abd (talk) 16:19, 20 May 2009 While I think it is possibly inappropriate to discuss this here, as your interpretation of the discussion that you've been having with Kirk was raised here it needs a more public response: having just read the material on User talk:Kirk shanahan, the above comments represent a serious mischaracterisation of the discussion. Kirk has provided a line-by-line analysis of your points, while you seemed to have missed his central arguments. His analogy, and following claims, seemed apt based on what I read prior to that. It would be best if you focused on discussion about the article here, and tried to avoid attacking the editors. - Bilby (talk) 00:00, 21 May 2009 (UTC) You have got to be kidding, right, Bilby? Shanahan's section header: Abd shows his fanacticism. If it's ever necessary, the sequence there can be extracted, showing how efforts to glean a coherent explanation from him were met with derision and contempt; however, of course, this isn't for here. Shanahan is not an editor of this article (for a long time), his opinions and behavior on his Talk page are moot. I will collapse this part. --Abd (talk) 01:27, 21 May 2009 (UTC) Striking or removing would make me happier, but I can live with collapsing. - Bilby (talk) 01:53, 21 May 2009 (UTC) Hey Abd, reread Bilby's comment of 00:00 21 May. Do you get the message yet? Here's another _new_ editor who can see what I have been saying. It's very plain to him, and everybody else, except CF fanatics. You can't see it because you have emotionally committed to a nuclear-only position. How can you do that, when you admit you are new to the field?? There is only one explanation, and I've offered it. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:45, 21 May 2009 (UTC) Wow, Kirk, where did you learn to read minds like that? Ask for your money back. People emotionally committed to a field tend to be those actually invested in it. I was a skeptic five months ago. I'm still a skeptic, but one who has moved to a neutral or somewhat pro-cold fusion position, and I'm a dialectical thinker, which means that, depending on context, I will appear to be asserting one side of an issue. Look more carefully, you will see that I provide comments on both sides. For example, above I mention Vyosotskii's work on Water memory, which is about as fringe a topic as one can currently find outside of looney bins. To me, skeptic doesn't mean someone who believes anything new is false. It's someone who doubts all alleged knowledge, but there are practical limits. I don't doubt that I'm sitting at a keyboard entering this edit, not in practice. Please, Kirk, tell me what happened with Robert Duncan (physicist)? How did they get to him? Bribery? Dancing girls? Sleight-of-hand? Or is it merely that a skeptical but open-minded physicist took a careful look at the research and the published material? I'm new to the field, but I'm not new to recognizing attachment, I'm an old hand at it, and attachment to opinion is what I see. Show me some quality research refuting the present major claims of the cold fusion researchers. I don't see the papers of 1989-1990 as contradicting more than a few of the positive results, earlier or later. Period. Rather, those papers raised reasonable doubts. In some cases, those papers were themselves defective, but in others, the doubts with respect to work they were directly criticizing were reasonable. There isn't any debate over the difficulty, regarding what was well-established by 2004, of demonstrating the excess heat and other results and, as you know, they go together, excess heat as inferred from experimental records is highly correlated with helium as independently measured. Sure, that can happen by chance, but we routinely risk our lives depending on low probabilities more likely to fail us than that the correlation is to be due to chance. So how are we going to approach this situation? I'm inclining toward a meta-article, a set of documents that reviews the topic from different perspectives. it might be best to start with history. What's the history of the cold fusion affair? What is the publication record? There is a huge difference between a negative replication and a refutation. We will not be likely to come to consensus on this topic unless there is a detailed examination of every necessary element, that's what I know from consensus process. Until then, it's one set of bull-headed conclusions against another, and "victory" is awarded to whatever side can successfully appeal to editor ignorance or prejudice. Kind of like what happened in 1989 with scientists. The Fleischmann report was quite disturbing to some, it meant we didn't know bleep, if it was true. Or so it seemed. (Actually, it would have only meant that the boundaries were slightly different than we thought. But never underestimate how much people dislike having their world-view revised.) Until there is real consensus here, this article will be plagued with edit warring and contention. There are some who obviously believe that such contention is unavoidable and necessary. I disagree, and I have life-experience that teaches me otherwise. Many of those who are strongly opposing my work have been doing so for a long time, because I'm opposing what has been called "Majority POV-pushing," and, guess what? -- the majority can tend to think that their POV is neutral. It's a very easy mistake to make, especially when communication between the majority and the minority is poor. Improve that communication, and disputes sometimes disappear. The last thing I'd want is to win here at the expense of other editors. My goal is true consensus, not that my supposed opinion prevails. If we have true consensus, improving and maintaining the article will be much easier, many hands make short work. Do the math: if there is a 2:1 majority, often considered a supermajority, that still means that, compared to 100% effort, we have 33% net effort. The available labor can triple if people are united. --Abd (talk) 21:25, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Excess heat is "confirmed"

In his most recent reversion Abd states that "Well, the observations [of excess heat] are not only not challenged in the literature, they are confirmed massively." This, of course, is not true. Said observations are challenged as experimental error in multiple sources, including, but not limited to, "What is the current scientific thinking on cold fusion? Is there any possible validity to this phenomenon?" Sci.Am. October 21, 1999 - "The case for experimental error is supported by the unreliability and lack of independent replication of key results." "The NHE lab of MITI described a large series of experiments devised to check the original claims of Fleischmann and Pons. No excess heat was found," amongst others. I suggest that stating excess heat is a fact is misniforming our readers. Excess heat is measured in some experiments, perhaps, but that is considered by reliable sources to be experimental error. Hipocrite (talk) 13:52, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Hipocrite, the problem with that quote is that it is approaching ten years out-of-date. At the rate Science progresses, ten-year-old conclusions can hardly be called "current" in at least one sense of the term. Offhand, I'd guess that the actual majority current state is more like "trying to save a sinking ship" against a flood of data from the minority view. It will certainly be entertaining to see if that minority can hold the interest of the Popular Press, because only the Popular Press has the power to influence hard-core detractors into actually paying some attention to that data (when the data is everywhere, how can it be completely ignored?). SOMEONE among the "moderates" (like Robert Duncan originally was) will eventually be able to decide to put some resources into mediating an Experiment refereed by the detractors (who will know and watch out for all the pitfalls) and performed by the proponents (who will know what detailed experimental procedure is most likely to produce interesting results). I can hardly wait for the outcome! V (talk) 22:23, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Agreed in principle. It is considered by some reliable sources to be experimental error. But that seems to imply that it logically follows that it is experimental error. (due to the meaning of the word "reliable") Problem is is that many -- if not all -- of these reliable sources can't possibly know whether or not the excess heat observed in these experiments were due to excess error because they were not at the "positive" experiments, they did not examine the particular run, they did not check over the equipment, etc. etc. - there's no way for them to know whether or not those particular experiments were false positives. Unfortunately, many of them seem to like to give people the impression that they were there (or does the logic really elude them?), when, in fact, the most they can say is that the excess heat could be due to experimental error. Let's be careful not to misinform our readers in this regard, either. Kevin Baas^talk 14:41, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

For the record, APPARENT excess heat has been confirmed many times. It is difficult to get and very irreproducible. However, the calibration constant shift systematic error is fully capable of explaining these observations, so in the article, the idea that excess heat has been shown to exist should be clearly labelled as a CF advocate position, not a scientific fact. Kevin Baas points out that there is no way to know if reports of excess heat are false positives. This is completely correct, but likewise there is know way to know if they are not. The correct position to take in such a situation is to state clearly that experimentation to date has been inconclusive, not to conclude for one or the other alternative. KirkShanahan (talk) 15:51, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

If a thing is at all "irreproducable", it simply cannot be reproduced; there is no "very" or "somewhat". If you want to say "very" i think you need to say something like very "difficult to reproduce", or "not very reproducable". The "ir-" implies an absolute. You bring up "calibration constant shift systematic error" again. Why don't you just say they could have mis-calibrated it? That's a lot simpler and usually simpler is better when it comes to writting or speaking. And it's not fully capable of "explaining away" - it is only capable of explaining a corresponding amount of error when it is in fact a cause of error. And when it can be completely ruled out as a source of error it's "capability" is zilch. I don't agree that the idea that excess heat has been shown to exist should be clearly labelled as a CF advocate position. I certainly don't think it should be labelled as a scientific fact, but I certainly don't remember when we got into the habit of "clearly label"ing things as CF-advocate or CF-?antagonist? - nor do i think such a dichotomy would benefit the article -, and it is certainly a feasable position to take that there is excess heat but it is not due to fusion or any nuclear process whatever; i.e. one can hold that position and not be an advocate. One can also hold a neutral/impartial position - one can hold that the experimental evidence seems to suggest excess heat -- a purely empirical stance --, yet have no opinion or stance as to the source/cause. Finally, I do not point out "that there is no way to know if reports of excess heat are false positives." and this is in fact in-correct. There are ways to test hypthesis on the cause of the apparent excess heat by reproducing the exact experiments such that u get the positives. There are ways to apply the scientific method to determine the cause. And there are historical instances of such approaches. One has only to look at polywater to see how it is possible to conclusively demonstrate the falsity of a positive. (excuse the awkward phrasing) Kevin Baas^talk 21:45, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

No Kevin, irreproducibility and reproduciblity are not binary terms. Random error always exists in all scientific experiments, so nothing is _ever_ totally reproducible. The relative proportion of error to signal is the measure of reproducibility. Somewhere around 10-20% error, we can begin to use the term ‘irreproducible’. It is a judgement call based on what the judge is considering at the moment. ‘Very’ irreproducible means a very large % error apparent in the data.

Look it up: [16] [17] I never said they are binary terms. I said that "irreproducible" is an absoltue term, and then showed how "reproducable" can be used to show varying degrees. How could I show how reproducible can be used to show varying degrees if it is an absolute? More to the point, why would I if my aim was to show that it was an absolute; that it couldn't be used to show varying degrees? Please try not to over-generalize what i say to the point of making me out to say things that i disagree with. Kevin Baas^talk 17:37, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

The CCS has nothing to do with the experimenters ‘miscalibrating’. It’s not their fault. Specifically, the proposed mechanism for the CCS is purely chemistry. What the whole CCS package says is that the experimenters calibrate (assume perfectly for the sake of discussion) and then chemistry happens, shifting the system dynamics. That means the perfect prior calibration is now inapplicable, which in turn requires recalibration. However, the process of shutting down the experiment seems to cause the system to change again (see my 2006 pub for deails), which is a nasty, nasty experimental problem for anyone.

“And it's not fully capable of "explaining away"” – Sorry for trying to be compact. I guess I should have written that: “The CCS has the potential to induce errors of very large proportion. Thus without having published information to judge the potential magnitude of a CCS-induced error, the observation of apparent excess heat signals cannot be taken as any kind of evidence that true excess heat has been produced, by any process, not just a nuclear one. Two relevant pieces of information would be the time-to-time variation in calibration constants, and the amount of input energy that is registered by the system when the unitless part of the calibration constant that adjusts for losses is arbitrarily set to 1.” – would that have been better?

a little overdone, IMO -- but I understand that's intentional for rhetorical purposes, i.e. you know that. i thought my wording struck a nice balance between brevity and accuracy - though it was in response to what u were saying rather than a rewording of what you were saying, so the subject matter was somewhat different. anyways, i would change "cannot be taken as any kind of evidence" to something more like "cannot be taken as conclusive evidence", and in any case less absolute. It might be an indication, but other factors still need to be ruled out. but to say outright that it has absolutely no merit ("cannot be taken as any kind of evidence") is excessive and unjustified. (and remember, evidence doesn't need to always point to the right conclusion - for instance, both sides in a court case have "evidence", but one of them is inevitably wrong.) But yeah, my main qualm is that you seem to be using absolutes where things are not absolute, whether it just be in subtle nuances of phrasing or word choice (e.g. "irreproducible"). So I admit I'm being nit-picky, but I mention these things because I'm concerned that they may be an indication / symptom of a latent bias. Kevin Baas^talk 17:37, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

“I don't agree that the idea that excess heat has been shown to exist should be clearly labelled as a CF advocate position.” - Well, I don’t think it is anything but. The scientific position is that the case is unproven. We have an anomaly, yes, but proof that excess heat is real? No way. Only the CF advocates take that position, so I contend that it should be labeled such, as there is no RS for the alternative position.

Well in addition to the other arguments I've made, I think it would be original research to label it. Kevin Baas^talk 17:37, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

“Finally, I do not point out "that there is no way to know if reports of excess heat are false positives." and this is in fact in-correct. “ - previously you wrote: “there's no way for them to know whether or not those particular experiments were false positives”. If I take what I wrote and 1) contract ‘there is’, 2) insert ‘for them’, 3) replace ‘if’ with ‘whether or not’), and 4) replace ‘are’ with ‘were’, the only conceptual difference between what you wrote and what I wrote is that you wrote ‘those particular experiments’ and I wrote ‘reports of excess heat’. Now, I believe that one can correctly say” “Cold fusion researchers reported on ‘those particular experiments’ and claimed ‘excess heat’ (i.e. made ‘reports of excess heat’)”. That’s good English, right? So, I don’t get your point. Am I supposed to only ‘exactly quote’ all the time, and never reword concepts, even when I am not quoting?

you need to be more conservative in your interpretation. logical nuances abound and it's quite easy to accidently twist a person's words. people do that too often, i'm afraid, and it causes a lot of unnecessary suffering. i guess i'm saying that if you read what i write more like a question on an LSAT and less like a poem, esp. when we're talking about technical things, we might be able to understand each other better. (and more efficiently.) I try to be precise when i write, because there are a lot of things nearby that i don't mean. but that effort's wasted if the reader doesn't make a similiar effort. Kevin Baas^talk 17:37, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Though if i'm not mistaken, this misinterpretation here is a simple matter of a failure to recognize the difference between "did not" and "can not": I said they did not I did not say they can not. Kevin Baas^talk 20:07, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

“There are ways to apply the scientific method to determine the cause.” – Absolutely, I use them myself whenver needed. I’m talking about statistically designed experiments. I do my own, don’t need to consult statiticians for help. CFers never do. That’s the primary reason, when combined with their refusal to consider anything but a nuclear source, that their results are still so irreproducible 20 years on. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kirk shanahan (talk • contribs) 13:10, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

I would say that not having discovered and mastered control of all of the conditions would be the primary factor in making any result difficult to reproduce. Whether those conditions be errors, unknown circumstances, or what have you. Kevin Baas^talk 17:37, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Let's see what Hipocrite is talking about. He had changed a long-standing part of the article with [18]:

An excess heat observation is based on an energy balance. Various sources of energy input and output are continuously measured. Under normal condition, the energy input can be matched to the energy output to within experimental error. In experiments such as those run by Fleischmann and Pons, a cell operating steadily at one temperature transitions was alleged to have transitioned to operating at a higher temperature with no increase in applied current. At the higher temperature, the energy balance shows an unaccounted term. In the Fleischmann and Pons experiments, the Fleischmann and Pons alleged a rate of excess heat generation was in the range of from 10-20% of total input. The high temperature condition would was alleged to last for an extended period, making the total excess heat disproportionate to what might be obtained by ordinary chemical reaction of the material contained within the cell at any one time. These high temperature phases did not were not found to last indefinitely and did not occur in every experiment, but in those experiments where they did occur, they would usually reoccur several times.

What's the problem with this? Well, it totally side-steps scientific tradition, and the reason why we place preferential reliance on peer-reviewed sources. The tradition is that experimental reports are accepted as more than allegations or arguments or volleys in debate, they are accepted as true testimony. The testimony is not as to underlying fact, but to observation. Fleischmann reported experimental results showing a measurement of excess heat. He could be wrong, i.e., there could certainly be experimental error. But his observations (which include his calculations) aren't "allegations," they are reports. And that is exactly how we should report them, ourselves. We do not report that there was actual, real, excess heat. We report that the experimental technique and analysis indicated excess heat. These are not "allegations," they are reports of the work done by the experimenter, which includes analysis. Now, if Fleischmann said that this was nuclear fusion, that was a conclusion and we could call that an allegation.

I reverted, with an explanation in my edit summary of (Well, the observations are not only not challenged in the literature, they are confirmed massively. The open question is interpretation; the apparent excess energy could be artifact.) It appears that Hipocrite did not understand this, from his objections above. Shanahan, a strong critic of cold fusion, above confirms this. The "observations" are massively confirmed, what Shanahan contests is the interpretation that the apparent excess heat is real, i.e., not just some kind of common problem with the experimental setup, or, if I'm reading Shanahan correctly, some unanticipated effect that causes calibration to go out of whack in a consistent way (i.e., always toward apparent excess heat, when this effect arises, not in the other direction).

I modified the language in an attempt to satisfy a possibly legitimate objection, as can be easily seen in the diff, I was simply adding a little language to make it clear that we are talking about an experimental report, an interpretation of data through a known method of analysis, as previously described, not necessarily actual excess heat.

Hipocrite removed this, with (excess heat is considered an experimental artifact. Replication failures do not make the fact that broken experiments break repeatedly meaningful - WP:SYN), substituting his own synthesis and giving undue weight, in this case, to outright rejection of the apparent excess heat findings, citing a 1999 source, the Scientific American article, apparently to justify this text (bolded):

In other experiments, however, no excess heat was discovered, and, in fact, even the heat from successful experiments was unreliable and could not be replicated independently.[ref] If higher temperatures were real, and not experimental artifact, the energy balance would show an unaccounted term. In the Fleischmann and Pons experiments, the rate of inferred excess heat generation was in the range of 10-20% of total input. The high temperature condition would last for an extended period, making the total excess heat appear to be disproportionate to what might be obtained by ordinary chemical reaction of the material contained within the cell at any one time, though this could not be reliably replicated.

He cites page 2 of the SciAm article. What does it say?

There is no widely accepted theory that might explain such effects, however. Therefore, most of the scientific community concluded that the 'Pons and Fleischmann effect' was experimental error.

Even so, several laboratories continued cold fusion experiments. Excess power remained small and sporadic. If some of the recent reports of new work can be verified, however, the years of effort might be paying off. Pons and Fleischmann now report excess powers of 100 watt (150 percent of the input power) sustained over a 30-day run. The Pons and Fleischmann technique calls for about 20 days of electrolytic conditioning, after which the cell is allowed to heat to boiling for the power run. This technique was reportedly reproduced by a separate group under G. Lonchampt, with support by the French Atomic Energy Commission and in consultation with Pons. Other groups in Japan and Italy are beginning to report excess powers in the 30 to 100 percent range. Experimental results of this magnitude are far beyond ordinary chemistry and point toward the possible existence of some new effect. It might not be 'cold fusion' at all. Whether the effect is a new kind of chemical reaction, a new pathway for nuclear reactions, or something either more surprising or more mundane will only be known after more research.

The source he cites is far from confirming his text, his text is made up to promote his personal conclusions, and he doesn't understand the text he is editing, he made mincemeat of the "energy balance unaccounted term" language. There is an unaccounted term, that's not in controversy; what has been in controversy (to the point that in 2004 the DoE panel was evenly divided on the question, half saying "convincing," the other half "not conclusive," which, by the way, isn't "rejected.") is whether or not there is real excess heat.

Note that since the 1999 SciAm report (which had another, more skeptical section), there has been a lot of work, and reproducibility is apparently way up. I'll pull up the reference from prior Talk here. See, folks, I put my research notes in Talk, I share them, and all this research into sources is dedicated to improving the article, in the end. There are also techniques that produce steady heat ("reliable,") and they've apparently been confirmed (I'm thinking of Arata in Japan, with gas-loaded nanoparticle palladium deuteride, no electrolysis energy put in to complicate things, published in Japanese peer-reviewed physics journals, and McKubre's confirmation, not sure about publication of that.) --Abd (talk) 01:15, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Reproducibility of "cold fusion" experiments.

The issue of reproducibility in cold fusion experiments is a complex one. The first difficulty is that no clear and consistent definition of reproducibility is used. If the cold fusion researchers are correct, what Storms calls the Nuclear Active Environment, or NAE, is difficult to form, and, for classic Pons-Fleischmann electrolytic cells, forms chaotically, and under conditions which are still poorly understood. So researchers may take what seems to be the same exact experiment, same everything as far as they know, and come up with different results. There are many phenomena in nature where this kind of result may be found. Simple example: toss a coin, repeatedly, and record the results. You may think that you toss every coin with the same starting conditions, it's even the same coin, but unless you control all the variables with insane accuracy, you are quite likely in a series of ten tosses, to come up with a range of results. If you manage to control the coin toss and catch very precisely, you might still come up with one set of results being "heads confirmed," and another group comes up with another set, "tails confirmed." Depending, of course, on the exact initial condition of the coin. Nevertheless, with statistical analysis you could show a probable frequency for the results, and many such studies would show confirmation of the frequency, not of the specific results for each study.

However, there are other techniques that apparently create an NAE, more reliably, but are these "replications"? If we look at the field in general, and ask, is there confirmation of the concept that excess energy is possible? (To take one result.) The answer is yes; but what is common is that the experiments vary in approach. One of the reasons is that researchers are searching for ways to improve reliability as well as to increase excess energy, questions of utmost importance for possible ultimate applications, and someone finding such a technique will be, to put it bluntly, rich. Whereas reproducing the work of someone else, years before, who got, say, 35% of cells to produce excess heat, and that was, at the time, considered inadequate, and the absolute amount of energy generated of no commercial interest, and a reproduction of the old result is likely to be rejected for publication (after all, it's the same-old, same-old), is boring and not likely to attract the serious effort required, given that there isn't funding for this. Complicating this is the fact that the U.S. Patent Office will reject patents, so researchers who do find a technique to increase reliability and energy output are highly motivated to keep it as a trade secret until they can develop into a product. Which, of course, has become much more difficult because various research groups may not be sharing successes! One of the early complications with Fleischmann's work, which is pretty well documented, is that his group didn't disclose exact techniques, on the advice, apparently, of their lawyers.

However, there is a document which examines publications in the field, put together by Jed Rothwell of lenr-canr.org, it's at http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJtallyofcol.pdf. By its nature, the information in this document is verifiable. I'm not proposing the document as a source for our article, but for review by those editors who are willing to take a neutral view of the subject. It shows some reason to suspect the common claim that negative papers outweigh positive ones in this field, and it shows an increase in publication frequency after 2004 or 2005, pretty clearly a nadir. (see p. 4 for the Britz bibliography chart and p. 5 for the lenr-canr.org chart). It should be known that Britz is skeptical about cold fusion, and, of course, Rothwell is quite sure cold fusion is real. I am most interested, for our purposes here, in an examination of the most recent publications in peer-reviewed journals, academic publications, and popular media. The graph on p. 11 shows publication by year of positive and negative results, as classified by Britz. Rothwell, later, challenges some of the interpretations, giving some specifics. In 1989, negative publications outweighed positive, roughly 83:46 (reading off the graph). Remember, by the end of 1989, the physics community was shouting "junk science." For 1990, the figure was about 76:75. And for every year after that, positive papers greatly outnumbered negative, there really are only a handful of negative papers after 1996. After 2005, there appear to be no negative papers.

Now, as to recent results, I recommend a review of HE Jing-tang, Nuclear fusion inside condense matters, a review article, from Front. Phys. China (2007) 1: 96―102. The journal and the paper were discussed at some length above, see Talk:Cold_fusion/Archive_24#Holy_Grail_Found.3F_--_2007_Review_article. Regardless of that discussion, this is reliable source, coming from a hot fusion researcher at a major fusion research group in China. In his section on "Reproducibility of cold fusion," he writes that In the process of electrolysis of heavy water using Pd as the cathode and Pt as the anode, if the following two conditions are satisfied spontaneously, excess energy will be produced. And then he gives the conditions:

• D/Pd ratio larger than 0.88
• The current density of the electrolysis is larger than 280 mA/cm2

In his table on p. 98, looking at excess heat, he gives results for groups that have done a total of 14,720 experiments, and he reports results for five years ago of 45% average reproducibility. For the last year before closing his paper, he reports average reproducibility of 83%, and he shows four research groups, in Japan, Romania, the United States, and Russia, as reporting 100% reproducibility. Garwin used to say that when there was 50% reproducibility, he'd be satisfied. He now wants two cups of tea brewed, which, of course, has nothing to do with the science. We don't reject muon-catalyzed fusion because you can't brew tea with it. The lowest reported reproducibility in the previous year was 50%, from an Italian group which we can speculate, from other data provided, has the least experience with cold fusion.

While I regret that this paper didn't provide detail on the sources involved, and is ambiguous in certain respects, this is of higher quality than any popular media source, and with media sources, we generally wouldn't have that kind of detail either. I am aware of no recent academic publications which negate the claim of excess heat. If we read the 2004 DoE review, and especially if we read the individual reviewer papers (they are available on both lenr-canr.org and newenergytimes.com), we can see that, then, there was very substantial opinion (fifty-fifty among the reviewers) that evidence for excess heat was "convincing." The other reviewers were less convinced, to be sure, but not entirely negative. What if the DoE panel had been looking at recent results, instead of older ones? In any case, the He Jing-tang paper is a secondary source, published in a peer-reviewed journal, which would support a much stronger statement in the article than anyone has attempted to place in it, to my knowledge. And against this source is what?

There are those who have been noting that Wikipedia is not the place to right great wrongs, and I agree. However, if we follow WP:RS without bias, we'd have to conclude that, on a matter of scientific research, the most reliable sources almost entirely favor cold fusion, because the "mainstream," whatever they are, abandoned the field. That could be unfair, but tough. If they aren't publishing, they don't exist, would be a hard-line view. However, my own opinion is that we don't reject sources of lower quality, we report them with caution. At this point, there isn't any real controversy over the claim that "most scientists" are of the opinion that cold fusion is bogus. But that view isn't based on current publications, it's based on very old work. Only in 1989 did the negative publications truly outnumber the positive ones, every year after that, positive publications outweighed them.

And, please remember, in 1989 hardly anyone knew how to get the damn experiment to work, Fleischmann's work came to a screeching halt for a while when their original supply of palladium ran out, until it was found how to process the stuff to get it to work. They'd been lucky, the first time, as were other research groups that reported positive results. Absence of proof is not proof of absence, it's a lesson too easily forgotten.

Further, a lot of the original negative work was reporting that there wasn't neutron radiation. And we now know that there isn't neutron radiation at anything like the expected levels, whatever there is, it's way down; enough above background to be quite sure that it's real (now, with the SPAWAR group results, which are confirming earlier results done with other techniques), but it has practically nothing to do with cold fusion; as Mosier-Boss considers likely, it's hot fusion, at very low levels, resulting from the energy release of cold fusion. 24 MeV alpha particles can do that!

He Jing-Tang also cites Takahashi, by the way, about the Be-8 hypothesis. Coming soon to an article near you. --Abd (talk) 19:05, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Abd, this is not what we should do in the article because a) your analysis is based on the numbers run by Jed Rothwell, who is not a reliable source and has a huge POV here b) your conclusions about mainstream sources go against what WP:PARITY says c) you know that Storms is a fringe non-reliable source, as discussed here d) you already tried to introduce He Jing-tang's article in Frontiers of Physics in China by raising the issue here, here and it was explained to you how it was a non-notable new journal of unknown reliability, but you still keep raising the issue regularly.

Your edits are getting increasingly non-helpful as you keep raising the same discarded issues again and again and adding more issues along the way until it all becomes a huge mess that you refuse to untangle. You are now very clearly going into naked fringe POV pushing and tendentious editing. Consider this a formal warning to stop this behaviour. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:38, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Basically, Enric, because I'm implying an intention to follow WP:RS and not a distorted local consensus cobbed together by a phony poll (i.e., a poll which asked leading questions asking for judgments based on inadequate information and inadequate prior discussion), I'm being "non-helpful" and the issues have been "discarded"? No, I don't think you understand dispute resolution. There is enough support here to assert edits; I've been abstaining from that because it's obvious that there are several involved editors willing to edit war, and I was occupied with RfC and ArbComm, where many of the same editors, including yourself, were pushing for me to be banned. I wasn't. ArbComm didn't even think it worthy of mention. That doesn't mean it's over, Enric, that means it's about to begin. A group of editors at this article, and to some extent elsewhere, are blatantly violating Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science. That can't be allowed to stand. I have a suggestion, Enric. Take a look at who preceded you, take a look at whom you are supporting and who is supporting you. And notice the road they are going down, and where it led. ScienceApologist was topic-banned from anything to do with Fringe science, and then Hipocrite assisted him in creating such disruption over it, trying to discredit anyone who dared to enforce the topic ban, that SA was given a lengthy block. SA was highly defended. Are you ready for this? Think about it. You have been able to compromise in the past. You are now working with take-no-prisoners editors who don't compromise. Some of that could fall on your head. Since you have been so kind as to warn me, I'll return the favor on your Talk page, just so it's clear. --Abd (talk) 00:56, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

As to the Rothwell document, it's essentially a collection of lists with some simple verifiable analysis. Against this you have? What I know of are old statements that were made with no actual statistics, they were mere opinions, which have then been repeated over and over. In particular, the chart of positive/negative/undecided publications is simply a graphical presentation of data from Britz. I'm not suggesting that we put this into the article! -- but it is surely appropriate for our consideration here, when we need to make considerations of due weight. Numbers of peer-reviewed publications are indicators of due weight. Britz isn't a "cold fusioneer," according to Rothwell, he's one of the few electrochemists who is still skeptical. (Read the paper, you'll see, Rothwell tears into Britz a bit, even though I know that they extensively cooperate in maintaining their bibliographies.) Rothwell claims that some of what Britz presents as "undecided" were positive, but the graph doesn't reflect those judgments. --Abd (talk) 01:57, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

You mean that *I* might get topic banned from fringe science topics if I pursue this? Not *you*? Seriously? That's... so out of touch with reality.... Do you *really* think that *I* might get topic banned from this page?

About the content. You are still asking us to use an unreliable biased source from Jed Rothwell, in his analysis of an unpublished compilation of papers by Britz in his personal page. And against all the better sources saying that the evidence for cold fusion is unsufficient and flawed. And all because of your personal opinion that the evidence is good (you keep cherrypicking the DOE 2004 by forgetting to take into account that "Most reviewers, including those who accepted the evidence and those who did not, stated that the effects are not repeatable, the magnitude of the effect has not increased in over a decade of work, and that many of the reported experiments were not well documented."), and without taking into account the many discussions here about most if not all of the publications not being good-quality or notable physics or chemics journals, included the one where Moussier-Boss published. And you keep trying to use fringe sources because mainstream no longer publishes about it. And you didn't want to sue media articles when they were negative, but then you had no trouble using the CBS 60 minutes positive coverage. And you said that we shouldn't use some certain negative sources because they used the word "background" without defining but you had no problem citing the positive Storms source who made the same thing. And you kept throwing things like "Mr. or Ms. Mainstream" [19], when in that same page I had gathered already enough RS to show what mainstream thinks [20], not to mention the RS in the section above about how mainstream sources plainly stating that cold fusion is similar to N-rays and polywater. Plain no, this has gone too far. Stop the fringe pushing right now and start acknowledging consensus when it goes against you. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:33, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

How ArbComm would deal with an AE request on this is unclear. But to imagine oneself as above reproach is naive. I'll note that Enric Naval has been calling for my topic ban for some time. "Cherry-picking"? That's the conclusions of the report, where the science is reviewed! The Rothwell source is documented, everything in it is verifiable, except for his stated opinions. These are bibliographies and bibliographic analysis, Enric, and against this, for the claims you make about the state of the science, what, exactly, do you have? "Most reviewers stated that the effects are not repeatable." You have to know some science to know what that means. The effects -- until quite recently, after the 2004 review -- weren't repeatable, for the most part. You'd run twenty cells and see a few with excess heat. However, if you look at only the cells with excess heat, other effects could be seen, in association, correlated. Not in the cells without excess heat. That's a form of repeatability, actually a strong one, and it seems that the 2004 DoE review largely neglected that, but still came up with some substantial support for this being real science, worthy of investigation. You are incorrect about using media coverage, rather, there is an issue with media coverage where clearly what is being said is simply regurgitation of old media coverage. The "couldn't be replicated" claim found in some of the media coverage is a sign of that. That's an old claim that has been repeated over and over. Enric, I'm making substantive arguments and it seems you are stuck. Consider the N-rays and polywater claims. Yes, that's been said. In peer-reviewed reliable source? When? Is it still relevant? But have I ever removed reliably sourced and properly attributed opinion like that?

Absolutely, you've been cooperating with the agenda of those who would exclude all positive information about cold fusion, and, yes, that could result in a topic ban. Just as my own work could result in a topic ban; some of it depends on the politics of the moment. However, some editors, including yourself, tried hard to get ArbComm to sanction me or at least criticize me for POV-pushing here, and they failed. That time. They are still trying. Can't say what will happen if it goes back. As it might, if we can't resolve this at a lower level. How about starting to seriously work on that?

What I see on this article isn't consensus, it's lack of consensus. You can gather together, sometimes, a group of editors to support an opinion, and the names are quite familiar. Remember, these are almost all in favor of what JzG was doing, and at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/JzG 3, two-thirds of the editors were more or less screaming for my head. Was that consensus? No, it was a concentration of interested and largely involved editors. The polls above were a travesty of process, and they certainly don't show the consensus you and Hipocrite have claimed. We will, I assume, do some real RfCs here. Watch and see how it's done, Enric, you might learn something.

Arrogant? Perhaps. But I do have well over thirty years of experience with consensus process. There never was a scientific consensus on cold fusion, there was a popular consensus. Lack of proof was widely considered proof of lack. The situation was very, very different with N-rays and polywater, there were very strong refutations and then the fields died. Yes, people sometimes are die-hards. Good thing, actually, but cold fusion has outlasted that. The biggest problem was the loss of funding, institutional support, and the radical deprivation of graduate students to assist in the research; Simon documents this in Undead Science: graduate students were threatened with career loss if they helped cold fusion research. That's reliable source, Enric. One of the editors here claimed to me that if he let it be known that he was in any way involved with writing about cold fusion, there would go his career. And he's a skeptic. Why isn't this history in the article? Do you have any interest in this side of the story? Or are you only only interested in one side? If you are only interested in one side, and you have worked on this article for a long time, yes, that is the kind of thing that could lead to a topic ban. I'd consider that unfortunate. --Abd (talk) 14:47, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Sources

Abd writes in his edit summary "Please negotiate consensus in Talk." I think that editors who are not Abd and aren't challenging the validity of WP:RS on this article have come to a consensus that Storms and Front. Phys. China were not reliable sources. If anyone disagrees with this (aside from you, Abd, I know you disagree, and you Objectivitst, I know you have stated that WP:RS is depreciated on this article), I'd like to know why, exactly, they consider these sources reliable. Hipocrite (talk) 17:14, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Hipocrite mistakes an unclosed discussion, with very low participation, for a "consensus," and neglects other discussions that approached the issue more objectively. Storms (2007) is published by World Scientific. Front. Phys. China is published by the largest publisher in China, Higher Education Press, one of the largest in the world (45th largest), in cooperation with Springer-Verlag, and is peer-reviewed. Further, these sources are not being used to claim scientific fact, but only claims, i.e., "proposed explanations." Hipocrite, you are on thin ice, and someone following you should be aware of the history. It will come out. V. didn't state what you claim, but if he did, he'd have been wrong. WP:RS applies, not your opinions and point of view. --Abd (talk) 17:27, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, Abd. Hipocrite, what I've previously written here are words to the effect that strict-RS is an inadequate rule for this and other articles. And you have consistently failed to specify why, if this article can contain statements that are marked as being claims, those claims can only come from strict-RS material. Also, with respect to speculative explanations for CF, since practically none exist in strict-RS material, you have failed to explain why such speculations must be excluded. What makes an "RS" speculation superior to a non-RS speculation? By definition, BOTH are just guesses! V (talk) 15:29, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

An RS speculation has been validated as notable in some way, a non-RS one hasn't. However, if it's been quoted in a reliable secondary source, it's been validated as notable. Sometimes, however, we can point to sources not normally considered reliable to attribute claims or opinions. The usual requirement is that the person expressing the opinion is notable in the relevant field. In the case under discussion, Storms is certainly notable in the field. But he is also RS, and claims that he isn't are essentially proposterous, and are based on the kind of anti-fringe judgment that ArbComm has rejected, and Hipocrite knows that, and I believe that he does not respect that decision. Or does he? He's welcome to tell me I'm wrong. It's preposterous to have an article on cold fusion, and a section on proposed explanations, i.e., how those working in the field explain the results, and not mention any of the explanations because they are allegedly "frimge," but only source secondary comment that the explanations (what explanations?) are "ad-hoc." And the only reason that Storms would be deprecated as reliable source would be a claim that he's fringe. The publisher is independent, and not a dedicated fringe publisher, it could be much worse than World Scientific and Storms would still be RS. --Abd (talk) 03:43, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Storms is neither notable nor reliable. His bald speculation is not verifiable for the purposes of our articles. Hipocrite (talk) 03:48, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Prior discussion of the FPC paper: Talk:Cold_fusion/Archive_24#Holy_Grail_Found.3F_--_2007_Review_article. --Abd (talk) 18:03, 21 May 2009 (UTC). There was certainly no consensus there. Further, discussion of a source without actual text being backed by it is exploratory, preliminary, and of no conclusive value, even if there had been consensus. --Abd (talk) 18:12, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

To make the point clear, relative quality of reliable sources only comes into play, for balance, when there is contradiction of sources. What reliable source contradicts the information provided in the text Hipocrite has been edit-warring, with blind reverts, to take out? Is there reliable source claiming that these explanations aren't being proposed? I don't think so! Is there reliable source rejecting the proposals? Then balance the text and cite it! Otherwise, this is all just an attempt to exclude reliably sourced material (by objective standards) from Wikipedia based solely on the claim that it is from a fringe source, and following a clear POV agenda. Which is not allowed. --Abd (talk) 18:17, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

By my count, both of us are at 3RR on the section sourced to Storms and He Jing-tang in Front. Physics China, so it's time for other editors to make this decision, ad hoc. And if we can't settle, we can look forward to the pleasant vista of dispute resolution, though there is the possibility of Arbitration Enforcement on this. There really are two disputes: a long-term one with editors like Enric Naval, where ordinary DR is likely to find consensus, and a short-term one with Hipocrite, who arrived here quite recently with no experience in this topic, based on politics elsewhere, and began asserting an extreme anti-fringe position, the kind ArbComm has rejected. --Abd (talk) 18:44, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Wow! Do you realize what you just did right above Abd? You painted a perfect picture of yourself. The only difference is that for Hipocrite we talk about 2-3 weeks, while with you we talk about 2-3 months! ROFL!

For the record, the Storms book is an impressive listing of positive 'cold fusion' results, with two glaring ommssions of recent negative comments/results. It is clearly biased, but could be used by Wiki readers advantageously if they were alerted to the bias. I agree the Jing-tang paper is not useful. Kirk shanahan (talk) 19:05, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh and one other thing, Storms does not assess the quality of the papers he cites. He just cites everything. He carries this problem into his data tables as well. What this does is mark his book as a second-class review. First class reviews always try to bring sense to a field by pointing out the best work and the not-so-good stuff. That argues against inclusion again, but adequate warning could overcome that. Kirk shanahan (talk) 19:31, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, that's the main problem I have with Storms. He uncritically lists everything, from reasonable to crackpot without making distintions. He can't be used to decide what is relevant. I'd agree on a brief mention that makes clear that a) it doesn't represent mainstream b) it represents the viewpoint of the small group that continues holding that the evidence is good against the majority opinion that it has lots of deep flaws. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:23, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Enric, you are utterly unqualified to determine what is crackpot and what is not. Further, you confuse popular opinion among scientists -- who get their news from fields in which they don't specialize from the media, just like the rest of us -- with expert opinion. We have no good guide to current scientific opinion among those qualified to judge the matter. For 2004, we have the DOE review, which does not support the kind of extreme view that Hipocrite has been pushing and that you have been supporting. "Small group." How large? Wikipedia doesn't care, we do not assess scientific consensus by taking polls. We rely on reliable sources, with preference given to peer-reviewed reliable source and other academic sources. We know due weight by the weight of publication. You are rejecting sources that are reliable on the face because of allegations of "fringe." And that is circular. It's fringe because there is no reliable source supporting it. And if you reject any source that supports it as fringe, well, there you have it. Now, there is media source that cold fusion is generally rejected. But there is also recent media source that the topic is "hot" again. "A funny thing happened on the way to oblivion," the announcer said in the recent CBS Sixty Minutes documentary. I'm not asserting that cold fusion isn't generally rejected, so our article needs to be clear that cold fusion is not generally accepted. But treating it as proven to be experimental error? That's way beyond the pale. That's not supported by the DOE reviews, especially the 2004 review, where we have more detail.

In order to impeach a reliable source, there must be contradiction with other reliable source. In rejecting Storms as a reliable source, you have not shown one single contradiction in anything sourced from Storms. Rather, you simply reject it out of hand, which totally subverts Wikipedia's method of gauging balance. You are excluding fringe instead of reporting it neutrally and in a balanced way. What's "crackpot"? I can think of two things that you might have in mind: hydrino theory and biological transmutation. How do you know that hydrino theory is crackpot? It certainly does challenge existing theory, but that doesn't make it crackpot, in itself. I think perhaps you should read the sources. Myself, I have no idea if Mills is a genius, an innovator who saw beyond the limitations of existing theories, or an expert con artist. I've been thinking of trying to visit Blacklight Power, they aren't far from me. But would I know the difference? (If they even let me visit, they are very secretive, which is an absolute necessity in what they are doing, since the U.S. Patent Office refuses to grant patents in the field. Think about it.) All I know is that the theory is widely known and considered to be one possible explanation, and it seems Storms may favor it. And, no, he doesn't work for them!

I'd like to interject a remark regarding my first impressions when I first encountered "hydrino" descriptions. I was aware that in Quantum Mechanics electron orbits are "mapped" in terms of whole numbers; the circumference of the lowest orbit is basically equal to one wavelength of the electron; the circumference of the next-lowest orbit is equal to two wavelengths, and so on. Well, if hydrinos are real, the only way it could make sense in terms of QM (to me, anyway) is if the first orbit smaller than the QM-standard-lowest-orbit was such that twice its circumference equalled one electron-wavelength; in other words, the electron orbits twice while doing one "vibration". Obviously the next smaller orbit would have the electron orbiting three times while doing one vibration, and so on. The PROBLEM I have with that is an orbit is itself a type of vibration (cyclic); we would be saying that the electron can do two or more orbit-vibes at the same time it is doing one (ordinary) vibe, and there is something contradictory about that. So, I cannot much support the hydrino hypothesis, until that contradiction is resolved. But I can keep a somewhat-open mind about it, on the off-chance that the contradiction has been resolved in a way about which I am simply currently ignorant. V (talk) 15:43, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

The other possible "crackpot" idea would be biological transmutation. Why is this crackpot? Well, it just seems impossible! But how do we know it is impossible? Well, because nuclear reactions take energies that couldn't be managed by a biological organism. Er, wait a minute. If a palladium lattice could manage to do a little nuclear stuff, why not a protein? Sure, not necessarily! But if you are a cold fusion researcher, you've seen heat-after-death other effects, time and again, you aren't quite so skeptical about other possibilities. I winced, myself, when Storms speculated about human combustion. But it seems to come with the territory, Simon writes about the phenomenon in Undead Science. Since you and everything you work with has been rejected and considered pseudoscience or worse, you aren't quite so ready to reject other strange ideas. But the biological transformation work has come to the attention of cold fusion researchers through the steady and persistent work of Vyosotskii, who seems to be quite an established scientist, with a long history of publication in many areas (not just weird stuff). And the evidence that Storms shows for biological transformation is actually spectacular (and it's clearer in the original paper, which I've seen). This is work that is crying out for replication. So why hasn't it been replicated? I think that's a really good question; all I know is that I've looked for any sign that anyone has even been trying and found nothing. It should be a cheap and easy experiment.

However, Storms notes it. Sorry, Enric. That's a reliable secondary source (reliable because independently published by a reputable publishing company) reporting on a primary source (Vyosotskii). That makes it notable and usable. How it's used is another question. "Not accepted by mainstream science." Sure. But that doesn't mean that we don't report what is in reliable source, with proper attribution and framing.

And Storms was not the only source cited in what was reverted by Hipocrite today. Takahashi's Be-8 theory was also described by He Jing-Tang. I think it's in other reliable source as well, but I had He Jing-Tang handy. There is no way that this paper isn't reliable source, and He Jing-Tang isn't some fringe lunatic. The paper is weird, to be sure, but it's a secondary source, showing notability, and it was in a peer-reviewed journal. Sure, you can claim that this is a journal of lesser quality, perhaps, but ... that only matters if there is contradiction. What contradiction? Show something from a better source that it contradicts!

You seem to have missed, Enric, that these sources were simply being used to show two theories that have been proposed. Do you disagree that they have been proposed? What do you require, if these sources aren't adequate? --Abd (talk) 05:09, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I already gave my arguments, others added other better arguments, and you don't seem to remember them. Or, rather, you discarded them completely. I think that your suggestion to go to mediation is good. However, before spending a sizable effort in compiling the arguments in one place, I would like you to reply to my question here. I want to have assurance that we don't find ourselves in the same situation after the mediation, with you discarding the result of the mediation. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:20, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Prot (again)

Protected, again. Ah well. Complain here William M. Connolley (talk) 20:48, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

No complaint. Possibly not necessary, since both editors engaged in reversion said, before the protection, that they were stopping. But it's gone in a week, nothing in the long view. Naturally, Bill, you protected the The_Wrong_Version. (Seriously, the version you protected was one where my last edit was reverted, but that meant that half of the important stuff I'd put in was left, so this was progress over the pre-revert-war version. What had been done with that, by the other editor was to balance it, after having taken it all out twice, which is what I'd been suggesting our policies would require instead of blindly reverting out material sourced to publications meeting WP:RS. I took a certain risk, a risk that I almost never take. As far as I recall, the last time I hit 3RR was in 2007.) --Abd (talk) (talk) 21:36, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Gone in a week? It seems to be June 4th, and it is still protected. Titanium Dragon (talk) 02:23, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

It was gone in a week, then an editor repeated his edit warring and it was protected again. See the protection log. See also discussion below, [[21]]. I complained about this to no effect, so far. If I really cared, I'd be compiling diffs for reports, etc. But I'd rather work on background and developing consensus here, and I can do that with protection in place, and I didn't see anyone else trying to get the article unprotected. Care about it? Do something about it, or help those who are trying to do something about it! --Abd (talk) 03:28, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

sections reverted

Proposed explanations

According to Storms (2007), no published theory has been able to meet all the requirements of basic physical principles, while adequately explaining the experimental results he considers established or otherwise worthy of theoretical consideration.[1]

The source:

1. <ref>{{harvnb|Storms|2007|p=173}}</ref>

I assert that Storms is reliable for a statement like this. Is there any contradiction to it in any other reliable source? Besides, it's attributed. Why was this removed?--Abd (talk) 05:45, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Theory of ⁸Be intermediary, not simple d-d fusion

(this section edited to expand consensus)

Outside of mainstream-accepted explanations , cold fusion researchers have proposed a number of different possible fusion pathways other than deuterium-deuterium fusion, but most of them produce too little energy per resulting helium nucleus to explain the excess heat claims of 25±5 MeV/⁴He.[1] One that predicts this energy has been advanced by Takahashi, that four deuterons condense to make ⁸Be, which quickly decays to two alpha particles, each with 23.8 MeV.[2][3] --Abd (talk) 18:38, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

The sources:

1. <ref>{{harvnb|Storms|2007|p=180}}</ref>

2. <ref>Takahashi, A., Deuteron cluster fusion and ash, in [http://www.iscmns.org/ ASTI-5], Asti, Italy, 2004, cited in {{harvnb|Storms|2007|p=180}}</ref>

3. <ref>He Jing-tang, ''Nuclear fusion inside condense matters,'' Front. Phys. China (2007) 1: 96―102</ref>

above edited per suggestion from Enric Naval. Version before edit at [22]--Abd (talk) 21:56, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

---

What, specifically, is the problem with this? There are a number of theories that have been advanced to explain cold fusion, (besides the null hypothesis of experimental error!) While it can be argued that Storms is fringe, or that He Jing-Tang is fringe (harder, perhaps, I think he's a nuclear physicist), the publishers aren't fringe! these sources are being used to establish notability within the field. If cold fusion is a widely rejected field, i.e., if the general belief is that cold fusion is not a real phenomenon, then it should go without saying that theories to explain it would also not be generally accepted! What is the problem with stating this proposed explanation? It's not being asserted that Be-8 is formed. The decay of Be-8 to two alpha particles, though, isn't controversial, that's what would happen, it's a very unstable isotope, see Beryllium-8. What we say here is not that deuterons fuse to form Be-8, but only that Takahashi has proposed this. And, of course, I assert that because it's cited both an independently published volume on the science, and in a peer-reviewed journal, it's notable. --Abd (talk) 05:45, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Why is this theory important? Well, if that kind of fusion could occur, it would explain: the lack of neutron radiation, the low levels of tritium, the conservation of momentum problem, the branching ratio difficulty, the finding of helium correlated with excess heat, the extreme sensitivity of the effect to exact surface conditions, and possibly more. What would this theory predict: alpha radiation. And this is found and confirmed. "Catching" the fusion "in the act" would be extremely difficult, but only one "miracle" is required for this theory: quadruple deuteron fusion. That some effects might exist with multiple deuterons is indicated by the transmutation work of Iwamura et al. The claim that no theories have been advanced is quite misleading. Please remember that Quantum mechanics is inadequate to predict behavior in the nuclear environment when three or more bodies are involved. That requires, I understand, Quantum field theory or Quantum electrodynamics, and Fleischmann's work was intended, not to discover "cold fusion" as an energy source, but to test the limits of quantum mechanics. From our article on Quantum mechanics, which matches my memory of the subject from Feynman: It turns out that analytic solutions of Schrödinger's equation are only available for a small number of model Hamiltonians, of which the quantum harmonic oscillator, the particle in a box, the hydrogen molecular ion and the hydrogen atom are the most important representatives. Even the helium atom, which contains just one more electron than hydrogen, defies all attempts at a fully analytic treatment.

None of this indicates that this actually happens. It only shows that the claims that theory conclusively prohibits cold fusion, or that there is no theory explaining it, are false and easily shown to be so, with reliable source, and only by rejecting reliable source because it's "fringe" can this be blocked, so that the reader remains unaware of it.

We now have in the article, hydrino theory, but not the much more mainstream Be-8 theory. Why? Well, the New York times has covered Blacklight Power, that's why. The Be-8 theory is only covered in peer-reviewed publications (I think I can find more than just the Front. Phys. China article, though that should really be enough), and the independently published, but not mass-market, Storms (World Scientific, 2007). --Abd (talk) 15:17, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

On the ⁸Be thing, I would agree on this wording with two tweaks:

a) replace that "however" with "one of them that would produce enough energy", as the sentence before says "most of them" not "all of them"

b) the start of the paragraph should read something like "Outside of mainstream-accepted explanations , cold fusion researchers have proposed a number of different possible fusion pathways other than deuterium-deuterium fusion,(...)". I think that this is mecessary to address the issues raised by Phil153 about weight [23] (fourth paragraph). That's an introduction that makes clear to readers that this part is describing the POV of the group of CF researchers outside of mainstream that is described in other part of the article, so it would satisfy WP:NPOV and WP:UNDUE.

--Enric Naval (talk) 21:05, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to edit the proposals above to reflect your changes, Enric, since they seem reasonable to me. Thanks. Uh, "explanations"? Okay, there are two. One is actually very reputable, might still be a majority or close: "unexplained anomaly, probably not nuclear in origin." "Experimental error" is the other. The "experimental error," for excess heat, is probably a small minority position now, among those who know the research. From 2004, already one-third of the DoE reviewers were inclined to a nuclear explanation. My guess is that "experimental error" is down below ten or twenty percent of those who look at the research. There are a lot of scientists who long ago decided to stop looking. --Abd (talk) 21:46, 22 May 2009 (UTC) 21:44, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

The 2004 Takahashi paper has been discussed previously on this talk page, and the conclusion at the time was that it does not support the ⁸Be claim. User:JohnAspinall had read the paper and indicated that it does not address the claim of a ⁸Be intermediary that Storms(2007) alleges that it does. Please address these concerns prior to adding material that has been previously considered on this talk page and rejected for cause. --Noren (talk) 00:54, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Can we have another tweak to appease these concerns? Something like adding at the end "Mainstream theory predicts that the fusion of four d nuclei has a much lower probability than the fusion of 3 nuclei, which already has a much lower probability than the fusion of two d nuclei." --Enric Naval (talk) 11:48, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Got any source for that, Enric? I don't know of any, in fact, and don't know that it's true. It would be true in free space, obviously. "Much lower" would be an understatement! But under conditions of confinement, the relationship would be complex. On the one hand, as you add deuterons to a confined space, the probability of fusion increases. On the other hand, the "space" starts to resist the addition of deuterons, and deuterons will be expelled; in addition, the stress on the chemical bonds holding the space together increases. There may be a peak, a level of maximum fusion rate, and it might be sharp. I.e. fusion of two deuterons might be rare, of three a little more, but not much more, and four high enough to see effects before the increasing rarity of the conditions again reduces fusion probability drastically. I'm not aware of any reliable source showing the claim about lower probability, but if you can find one, of course! I have already addressed the concerns previously expressed below. They were misplaced as applied to this text, which is only about a proposed theory. The mainstream response? Mostly none. You want to say that, I don't think I would object, but making up a mainstream theoretical response is beyond the pale. We could say, "There has been no mainstream response to this proposal." Negatives are a bit tricky because they are clearly synthetic, unless based in a source, but sometimes this kind of thing is done as a compromise, and all it takes is someone to find one mainstream response, and out that goes and in goes the actual response. --Abd (talk) 14:11, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Hum, Takahashi said in one paper[24] said that he had observed fusions of 3 nuclei happening 10⁴ less times than to 2 nuclei fusion, when conventional physics predict 2³⁰. We can assume that 4 nuclei fusion will be at least as unfrequent in respect to 3 nuclei fusion, so mainstream theory would predict that they would be at least 10³⁰⁺³⁰ = 10⁶⁰ less frequent than 2 nuclei fusions. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:14, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Noren. The reference at that time was to a 2001 paper by Storms hosted by New Energy Times that has been moved to [25] The paper is worth reading. For our purposes:

The insistence that gamma emission must accompany helium production is based on how this fusion branch behaves in a plasma. Because the reaction d + d = 4He has two nuclei producing one nucleus, gamma radiation must occur to conserve momentum. On the other hand, suppose the following reaction occurs in a lattice where the d concentration is very high[119] [120]: d+d+d+d --> ^8Be --> 2 ^4He. Such a reaction would not require gamma emission because 8Be would promptly decompose into two particles, each having 23.8 MeV. Other, similar reactions can be proposed to avoid the need to emit gamma radiation. This suggestion shifts the problem from requiring gamma emission, to accepting that such reactions can actually occur. Evidence for such multibody interaction has been reported by Takahashi et al.[121] based on the energy of tritons emitted when titanium is bombarded by D+.

Notes:

119. Chubb, S.R. and T.A. Chubb. Quantum Mechanics of "Cold and "Not-So-Cold Fusion". in The First Annual Conference on Cold Fusion. 1990. University of Utah Research Park, Salt Lake City, Utah: National Cold Fusion Institute.

120. Takahashi, A., Some Considerations of Multibody Fusion in Metal-Deuterides. Trans. Fusion Technol., 1994. 26(4T): p. 451.

121. Takahashi, A., et al., Detection of three-body deuteron fusion in titanium deuteride under the stimulation by a deuteron beam. Phys. Lett. A, 1999. 255: p. 89.

The analysis at our Talk page was largely original research, which is, in my opinion, acceptable for our purposes in discussion, though, obviously, not for article text. To cut it short, JohnAspinall criticized the theory based on evidence for it, specifically note 121, being allegedly insufficient. That is not a denial of the fact that the theory has been advanced. Storms only used that paper as evidence for multibody reactions occurring. However, to understand how the multibody theory might work, imagine a box with openings in each side; the palladium lattice is an array of such boxes. One deuteron into the box: very happy, a little heat is released (the heat of formation of palladium deuteride). Another in: it begins to get tight, probably one deuteron is expelled thorough one of the faces into an adjacent box, but this takes time. Another in: tighter, faster expulsion, or the box ruptures. Another in: this can't last long, but it might be tight enough for long enough that the four deuterons realize that "It will be much more comfortable in here if we get together." So they do. Take this rough explanation and do the math on it. Warning: the math is probably too difficult for present-day analytical techniques, at least using classical quantum mechanics. But, for certain, it's beyond me. There is much other work by Takahashi, referring to the hypothesis, in conference papers.

Googling source 120 should ice it. 120 is cited in the Mosier-Boss Naturwissenschaften (2009 96:135–142} paper, Triple tracks in CR-39 as the result of Pd–D Co-deposition: evidence of energetic neutrons, with explicit reference to the multibody hypothesis. Here is what they say:

The multibody reactions proposed by Takahashi (1994) involve deuteria occupying the tetrahedral and octahedral sites in the metal lattice. In the proposed 3D and 4D fusion reactions occurring in the metal deuterides, high-energy α particles are formed that dissociate deuterons in the system to produce neutrons with a continuous spectrum in the 0 to 10 MeV region. These high energy α particles are also expected to produce Bremsstrahlung X-rays. Experimental data that support this mechanism are evidence of recoil carbon and oxygen atoms on the backside of the CR-39 suggestive of 1.25–8 MeV neutrons (see discussion in “Electronic supplementary material”) and Bremsstrahlung radiation that has been observed in the X-ray and γ-ray spectra obtained during Pd–D co-deposition (Szpak et al. 1996).

Mosier-Boss is leaning on the Takahashi hypothesis to explain why she found a low level of energetic neutrons. They are proposed to be secondary products, which is why they occur at such low levels. However, any other mechanism that allows fusion and predominantly results in energetic alpha particles at the 24 MeV level would likewise explain the neutrons. However, I'd expect those other mechanisms to show more evidence of the other pathways, as JohnAspinall noted. He apparently didn't consider that lattice confinement with less than four deuterons might be insufficient to produce significant fusion. Good thing, too. Otherwise, load palladium with deuterium, disturb it to create a shock wave in the deuterium causing local compression, and bang! there goes the lab and maybe the whole city block. --Abd (talk) 12:41, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

The 8Be theory, and other notable proposed explanations, should definitely be included, IMO. If the section gets too long, it can be made into a new article and briefly summarized here. In a brief summary, many explanations can be mentioned: a couple of them in a sentence or two each, perhaps, plus some more perhaps listed as one word or phrase each (to show people what they can find out about at the other article). ☺Coppertwig (talk) 01:06, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

"proposed explanations" section seems too narrow

extended discussion.

I noticed that the proposed explanations section only covers two expl.: experimental error and hydrino theory. They are many more theories out there- both on sources of error or how fusion could happen - or even how excess heat could happen w/out fusion. ideally, a section called "proposed explanations" would give a good survey of them, but the section as is only lists two, and in so doing give them way too much weight in comparison to other theories (namely, infinity). I think this section should show more of the various explanations - a broad survey - or if this cannot be done well in a reasonable amount of space, we should consider removing it, or perhaps putting a broad survey of explanations in the article in some other way. Kevin Baastalk 15:21, 22 May 2009 (UTC) Ack! You're just noticing that! I've only been complaining about that for months! For the record, any set of experimental observations dealing with the same class of observation (i.e., excess heat, He4 detection, pits, etc.) has a conventional explanation available. My original contribution to the article was to describe these for the specific classes noted in the article in support of the 'nuclear' cause. And I was asked to do this becasue the editors of that time period (c. May '08) noted the same thing you did! Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:42, 26 May 2009 (UTC) If there were "proposed explanations" listed in a reliable source, like one of the DoE reviews, that would be great. If we're still talking about proposed explanations listed in fringe journals and books, I would oppose that. Hipocrite (talk) 15:31, 22 May 2009 (UTC) Excess heat - 3 pubs in Thermochimica Acta; He4 - DOE review panel concerns on contamination coupled with Clarke paper in Fus. Sci. and Tech (2003); heavy metal transmutation - not peer reveiwed, but specific examples of finding contaminants point of origin and/or re-identifying contaminants; pits - primarily evidence of physical damage effects and admission of same in papers (some not peer reviewed) + commonality of agreement on specific factors in experiments that would lead to such; and on and on. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:49, 26 May 2009 (UTC) I've gathered the impression that you're pretty liberal in your use of the term "fringe", esp. when it comes to any publication that's ever said anything pertaining to C.F., and I certainly wouldn't think it prudent to narrow our sources down to one four-page review, though I realize that's not what you're suggesting. I just think that we should focus on explanations in as much as how much they represent the active research community, since, after all, our goal is to inform the reader about the what is out there and what is going on. In any case, if you have any suggestions about how to make the section better, e.g. some of the more common / representative proposals, or some ideas on wording / phrasing, i'd be interested to hear them. Kevin Baastalk 15:46, 22 May 2009 (UTC) I was just looking back, and early in March, Phil153, who has generally taken a quite skeptical position here, acknowledged that the paper in Frontiers of Physics In China might be usable somewhere in the article, he wanted to see a specific proposed edit.[26] Well, he got one, though he hasn't edited this article for months, see above for what Hipocrite removed. "Proposed explanations" would, for a fringe topic, necessarily be coming from fringe sources. If, aside from the "experimental error" explanation, they were coming from mainstream sources, the topic would not be fringe, by definition! The mainstream doesn't propose explanations of experimental phenomena they consider a mistake. From Storms, the two explanations that are most notable are hydrino theory, which involves a major revision of quantum mechanics, literally at the fringe (i.e., as a special case not normally seen, fractional energy levels for electrons, below the minimum Bohr orbit), and the Beryllium-8 hypothesis. But there are others which have been published in peer-reviewed journals. I wanted to find secondary sources, and Storms and He Jing-Tang are secondary sources, reviews of the field. I frankly don't understand why we can't use them to source theories as notable. No implication was made or implied that these theories were "accepted by the mainstream" which remains blissfully ignorant of them, as far as I've been able to tell. Cold fusion researchers have largely steered clear of theory, since they consider it most important to establish the phenomena first. Don't you think that's a good idea? Figure out if it is happening before trying to figure out why it happens? But Takahashi is an exception. See http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/TakahashiAtetrahedra.pdf , which is, unfortunately, a conference paper, though it gives an idea of Takahashi's work. From it, The extended model should contain consistent story of He-4 production without neutrons and mass-8-and-charge-4-increased transmutation without hard radiation. Around focal points (t-sites, o-sites, defects, etc.), microscopic coherence in radial dynamic motion of neighboring deuterons may realize the short-time bosonization of electrons to make sufficient screening ofCoulomb repulsion for fusion. There is [27], which appears to be in a peer-reviewed journal.[28] I haven't seen the whole paper, but it does talk about 4D fusion in the page shown. --Abd (talk) 17:46, 22 May 2009 (UTC) The 2004 DOE review did discuss one theory: To explain these unusual characteristics, the reviewers were presented with a theoretical framework that purported to describe how collective energy from the material lattice couples to a deuteron pair to induce fusion, how the only fusion reaction channel that occurs would be the production of 4He, and how all the energy is coupled back into the material in the form of heat instead of high energy gamma-rays. The reviewers raised serious concerns regarding the assumptions postulated in the proposed theoretical model for the explanation for 4He production. The problem is that this theory doesn't seem to be generally accepted as viable in the cold fusion field. Sure, it was proposed. Back then. Our article had some stuff about "coupling to the lattice," which is, in fact, a stretch, though it is one of the obvious possibilities that one would think of to explain the lack of gammas, but it's not just the gammas, it's the branching ratio; the mode for gamma emission is rare. The Be-8 theory, which certainly existed at the time of the 2004 review, doesn't seem to have been considered. I looked at the McKubre paper presented to the review panel and it does not seem to have contained proposed theories. However, the panel may have been orally presented with a theory, it might be somewhere in the papers cited in the McKubre review. The 2004 DOE review is not of a quality comparable to peer-reviewed publications. What we usually look at is the summary, and we don't even know who the author of that summary is. We have access to the individual review papers, and those, of course, aren't peer-reviewed, they are individual expert opinions and they widely differ from each other. But the 2004 DOE review is one of the best gauges we have as to "mainstream" opinion on cold fusion, among mainstream scientists in related fields who actually look at the evidence. My position is that "mainstream scientists" who aren't familiar with the research aren't any better informed than much of the public, and they get their opinions either from the media, or from a look at very old data, twenty years old, in fact. --Abd (talk) 18:03, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Criticism of hydrino theory

extended discussion.

Hipocrite, in adding criticism of hydrino theory to balance the proposed explanation of cold fusion, has pointed to some very interesting work. First of all, here is the text he added: Mills' explanation of Classical Quantum Mechanics and hydrinos has been doubted in the literature[116] and is not accepted by most experts in the field nor by mainstream science,[117][118][119] His critics say that, although he has published theory papers in peer-reviewed journals, he has published only in those dealing with speculative work.[117] They also say that he hasn't addressed several deep flaws in his theory.[117] Sources: 116. Rathke, A critical analysis of the hydrino model, New Journal of Physics, 2005, 7:127. 117. Erico Guizzo, Loser: Hot or Not?, IEEE Spectrum, January 2009. 118. Morrison, Chris, Blacklight Power bolsters its impossible claims of a new renewable energy source, New York Times, October 21, 2008. Rathke's paper begins with: Recently, experimental results have been published in respectable physics journals that have been interpreted as support for a new model of the hydrogen atom [1]-[4]. This model predicts the existence of new orbital states for the electron of a hydrogen atom with enhanced binding energy compared to the known hydrogen ground state. These new states have been named hydrinos. Applications of these alleged states have already been considered. In particular, the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts has funded a study to investigate new propulsion concepts based on the transition of conventional hydrogen states to hydrino states [5]. Although the hydrino model has received considerable public attention, the discussion of the underlying theory has mainly been restricted to the sweeping statement that the hydrino model is in contradiction to quantum mechanics and hence dubious (cf e.g. [6]). This lack of theoretical consideration is particularly unfortunate in view of the wealth of experimental evidence that has been published in peer reviewed journals in favour of the hydrino model [1]-[4], [7]-[22]. In this paper, we attempt to fill this gap by giving a brief review of the theory underlying the hydrino model. We investigate its internal consistency and comment on the possibility that hydrino-like states exist in standard quantum mechanics. This is quite remarkable. First of all, it treats seriously the experimental evidence for the existence of hydrino (I had no idea there was a "wealth of experimental evidence that has been published in peer reviewed journals in favor of the hydrino model), whereas editors here, including Hipocrite, have treated it as ridiculous pseudoscience, perhaps fraud. I sincerely congratulate Hipocrite for bringing this to our attention, and the wonder here is that he referred to this theory as "garbage,"[29] and his comments as "truth." But I presume that by now he's actually read the paper and may have a different opinion. Rathke is not actually criticizing so much hydrino theory, as it would apply to Cold fusion, as much as the deterministic model that predicted other hydrino behavior, Mills' Grand unified theory of classical quantum mechanics. Rathke concludes, however, that hydrinos are incompatible with standard quantum mechanics, which is certainly no surprise; however, in his more detailed text, he leaves wiggle room: a state of the hydrogen atom that is less energetic than the ground state cannot be ruled out completely under some exotic conditions at our current level of understanding. Such conditions are however not likely to be fulfilled in the relatively low-energy, low electromagnetic field environment of the plasmas studied by Mills et al. And he regrets that there hasn't been, at least as of his writing, independent reproduction of Mills' results by other experimental groups. That's something we see all the time with cold fusion. Remarkable experimental results, theoretically verifiable (or refutable). Nobody bothers. So many mysteries, so little time! The IEEE Spectrum article is also quite interesting. It's highly skeptical, "This is part of IEEE Spectrum's SPECIAL REPORT: WINNERS & LOSERS 2009, The Year's Best and Worst of Technology," perhaps this is why Hipocrite cited it three times in three sentences. The New York Times article has this: Its “hydrino” theory isn’t put forth by a single crackpot; instead, the company employs a good handful of high-level scientists who would presumably rebel if the idea was totally false. It has also taken over $60 million in venture funding. Despite a hearty rejection by the scientific mainstream, and being ignored for years on end, its founder, Randell Mills, has plugged on. We covered the company extensively back in May, when it started saying it had a prototype 50 kilowatt reactor. And then, As I noted in May, it would be odd, if Blacklight were a complete sham, for Mills to place himself in an end game in which he would be definitively proven wrong within just a year or two. So there does seem to be something deeper here. Physicists will deny the hydrino theory, and they may be right; perhaps that’s why there was a distinct note of smugness in Mills’ voice as he said, “The controversy and academic debate won’t stop commercialization.” For our purposes here, we don't need to know -- at all -- if hydrino theory is correct, compatible with standard quantum mechanics, accepted or rejected. What we need to know is that it is notable as a theory, advanced to explain the phenomena called cold fusion, and that is certainly true. But I personally wonder that there is a science writer at the New York Times who says, "there does seem to be something deeper here," as he postpones judgment, but we have Wikipedia editors who are dead certain that this is all bogus. What I'll say is, "I don't know." I can only report what is in the sources, and think about it a little. --Abd (talk) 20:02, 23 May 2009 (UTC) Just because someone writes an article about it doesn't make it notable. Any time someone makes sweeping claims in their opening, you need to be dubious. Titanium Dragon (talk) 00:12, 25 May 2009 (UTC) Well, that's a subjective standard. "Dubious" isn't part of our reliable source guidelines. In any case, there is plenty of source showing notability for hydrino theory: publication in peer-reviewed journals, criticism of it published in a peer-reviewed journal, notice in major media, etc. I'll note Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Randell Mills, which decided on a redirect to hydrino theory, which was later moved to Blacklight Power. Titanium Dragon, how would you propose we determine notability? --Abd (talk) 01:49, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Review of Storms' book by Eric Sheldon

extended discussion.

The book of Storms received a four page review by Eric Sheldon here in Contemporary Physics in 2008 (vol 49, pages 375–378). Sheldon is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Massachusetts. This article describes hydrino theory as "nowadays widely-discredited". The article of Rathke, cited above, is also damning in its conclusions. Because it is regarded as pseudophysics, at odds with conventional quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, hydrino theory rightly has no WP article of its own. It's not clear why Abd, who gives every appearance of having had no formal training in quantum theory, should be actively advocating hydrino theory here. It is exactly for that reason that the summarising and evaluation of books on WP is through reviews by professional academics like Sheldon, i.e. secondary sources. Pushing crackpot pseudoscience in this way, ignoring secondary sources (such as Sheldon's review), cherry-picking quotes from negative reviews to create a positive spin — this style of editing seems to run counter to all of wikipedia's core policies. I have no interest in editing the namespace article but have watched with consternation as Abd has attempted to generate pseudoscience fatigue on this talk page by his screeds of endless prose on the subject: why is he unduly pushing pseudophysics? Mathsci (talk) 02:54, 25 May 2009 (UTC) For the record, the Contemporary Physics journal had an impact factor of 4.651 in 2007 in category "physics" [30], Naturwissenschaften had 1.955 in category "multidisciplinary sciences" [31], and Frontiers of Physics in China didn't have an impact factor. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:17, 25 May 2009 (UTC) Mathsci, calm down. I'm not "advocating hydrino theory." I'm reporting, as a Wikipedia editor should, what is in reliable sources. Hydrino theory is fringe. It certainly is at odds with standard quantum mechanics, that's the whole point, in fact. As to formal training, well, I did sit with Richard P. Feynman through his lectures on quantum theory, but that was a long time ago. I'm not "ignoring Sheldon's review," this is the first time it's been brought to my attention. Thanks for pointing it out. As to hydrino theory, it's not clear from the literature that it is actually "discredited." Certainly it's not accepted. But publication continues in peer-reviewed journals, it appears, none of which is particularly relevant here. Hydrino theory is notable as a possible explanation for cold fusion, and we have adequate source for that. It isn't necessary for a "proposed explanation" to be true, or accepted, and, in fact, were one accepted, cold fusion would no longer be fringe, would it? It's enough that it is notably proposed, which is the case. As to core policies, I'm hewing closely to ArbComm's interpretation of them, with respect to fringe science, whereas, Matchsci, you are quite out on a limb, busy sawing it off. --Abd (talk) 03:28, 25 May 2009 (UTC) One problem. The URL given for the PDF for Sheldon's review doesn't work. I found the article, [32], but I'd have to pay to read it. --Abd (talk) 03:41, 25 May 2009 (UTC) Then perhaps you might have to abandon editing the article? Mathsci (talk) 03:56, 25 May 2009 (UTC) <Immediate response suppressed>. I have to buy every source that some pseudoskeptic suggests? No, Mathsci, you are quite welcome to use sources that you have access to in order to balance the article, should that be required. I will also read the article when I have the opportunity. You provided, above, nothing of interest, nothing that I didn't already know, except for a presently useless reference to a review, though the first words, which I did find in Google scholar, were quite interesting, it looked like they were lauding the book (Storms). Hipocrite added balancing material, and, you might notice, I didn't attempt to take it out. I accepted it. At least in substance. I simply found it interesting to review, you can call that "cherry-picking" if you like, but ... your POV is showing. As it has been for some time. --Abd (talk) 04:02, 25 May 2009 (UTC) Abd, I think it's you that needs to calm down. You know the secondary source exists now, so it would be intellectually dishonest of you to ignore it. Anyway, if you had checked your email, you would have noticed that I had made a copy of the article available to you a little while back. Mathsci (talk) 04:20, 25 May 2009 (UTC) Oh and by the way, WP:NPA. I have no point of view on cold fusion, just on your use of sources. My namespace editing record speaks for itself. Mathsci (talk) 04:24, 25 May 2009 (UTC) I would be dishonest, indeed. Thanks, very much, for the email, which was mailed at Mon, 25 May 2009 04:01:13 +0000. I'd say that the claim about "you would have noticed" was a tad overheated! I don't check my email every minute. I've downloaded the paper and it's quite interesting. As to POV, it's quite apparently a strong "anti-fringe" POV which has, above, identified hydrino theory as "crackpot pseudoscience." That's polemic, not NPOV. Further, the characterization of my reference to hydrino theory, which, it appears, has been accepted by consensus here, and which was rooted in reliable sources, plenty of them, as "pushing crackpot science," is highly offensive and, really, Mathsci, properly, you should apologize. I have no POV on hydrino theory other than an opinion that it is notable. If I needed to decide if it was worthy of the Nobel Prize or of prosecution for fraud, I'd have to toss a coin. We will almost certainly know the difference within a year or two, Mills has been playing what's been called, in the New York Times, an "end game." For all I know, Mills will disappear with a few million dollars, having worked the idea to the limit. On the other hand, there are reasons to be skeptical of this view, as well. --Abd (talk) 14:50, 25 May 2009 (UTC) Abd, a simple "thank you" would have sufficed. Please stop using this talk page as a forum. On this page you seem to be suggesting pseudoscientific theories like hydrino theory should not be dismissed. The problem is that you argue this directly: you never provide any kind of secondary source. In the case of hydrino theory, it has been discredited by several secondary sources. To paraphrase your favourite physics lecturer, "Surely you're joking, Mr Abd." Mathsci (talk) 22:15, 25 May 2009 (UTC) I'm using this talk page to explore the topic with the goal of producing a better article. You seem to be using it to explore how you can accuse me of POV-pushing. I've been researching the field, intensely, and started editing the article. You haven't done either and don't seem to care to do so. It is not our job to accept or dismiss theories. We can discuss them for background, and the belief that one can approach a topic like this without such discussion, and still end up with a good article and consensus, is a fantasy. I "never provide any kind of secondary source"? Really? Storms is a secondary source. He Jing-Tang is a secondary source. The Guardian is a secondary source. The New York Times is a secondary source, and now Sheldon, thanks to you, is a secondary source, a very useful one. Feynman wasn't just my "favorite physics lecturer," he was my favorite person. Because of him, I can beat cross-rhythms, 5:4 easily, maybe 6:5 at my peak, he could do 7:6, as I recall. And I can think in a way that integrates various points of view, a capacity that seems to be blatantly missing from what you report above. Mathsci, You say that I'm "suggesting pseudoscientific theories like hydrino theory should not be dismissed." It seems you think that they should be dismissed, presumably by us, which is a POV, and, as applied to our work here, would represent POV-pushing. Above, I look at the balancing sources provided by Hipocrite. Did you think that this meant that I think those sources and criticisms should be "dismissed"? I was not objecting and did not object to that material, I didn't revert it when I had the chance. What I noticed was that the critical material acknowledges the notability of hydrino theory. This, apparently, disturbs you, but it is of importance to our work, it underscores why hydrino theory must be covered. Not "promoted" or "dismissed." Covered. --Abd (talk) 23:55, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Proposal to move "non-nuclear" section to the "Discussion" section

To keep the article structure consistent, we should move the "Non-nuclear explanations for excess heat" section to just after the "experimental error" section. Does anyone object? Olorinish (talk) 13:14, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

We should remove significant redundancies, aside from the natural redundancy in the lead. I do think it is a bit much to be saying, over and over, "this is rejected by the mainstream." What's accurate is that it was rejected, twenty years ago. Current status is far more ambiguous, with plenty of source that the field is being given more respect and appropriate skepticism, i.e., "show me!" instead of "don't bother!" --Abd (talk) 14:29, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Let's organize our thoughts

Apparently there are currently two big points of disagreement: Whether the article should have a hydrino section, and whether the article should have a Be8 section. I personally think the article would be fine with or without them, which is why I haven't been commenting much lately. I do, however, think the hydrino section should be smaller (about half of its current size) considering the current level of support for hydrino existence. Perhaps people could use this space for brief, productive discussion of what we should do about these two issues. Olorinish (talk) 13:27, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Hydrino theory is notable. Storms gives it several pages. The general theory itself is highly controversial, with continued publication in peer-reviewed journals and a relative paucity of specific criticism; Rathke is the best criticism to date, but doesn't appear to have been confirmed; Blacklight Power hosts a recent refutation of Rathke, citing math errors, but that's not usable unless we simply want to to note that the authors have replied. I think it's been submitted, we'll see if it gets published.

If you can present hydrino theory in fewer words, fine. What's there now is quite short, and if you want to trim it, the most obvious place is trimming the criticism, which is quite redundant, summarized by what we already know: just as cold fusion is not generally accepted, neither is any theory that proposes an explanation; if such a theory were, in fact, accepted, it would be all over, cold fusion would be accepted. Controversy over Mills' theories is covered at Blacklight Power and only the briefest summary should be in our article; Hipocrite was quite correct to add the reference to the Blacklight Power article.

By the way, I don't see a controversy over the hydrino section, it looks like it's been accepted. Be8 wasn't accepted by Hipocrite and he edit warred to keep it out, as I did to assert it, though usually with compromise, but I'm not seeing any objection to it now beyond Noren's comment, which simply asked a question about it. --Abd (talk) 14:38, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't like how the current version dedicates all that space to explain all that theory. I would reduce it to say that it started as an attempt to explain CF as a non-nuclear phenomena, that it theorizes a lower state of the electron in the deuterium molecule, how this is used to try to explain the occasional radiation, and then that it's widely discredited among scientifics (specially theorical physicists?), mainly because the theory goes against known quantum mechanics and doesn't offer experimental evidence.

That covers the relationship to CF, makes enough explanation to understand the concept, and makes clear where the Hydrino theory stands from the point of current mainstream science and why. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:55, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, your explanation is inaccurate, for starters. We really should have the full explanation somewhere, what I put in isn't full, at all, it's drastically cut down. The following isn't full either, it's cut down, but it's exact quote from Storms:

Mills proposes that the electron in a hydrogen isotope can occupy energy levels below those associated with normal Bohr orbits. For an electron to enter these fractional quantum states, a special catalyst atom is required.... This process is exothermic.... [but so far, not nuclear]. Once the electron has reached a sufficiently collapsed state, the nuclear charge would be shielded and the deuteron could fuse or enter another nucleus, thus providing a solution to the Coulomb barrier problem as first proposed by Mills. During fusion, the Mills electron might be ejected as a prompt beta particle, thus providing a solution to the single-product problem [i.e., conservation of momentum].

Normally, most deuterons are not close enough to a Mills catalyst to react. However, when deuterons are forced to diffuse through the lattice they have a much greater probability of contacting a rare catalyst atom....

There is much more. Note that none of this is proposed by Storms as "established fact," he is reporting a theory.

This is what we have now:

Main article: Blacklight Power

Mills (2006) has suggested that electrons can occupy energy levels lower than previously understood, but that under normal conditions, a barrier exists to prevent transitions to such a reduced energy state. Mills postulates that some atoms with an appropriate available energy level can catalyze the transition of electrons to this state. If an electron has reached a sufficiently collapsed state, this electron may then shield two deuterons similarly to muon-catalyzed fusion, allowing the nuclei to approach and fuse, and the electron could then be emitted as a prompt beta particle, thus explaining the lack of gamma radiation and conserving momentum.

Plus the critical material Hipocrite added.

I can boil it down more, I think:

Mills (2006) has suggested that electrons can occupy energy levels lower than previously understood. If an electron has reached a sufficiently collapsed state, this electron may shield the nuclear charge and allow the nuclei to approach and fuse, and the electron could then be ejected, explaining the lack of gamma radiation and conserving momentum.

Together with the link to Blacklight Power, where there could be more detail on hydrino theory and its application to cold fusion, this should cover it. On the other hand, some of the same editors have been working on Blacklight Power and I suspect that there might be resistance to inclusion of cold fusion theory there; Blacklight Power's project does not appear to involve cold fusion at all, it allegedly generates energy simply from the collapse of the electron. --Abd (talk) 17:35, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Notability of Storms (2007)

Mathsci kindly provided me a way to read a review of Storms, The Science of LOw Energy Nuclear Reaction, World Scientific, 2007.

E. Sheldon, An overview of almost 20 years’ research on cold fusion, Contemporary Physics, Vol. 49, No. 5, September–October 2008, 375–378.

Some editors, above, had been claiming that Storms had attracted no attention from the mainstream. The review shows otherwise. From the review:

... this timely ‘compilation of evidence and explanations about cold fusion’ as the first such detailed synopsis of nearly 20 years’ intensive experimental and theoretical research worldwide to provide a comprehensive up-to-date overview. Within its 312 pages the book features, among its 16 tables, a nine-page summary of experiments (up to 2004) as Table 2 on pp. 53–61 that lists some 181 studies reporting anomalous power production on various systems; the text concludes with a 77-page bibliography which cites more than 1060 publications, followed by a fairly detailed seven-page index, to make this a worthwhile, informative acquisition.

[...]

Storms writes in an informal style devoid of polemics or gullible advocacy, although a degree of caution is advisable in regard to uncritical acceptance of some results and hypotheses in his compilation.

[...]

Whatever is to be the outcome of objective professional consideration by protagonists and antagonists of ‘cold fusion’ phenomena there is no doubt that the latest descriptive accounts, including especially Storms’ book and the Web site, offer an inducement to re-examine the extensive experimental and theoretical writings with an open mind. As for myself, I remain sceptical: I cannot accept the notion of the process to be any form of true ‘fusion’ and am even unable yet to accede to its being dubbed a ‘nuclear reaction’ – I’d be much more at ease to designate this as an ‘unclear reaction’.

Yes, Sheldon writes what was stated about hydrino theory, and this merely establishes more notability for it. The reference was not to Storm's citation of the theory, but was Sheldon's own recounting of his history with cold fusion, and was in reference to Mills' 1991 paper, with only a passing reference to the 2007 theoretical tome written by Mills, with no detail at all on the latter.

So, once again, thanks, Mathsci, this source establishes, clearly, notability for Storms, which was already reliable source, usable with appropriate caution. (As Sheldon notes in what I quoted above.)

As to Sheldon's expressed skeptical position, it's quite understandable, but many physicists started to revise their opinions this year, as the Mosier-Boss neutron results came to be widely known. I'll see if I can contact Sheldon, I live in Massachusetts. --Abd (talk) 15:19, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

By the way, the "web site" mentioned is lenr-canr.org, currently blacklisted at meta. Real physicists who have taken the trouble of becoming a bit more knowledgeable than the norm, on this topic, seem to have a different opinion of that web site than non-physicist editors and pseudoskeptics, ready to shout "crackpot!" and "kook!" at the appearance of something they don't understand. --Abd (talk) 15:23, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

The review is actually an essay by a retired physicist, trying to be impartial and keep an open mind, but neverthless concluding that the explanations for lenr involving physics are unconvincing. Instead of "nuclear physics", Sheldon suggests "unclear physics". The article dismisses hydrino theory completely, as stated before. It's interesting that Abd is planning to contact Eric Sheldon to see whether he has changed his mind. I had no idea that was how wikipedia articles on science are written. Mathsci (talk) 22:45, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Mathsci, you haven't a clue about this field and what's been happening over the last couple of years. I'm not personally interested in hydrino theory, and Sheldon's mention of it in the review -- which had nothing to do with Storms -- didn't add anything that we didn't already know from other sources. Sheldon's objections to LENR probably have a basis which has recently been undermined, and I'm interested in contacting him for personal reasons, though I would indeed, like to hear his reaction to certain recent work, particularly the Mosier-Boss neutron findings. Interesting about how Wikipedia articles are written. Maybe this is part of the problem. Used to be, writers and editors at encyclopedias would talk to experts in the field. Now, apparently we don't. I know what happens when newspaper writers don't discuss a topic adequately with those who know it: garbage. Certain facts may be right, but it gets put together in a way that shows a lack of understanding, and which simply confuses the reader, if the reader doesn't know enough to take it apart and put it together. Come to think of it, I have noticed this in some articles. Such as this one. I've still been unable to get Cold_fusion#Reports_of_nuclear_products_in_association_with_excess_heat to show "association." The picked example doesn't show association of any strength. (That is a blatant error in the DoE report, the result of a misunderstanding of the McKubre report they considered. I'll examine this in its own section, since I just figured out what happened, where the error came from.)

"Unclear physics" is a reference to what we've been saying: there is no clear, coherent theory that explains all the experimental work.

In any case, the Sheldon review shows nothing but respect for Storms and his book, and validates this as a reliable secondary source, something that other editors here were objecting to. In other words, Mathsci, your generosity in providing that source sped up the process of acceptance of Storms here. --Abd (talk) 00:49, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

The book of Storms is not a secondary source. It contains highly speculative material on possible theoretical physics explanations of experimental observations that are not properly understood. Sheldon dismisses some of these physical explanations, including hydrino theory. I understand that your stance is to rebrand lenr as an "emerging science". At present, much of it is misunderstood and speculative science that is not ripe for inclusion in an encyclopedia. At some stage Krivit's OUP book should be reviewed in the mainstream literature by heavyweight academics. It might be worth waiting until then to add further content, while secondary sources are so thin on the ground. BTW Sheldon used "unclear physics" to describe the current state of the subject: I don't believe he was referring to me. Please look for further secondary sources. Mathsci (talk) 09:17, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

This is the relevant policy: Wikipedia:No_original_research#Primary.2C_secondary_and_tertiary_sources. Secondary sources may contain "highly speculative material." To quote the policy:

Secondary sources are at least one step removed from an event. They rely for their facts and opinions on primary sources, often to make analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims.

Storms, The science of low energy nuclear reaction, World Scientific, 2007, is almost entirely secondary source. An exception could be Storms' autobiographical details, one chapter, which aren't relevant here at this point. There is no requirement that reliable secondary sources be reviewed to be usable, this has been made up by Mathsci in pursuit of an obvious agenda. We are not competent to judge, here, who is "heavyweight" and who is not, and to require this would make the editing of articles so cumbersome and contentious as to be impossible. We should, quite simply, follow WP:RS.

As to "emerging science," it is clear that from the beginning, there never was a scientific closure, but only a very successful political campaign to make it appear closed. Scientific RS in the fields of physics and chemistry never showed the topic as closed, nor did the DoE reviews in 1989 and 2004; but they have been widely framed as having done so. It's impossible to read the individual reviews in 2004, and the summary report, and still hold a rational opinion that this is a closed topic by scientific consensus (as distinct from individual opinion), as would be the case with pseudoscience, and the level of respect shown in the 2004 report is such that, yes, it is probably more reasonable to consider this emerging science. However, we face the fact that there is still wide opinion among "scientists" -- not necessarily those informed about the current research -- that cold fusion was debunked twenty years ago, hence it is still necessary to report research in this field maintaining that context.

Mathsci seems to look for reasons to disagree. Yes, Sheldon used "unclear physics" to "describe the current state of the subject." That's what I said, writing, "There is no clear, coherent theory that explains all the experimental work." "Unclear" doesn't mean "rejected." It means, "Not understood." That's characteristic of emerging science, and the solution, as recommended by the DOE both in 1989 and in 2004, is more research. Because there is no clear evidence that cold fusion will ever be a practical power source, even if what is happening is actually fusion, there has been no recommendation of a massive program, only work to clarify the science; but that recommendation makes no sense with fringe science or pseudoscience. --Abd (talk) 14:04, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that Mathsci wanted to mean something like "is not a reliable secondary source (so it shouldn't be used as a secondary source in the article)". --Enric Naval (talk) 15:35, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

You can gloss it that way, but that's not what he said. How do we determine what is "reliable secondary source," such that we can use it in articles? I'd say we follow WP:RS! We use the existence of independent publication from a standard publisher (as distinct from a publisher who can be alleged to be fringe, such as Beaudette's publisher). Storms meets that. If sources are to be rejected on simple allegations of "fringe content," we have a circular definition, because it's fringe if there is a paucity of reliable source, but we have excluded the reliable source because it's allegedly fringe. Further, there is a middle ground between "not usable" and "fully reliable." That is, use with attribution, and that is what would be suggested in this situation. Attribution should be an easy solution to much of this, but some editors seem hell-bent on total exclusion, which clearly violates WP:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science. The fact is that material even from fringe publishers can be used with attribution, if there is some evidence of notability. --Abd (talk) 16:19, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Abd's contributions here seem to be extremely skewed. Any source that is actively promoting a universally rejected pseudophysics theory, like hydrino theory, is primary and questionable. In view of his poor namespace editing record, my advice to Abd is to attempt to edit a non-controversial article on science in order to get more experience in handling scientific sourcing in a completely neutral context. That might be a valuable eye-opener. Mathsci (talk) 21:34, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Eye-opening is definitely something you need, Mathsci. Hydrino theory is not "universally rejected," and if you can't write sound text on ordinary subjects, where the facts are easily and plainly verifiable, how in the world would you be expected to write on complex subjects? WTF are you doing here? I haven't noticed any article writing.

Storms does not "promote" hydrino theory. However, have you noticed that the section that was kept by Hipocrite was the one on hydrino theory? Have you wondered why? Could it have to do with the fact that there is plenty of reliable source on it? It strikes me that you are searching for criticisms to make. It's transparent.

Enough. --Abd (talk) 04:00, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Would you please provide a source for the document that purports to be the individual reviewers' DOE 2004 comments? It is inconsistent with the official report, and the only source it of which I am aware is the personal website of banned user JedRothwell. --Noren (talk) 01:25, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

You are right that it is inconsistent with the official report, but that's actually not the core of this. The official report is inconsistent with the document that was reviewed, and that document was published by the DoE together with the report, so we don't actually need to see the intermediate documents. The individual reviewer documents were, however, made available to McKubre et al, and that's how we came to have copies available. At least that's what I recall reading. There is a comment that they were published on a DoE site that doesn't have them any more, you can find it in the lenr-canr.org document linked below. Basically, we have Summary <> Reviewer <> McKubre paper. You can take the middle out of that, it's still the same inequality.

That isn't a mere "personal website," it's actually a reputable document repository, its entire reputation, which is considerable in the field, is based on its reliability. We don't use it as reliable source, itself, because it has an associated POV, but there is no evidence at all for document forgery. But I think there is a corroborating source. First of all, the lenr-canr overall page: http://www.lenr-canr.org/Collections/DoeReview.htm and then there is, cited from there, http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEtheusgover.pdf published in 21st Century Sci. & Technol., 2005, by Storms. Which refers to lenr-canr.org for copies of the individual reviews, thus validating that those copies are there, in a published source. You are welcome to challenge the reliability of that source, but do consider this: if lenr-canr.org was hosting altered copies or forgeries, don't you think it would have been noticed by now?

The documents are also available at http://www.newenergytimes.com/v2/government/DOE/DOE.shtml . That's not the "personal website of a banned user."

Speaking of banned user, do you really want to get into that here? I'd be happy, but this isn't the place. That has nothing to do with this information and its reliability --Abd (talk) 04:00, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

The pdf with the individual reviewers was put in the DOE website at the same time as the final report. Someone should ask Jed about the original URL of the document so that we can retrieve it from archive.org --Enric Naval (talk) 20:41, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

How about you ask him, Enric? Look, I've taken a lot of flak, and do I remember correctly that some of it was from you, over communicating with Rothwell and Krivit? So I'm tempted to let you be the one to convince him that he should respond to your request. I think you have a long history of insulting him and working to exclude his simple comments from this Talk page. You could try apologizing. It might work.

I'll ask him if we need it. We don't. You can read them if you want, or not if you don't want. I believe that they are accurate, there is no evidence ever of lenr-canr.org altering a document in any fraudulent way. You know this, we've discussed this at great length. I will say this: I looked at the last archive.com scrape of the DOE site before the whole thing disappeared. The panel report was there and the Hagelstein paper and some other documents were there (the charge letter, in particular, maybe something else). The individual reviewer comments were not linked there. --Abd (talk) 23:17, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I did ask him, before he was blocked, and received a sarcastic and non-informative response. As to the DoE site, I did look around the DoE site while it was still up... several times, in fact. It did not contain that document that purports to be individual reviewer comments any of the times that I checked it. What is the basis for your claim that it was there, Enric? --Noren (talk) 03:15, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the reference to Rothwell's response. Yeah, classic Rothwell. I'd have pushed him to answer the question. His sarcasm was a tad justified, given several factors: lenr-canr.org is pretty badly described as "Jed Rothwell's personal web site," though he does manage it. It seems it was pretty much Storms who put it together. And you were effectively accusing him of fabricating documents. I might have taken it rather badly too.

I've seen the same thing that Enric has seen, I might even have written about it above somewhere. One of the reasons I write so much is that I can't remember anything if I don't write it down.... One of the sites, lenr-canr.org or newenergytimes.com, both of which host copies of this material, appears to claim that the documents came from the DoE web site. By the way, that answers your question about personal web site. NET isn't Jed's personal web site, and both Krivit and Rothwell have strong connections with the players and would have been able to get their own copies from them (Somewhere it says that the DoE provided copies of the reviewer comments to the researchers who presented, which would seem to be ordinary courtesy.) My conclusion is that the comment about the web site was referring to all the other documents: the charge letter, the review itself, the list of papers, and the review document, i.e., the Hagelstein paper, but not the individual reviewer comments. It is possile that there was some non-linked URL for a time. In any case, this is the kind of thing that I think Krivit in particular can be trusted for, accuracy of reportage, uncovering scandals and misrepresentations in the field, con artists, etc., is his forte and penchant. The idea that there isn't criticism within the field is preposterous if you've looked. And I've seen nothing that would remotely resemble fabrication of documents from either lenr-canr.org or newenergytimes.com. They have editorial viewpoints, to be sure, but they also have journalistic integrity. Noren, Rothwell was telling you that he didn't make up the documents, and that it was preposterous to imagine that he might have, or, in fact, that anyone might have. They'd have been exposed, there is a substantial group of people who had access to those documents, plus the reviewers themselves, eighteen of them. --Abd (talk) 04:49, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Based on Abd's description and the above excerpt from a book review, my opinion is that the Storms (2007) book is a solidly academic reference and a secondary source and can be used to describe the pro-cold-fusion POV and to establish notability of subtopics; it seems to me that this article (or subarticles, if split) could likely benefit from extensive citing from this book, which from the descriptions may be the most comprehensive academic book on this topic. (Reliable sources and academic sources can have POVs.) In general, however, given the current status of the field within the scientific community in general, pro-cold-fusion information can't be presented as fact. I'm under the impression that Storms considers himself a skeptic, given the title of his talk "An Informed Skeptics View of Cold Fusion" at a seminar yesterday ([33]). ☺Coppertwig (talk) 17:41, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure what Storms meant, I think you may have seen the talk, Coppertwig. There are skeptics and there are skeptics. The most important kind of skepticism is an approach, not a conclusion. But we also use the word "skeptic" to mean someone who has firmly concluded that some idea is bogus. This is not scientific skepticism, it is almost the opposite. Storms, if he's a skeptic, is the first kind. If he's the second kind, he'd be skeptical, in that sense, of the rejections of cold fusion. Clearly, he operates on the assumption that it's real, probably, like most researchers in the field, he saw one (or more) of those "miracles" which were so hard to come by initially. If you'd been Mizuno, pouring water in a cooling bucket every few hours to keep a shut-down cold fusion cell cool because of what later has been called "heat-after-death," you might also be convinced. It's a simple human reaction. This is why it is so important, for the advancement of science, to trust experimental reports and even anecdotes. That does not mean not being skeptical as to conclusions. It simply means, "Hmmm... maybe there is something to look into here." And if one has the time and resources, maybe this skeptic does investigate. Most won't, and that's okay. One must set priorities, and the theoretical concerns about cold fusion were very strong. There may come a point, however, where attachment to theory takes the place of the skepticism that should remain about all theories, and, if this happens, the theory has become a fixed belief and the individual is no longer functioning, in this area at least, as a scientist. --Abd (talk) 16:52, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

drastic rewrite

extended discussion.

moved from Talk:Cold_fusion/to_do, this needs consensus and sources before going into the TODO list --Enric Naval (talk) 20:23, 25 May 2009 (UTC) The entire article needs a drastic rewrite. The Widom-Larsen theory now satisfactorily explains LENR as a weak interaction phenomenon, not a strong force phenomenon. There is no longer much theoretical mystery. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.73.189.162 (talk • contribs) 18:22, 25 May 2009 We probably should cover Widom-Larsen theory. Storms gives it a little space, not much, but here are some references from Storms: Widom, A. and Laarsen, L., ULtra low momentum neutron catalyzed nuclear reactions on metallic hydride surfaces, Eur. Phys. J., C46, 107, 2006. Widom, A. and Larsen, L., Nuclear abundances in metallic hydride electrodes of electrolytic chemical cells, arXiv:cond-mat/062472 v1, 2006 Widom, A. and Larsen. L., Absorption of nuclear gamma radiation by heavy electrons on metallic hydride surfaces, arXiv:cond-mat, 2006. Note that Storms was, above, alleged to have a conflict of interest due to his relationship with Lattice Energy, but he gives short shrift to the theory. I'll note, though, that W-L, as described in the second paper below, also proposes a Be-8 intermediary, it simply gets there in a different way. Here is an article on W-L theory by Larsen: [34] (4 Dec 2008). See also [35] for another account (23 Oct 2007) Steve Krivit of New Energy Times gave a talk at the 2007 ACS conference, video at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1944189360430905288&hl=en; covering the field and reporting on W-L theory a bit, but there is much more depth in the documents above. Point to take home from the Krivit lecture: we don't know WTF is happening. There are theories that might explain cold fusion, but as the introduction to the "Proposed explanations" section said, According to Storms (2007), no published theory has been able to meet all the requirements of basic physical principles, while adequately explaining the experimental results he considers established or otherwise worthy of theoretical consideration. It's beyond me why this statement was taken out. The most complete and tightly organized source of information on W-L theory is on the New Energy Times web site: http://www.newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/WL/WLTheory.shtml. Reading this material should convey some sense of the level of controversy in the field over theory. Krivit is in communication with all the major players. On that page there are many references to peer-reviewed publications, but I haven't gone over it to see if there is enough for us to report this in the article yet. There is a listing of "all" of the W-L papers, with links, at [36]. Certainly Storms thought W-L theory was bogus at the beginning of 2008. A detailed critique from Storms is available at [37]. While New Energy Times is problematic as a source, Krivit is, indeed, a full-time investigative journalist who is paid to research and report on the field, and he appears to do so with energy and accuracy. He's also quite opinionated, sometimes, so care should be exercised with regard to presenting science from NET as "fact" without corroboration. But if Krivit says that so-and-so said such-and-such, he seems to be as reliable or more reliable than an ordinary newspaper. This is now the place I go to find news on the field. I've never found an error in it, but sometimes he's making some point. His whole conversation with Garwin, in the issue cited above, left me with "So?" I.e., he seems to have been extrapolating from a non-conversation, a few words, to some conclusion, basically that Garwin hadn't specifically criticized W-L theory, but only made an off-hand comment implying some criticism, which would be expected from Garwin anyway. Garwin needs a cup of tea, apparently, in order to get started. --Abd (talk) 23:25, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Reports of nuclear products in association with excess heat

extended discussion.

I've discussed this before, but the source of the problem just became apparent to me. There is a paragraph in the 2004 DoE report,[38]: The hypothesis that excess energy production in electrolytic cells is due to low energy nuclear reactions was tested in some experiments by looking for D + D fusion reaction products, in particular 4He, normally produced in about 1 in 10^7 in hot D + D fusion reactions. Results reported in the review document purported to show that 4He was detected in five out of sixteen cases where electrolytic cells were reported to be producing excess heat. The detected 4He was typically very close to, but reportedly above background levels. This evidence was taken as convincing or somewhat convincing by some reviewers; for others the lack of consistency was an indication that the overall hypothesis was not justified. Contamination of apparatus or samples by air containing 4He was cited as one possible cause for false positive results in some measurements. In our article, we have, "In the report presented to the DOE in 2004, 4He was detected in five out of sixteen cases where electrolytic cells were producing excess heat." I'd looked before to find the material in the McKubre report on which this was based, since there is much stronger evidence in the McKubre report than that on the correlation of excess heat and helium: the phrase above, if correct, would actually be strong evidence against correlation. I found the source. It's a description of the Case experiments, and one reviewer considers it with this language: Another class of experiments are referenced for the production of “excess heat” which do not involve electrolysis. The first of these is the Case experiments. Platinum group metals are loaded onto carbon substrates, 0.5 - 1.0 %. The excess heat is only observed with this low loading of platinum metals. This implies that carbon is involved in the effect. Six of 16 cells show excess heat. Four or five show helium excess as well. The most conventional explanation is that the carbon has adsorbed gases from the air, oxygen and helium. Oxygen combines with the deuterium to produce heat and helium is released on heating. The authors attempted to discredit this explanation by asserting that the container was helium leak tight. Presumably this was based on the ability to hold hydrogen. I don't see how the apparatus could be guaranteed leak-tight without a helium leak check. [the individual reviewer comments are accessible at http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/DOEusdepartme.pdf ) These were not electrolytic cells, for starters, as the reviewer notes. They are gas-loaded cells, which produce excess heat with no power input, similar to Arata's work. There were not sixteen cells producing excess heat, at least not as shown in the report. The report actually doesn't state how many produced excess heat. McKubre's interest in this part of the report is behavior of He4 over time, the temporal correlation, not the quantitative one, which is covered in the earlier part of the report, this is Appendix B. One cell only, cell SC2 has excess heat and He4 data reported by time. So not only did the DoE bureaucrat summarizing the reviewer comments get this one wrong, based on misreading the reviewer's report, the reviewer apparently got it wrong as well, misreading the McKubre paper. The reviewer also seems to have ignored chunks of the report, raising questions which are answered in it, but that's a separate problem, and this kind of obtuse response seems common in this field. I just saw a blog by a physicist on the CBS special and it was totally derisive, with him asking why they weren't looking for helium. The CBS special was twenty minutes and that physicist could easily have done his own research and would have found that, indeed, "they" have been looking for, and have found, helium, in just the right quantities to explain the excess heat from d-d fusion, which doesn't prove that the reaction is d-d fusion, but it makes it rather look like it! Note that with these Case cells, the helium level rose as high as double background, so "leakage" starts to look a tad weak. Meanwhile, we should be reporting secondary source review of these experiments, setting aside obvious errors like that above, and both Storms and He Jing-tang, if nothing else, do look at correlation, and the correlation is very strong. (Both He Jing-tang and Storms reproduce McKubre's single-cell plot of Case energy vs He4.) Storms gives, however, much more information than that. He Jing-tang presents some astonishing results from Arata, if I read them right. I'd want to confirm this with the original Arata report. Yes. ( http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ArataYdevelopmena.pdf ). Arata claimed 100 ppm helium generation from D2 gas-loading nanoparticle palladium, stimulated by "laser welding." Air background is 5.2 ppm. "The data for a corresponding study using pure H2 with a Pd sample powder showed no generated 4He." This was presented at ICCF10, August, 2003. Arata's work has been published in peer-reviewed journals in Japan, it may be tricky to find the papers. "Close to background," my eye.) --Abd (talk) 02:22, 26 May 2009 (UTC) Based on what I read from Kirk, I have three quick comments. The first is that correlation is only valid (given that it is unable to show a causal relationship, anyway) if you can show that the two data sets being correlated are accurate. Kirk has raised strong objections to the measurements of excess heat. Therefore if there is reason to doubt that heat was generated (or, indeed, that helium was produced) then any claims of correlation are effectively meaningless until the doubts can be removed. The second is that background levels of helium are, or so I gather, 5.2 parts per million. If that's the case, double that level would seem to be within standard variance, as per Kirk. At least the Arata findings are a tad under 20 times the background level, which still may not be convincing, but may be more interesting. But my third point is what are you trying to say? That you believe the DOE made an error based on your reading of McKubre's report? So we should ...? I'm not sure how this relates to the article, given that excess heat and helium production are both mentioned. - Bilby (talk) 03:32, 26 May 2009 (UTC) Correlation doesn't exactly show causal relationship (for starters, which of two effects is cause and which is effect?). However, what it shows, done properly, is common cause. The analysis Bilby gives is dead wrong. No, double the level isn't within standard variance. The charts involved show standard error bars. Measurement accuracy is well below the background level. The errors in the DoE summary are blatant. Unless there is something I've missed! (i.e., some other helium result that was 5 out of 16.) These were not electrolysis experiments, period, the reviewer got that absolutely right, this error was only in the summary. Mention of excess heat and helium isn't mention of a correlation. Correlation is, in fact, the strongest evidence for cold fusion. The big complaint in 1989 was lack of evidence for nuclear ash. That complaint was echoed in 2004, even though they had evidence in front of them; the summary shows that the evidence wasn't clearly seen and understood, though some reviewers did understand it (this is the evidence the summary calls "somewhat convincing," a view reportedly held by one-third of the panel). Our article, on helium "associated" with excess heat, is clearly wrong, the supposed results aren't in the McKubre paper that the panel was considering. I'd like to look at the other Case work published by SRI elsewhere to verify details, though. So the immediate relevance is that our article needs to be fixed to make it true to source, the ultimate source that is being cited by the anonymous summary of the DoE review. We are not condemned to repeat errors found in a secondary source. Now, as to correlation. The Case experiments weren't presented to show correlation in multiple experiments, only one experiment was shown to show time correlation of excess heat and helium level. Note that these cells were studied in pairs, a cell with presumed active material and one without. But the presentation of data on this in the McKubre paper is scanty, I'd certainly want to know more. Storms has a better presentation of the heat/helium data, from the more extensive Miles work. For thinking about this, in a way that is, at least, similar to the actual data, suppose there are 33 cold fusion Pd/D electrolysis cells. They are all operated in the same way. At the conclusion of the electrolysis, the cells are sent to an independent lab for helium analysis. 15 of them show no helium, 18 do. Also of the 33 cells, 21 show excess heat, 12 do not. That's uncorrelated data, and it certainly does not look convincing. The helium could be due to leaks. The excess heat could be due to calorimetry error. Now the correlation: the 12 cells that showed no excess heat also showed no helium. Of the 21 cells that showed excess heat, 18 showed helium. Storms notes reasons to suspect the remaining three cells as being different, one he ascribes to an error in heat measurement, the other two were a different alloy electrode, and there are always little mysteries like this. The absence of helium from the cells showing no excess heat is stunning. Now, if the excess heat were at a level that it could compromise the integrity of the cells, that could cause leakage, but it wasn't. Absent a reasonably hypothesis for common cause, this is strong evidence, and it is evidence that the calorimetry is at least qualitatively accurate, and that the helium measurements are likewise. However, there is more. The correlation is also quantitative. In other experiments, as well as with those Miles experiments, the quantity of helium detected correlates with the amount of excess heat determined from the calorimetry. So, again, what we have is evidence that whatever is causing excess heat is also causing helium to be found. Storms gives the figure of 25 +/- 5 MeV/He4. McKubre gives a more direct estimate of a bit over 30 MeV/He4, I forget the figure, but Storms has apparently done more analysis on the issue of missing helium (helium absorbed by the palladium and not recovered for measurement, and helium lost in other ways. (Note that any lost helium will raise the calculated energy/He4. Likewise any other pathways or causes of excess heat findings.) So: We have strong evidence for excess heat, and we have strong evidence for helium associated with it. There is controversy about the exact level of energy/He4, Krivit, in particular, challenges the McKubre and Storms estimates, but Krivit, I'll note, is a journalist, not a scientist. He's quite good on reporting what the people have been doing, the best available. On the science, he's more knowledgeable than your average Wikipedia editor, for sure, but not necessarily than the scientists involved. But, at this point, for those who haven't followed all this, the figure of excess energy/He4 is significant because d+d fusion would generate He4 at 23.8 MeV/He4. That doesn't prove that the reaction is d+d fusion, and simple d+d fusion would be expected, for reasons our article should clearly show, to involve gamma emission to conserve momentum, but 4d fusion to form Be8 -> 2 He4, same energy figure, solves that problem, there is no need for gammas and they wouldn't be expected. What would, in fact, be expected is X-radiation from deacceleration of the alpha particles in the electrolyte or in the electrode, and that radiation has been amply reported. Classic technique: piece of protected X-ray film that, when developed, shows an outline of the electrode. Storms covers all this, I believe, and is a reliable secondary source, we need look for no more, the Sheldon review confirms the reliability, and we aren't likely to find better in the near future, aside from possible magazine coverage here and there, nothing with the depth of Storms. We have no reliable source on the "scientific consensus" at this time that isn't passing mention based on no stated evidence, but I do assume that the general opinion of rejection is still more or less accurate. I've been talking to a lot of scientists on this, and the normal first reaction is rejection based on 1989. However, when they hear about the recent results, that changes rather easily. "I'll have to look that up. If that's true, there definitely is something there." (This is usually regarding the neutron findings of Mosier-Boss.) The ACS Sourcebook will be useful, but is actually, for the most part, a compendium of primary sources; the effect of it is to show notability of those sources, for they were selected for importance, and inclusion decisions there are a form of peer review. There is, however, some summary review there, though, in particular one written by Krivit that I'm looking forward to seeing in print. Storms, for this field, right now, is the gold standard for secondary source, much better and deeper than the McKubre report presented to the DoE. --Abd (talk) 15:04, 26 May 2009 (UTC) I must admit, I do wish that you would try and keep your replies to a manageable length, given that most of this has been said, by you, multiple times in your comments. But that aside: First, "Correlation doesn't exactly show causal relationship" - no. Correlation doesn't show causal relationship. At most, it provides evidence, or hints - nothing more. This is a basic rule in any stats, and to suggest otherwise is problematic. If it didn't then I'd gladly join the Pastafarians in blaming global warming on the decrease in the pirate population. Second, you're using very poor evidence to base these claims. If we can't regard the amount of energy produced as reliable (per Kirk), and if we can't trust the amount of helium (as a result of potential leakage) then we have no basis to claim correlation. It is irrelevant if the two values are in keeping with fusion if we can't trust the values in the first place. Third, I care little if you agree with the second point, as I suspect the answer is no. What I do care about is that you still haven't addressed the core issue: what are you trying to say in terms of this article? Is it that you have decided that the DOE report was wrong, and can't be considered reliable? That Storms is better than the DOE, so one should be replaced with the other? Or are you just trying to argue that cold fusion really happens? Based on your comments, what is it that you want done? - Bilby (talk) 15:40, 26 May 2009 (UTC) At this point, I'd prefer to be either making edits to the article, or rewriting it. Correlation, when strong, shows common cause. When weak, it might be chance. That's why statistical analysis is used with correlation, but, in fact, we don't know bleep about cause except through correlation analysis. If there were correlation between the decrease in pirate population and global warming, such that there were 33 experiments -- intervals without cherry-picking -- showing what has been shown with excess heat and helium, I'd be moving for the health of pirates. Or preparing for global warming. But there isn't. Further, there is no even preposterous causal connection, such that we might expect that increasing pirate population would reduce global warming ... no, strike that. If pirate activity became so high that global commerce would decline, global warming might! With excess heat and helium, there is a reasonable explanation, a causal connection, a theorized common cause, one that has not been rejected out of hand by major theorists (such as Edward Teller, but considered possible even if unlikely. Second, it's not necessary for the measurements in correlation analysis to be reliable in an absolute sense. We use correlation analysis, in fact, to judge measurement reliability! Note that the measurement error in the calorimetry experiments is way below the detected levels, the calorimetry is accurate enough to discover some level of apparent excess heat from Pons-Fleischmann cells using ordinary water, probably due to the presence of deuterium in ordinary water, the levels are about right for that. Shanahan proposes that there is some heat distribution effect that causes a systematic error, which is a reasonable hypothesis deserving of test, though it's difficult to imagine that this affects all kinds of calorimetry. For example, it's hard to see how this would affect the Case results, which involve no electrolysis, so no energy input, only the very limited heat of formation of palladium deuteride. (Same with Arata). If the calorimetry were all over the map, varying wildly regardless of the existence or non-existence of the P-F effect, then we'd expect that this would not correlate with helium measurements, unless there is some common cause. As an extreme example of common cause, a lab assistant adds helium to the cells secretly, in an amount proportional to the heat that has been observed, and only to those cells. If the cells with no helium were only operated for a short time because no excess heat was being observed, then we could theorize that there was more helium in the excess heat cells because they were operated for longer. I don't think that's the case with these experiments. Plus, leakage as a hypothesis doesn't cut it when the helium has gone above background, as it often has in this work. What I've been saying is that we come to trust experimental values when they are correlated. Lots of scientific work is done, conclusions drawn, and huge amounts of money spent, with correlations far below what is seen with excess heat and helium. Mills estimates the possibility that the correlation between excess heat and helium in his experiments was one in 750,000. I could do the math, so could many other editors. But we have reliable source on it, folks. Storms. He's reviewing Mills' work, and published by an independent, non-fringe publisher. In 1995, Hoffman, a skeptic, wrote (see the article bibliography), as a conclusion on the issue of cold fusion calorimetry: In general, these heat measurements are being done by very knowledgeable experimenters who know how to avoid artifacts. As to the helium, the helium for Mills was measured by an independent laboratory, blind. In other words, it was measured by experts who knew how to measure helium and who had no idea of which cells were "supposed to" contain helium, no idea which cells had produced excess heat. As to the third question, yes, we will change the article, because the statement we are citing from the DoE as if it were fact is blatantly, from the primary or secondary source (it's some of both) that the DoE used, false. That was inserted there by an editor who was removing text from a reliable secondary source who understands the issues and the evidence, and who, quite obviously (from extensive discussion) has no understanding of what "association" means. I am not trying to argue that cold fusion happens. That's not my business, nor is it our business. Our business, or, more accurately, our technique, is to report what's in reliable sources. However, we might indeed ask what the purpose of knowledge is. Is all knowledge secondary and relative? Does truth matter? I think sometimes we put the cart before the horse. Consensus is the most reliable guide to truth that we have, and, in particular, the consensus of the knowledgeable. But that's circular, if we don't have objective standards for "knowledgeable." We use technically reliable source because we have no choice, we have nothing more reliable, our own original research and our own individual thinking being inadequate and too much subject to error, unless we can find consensus on it after full deliberation. But if our goal isn't truth, i.e., knowledge that we can stand on, that will carry our weight and guide us, and not deceive us and our readers and set us up for a fall, we've lost our way and we end up wikilawyering trivia. --Abd (talk) 16:56, 26 May 2009 (UTC) We're not going to agree in regard to the correlation, but that's fine. Now that I know where you're heading it is probably irrelevant anyway. To refer to the general principle first, no, on Wikipedia truth does not matter. We rely on verifiability, not truth, and I would be inclined to argue that WP:V is the most important of Wikipedia's policies. I can't see how the project could function without this basic distinction. It is also worth noting that consensus isn't a guide to truth - at best, consensus leads to what people agree to be true, not what actually is (unless you wish to take a constructivist stance, which wouldn't be in keeping with your other comments). But as I understand it, you, based on your reading, believe that the DOE report is unreliable and should be discarded in favour of Storms. That sounds a tad like WP:OR, but I think OR is bandied around a bit too easily here, so I'm not inclined to assume it is. However, the DOE report does seem to have a higher standard of reliability than Storms, so I suspect you'll have trouble getting much traction with this. Perhaps there is a reliable source that draws the same conclusion as you do about the DOE? - Bilby (talk) 17:46, 26 May 2009 (UTC) First point: I would rather have no text than misleading text based on reliable source error. You are incorrect about consensus. First of all, I didn't state that consensus was truth. It isn't. Rather, it is our guide to collective truth, more reliable than individual opinion. It can be wrong. Look, this is a question that is well over a thousand years old, it's the issue of ijma in Islam. We have no way of judging NPOV other than consensus, there is no way to guarantee NPOV by following the letter of the law, it's a matter of individual judgment, applied collectively. The question of what to do if one has special knowledge that leads to an opinion at variance with general consensus or even universal consensus (except for oneself) was also faced: properly, you act in matters that only affect yourself according to your own best understanding, and you act in matters of social concern according to the consensus. Practically speaking, when push comes to shove, it comes down to sovereignty and what can be done without disruption (fitna). To bring it home, what matters it if I improve an article, if everyone ends up arguing endlessly about it? It better be good! The point is that it is more likely that the consensus is right, generally, than that I'm right, and I should be very sure of my own special knowledge before I would sensibly dare to step outside the consensus. I can know this by looking at others who are very sure of themselves, and I can see how they went astray -- but they can't. Since I'm also human, it's probably true of me as well. Here, you may find me sometimes opposing majorities, but only when I expect, from knowledge and experience and perhaps even intuition, that, with sufficient attention, the consensus, or at least the majority, will support me, or will find some compromise that I can accept. I saw this happen at ArbComm recently. Second point: I do not favor discarding the DoE report. It's highly notable. It also contains at least one blatant error, I pointed it out above. Compared to an ordinary peer-reviewed secondary source, however, it is flawed. The nine individual reviews written on the basis of study of the sources provided are quite important, but they aren't edited or reviewed, themselves. The nine reviews written on the basis of a one-day seminar seem to be of varying quality and depth, and nobody familiar with this field is likely to expect that a one-day seminar is going to drastically change anyone's mind, ideas are way too deeply entrenched. Then there is the summary, which was written by someone anonymous, and some editors here have placed great weight on what may have been mere obitur dictum in it, a gross summarisation meaning one thing and being given another meaning by us, by implication. Given all that, nevertheless, it is an historic event in itself, it would be totally silly to discard it. Storms is, quite simply, different. Storms has probably been fact-checked more thoroughly. I think that what must be realized is that Storms, as a secondary source, acts like a filter. The citation in Storms of a paper, including conference papers and even private communications, is prima facie evidence of notability, it isn't merely about verifiability. V doesn't appear to understand this well. That such and such an experimental result is reported by so-and-so meets WP:V from being published in conference proceedings, and we can sometimes use such a source with consensus. But those are primary sources, and inclusion in the proceedings is weak evidence of notability. That's what we need secondary sources for, some source that judges the importance of primary information. And then there is the fact that relative reliability of sources doesn't come into play until and unless there is contradiction. Contradiction is much more rare than many of us might think. Where contradiction is commonly seen isn't in reliable sources, especially the peer-reviewed scientific kind of primary sources, but in interpretation of sources, and even more in the imaginations of editors. There is no contradiction between the negative replications of excess heat findings in 1989 and the positive replications from 1989-date. The experimental conditions were different. As I said, contradiction is rare. An example of alleged contradiction: MIT reported finding no excess heat. It was noticed by Eugene Mallove that the published chart had an offset that concealed the original data. For this reason you can find cold fusion researchers asserting that the MIT data was altered to present an appearance of negative replication. That's a contradiction that would require balancing the reliability of one source against that of another. Otherwise reliable source is reliable source. --Abd (talk) 19:22, 26 May 2009 (UTC) About DOE 2004: since the error is blatant, it can be reasonably expected that other RS have noticed the error and talked about it. Where are those sources? I also expect to see other RS talking how DOE chose an unreliable way to analyze the evidence, or about how DOE is less reliable than X or Y. Where are those sources? --Enric Naval (talk) 00:36, 27 May 2009 (UTC) You know, I'd read quite a bit about this review and hadn't noticed any mention of this. Cold fusion researchers have had a lot to say about the review, to be sure, but this particular error wasn't noticed, as far as I've seen. I didn't see it when I first looked, I remember being confused by aspects of the Case presentation in McKubre -- it was hard to read the graphs to get at what they were saying, and I misinterpreted it myself the first time -- so I don't know. The DoE review isn't a peer-reviewed paper, it is, rather a document with intrinsic notability. It had a purpose, which was not scientific accuracy, it was to make possible funding recommendations. Quite simply, it was what it was. Compare that with the IPCC documents on global warming, where great care was exercised with every aspect. No comparison at all! --Abd (talk) 04:06, 27 May 2009 (UTC) So, no sources? no mainstream sources? The errors and unreliability of DOE 2004 can only be sourced from cold fusion researchers? --Enric Naval (talk) 16:10, 27 May 2009 (UTC) Read the summary below, Enric. It was already said above, and what is below was added before your edit, but .... the only sources necessary to show the error are available from the DoE archive. The DoE report was a comment, explicitly, on what was in the document submitted by "cold fusion researchers," yes. Isn't that the point? The DoE report includes that paper as Appendix 1. So the unreliability, if you want to call it that -- I didn't -- of DOE 2004 is shown by DOE 2004, very simply. It isn't necessary to see the individual reviewer papers, but if you want to understand what happened, you'd want to look at them. And this continual rejection of sources because they are associated with cold fusion researchers, in any way, even when simply providing convenient access to public documents, even if just for background, to help understand our more reliable sources, is characteristic of POV-pushing in this field. Stop it. --Abd (talk) 17:02, 27 May 2009 (UTC) If the only sources saying that DOE 2004 has errors/ is unreliable are from cold fusion researchers, then it has to be attributed as a POV hold by them. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:32, 27 May 2009 (UTC) Enric, you present an impoverished idea of what Wikipedia editors can and should do. We do not report demonstrably false information as fact just because a reliable source says it, unless we balance it. We can and should balance secondary source error with primary source fact. The requirement is that the primary source facts reported should be directly verifiable without synthesis, by any ordinary person with ordinary skill applying reasonable effort. First of all, it's worth reading WP:OR over carefully. Then look at the essay linked from the WP:OR page, WP:NOTOR. See, specifically, this example: A book, short story, film, or other work of fiction is a primary source for any article or topic regarding that work. Anything that can be observed by a reasonable person simply by reading the work itself, without interpretation, is not original research, but is reliance upon a primary source. This would include direct quotes or non interpretative summaries, publication dates, and any other patent information that can be observed from the work. For example, if there are multiple versions of a particular story, and one version does not have a particular character, or has extra characters, that is clear simply by reading or watching the work. The fact that one would have to read or watch the whole thing does not make the matter original research. The work is verifiable, even if it takes more time than flipping to a single page. Notice that the example is quite on point here: After reporting what the DoE report says is claimed in the review document about the sixteen samples, 'blah blah.' we could say, "The Hagelstein paper, which was the review document, does not contain a report of 'blah blah.' However, it does contain 'bleep bleep.'" And there is probably more than we can say; there is some criticism of the 2004 report in reliable source, if I'm correct. This tidbit, however, requires no source other than the 2004 DoE material. Notice also that we probably cannot report, for example, that "The 2004 DoE report erroneously interpreted the review document," unless we have secondary source on that. What we properly do is to present the elements of the (alleged) contradiction, without claiming contradiction, reliably sourced, and let the reader form his or her own conclusion. The elements are directly verifiable. The conclusion isn't. --Abd (talk) 22:55, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

To summarize, on "association."

extended discussion.

Our article has, in Coldfusion#Reports of nuclear products in association with excess heat, no report of association of nuclear products in association with excess heat, except for this: In the report presented to the DOE in 2004, 4He was detected in five out of sixteen cases where electrolytic cells were producing excess heat.[78] The note cites the summary review, but the text attributes to the report itself, which is available. This, on the face, appears to show association, though a very weak one, without the information that would allow the association to be judged. I.e, with two variables (how much helium was detected and how much excess heat was detected), there are four gross categories of association: heat and excess helium, no heat and no excess helium, no heat and excess helium, and heat and no excess helium. What is implied in the sentence is 5 cases of heat and helium, and an implication of 11 cases of heat and no helium, and no indication of how many cases there were of the other two categories. (i.e., we don't know, from our text, how many cells were tested for heat and helium.) As presented, the information is singularly weak, reading this, I'd say, my conclusion would be that helium and excess heat were not related. This is what is in the actual summary report: Results reported in the review document purported to show that 4He was detected in five out of sixteen cases where electrolytic cells were reported to be producing excess heat.[39] This is a citation or interpretation of the review document. Now, is that information actually in the review document? It is not. What we are quoting as fact (that the review document "purports to show" the information) is verifiably false. What is in the review document? interjection by Kirk Shanahan, interrupting comment by Abd, which resumes below next full-left smalltext note Examining Figure 12 and surrounding text in the review document indicates that 5 out of 16 of the samples showed He signals. The reviewer, while not 'quoting' anything in text in the review, correctly interprets Figure 12. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:24, 27 May 2009 (UTC) Actually, no, Kirk, so you must have missed it too. There is nothing in the text of the Hagelstein paper or in the figure, that indicates that the 16 cases were cells "producing excess heat," as the summary stated. Heat data is only shown for one of the sixteen cells, cell SC2. The experimental setup is also described in what may be the first report of this work, the charts are there, available at http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHtheemergen.pdf Now, by "reviewer" did you mean the DoE bureaucrat, who wrote the erroneous report quoted above, or did you mean the expert member of the panel? This is Review #6. That member wrote: Another class of experiments are referenced for the production of “excess heat” which do not involve electrolysis. The first of these is the Case experiments. Platinum group metals are loaded onto carbon substrates, 0.5 - 1.0 %. The excess heat is only observed with this low loading of platinum metals. This implies that carbon is involved in the effect. Six of 16 cells show excess heat. Four or five show helium excess as well. This expert did correctly state that these were not electrolytic experiments, but differently misstated the heat results, apparently making an assumption about it, that all six cells charted for helium showed excess heat. No wonder he concluded that there wasn't any association shown! I.e, there was excess heat and no helium, as with cell SC3.1? Or very low helium, as with cell SC1. But nowhere does the text state that SC3.1 or SC1 showed excess heat, nor does the chart show that. Excess heat data is only shown for cell SC2, in Figure 13. Why only that one? Beats me. I'd want to know all the results for all the cells. We have that kind of data from Miles, I believe. --Abd (talk) 04:24, 28 May 2009 (UTC) I see that you have noted this, and that the reviewer has misidentified the Case-type cells as electrolytic. Personally, this is not really a significant error, as the question is whether there is conclusive proof of He being generated, wherever that might have been. As I have noted however, the plots are bogus because we can't trust the measurements. This is why I tried to get included in the 2004 DOE review, but the powers that be didn't see my point I guess. Also of note is the direct ommission of the Clarke paper I comment on in the next section. This is more CFer obsfucation. McK knew intimately what Clarke et al had written. He _choose_ to exclude it from the presentation to the reviewers. I wonder why? Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:33, 27 May 2009 (UTC) As I note below, the Clarke paper is not omitted, that's a gross error on your part. It's cited. I think it was discounted because it had nothing to do with this work, but, for sure, that's speculation, and if you have better information, by all means, let me know. But this is about people and how they behave, not experiments and what they showed. (Folks, you should be looking at the charts in the Hagelstein paper from our article's bibliography.[40], figures 12 and 13.) The error of the DoE reviewer (the summarizer) was major. The error of the panel expert was just as bad, because that expert should have recognized the problem. The Case evidence is weak (Miles is much stronger, and Miles' work was submitted to the DoE as part of the documentation package). (Storms presents all this much better, in his 2007 book, but that research was all done long before.) In my opinion, the team of researchers did a poor job of presenting the evidence to the DoE. The evidence is there, particularly in the complete package of papers, but presented in such a way that if a reviewer wasn't very careful -- some apparently were careful -- they'd miss critical points or become confused, as what I've found, here, shows. From other research, the correlation between excess heat and helium is strong, and so, from the helium measurments, I'd suspect that three or four of the six charted cells showed significant excess heat. The cells with a sharp rise are very likely, the long-term, slow rise could be leak and would thus would be expected (again, based on other results) to show little or no excess heat.... but if not a leak, the excess heat would be perhaps half of what was found with the really active cells. No, I'm not assuming a result to prove a result. If, however, it was not as I'm speculating, then McKubre would indeed be guilty of "obfuscation," actually, of a kind of fraud. If it were true as the panel member quoted above wrote, then to claim these results as evidence of strong correlation between excess heat and helium would be deceptive, cherry-picking of data. I don't think so. --Abd (talk) 04:24, 28 May 2009 (UTC) original comment by Abd resumes: Page 7 of the review document has a section on Helium and Excess heat. There is a subsection titled "Correlation of Excess Heat and Helium." This section discusses the work of a number of experimental groups, and includes analysis of the "Q value," i.e, how much heat is associated with each atom of helium found. This is work that is fundamental to both evidence for cold fusion and to the consideration of theories. There is no mention in this section of "sixteen cases." The section does, however, refer to Appendix B for some further discussion of helium and excess heat. There is a mention of sixteen cells that Appendix, page 18, a report of a study of Case cells in which 4He was found. Just to start with, these are not electrolytic cells. Secondly, the total number of cells was sixteen. The total number of cells for which helium measurements were reported was six. One of these is flat, at zero ppm, leaving five which show any helium at all. One of the five shows very low helium, not exceeding roughly 1 ppm. One shows a slow rise to about 4 ppm. Three show sharp rises of helium levels, crossing the background level of about 5.2 ppm with no sign of slowing down, until reaching, for one cell, almost 11 ppm. This is the only cell for which excess heat is reported, in a chart on figure 13 on page 21. As far as we know from this appendix, excess heat was only found in one cell, though that is unlikely to be true. I'll return to that later, I believe there is a more thorough report on this work. This appendix was not a report showing heat/helium correlation in more than one cell. The only reports showing correlation of excess heat and helium over multiple experimental runs were in the earlier section described above. The correlation is quantitative, at a level consistent with d + d -> He4 (or with 4d -> Be8 -> 2 He4). So: the summary report is almost completely erroneous. These were not electrolytic cells. The review document doesn't show "sixteen cases where ... cells were reported to be producing excess heat." Where there is a reported set of sixteen measurements of helium, excess heat was reported for only one. The document isn't clear, but the purpose of this section was to report time correlation of heat and helium, and that was only done for one run. Helium was found in five cells, but one of the five was at a very low level easily ascribed to contamination. And one of the remaining showed a very slow rise that did not reach background, and the data isn't reported for sufficient time to see if it would slow down as it approched background (as would be expected for leaks). So, truly, anomalous helium was only found in three cells. Not five. The correlation of helium and excess heat is crucial, and the submitters of the review document knew this, and that's why they had a section dedicated to this. It appears that whoever summarized the document was distracted by the information in Appendix B, and misread it and then reported that. There was one individual reviewer report that made some of the mistakes made by the summarizer, but this merely helps us to understand how the summarizer came to make the mistake, being led part of the way there by the reviewer. Without the correlation, or somehow overlooking it, the wonder would be that even one-third of the reviewers thought that the evidence for a nuclear explanation for the excess heat (that half thought was convincing) was "somewhat persuasive." That is, the reviewers did not generally make the same mistake as the summarizer. Now, what do we do with this? Well, we don't quote the DoE summarizer as being what was in the review document, unless we also note that the information allegedly there wasn't. Which I prefer, because that piece of information (the error) is important in understanding subsequent events. The reviewer was a DoE official, and was, I'm sure, singularly unimpressed with the evidence, because the official didn't understand it, read it incorrectly." I would never say this in the article, but readers can come to conclusions themselves, if we provide them with what's verifiable. The statement in the summary report is notable, it's obvious that editors here have agreed on that. The actual review document is notable, for lots of reasons. This is all reliably sourced as released by the DoE. So we report both. And since the energy/helium ratio is considered the strongest evidence for fusion, with a specific mechanism, and we have Storms for that as well as other secondary sources, we present the real evidence that was shown to the DoE, the review of Miles' work as presented by them, or, better, by Storms. I mention subsequent events. The DoE review recommended further research. So did the 1989 review. After 1989, the DoE rejected, apparently, all requests for funding of any research related to cold fusion, and this has been ascribed to the continued influence of Huizenga, who chaired the original panel and who has been a highly skeptical commentator on the field, putting out his own book that gives the most negative possible interpretation on every bit of the work. (But it is still a valuable resource, it is only his conclusions and framing that are problematic. It's like Taubes, which is a goldmine as well.) After 2004, a well-known cold fusion researcher submitted a request to do exactly the kind of work that the report recommended, a modest effort. It was denied without review, apparently. I think it's easy to see why this might have happened. The official who wrote the summary was asked about it, or is the one who made the decision. While in 1989 and 2004 the panels were reasonably neutral, the continued influence was entirely from the most skeptical side. I have, above, refered to the report as the McKubre report. That was an error; McKubre was an author and was crucial in presenting it, but the paper is the Hagelstein paper, this theorist was the lead author, and that's how we have it in our bibliography. --Abd (talk) 16:00, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Some comments on the 'heat-He correlation'

extended discussion.

Reference: “PRODUCTION OF 4He IN D2-LOADED PALLADIUM-CARBON CATALYST II”, W. BRIAN CLARKE, STANLEY J. BOS and BRIAN M. OLIVER FUSION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 43, MAR. 2003, 250 It is of interest to look at some quotes from the referenced article in light of the supposed He-excess heat correlation that Abd is pushing so much. In the following I have clipped out some sections, which is indicated by {deletion}, for brevity. This article is the one I attempted to get into the Wiki article, but which has been removed from discussion, even though it still remains in the Bibliography. Note that Dr. M. McKubre heads the SRI effort in this field. The Abstract ”Measurements of He, 3He/ 4He, Ne and 13 other components{deletion} in four samples of gas from SRI International (SRI) are reported. Three samples were collected from SRI Case-type stainless steel cells containing ~10 g of Pd/C catalyst initially loaded with ~3 atm D2 at ~200C, and the fourth sample (not identified) was stated to be a control. Case and the SRI researchers have claimed to observe 4He in concentrations of ~100 parts per million (ppm) and up to 11 ppm, respectively, produced in these cells via the fusion reaction D + D = 4He + 23.8 MeV. Others {note: ‘Others” being ‘these researchers’, i.e. Clarke, et al} found no evidence for 4He addition that cannot be readily explained by leaks from the atmosphere into the SRI cells. One sample appears to be identical in composition to air, and the other three have been seriously affected by leak(s) into and from the SRI cells. The rare gas “forensic” evidence includes 3He/ 4He ratios and He and Ne concentrations that are almost identical to air values. The samples also show high N2 (a primary indicator of air), low O2, and high CO and CO2 due to reaction of incoming atmospheric O2 with C in the catalyst. In two samples, the original D2 (or H2) has almost completely disappeared by outflow through the leak(s). These results have obvious implications concerning the validity of the excess 4He concentrations claimed by Case and the SRI researchers.” Points made in the body: He levels reported (ppm) 5.48, 6.52, 0.70, 5.30 N2 content of samples (mole %) 86.0, 89.1, 1.67, 78.4 (dry air = 78.1) “1. All samples show high N2, which is a primary indicator of air.” “2. Sample 46D is most probably room (or outside) air” “After this technical note was submitted to Fusion Science and Technology, we received a communication from McKubre, who stated, inter alia, that sample 46D “was taken directly from a cylinder containing only deuterium gas with approximately 5 ppm helium-4 that we use to calibrate our mass spectrometer.” It is therefore very puzzling that this sample, except for slight additions of H2, D2, and CO2, was identical in composition to normal (dry) air.” From the Summary: “The results of our measurements show that after the Case-type cells at SRI were filled with hydrogen {deletion}, the following events probably occurred: 1. The hydrogen pressure in the cell decreased from ~3 to ~0.7 atm during the first few days. {deletion} 2. Incoming atmospheric O2 started to react with C in the Pd/C catalyst to produce CO and CO2, although the inflow rate of O2 was low during the first few days. Remaining hydrogen in the cell leaked outward and also reacted with O2 (aided by the catalyst) to form D2O and H2O. {deletion}” “We note that two plots of helium concentrations versus time given by McKubre et al.(4) in fact show that the helium concentrations reach maximum values of 9 and 11 ppm at 20 and 27 days, respectively, and then appear to decrease slightly at later times. At the present time, we do not understand why the SRI maximum helium concentrations are a factor of ~2 higher than the atmospheric value of 5.2 ppm, although the observed increase must surely be due to unrecognized systematic error(s) in the SRI experiments.” So, from the best CF researcher around we have four samples submitted that were all supposed to be primarily hydrogen with traces of helium in them, and experts in mass spectrometry instead find air. Yet, McKubre et al report He production via ‘cold fusion’. Note also that a slow in-leak of air would provide O2 for the H2+O2 reaction, which produces heat. That heat would appear as excess heat. Bottom line: If the He-heat correlation is to be placed in the Wiki article, then a summary of this information needs to be placed there as well, along with the commentary on the CCS, since the evidence is that the CFers don’t correctly measure either excess heat or He. If you can’t measure your X and Y properly, an accidental correlation arising from a plot cannot be considered real. Kirk shanahan (talk) 14:38, 27 May 2009 (UTC) If you can’t measure your X and Y properly, an accidental correlation arising from a plot cannot be considered real. Amen, hallelujah. I haven't read these sources and wouldn't have the physics background to evaluate where the consensus of reliable sources lies if I did read them; I leave it to more knowledgeable people to sort out the physics. But I do know statistics, and I've been reading the statistical assertions made in this discussion with increasing bemusement. Thanks for leaking some fresh air into the fog of obfuscating verbiage. Woonpton (talk) 16:05, 27 May 2009 (UTC) Of course. Woonpton, there are a number of scientists who have been following the events here, and you might do us the favor of disclosing the source of your bemusement regarding statistics, there are quite a few of us who likewise understand that field. Shanahan is correct, this information belongs in the article, if the Case work is reported, because it may be the most cogent recent criticism of the helium work. However, the Case work is actually the weakest work on this point, and was used in only one correlation study, of a single cell, as reported to the DoE. (But I haven't reviewed the original Case article.) The Case effect is actually an open mystery, and I'm not convinced that it should be in our article: what was important here was that distorted Case effect results were presented by the DoE summary as if this was the strong evidence of helium correlation presented, when it wasn't. On the Case effect, Storms, p.46: After McKubre and co-workers reproduced the Case effect at SRI, I undertook to do the same. Jed Rothwell provided funds to build a system needed to purify the Case catalyst ... About a year was spent on this effort without seeing any ambiguous energy. As is common in this field, the ability to make active material was lost. In this case, the drum of charcoal used by United Catalyst as the substrate was thrown out during cleanup, perhaps explaining why the catalyst they made later did not work. Because the unique characteristics required to make the material nuclear-active were not determined at the time, it is impossible to manufacture more active material according to known specifications. We are left with two alternate hypotheses, both reasonable if we only look at the Case effect. One, there was experimental error of an unknown kind (or as hypothesized by the researchers whose work is cited above), or the effect is fragile and sometimes associated with unknown factors. There is no controversy over the latter, and it is also quite likely that some of the positive results were due to artifact. Even careful researchers make mistakes. To me, energy/He4 quantitative correlation, found over many experiments by different groups, with blind testing of the Helium in a significant part of the work (Miles, at least), is perhaps the strongest piece of evidence that the excess heat is real and that it is nuclear in origin. I will allow this out-of-sequence interjection breaking up my post, by Shanahan. See the next full-left small-text below for the resumption of my post --Abd (talk) 18:30, 27 May 2009 (UTC) No, three. (3) it was leaks, and the latter attempts somehow were done better, i.e. without leaks. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:13, 27 May 2009 (UTC) Sure. As noted, causes of results may vary from experiment to experiment. Note that the "latter attempts" were earlier, and that they include work from several other research groups. Further, leaks don't explain correlation. --Abd (talk) 18:30, 27 May 2009 (UTC) P.S., You do understand that Krivit had a whole article in a recent NET that critiqued the idea that anyone has shown the 23.8 MeV number in their experiments right? Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:13, 27 May 2009 (UTC) Yes, I do. Krivit is a bit obsessed about this, I've corresponded with him. I'd love to be able to use NET as a source, because it publishes material from all the major players, those discussions include comment from many well-known cold fusion researchers, and sometimes, critics. Basically, nobody has found "23.8 MeV." That's the theoretical value for d-d fusion and would also be the same for 4d Be-8 intermediary fusion (i.e., you'd get, from the latter, two 23.8 MeV alpha particles). What has actually been claimed is that results are "consistent with" 23.8 MeV. I.e., 31-32 +/- 13 MeV/He-4 (McKubre), based on a single Case study, as far as I know, 24.8 +/- 2.5 MeV from a single SRI study reported by Hagelstein. Storms then claims that, by combining all measurements (he reports a lot of results using different units, i.e., He/watt-second, and I haven't done the conversion), he comes up with 25 +/- 5 MeV/He-4. His conclusion is "this value is consistent with d-d fusion being the source of energy and helium, other reactions may also be consistent...." For detail, at [41] is a 2003 review of heat and He-4 papers by NET. [42] is the October 2008 issue of NET, with discussion of what Krivit titles the "24 MeV belief." --Abd (talk) 18:30, 27 May 2009 (UTC) Resumption of my original post below --Abd (talk) 18:30, 27 May 2009 (UTC) Criticism of cold fusion work has often been based on two claims: lack of "nuclear ash," i.e., reaction product, and lack of radiation expected to accompany fusion. Almost any radiation, though, would show a nuclear reaction, radiation doesn't ordinarily come from chemical reactions. Finding helium correlated with excess heat, however, validates both sets of measurements unless there is some reasonable hypothesis connecting both as errors with a common cause, it answers the nuclear ash objection, since it is the ash, and it also can answer the radiation question, since energetic alpha radiation transfers its energy to the environment as heat, and there are at least two proposed mechanisms which explain why the expected neutrons would be missing. (Contrary to the claims made about me, repeatedly, that I'm pushing hydrino theory, I prefer the Be8 hypothesis of Takahashi, which neatly predicts no neutrons but only alpha radiation at 23.8 MeV) Energetic alpha particles would be expected to generate X-radiation, and that is reported quite clearly and cleanly (X-ray film that forms an image of the electrode, an electrode that wasn't radioactive before the experiment). Further, there is direct evidence of energetic alphas, much of the SPAWAR work, peer-review published, is about that. In 2004, though, energy/helium correlation was the only widely-known clear evidence for nuclear origin, so that this evidence was missed by the review, to some degree, was of great historical importance. Believe it or not, Woonpton, what I'm about here is writing an encyclopedia article, one which neutrally reports the whole story as found in sources meeting our standards. Doing that requires confronting certain common editorial assumptions based on widespread misinformation as to what is actually in the sources. Please remember that in January, when I came across some administrative abuse over related issues, I was skeptical about cold fusion, though dedicated to NPOV. My initial concern was pure process, administrators shouldn't be using their tools in the service of their POV, and it was quite clear to me that this had happened. It took months, but ArbComm validated this view and rejected or ignored claims that I was POV-pushing. I only developed a POV about cold fusion as a result of becoming familiar with what is in reliable sources, plus extensive discussions here. I've encountered, in the literature, many stories like my own: skeptics who, for some reason, were motivated to actually look at the sources instead of relying on knee-jerk assumptions. Robert Duncan (physicist) is only the most recent example. And what is my POV? It is that claims that low energy nuclear reactions sometimes take place in the palladium deuteride system are reasonable and worthy of further investigation. Given that it took almost twenty years to find experimental techniques that reliably show the excess energy production, at low levels, it's quite possible that this will never be commercially practical for energy generation, hence I would only recommend, at this time, modest funding. This is exactly the same conclusion as the 2004 DoE report. I am not out on a limb, if my agreement with the conclusions of the DoE report (errors aside) is any sign, I'm right in the mainstream. It just looks different, to some, until they have seen what I've seen. And that is why we discuss and why we don't edit war; exceptions, for me, are rare and confined to some specific need, where asserting edits and compromising through edits rather than through more tedious discussion that goes nowhere is more efficient. Watch: you will see the results. If they don't toss me out of here first! Seems unlikely, at this point, but you never know. I can't do a thing without consensus, and I wouldn't want to. --Abd (talk) 16:55, 27 May 2009 (UTC) Abd, you are not neutral. Your complete lack of understanding of the import of the Clarke work shows this. Let me be clear. At the same time McKubre was developing the data he presented to the 2004 DOE Review, he supplied 4 samples to Clarke, et al. McKubre expected and communicated that the samples were to be hydrogen with traces of He in them. Clarke, et al found air. This means McK had no idea what he was doing. And this is from 'the best' the field has to offer. That directly applies to the work presented at the 2004 DOE review. Net conclusion, we are in a fog of confusion, and the correct response to that is "we have no idea what is going on, but there's no compelling evidence for CF". However, you are unable to accept this because, somehow, you have transformed into a CF fanatic advocate, and anyone who reads what you write here can see that. Most of us don't like that. It leads to a POV'd article. Please stop. Go away if you have to. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:22, 27 May 2009 (UTC) I'm not neutral, I didn't claim to be neutral. I wrote that my goal is a neutral article. What I understand is largely irrelevant, the community will judge; however, I do understand the import, though I may interpret it differently. You should know, if you are a careful scientist, that a single report isn't proof of anything, least of all that a researcher you assert is "the best the field has to offer" (that's quite debatable, he's notable and he's respected, but "best" is a big word) had "no idea what he was doing." If I take your account as accurate, more likely, he received the results and had no time to make sense of them, if, indeed, any sense could be made. I wouldn't include last-minute news in a report to the DoE unless it was very, very solid. Sure, those results called into question the Case work, but how much they call it into question involves details that haven't been disclosed here. The Case work was very narrow, and not crucial to the DoE report (that's why it was in an appendix, not in the main body); indeed, in hindsight, that report might have been more effective if it hadn't been added, because it clearly confused at least one person involved. The Clarke results were so far from what he'd found that it was very reasonable for him to suspect something odd had happened. I'll see what reports and claims there are on the circumstances, what follow-up there is, and report in a separate section. --Abd (talk) 21:42, 27 May 2009 (UTC) friendly warning for Shanahan from Abd Now, Kirk, you are very definitely not neutral, and,having a conflict of interest, you are not expected to be. That's why you have been properly advised not to edit the article (which advice you have apparently respected). If Rothwell were here and behaving as you are behaving above, I'd be warning him, so so take this as a friendly warning; if it weren't friendly, it would not be here, it would be on your Talk page, where you could be held responsible for having seen it. I have no intention to act to cause sanctions for your incivility here, but someone else might, and there is a decent possibility that all of this will end up before the Arbitration Committee again, there are arbitratable issues being raised that we might not be unable to find consensus on. My goal is to avoid that if possible, but also understand that the last time I went very far to try to find a way to avoid going to ArbComm, and only went because it was forced, I was troutslapped by ArbComm, not for my complaints and claims and work on this article and related issues, which a majority of editors currently active here derided, and attempted to have me banned over, but for not escalating sooner. (One well-known administrator described this to me, privately, as being "blessed by faint criticism.") There are lots of people reading what happens here, Kirk, who wouldn't agree with you about "CF fanatic advocate," but they don't necessarily jump in when they don't see it as necessary. I get the comments by email. From regular, experienced editors. I also get comments from people in the field, and from skeptics, some of whom are actually civil. You would do better, Kirk, if you recognize the boundaries. ArbComm has a tendency, when the can of worms is opened, to go through it and toss out single-purpose COI accounts who haven't respected WP:NPA and WP:CIVIL. Sometimes even if they have! I would prefer to retain your expertise, but, obviously, we also need balance from other experts, and we banned the most available one. I'll work on that. --Abd (talk) 21:42, 27 May 2009 (UTC) Kirk, what of the possibility that Clarke mishandled the samples? Or if the sample vials(?) were defective and leaked during transport? V (talk) 20:05, 27 May 2009 (UTC) Doesn't matter. May be entirely possible. However, data that was supposed to verify claims has contradicted them. Net result is "No conclusion can be drawn." But note however, that Clarke's work is an order of magnitude more thorough than McKubre's, AND represents what a scientist should do when conducting trace analysis. I have said the same thing about Little's work on 'transmutation products', and another example is Indian study on Bockris' carbon arc experiments. Bottom line, all the chemical measurements being made in this field are at trace level, and the CFers have never established they can and do (note, this means _every time_) do the job adequately. Therefore, the tendency is to trust Clarke over McKubre, but as I said that is not necessary, as the point was to 'prove' CF, and that didn't happen. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:33, 27 May 2009 (UTC) Thanks, Kirk. I was thinking of saying something along the lines of what Abd wrote in his second paragraph below, but since he's already done it.... I WILL say that your 3rd sentence is a bit "off". A vial of gas is not "data", although data would be obtainable from it. V (talk) 22:08, 27 May 2009 (UTC) Do you really not undersand English? I wrote: "data that was supposed to verify claims has contradicted them". That's exactly what I meant to say, and it true. The data from the Clarke, Bos, and Oliver paper repudiates McKubre, et al's claims. How clearer can I be? (You bias is showing I think...) Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:50, 28 May 2009 (UTC) It does matter. It's not an issue of trusting one researcher over another. Shanahan is stepping outside normal scientific protocol here, and his mention of this a sign of his attachment; the standard is to, by default, trust all the reports, which reflects the common-law principle that testimony is presumed true unless controverted. Experimental reports are just that, and we trust them. We assume that what they report is what was observed. So I assume that Clarke is reporting his expert analysis of what his techniques and instruments showed. You have done the same with calorimetry, by the way. You claim that excess heat is the result of an unknown surface effect that causes local heating, causing calibration constant shift. You claim that the experimental reports either show this or are consistent with this, which means that you are trusting the experimental results and are merely proposing an alternate explanation of them. Let's clarify first. The 'it' that does or doesn't matter is the possibility that Clarke, et al, messed up their analyses. So, exactly how is it 'stepping outside of scientific protocol' to say: "yes they might have, but the fact that they produced an excellent paper describing their work _and_ have the reputation to back it up, leads to a conclusion that we can't draw a conclusion."? They are not junk researchers, their work looks good, and, in fact, better than SRI's and any other CFer, and you want me to ignore it? Whose not being scientific now?? My conclusion is not wild or 'over-the-top', it is what is expected when a careful, detailed report is made presenting results that demonstrate an ongoing concern is still a problem. I simply ask those making the claims that are under question (CF produced He) to 'show their work', and to replicate. SOP for scientific protocol. I will note your comment is another ad hominem ("Shanahan doesn't follow scientific protocol") made on no basis other than you don't seem to like the implications of what I wrote. P.S. The standard is *not* to trust every report. All real scientisits know lots of garbage gets published everyday. _Everything_ that is published is questioned at some level. Science isn't the law, and publishing is a 'request for comment' from the general community. Why would you need that if it were true? I don't know where you think you learned sciecne V, but go back and do it over! (And the rest of the paragraph about how I do what you claim is equally off base.) Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:35, 28 May 2009 (UTC) Researchers have limited resources. It's easy to say that a researcher should have done this or that, but this or that may be expensive, not allowed by the budget or not possible with the research time available. Researchers report what results they have, balancing the need for more data -- there is almost always a need for more data -- with the need to communicate, so that others can become involved with analysis and confirmation, and, as well, so that they can receive credit for what they have done. Shanahan still does not seem to face the issue and power of correlation. We'll be examining that in more detail, it's a fundamental issue that bypasses the objections about measurement accuracy. In the meantime, however, we should note that the charts in the Hagelstein report do show error bars, and that the effects are not buried in the noise, and are confirmed with multiple measurements or experiments, and the heat/helium correlation is roughly confirmed by all the work that's been done on it. (We have no data, to my knowledge, on the heat generated from the cells from the Case report.) Note that Krivit, in what Kirk referred to about the 23.8 MeV/He-4 "myth," is claiming that one report, based on his own original analysis of it, shows 16 MeV/He-4, instead of the figures from other reports that were above the 24 MeV level (loss of helium, expected, will cause the measured and calculated MeV/He-4 to be above the actual reaction value). This is still quite close to the prediction for d-d fusion, when earlier criticism claimed that nuclear phenomena were many orders of magnitude -- very large numbers -- out of whack from theoretical predictions. Being within a factor of two is quite strong a result, in fact! --Abd (talk) 22:01, 27 May 2009 (UTC) Ummmm, Abd, the whole point of CCS is to extend the range of the error bars, so that data only a short distance outside them can instead be encompassed by them. Kirk is right in that the MATH is plausible, but as for the rationale for a mechanism...well, I want to see evidence for CCS in experiments designed to find it! And there is one other "tiny" thing...to the extent that a CF researcher was able to claim a tiny detection of excess heat, proportionate to natural deuterium level, using ordinary water in the electrolyte of a CF "control" experiment -- well, any calorimeter that can detect that, then when re-used in a heavy-water CF experiment (that's 6500 times as much deuterium as before)...that calorimeter's error bars SHOULD be far far below the level of measurable excess heat, such that not even CCS could expect to explain it away. V (talk) 22:17, 27 May 2009 (UTC) The issue is complex. I remain quite skeptical that Kirk's explanation is anything more than a long shot, a stretch. That it would remain through so many different kinds of experiments, including those that a measuring net heat flow from a tightly closed system such as an Arata cell (or Case cell), seems quite remote a possibility to me, but, yes, it should be investigated. About the ordinary water results, yes. They are measuring an effect three orders of magnitude lower than what they claim to see with heavy water. Kirk seems to be proposing, though, a non-nuclear excess heat effect that perturbs calorimetry because of the particular way that it manifests, through very local heating. Don't confuse precision (i.e., the ability to detect a very small change in evolved heat) with accuracy (the determination of an absolute level of heat evolution). Very precise results might be very inaccurate, if there is some systemic error. Look, the big problem with Kirk's results is that they haven't made a big splash. They've made a little splash. Storms does comment on Shanahan, which makes it notable. How does it feel, Kirk, to be notable because of Storms' response? Other secondary source that comments on Shanahan? There may be a little, I'm not sure. Not much. To a degree, any peer-reviewed response or other independently published response to Shanahan shows notability. --Abd (talk) 23:09, 27 May 2009 (UTC) Abd has again failed to research the things I write, and writes things that then imply I don't understand what is going on. Doing what I suggested, searching the Britz Bibliography, produced in about 5 minutes the facts that Notoya (FT 24(1993)202) produced a 4W excess heat signal with light water and nickel electrodes, and are other claims to 60% excess and 169% excess (Noninski FT 21(1992)163 and Notoya FT 26(1994)179). Storms' excess heat sig was 0.78W, McK's best (from c.'92-'93) was 1.7 as I recall, and his big '98 report best was only .36W. Point is, this is NOT 3 orders of magnitude under the signals obtained with heavy water, and it took 5 minutes to find this out. Kirk shanahan (talk) 14:30, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Clarke and Hagelstein

extended discussion.

Kirk shanahan wrote: So, from the best CF researcher around we have four samples submitted that were all supposed to be primarily hydrogen with traces of helium in them, and experts in mass spectrometry instead find air. Yet, McKubre et al report He production via ‘cold fusion’. At the same time McKubre was developing the data he presented to the 2004 DOE Review, he supplied 4 samples to Clarke, et al. McKubre expected and communicated that the samples were to be hydrogen with traces of He in them. Clarke, et al found air. This means McK had no idea what he was doing. And this is from 'the best' the field has to offer. That directly applies to the work presented at the 2004 DOE review. Shanahan had presented material from “PRODUCTION OF 4He IN D2-LOADED PALLADIUM-CARBON CATALYST II”, W. BRIAN CLARKE, STANLEY J. BOS and BRIAN M. OLIVER FUSION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 43, MAR. 2003, 250. The paper reviewed by the DoE in 2004 does refer to this paper, it is note 119. The context is a footnote on page 18. The samples may have had little or nothing to do with the work of McKubre reported in teh Hagelstein 2004 DoE review paper. The footnote: One study by Clarke[119] did not measure any significant increase in helium levels in a mass spectrometer where levels much smaller than 100 ppmV/V would have been easily recognized. Clarke, however, did not observe the procedures described by Case, which were in any case incomplete. Neither was Clarke able to measure any temperature effects and his geometry, which consisted of milligram single samples of “Case-type” catalyst confined with D2 or H2 in very small sealed Pb pipe sections, differed greatly from that used and recommended by Case. Clear as mud. If Shanahan has evidence on what these samples were and how they would bear on the Case cell work reported to the DOE, he's welcome to provide it. Notice the possible contradiction between the claim of Clarke to have measured levels in samples taken from "SRI Case-type stainless steelcells" and the claim in the Hagelstein paper that the samples were in "very small seald Pb pipe sections." Unstated, the provenance of the samples. I don't have direct access to the Clarke paper, maybe there are more details there. Otherwise, it's looking to me like the Clarke work is likely irrelevant to the Case study presented in Appendix B of the Hagelstein paper, which was, itself, a minor part of the energy/helium evidence, Clarke being blown up and stretched by Shanahan to make it appear highly relevant. Very impressive, Kirk. There is more. When was the work done on Case cells at SRI? McKubre reported on this at a conference in 1999: The catalytic fusion process of Dr. Les Case got a significant boost in early June. Dr. Michael McKubre of SRI International reported on a series of convincing experiments. These appear to confirm Case’s conclusion that helium-4 can be produced by the catalytic action of palladium-doped carbon in heated vessels containing pressurized (several atmospheres) heavy hydrogen (D2) gas. McKubre spoke on June 3, 1999 at the Society for Scientific Exploration’s 18th Annual Meeting, which was held at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.[43]. The Clarke study was published in March, 2003. As I mentioned above, we aren't informed as to the provenance of the cells. Samples were "taken from" stainless steel Case-type cells, but how? And when? How had the cells previously been treated? What was the purpose of the provision of samples to Clarke? How long elapsed between the filling of the sample containers (what were the sample containers, how were they sealed, etc) and the Clarke measurements. Pesky little details, some of which might have answers, and some not. Bottom line: these were not measurements reported as part of a study, and the purpose isn't stated by Clarke. Normally, SRI does their own measurement of Helium with their own mass spectrometer. This may have been an attempt to check a calibration, for example, and somebody screwed up. Or open, literally. It's a bit unclear why Clarke even published, the paper as described doesn't assert the significance, though Shanahan does. What I see in the Clarke report is that the containers were very badly sealed, whereas, looking at the helium data from the Hagelstein paper, one container shows no leakage at all, two show possible slow leaks (one very low levels detected, also possible measurement error, and one with a steady rise toward ambient level, could be a leak indication, but then three that show drastic rises, clearly unconnected with and surpassing ambient. I see no relation between this and the Clarke results, except possibly with the slowly leaking cells -- which were all leaking at a lower rate than Clarke speculates (major shift in "a few days" vs data collected for the Hagelstein paper over as long as 45 days.) --Abd (talk) 01:42, 28 May 2009 Any real scientist understands the case I am making. The vehement objections being raised by V and Abd about this is proof that they are biased and should not be editing the article. I don't feel the need to say more in response to them now. If others have questions please post them. Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:39, 28 May 2009 (UTC) P.S. You're confusing papers. Note the "I" and "II". Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:30, 28 May 2009 (UTC) Please remove this section to your own talk page. Verbal chat 06:46, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

American Chemistry Society Symposium Series: Low Energy Nuclear Reactions Sourcebook

I have obtained a copy of this book.

Be that as it may, there is a Foreword in the book that should be noticed, given what some have said about this source:

The ACS Symposium Series was first published in 1974 to provide a mechanism for publishing symposia quickly in book form. The purpose of the series is to publish timely, comprehensive books developed from ACS sponsored symposia based on current scientific research. Occasionally, books are developed from symposia sponsored by other organizations when the topic is of keen interest to the chemistry audience.

Before agreeing to publish a book, the proposed table of contents is reviewed for appropriate and comprehensive coverage and for interest to the audience. Some papers may be excluded to better focus the book; others may be added to provide comprehensiveness. When appropriate, overview or introductory chapters are added. Drafts of chapters are peer-reviewed prior to final acceptance or rejection, and manuscripts are prepared in camera-ready format.

As a rule, only original research papers and original review papers are included in the volumes. Verbatim reproductions of previously published papers are not accepted.

ACS Books Department.

The material is all copyright 2008 by the American Chemical Society. The title page says that it is "Sponsored by the ACS Division of Environmental Chemistry, Inc." Is that mainstream enough? The book is distributed by Oxford University Press, the well-known fringe publisher.

If anyone has questions about what's in the book, "Abd" means "servant" or "slave." Ask, if it pleases you. Otherwise, there will be, I suspect, some material sourced to this book appearing in an article near you. It might even survive more than a few minutes....

List of Papers

Contributing authors and papers

Any questions? --Abd (talk) 00:17, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't have a question, but I will repeat my request: Please stop posting so much unless you are discussing a particular proposed edit to the article. Talk pages are intended for discussion of how to improve wikipedia articles. Olorinish (talk) 01:11, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Just ignore everything 'till someone writes a brand new section that proposes a specific change to the article. I am. Hipocrite (talk) 14:39, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Great idea, Hipocrite. Too bad you don't take your own advice, it would be better if you did.

Ignoring Talk is perfectly legitimate and does not adversely affect editor rights. The only exception would be edit warring to maintain text or remove text when there has been recent unanswered discussion against that action, and if that discussion is tl;dr, one has a perfect excuse. Waiting to see edits is quite appropriate, if one is not interested in the discussion. Trying to prevent others who feel differently from discussing, however, is chilling to our best process, whereby a few editors explore possibly difficult issues in depth, then present results to a broader group having defined the issues and collected evidence. Some of this can take place on Talk pages, perhaps, but where it seems that the issue isn't editor behavior, but substance of the topic and the sources, I think it belongs in Article talk. Talk can be refactored to make it more accessible, and this is where I see effort increasing over coming years. We need backstory that explains how the text came to be what it is, so that future editors can be integrated into a standing consensus, and understand where it might be possible to change it. --Abd (talk) 17:58, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

If you feel that something I have written here isn't sufficiently useful, or is too long, you may collapse it. I will title the collapse section if it isn't neutrally and informatively titled (i.e., you don't necessarily have to read the whole thing to collapse it.) Don't use an archive template, please, because it should still be possible for others to comment within the collapse. Just use {{collapsetop|title text}} and {{collapsebottom}}, please. Or you can ask me to collapse it.

However, I'm using the Talk page to improve the article, the whole article, not just a particular proposed edit. I don't think we have a WikiProject Cold Fusion, or do we? I also use it for specific edit issues, as can be seen above. If you believe that what I'm doing here violates Talk page guidelines, I assume that you understand how to approach this issue. --Abd (talk) 03:22, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Specific article suggestions from Kirk Shanahan

{unindent}Ok – suggestions:

A.) Include:

1.) that the CCs potentially increase ‘excess heat’ error bars tremendously,

a.) implying all known reports may be explained by it

b.) requires CF reearchers address the issue directly, which hasn’t happened

2.)that Clarke, et al 4He results, coupled with DOE report(s), and Paneth and Peters experience

a.) suggests all 4He results are potentially false

b.) requires CF researchers disclose all methods, calibrations, etc. for He measurements, which hasn’t happened

3.)that ‘contamination’ concerns extend to heavy metal transmutation claims

a.) note such in S. Little’s RIFEX report (single specific use, meets RS)

b.) note Mizuno replicated Iwamura, but identified S contaminant insetead of Mo

c.) note BHARC replicated Bockris carbon-arc results but showed they came primarily from dust

d.) note that SIMS, XPS, etc are being misused by CF researchers

4.) that light water cold fusion has been observed and is of the same magnitude as heavy water CF

a.) note that this negates the whole “D + D -> He + 23.8 MeV” limitation to CF theories

(which should be obvious from D. below)

B.) Drop

1.) CR39 stuff, esp triplet stuff, as too recent, too suspect

2.) hydrino theory mention (hydrino theory is even wilder than CF)

3.) calling muon catalyzed fusion “cold fusion”

4.) legitimizing the name change to ‘LENR’, point out this is strictly to avoid ‘associations’ with CF

C.) Add section “Is it psuedoscience or not?”

1.) point out Storms omission of final Shanahan pub in his book

2.) point out Hagelstein, et al’s omission of Clarke et al 4He work on SRI samples

3.) point out conformances to Langmuir’s criteria

D.) Move stuff on conventional theory (the ‘miracles’) to a side article, noting that all sides agree CF is not constent with conventional theory Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:03, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

extended discussion

This certainly deserves clear response. Thanks, Kirk, for making specific suggestions. Some of them are utterly impossible, unless you can show secondary sources supporting the text you are proposing. Do you understand our sourcing requirements? A.) Some of what you assert seems false and not supported by sources. A few details you mention may be appropriate. For example, Mizuno's alleged finding of sulfur may be used if we are using a primary source for the Iwamura claim. However, Iwamura is highly notable, Mizuno is a notable researcher but I'm not sure about secondary source evaluating the objection. I'm inclined to allow it, but would want to examine the details closely. B.)CR39, hydrino theory, the fact that muon-catalyzed fusion was originally called cold fusion (and, in fact, technically is cold fusion, i.e., fusion at low temperatures, far, far below the temperatures involved in hot fusion), all are highly notable and rooted in reliable source. The general approach that we use the article to assert our personal conclusions is prohibited. Our personal conclusions may guide us personally, but the article is governed by policy and guidelines and consensus. C.)Discussion of the pseudoscience issue is appropriate, rooted in secondary sources. This is part of the history of the topic, not of the science itself. However, that we "point out" quite possibly inconsequential primary source details on the argument that they impeach a reliable secondary source, omissions of mention of work that has no independent notability, conformances to pseudoscience criteria (that's synthetic if not from uncomplicated secondary source, or attributed to same, or attributed to primary sources if we can agree, and it's also POV if not balanced with available secondary source). Cold fusion does not conform to Langmuir's criteria by any objective assessment, made today, in my opinion, and we do have reliable secondary source on the topic, as to the situation some time ago, which, indeed, we should report (both sides). On "omissions," do we "point out" that the 2004 DOE report neglected to mention the strongest argument for cold fusion presented in the Hagelstein paper, the finding of roughly 20-30 MeV per He4 by multiple research groups, and instead focused on an erroneous report of a detail in the paper, Appendix B, as if this was the whole argument? No, not exactly. However, since this is all essentially one source, reporting from it what is sufficient to show to an ordinary reader the contradiction involved, that we can and should do. We have, because it is a single source (that is, in this case, the review and the presentation reviewed), and that the review makes a factual claim about the presentation document that is impeached by showing text from it or the kind of obvious synthesis that is allowed (i.e., "it does not state...."), no conflict of sources, no need to balance source reliability, etc. D.) As to moving theory to a side article, we will need to fork articles to cover what we have from reliable source on this topic, so editors should be thinking about how to do this without creating POV forks. One general comment. Some of the concerns you raise, Kirk, are quite legitimate concerns, but we can't address them in the article. As has often been pointed out, Wikipedia is not the place to redress wrongs. We can make no demands of our sources, we cannot force anyone to do anything, and we cannot report their failure to do what we might ask unless we have reliable secondary source interpreting such failure. I find the omission of certain details in the Hagelstein paper, particularly Appendix B, appalling; however, I don't find that kind of critical omission in many other reports, and impeaching entire fields of research and research methods based on mistakes or errors having been made somewhere, sometime, is utterly beyond the pale. Contamination is always a concern with any trace analysis, and that is already noted in our article, I think. If not, it certainly should be. Then we want to know what measures were taken to avoid artifact due to contamination, what controls were there, etc. But we don't make this stuff up, though our own original research except sometimes for background discussion here, discussion that can guide us as to how to interpret sources and use them to create a neutral article, reliably sourced, that is also scientifically accurate and enjoys consensus. Want to avoid consensus? Refuse to discuss in detail, just assert your POV as if it were The Truth(TM), or, if you do discuss, never compromise, never admit that the other side might have a point, etc. Some apparently have thought that the discussions above were useless. They certainly weren't useless for me. I learn through discussion, the issues become clear, and I know, then, how to proceed to seek clarity in the article and consensus over it at the same time. This will be showing up in edits, possibly tonight when the article protection expires. We have sufficient consensus on certain things to at least assert them through edits instead of through more, arguably tedious, discussion. Thanks, --Abd (talk) 17:18, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

May 29 Video seminar organized by Robert Duncan (physicist)

May be of interest to some editors of this article. Discussion not needed now.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
[http://www.more.net/services/videostreaming/events.html Vice Chancellor for Research Seminar Series: Excess Heat and Particle Tracks from Deuterium-loaded Palladium] Friday, May 29, 2009 12:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Jesse Wrench Auditorium Memorial Union University of Missouri Program Schedule 12:30-1:00 – Robert V. Duncan, Ph.D., University of Missouri Welcome, Summary, and Observations 1:00-2:30 – Mr. Lawrence Forsley, President, JWK International Corporation Pamela A. Mosier-Boss, Ph.D., Advanced Systems and Applied Sciences Division of SSC-Pacific Frank E. Gordon, Ph.D., Head, Research and Applied Sciences Department, US Navy SSC-Pacific Twenty-Year History of Lattice-Enabled Nuclear Reactions Using Pd/D Co-deposition 2:30-2:45 – Break 2:45-3:15 – Edmund K. Storms, Ph.D., KivaLabs, LLC, Santa Fe, NM and Greenwich, CT An Informed Skeptics View of Cold Fusion 3:15-3:45 – Michael C.H. McKubre, Ph.D., Energy Research Center, SRI International Studies of the Fleischmann-Pons Effect at SRI International 3:45-4:15 – Peter L. Hagelstein, Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology Modeling Excess Heat in the Fleischmann-Pons Experiment 4:15-4:45 – Yeong E. Kim, Ph.D., Purdue University Theory of Bose-Einstein Condensation Nuclear Fusion 4:45-5:00 – Break 5:00-5:30 – Mark Prelas, Ph.D., Nuclear Science and Engineering Institute, University of Missouri A Review of Transmutation and Clustering in Low Energy Nuclear Reactions 5:30-6:00 – David J. Nagel, Ph.D., The George Washington University Scientific and Other Challenges of Lattice-Enabled Nuclear Reactions 6:00-6:30 – TBA 6:30-7:00 – TBA 7:00-7:15 – Robert V. Duncan - Wrap-up and Future Plans Enjoy. --Abd (talk) 04:56, 29 May 2009 (UTC) May I just ask - why is there here? - Bilby (talk) 06:50, 29 May 2009 (UTC) Because the fact that a physicist who was unfamiliar with the field failed to see the problems in a real world setup, and became convinced of the reality of cold fusion, which obviously proves cold fusion is real!  ;-} Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:21, 29 May 2009 (UTC) (unindent) It's here because there is a community of editors working on this article, and the more informed the community is on the topic, the better we will be able to understand it, and, in particular, to make judgments about due weight in the article. I can't say what the seminar will prove, I don't have a crystal ball, but the researchers presenting are well-known, so if you want to see faces and demeanor behind the abstract texts we normally look at, this is an opportunity. This video seminar would have been noticed here even if Duncan hadn't made a very public "conversion." He's much more familiar with physics than any of us, including Shanahan, and if he's unfamiliar with the cold fusion field, all the better. He'll learn. His conversion only proves that a skeptical physicist, who investigates, can come up with conclusions the opposite of the alleged mainstream. --Abd (talk) 12:30, 29 May 2009 (UTC) Ah. So it has nothing directly to do with the article, and instead you're just informing editors of an event happening elsewhere? Of which they may be interested? In that case it sounds like well-intentioned spam, which probably isn't appropriate here. - Bilby (talk) 12:35, 29 May 2009 (UTC) Bilby, at the bottom of the show/hide section you say that the section has "nothing directly to do with the article", but the whole section is marked "Nothing to do with the article". That sort of creeping POV cannot go unchallenged. Abd is perfectly correct in basically stating that knowledgeable editors will do a better job on this article than ignorant editors. If you are an editor of this particular article, which category are you in? And how thoroughly? Are you trying to imply that any ignorant or partly-ignorant editors should stay that way, that an easy way to become more informed should be censored? Well? Please explain your position in more detail! V (talk) 13:43, 29 May 2009 (UTC) Perhaps you should check the history - I didn't collapse the section, so the section header isn't mine. And yes, knowledge is good. However, advertising a forthcoming seminar on a discussion page is more than just a tad questionable, even with good intentions. - Bilby (talk) 13:48, 29 May 2009 (UTC) No problem with the archiving template, except I edited the reason. It does have to do with improving this article, but anyone who disagrees is welcome to ignore this, and discussion of this is not needed at this time. Some of the presentations, however, if made available for later viewing, may become sources. We'll discuss that later. This is also relevant to my observation of a shift in "mainstream" thinking on cold fusion, it's evidence that, at the very least, cold fusion is less fringe than it once was, making our determinations of due weight more complicated. --Abd (talk) 16:54, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Proposed change to intro

It seems that Hipocrite wants me to select a specific edit to discuss, and to make a suggestion. OK, here goes: The 1st paragraph as written is misleading, per my suggestions above. I propose the following, appropriately tagged, etc.:

Cold fusion is a term originally used to describe muon catalyzed fusion. It refers to the fact that muon catalyzed fusion occurs at room temperature, instead of the millions of degrees normally required for ‘hot’ nuclear fusion. In 1989, two electrochemists, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, presented evidence during a press conference that purported to show another method for obtaining room temperature (‘cold’) fusion reactions. Even though Prof. Steven Jones also claimed to have found evidence for such an effect, in the popular literature the term ‘cold fusion’ has come to be nearly exclusively associated to the Fleischmann and Pons claims. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:38, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Paragraphs 2 and 3:

Today, the field is viewed as a ‘pariah’ field by mainstream science. But a persistent band of scientists refuses to accept this verdict and continues to attempt to advance the state of knowledge about the field. A variety of effects have been observed and are claimed to support the contention that room temperature nuclear reactions have occurred in their apparati. Because of the pariah status of ‘cold fusion’, advocates have taken to calling this field “Low Energy Nuclear Reactions” (LENR) or “Condensed Matter Nuclear Science” (CMNS) in an attempt to avoid the negative connotations of “Cold Fusion”. A recent book by E. Storms summarizes these claims with great detail. However, current objections to these claims are not as well treated.

Originally the FP claims focused on D + D fusion, which is known to occur at high temperatures. However, early mistakes coupled with lack of reproducibility and the fact that ‘CF’ has now been observed at roughly similar levels in light water FP-type cells has led to a general admission that the physics at work is completely unknown, and probably inconsistent with high temperature nuclear fusion.

Enough for now. You get the drift. Additional facts currently included in the Intro section can be added in later paragraphs if necessary. Let's discuss. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:56, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Starting with the 1st para first, are you sure that it was initially used to describe muon cat fusion? Also, I'm not sure if that should be the first para - perhaps the 2nd, moving the intro to something like:

Cold fusion refers to a postulated nuclear fusion process, widely considered to be pathological science, offered to explain a group of disputed experimental results first reported by electrochemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons. Supporters of Cold Fusion also refer to it as sometimes as low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) studies or condensed matter nuclear science

Cold fusion is a term originally used to describe muon catalyzed fusion. It referred to the fact that muon catalyzed fusion occurs at room temperature, instead of the millions of degrees normally required for ‘hot’ nuclear fusion. In 1989, Fleischmann and Pons, presented evidence during a press conference that purported to show another method for obtaining room temperature (‘cold’) fusion reactions. Even though Prof. Steven Jones also claimed to have found evidence for such an effect, in the popular literature the term ‘cold fusion’ has come to be nearly exclusively associated to the Fleischmann and Pons claims."

Interjection: There is a grammatical inconsistency between "originally used" and "refers". Since the past tense is correct, "referred" is a better word there. I'd also like to point out that the part about Prof Jones is a bit unclear. What experiment did he do that was different from the P/F work? Did it involve deuterium-saturated metal? If so, then technically there is little significant difference; today "cold fusion" is basically the description of a proposed explanation for the apparent appearance of heat in experiments that involve deuterium-saturated metal. Believers, of course, think that the heat is real and the proposal is the correct explanation. V (talk) 16:03, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I have changed the referred per your advice. I cannot speak to Jones vs. PF. Hipocrite (talk) 16:24, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

No, change 'It' to "Cold" in quotes and it retains the point that it is still so today. Please don't edit until consensus is achieved, even if it is just in the Talk pages..

It amuses me that estwhile editors of the article don't know the history of the affair. Jones and F&P were involved in semi-parallel research efforts. They both submitted proposals to a DOE office, and the DOE person in charge noted the similarities. He then advised each of the other's work. The rest is history as they say. Read the Kowalski ref below for a good angle on it. Many books from the early days detail this also. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:29, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Kirk, you have said something that does not make adequate sense across multiple posts. If Jones' work is so similar to the P/F work, then there is no reason to say that the DEFINITION of "cold fusion" is associated with the P/F claims; the fact is, the definition is associated with CLAIMS, regardless of who made them. V (talk) 18:11, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

The definition of cold fusion that should be used is the one that causes the least con-fusion. As can be seen from the lack of information regarding the Jones version of CF in the article, the term has come to mean the F&P type cells, AND the stuff they are now lumping in with it, i.e. the Pd-CaO-Pd samdwiches, etc. (these are all the things mentioned in Storms' book). At the beginning, the similarity was that two separate research groups were claiming a new way to fuse D at room temp. Jones' claim was based on weak neutron signals, signals that were several of order of magnitude weaker than what would be expected based on F&P's claims. Jones' work was primarily derived from studies on Earth core simulants as I recall. In the end quite different set-ups. Also, Jones recognized his claims were not compelling, while never giving up belief in them, so he didn't fanatically push his ideas like F&P and the associated crowd. Jones never developed groupies like Rothwell either. In the end (i.e. today) his claims have been all but forgotten while F&Ps are still being pushed. 'Cold fusion' today means F&P-type cold fusion, and any other definition will confuse the Wiki reader. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:55, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree about avoiding confusion. That means any reference to either Jones or P&F can wait for later in the article, because the definition is not about people or events. So, try this on for size, as a first paragraph:

"Cold fusion" is a term originally used to describe muon-catalyzed fusion. It referred to the fact that MCF can occur at room temperature (and even much colder, such as in liquid hydrogen), instead of the millions of degrees normally required for "hot" nuclear fusion. But few knew of that definition in 1989, when the news media reported widely on a completely different discovery, so the phrase acquired a new definition. "Cold fusion" now typically refers to the idea that deuterium nuclei can fuse while inside solid metal. However, that idea has yet to be indisputably proved true; it is controversial, and even if true no one yet knows the details of just exactly how cold fusion could happen. This article will describe the 1989 discovery (among others), the controversy, and related information. V (talk) 07:38, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

(Interjecting to respond to the above suggestion)As I have pointed out, protium is also claimed to produce the effect. Restricting the definition to deuterium is incorrect. Further, the 'evidence' for D-D fusion is not compelling. The suggested version is technically incorrect. We may need to clarify in the original version that we are talking about all F&P type experiments. Kirk shanahan (talk) 12:40, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestion; I think there are some good ideas there. However, "has yet to be indisputably proved true" seems to me to give too much weight to the pro-cold-fusion POV. "inside solid metal" ignores the theory, widely accepted within the field I think, that the effect occurs on or very near the surface of the electrode. Also, I think Pons and Fleishmann should be mentioned in the lead, being very notable with respect to this topic. How about ""Cold fusion now typically refers to the controversial hypothesis that fusion of deuterium nuclei is responsible for the excess heat reported in the Fleischmann-Pons effect". (Except that we can't wikilink "Fleischmann-Pons effect since I don't think we have a separate article for that, leading to a circular definition.) ☺Coppertwig (talk) 19:05, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

"[Fleischmann] told Pelley he has two regrets: calling the nuclear effect "fusion," a name coined by a competitor,"[44]. I suppose that he refers to Steven Jones. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:27, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

A couple nights ago I replied to Coppertwig, but the message seems to have vanished completely (it's not even in the History). I suspect a systemic restore-from-backup due to some badly garbled Wikipedia pages I saw the next day. So now I need to try to reconstruct my vanished message, and reply to 2 other messages as well.

Coppertwig, can you clarify how the phrase "has yet to be indisputably proved true" is pro-CF POV, when in my mind the phrase "has yet to be indisputably proved false" would most certainly be pro-CF POV. I can try to explain a thought I had as I wrote that: Simply to say, "yet to be proved true" is inadequate because in the minds of CF believers, it IS proved true. Perhaps the best solution is just to drop that phrase and change the encompassing sentence to: However, that idea is controversial, and even if true no one yet knows the details of just exactly how cold fusion could happen.

Next, regarding the near-surface of the metal, your statement does not seem supported by those pictures of melted (erupted!) palladium that Robert Duncan showed in that "importance of doing Scientific Method" video. The data I've seen seems to me to indicate that near-surface events may be associated with stuff like CR-39 tracks, but heat production at greater depths in the metal is not. The implication is that the CF effect can occur throughout the metal (with different results in different places). If you think the phrase "inside solid metal" implies depth, then how about, "inside a piece of metal"?

Kirk, please note the proposed paragraph I wrote specifies "typically". It is certainly true that claims of heat production, when ordinary water is used, are rather rarer than claims of heat production when heavy water is used. I have no objection to mentioning all sorts of details in the main article, but the lead paragraph does not need many details. Next, whether or not something is "not compelling" depends on who you ask; remember the individual remarks behind-the-scenes of the 2004 DOE report. Saying that the idea is controversial should be adequate in the lead paragraph. And I disagree that electrolysis experiments should be stressed in the lead paragraph; there are enough reports of excess heat generation, when deuterium gas is brute-force pressurized into metal (not just palladium), to warrant more generic phrasing in the lead paragraph (which is what I did).

Enric, despite what Fleischmann said, when you play with deuterium looking for nuclear events, a very likely candidate event is fusion (deuterium simply doesn't have a lot of options!). I can agree that talking about fusion without more evidence (or even more-repeatable evidence) certainly led to a lot of still-persisting trouble with the Physics community. But I doubt he could have said "nuclear effect" without anyone jumping to "fusion". V (talk) 16:02, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Today, the field is viewed as a ‘pariah’ field by mainstream science. But a persistent band of scientists refuses to accept this verdict and continues to attempt to advance the state of knowledge about the field. A variety of effects have been observed and are claimed to support the contention that room temperature nuclear reactions have occurred in their apparati.

Originally Cold Fusion claims focused on D + D fusion, which is known to occur at high temperatures. However, early mistakes coupled with lack of reproducibility and the fact that Cpld Fusion has now been observed at roughly similar levels in light water cells has led to a general admission that the physics at work is completely unknown, and inconsistent with modern physics.

Thoughts? Hipocrite (talk) 14:06, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=6345322 ref to paper by Jones and Rafelski entitled "Cold nuclear fusion". It discusses muon cat. fusion. I have no objections to your other changes. Kirk shanahan (talk) 14:49, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Also see http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=5628318 ref to a paper by E. P. Palmer on muon-catalyzed cold fusion, 1986. refers to S. Jones work. Kirk shanahan (talk) 15:25, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

In the 9/17/08 version of the article, a ref is cited for the coining of 'cold fusion'. It is unpublished (http://pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/cf/131history.html) but it seems to suggest that the 1986 ref I give above is probably the earliest RS for it. Kirk shanahan (talk) 15:36, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Much of this looks good, though I haven't compared, but there is one problem. And here is why I want to work on a rewrite. The present article is based on a background assumption of general rejection, reflected by "pariah field." It's clear -- we have plenty of source -- that it was so, though it's not quite clear that this indicated scientific consensus, but rather a dominant majority opinion that was able to enforce itself. As I've shown elsewhere, the publication ratio was 2:1 against cold fusion in 1989, about 1:1 in 1990, and positive papers exceeded negative papers every year after that. Total positive papers exceed total negative papers. Recent work is almost completely positive. "Pariah" reflects a very active and strong prejudice that represses work in the field, and we have source on this: how, for example, a graduate student who worked with Brokris was harassed and intimidated. But what is the situation now? There is quite a bit of recent source which shows a shift. "Cold fusion hot again" is the title of the CBS documentary. And now I'm reading the American Chemical Society LENR Sourcebook. Storms was somewhat of a turning point, as a major scientific publisher committed to a major review of the field, in 2007. The ACS Sourcebook, 2008, is even more. Many of the papers published in it are reviews of the field, detailed. Nothing like this existed before. The ACS is mainstream. For them to host an occasional one-day seminar, as they did previously, is one thing, but the publication of the Sourcebook last year, working with Oxford University Press, and the four-day seminar this year, with a press release calling great attention to it, this is new.

I'm certainly not proposing that cold fusion be presented as having been accepted by the mainstream, but we have to start discriminating more closely. Mainstream what? Mainstream physics? Mainstream chemistry? Mainstream media? --Abd (talk) 04:27, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Abd, do you have any idea what "being decalared a pariah field" means in relation to RS? It means there won't be any past the declaration point. Why? Because it's a pariah field, and people who work in a pariah field are pariahs. No normal scientist wants to be labelled a 'pariah'. It means loss of funding and therefore often loss of job. So, no normal scientist continues to work in the field! No workers in the field means no papers! I.e. no RS!! However, in 20 years the CFers could have produced something to change that designation, if they participated in the normal scientific process. They didn't (as Goodstein noted). They circled their wagons and formed their clubs and carried on, all while ignoring standard scientific practice. So, normal scientists just had to look at that and say "Well, they're still at it." to justify not revisiting the issue. But, this also means the mainstream basically forgot about CF. The most normal response I get about this is: "Wasn't that resolved (badly) a long time ago?" So, the 'strategy' of renaming the field 'LENR' is paying off, because reviewers don't recognize they are dealing with cold fusion.

So, do you get the point? There literally is no RS past c. 1994-5, with a couple of specific exceptions. No mainstream workers meant no mainstream RS. The loss of critical review from CFers means no RS from their circles. And I will make the case that when a CFer publishes in a mainsteam journal, there is still an RS issue around the fact that the reviewers are likely uninformed on the field and thus not capable of critically reviewing the work. The only possible way I can see to get RS past 1994-5 is to present negative results that are fully conventional. Then, the reviewers are likely able to understand and follow the work described. Kirk shanahan (talk) 12:33, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I get much more than you realize, Kirk. You have clearly defined the problem with "pariah." It's a POV, a very strong one. We can report that POV when it's in reliable source, but that does not mean that we report it as fact, and especially that we report as still being true. Note that some researchers have participated in the normal peer-reviewed publication process; these tended to be better-funded and supported. Shanahan tries to lump them all together, that's part of his approach. Yes, Shanahan, the response you get is quite normal. What's of interest, though, is what happens next, when these people become aware of the continuing work. That's why we rely upon peer-reviewed reliable sources, not non-reviewed secondary sources making conclusions about "pariah" or "fraud" or "pathological science" or "dead" or any of the rest. This is a science article, and, where it is reporting on the science, we place less reliance on non-peer-reviewed sources, which is where the "pseudoscience" label is found. Because these other sources are still reliable source, we don't exclude the opinions, but we place them in context and we don't attach to them.

What you are doing is making hosts of personal assumptions, such as a claim that, effectively, the review panel for Die Naturwissenschaften, which is put together by the Max Planck Society, somehow doesn't have experts available to review the papers. Read the article on the Society! Your approach would leave us with nothing but unsupported editor opinion by which to determine RS, with research required to research the research. And no consensus would ever be found, so edit warring and other pathologies would continue. We can and should present "negative results" that are present in peer-reviewed journals, with appropriate weight, and how do we determine that weight? By the weight of publication in peer reviewed journals! (And by consensus.) And the fact that there is very little "negative" publication beyond 1994 (beyond 1990, when negative and positive papers were equal in number, positive papers, every year, outnumbered negative ones, entirely setting aside conference papers. The numbers declined until the middle of the first decade of this century or so, they have been increasing since then, a little, with some very high-quality work being published.

When there is contradiction of sources (which is actually rare with peer-reviewed sources, they are pretty careful, normally, so you may disagree with their conclusions, but when they say that they measured such and such, and, according to their instruments and how they interpreted them, they found this or that, it is normally trusted that it's true. And then we can look at possible mistakes. I.e., some artifact may have caused the results. The later report doesn't actually contradict the earlier report, except as to conclusions, perhaps. The experimental reports themselves are not generally impeached, and when they are, in a serious way, that's it for the career of that scientist. It's like editors here misrepresenting sources, that is a quick way to get banned. It's very serious, because it can cause a great deal of harm. --Abd (talk) 16:22, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

P.S. I have commented before that calling the ACS session a 'four-day' session is incorrect. At best it was a two and one-half-day event that was really a stetched 1-1 1/2 day event. Kirk shanahan (talk) 12:45, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

If I'm correct, the press release and the press reports called it a four-day session. You might be right, Kirk, but it's beside the point. Previous sessions were one day or maybe even part of a day, I'm not sure. This was more than a token, and put it together with the publication by the ACS of the Sourcebook, there is now evidence for a shift, in spite of how hard you are pushing for it to be a myth, based on your own POV and personal arguments not rooted in reliable source. I defend your right to do that here, so far, but I also recommend that you understand our guidelines and accept them, it will be more efficient. You do come up with good points, and that's why I want your participation. --Abd (talk) 15:39, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

extended discussion

Looking at the page with info about today's U. Minn. seminar, I came across this as a paper just published by one of the presenters: Theory of Bose–Einstein condensation mechanism for deuteron-induced nuclear reactions in micro/nano-scale metal grains and particles. Where published? Naturwissenschaften. Mainstream. And that's where Mosier-Boss published her triple-track paper. (And there is much more from her in the Sourcebook, and a far more detailed discussion of the Takahashi Be-8 theory, Fleischmann describing what he was looking for when he stumbled upon the excess heat. The book is chock full of secondary source reviewing aspects of the field that have been well-known from conference papers, New Energy Times, etc. From Excess Heat and Calorimetric Calculation: Evidence of Coherent Nuclear Reactions in Condensed Matter at Room Temperature" A. De Ninno, E. Del Giudice, and A. Frattolillo, p. 128-129: The debate on cold fusion has been sometimes represented to the public as a quarrel between "true believers" (supporting the cause of this peculiar kind of nuclear phenomenon out of an attitude of rebellion against the prevailing paradigm) and the "true unbelievers" (Acting as "defensores fidei", struggling against the people who try to subvert the scientific rationality). This misrepresentation has obscured the real scientific roots of the research approach that has brought some scientists to conceive the point of view that nuclear reactions could occur inside condensed matter, in particular within metal lattices at room temperature. And then this paper gives the most coherent explanation of the problem that I've seen: The usual objections against cold fusion are based on the tenet that physics of nuclei embedded in a lattice should not differ from the physics of nuclei in vacuo, in the empty space. This statement is known as the Asymptotic freedom. As a matter of fact, the space-time scale of nuclear phenomena is smaller by six orders of magnitude than the space-time scale of the lattice. Let us assume that nuclear reactions among deuterium nuclei d could occur within the lattice as physical events localized at definite sites. Consider in particular the reaction d + d -> compound_excited_nucleus_4He -> final_products. The energy release from the compound nucleus in order to relax to a stationary state should follow the Heisenberg uncertainty principle delta E times delta T =~ Plank's constant. Since delta E =~ 24 MeV, then delta T =~ 10-22 second. Actually the lattice could play a role in the decay of the compound nucleus only if the energy released by the nuclear reaction should involve several lattice components within the decay time delta T. However, this is impossible since the velocity of the energy transfer required to overcome the distance between first neighbors in a metal lattice, about 3 Ao, would exceed the speed of light by a factor of 104. This consideration would rule out any possibility of a nuclear reaction occurring in a lattice according to a dynamics different than in vacuo. But then they proceed to approach the problem with Quantum field theory, leading to this statement: Quantum electrodynamics (QED) implies that nuclear transformations of deuterons compressed into a palladium lattice would substantially differ from the reactions observed in diluted plasmas. This intuition was largely shared by Julian Schwinger. And, of course, by Fleischmann. That's what he's described in a number of papers, that he was searching for examples where ordinary Quantum mechanics would break down and where the more sophisticated QED would be required. He writes that he didn't expect to succeed, he thought the effects would probably be too small to measure. --Abd (talk) 04:27, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Response to Hipocrite's suggestion of 14:06, 29 May 2009: I don't think "lack of reproducibility" is NPOV. Many labs have reported reproducing the excess heat results and some other results (helium, neutrons) have also been reported as reproduced at more than one lab. Maybe you mean that reliable methods of predicting or controlling the effects have not been developed; this would need to be made more clear, and also may not be NPOV, as I think a couple of labs have said something about having developed recipes with 100% reproducibility (or something like that), e.g. SPAWAR's codeposition method.
It may be OK to say that there's a general acknowledgement that the physics at work is unknown but I don't think it's NPOV to say that it's inconsistent with modern physics. A lack of explanation is not the same thing as a contradiction of laws of physics, per Goodstein: "It proved that there are still genuine surprises waiting for us that, once understood, don't violate conventional physical laws." [45]. Also I wouldn't say "completely" unknown, since the idea of combining D + D and getting energy out is in itself understood.
What's this about it being observed at similar levels with light water? Could you provide a source, please? The graphs I saw had controls using light water producing no excess heat. At Friday's seminar someone mentioned Tritium, I think, produced in a cell with light water, but in much smaller amounts than in the cell with heavy water, and they explained this by pointing out that there's some deuterium in ordinary light water. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 23:39, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Go to the Dieter Britz Cold Nuclear Fusion Bibliography (http://www.chem.au.dk/~db/fusion/biblio.html). Select the journal articles with abstrat link, then search for 'nickel' in that. You will end up with at least 5 or 6 sources, and note Dieter only lists peer-reviewed publications. All RS. Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:45, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Shanahan is correct about this, generally. "Cold fusion" isn't a scientific term, it's not what the researchers usually use, except colloquially, and it's not what the 2004 panel called it. There are results with ordinary water and metals other than palladium. However, as to heavy water vs light water, with palladium, it's well-known that F and P did do light water work and found, to their surprise, a little excess heat, and they held off on publishing this, it was apparently a mystery to them. However, ordinary water does contain some deuterium, and that might possibly explain the results, though that leads to other mysteries with other experimental results, such as the poisoning effect found with a little ordinary water added to the heavy water in a cell that otherwise would generate excess heat. But it's also possible that hydrogen does fuse in condensed matter, and, basically, we can't rule it out; i.e., once one has established that it rains pigs and fishes, it wouldn't be surprising if it also rained squirrels or even polar bears. Light water controls are still used, as with the Mosier-Boss work, because, even if some fusion takes place with light water, the levels are way below that found, with heavy water, in a palladium-based experiment, so it's still a form of control. Simply not an absolute baseline.

Shanahan is also right about Dieter Britz. We used to link to that archive, and there is no reason not to do so now. I believe that it was taken out on the theory that anything to do with cold fusion was fringe, necessarily, and therefore biased, and therefore contrary to some interpretations of WP:EL policy. Though, in fact, it satisfies EL policy, quite handily. It's really almost the same as the lenr-canr.org bibliography, they cooperate and share new sightings. Both of them aim to be complete, but only lenr-canr.org also hosts actual papers when he can get permissions. Britz, on the other hand, also puts up his brief summaries of the content, which I've always found useful. He's an electrochemist, he knows what he's doing.

Notice that in describing Dieter's archive, Shanahan considers everything there RS, but the same papers, here, he denies it. What this implies is actually sad. Rothwell's chart of peer-reviewed publications is an analysis of Dieter's classifications. Rothwell then criticizes the classifications a bit, and that's more debatable, though he makes a good case. I'll put that link here if anyone requests it. --Abd (talk) 16:40, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Ah, a fish to the bait…Abd caught my little innuendo, although I don’t think he knew what it was. So let me be clear. We are spending inordinate amounts of time debating pointless topics here. Is so-and-so RS, is such-and-such? Why don’t we work on producing an article that the average Wikipedia reader would like to read. One that points out, simply, what cold fusion is, gives a little history, makes clear there is a controversy around it, and presents _both_ sides of the controversy fairly. I can make a good case, using Wiki policy and the sources that have been accepted by both sides, that most CF claiming papers are not RS, even if they have been published under a peer-review system. This is because the peer-review system is a) lenient, and b) flawed. But would that led to a good article? Hardly. Likewise, Abd’s voluminous writings do not significantly contribute to the article yet he won’t stop. I have taken to the tactic of Hipocrite, where I condense things that don’t contribute. Neither do I care if Abd doesn’t like my condensing comments. The vast bulk of what he (and V) have written do not contribute. Let’s focus on the article folks. Storms is good for it because he gives us a framework for the CF case to work with. I haven’t even read Krivit’s book, and I don’t think I will, it will only present more of the same. If there was any earth-shaking information in it, we would have heard the CFers trumpet it loudly. So, I say no on it for the article. It adds nothing of import.

Let’s also remember the CFers have a vested interest in promoting their POV, and they have routinely ignored what they don’t like. Light water cold fusion, cold fusion with platinum (which does not hydride, meaning it MUST be a surface reaction), the ‘best’ lab of the bunch having samples of air where they thought they had hydrogen with helium, etc. Let Abd and V (and PCarbonn) make their case, but let the oppositionmake its case too. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:41, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Not SPAM!!!

Collapsed off-topic advice to IP editor, per WP:TALK. Please see also MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist#lenr-canr.org (3)

Why will this site not let me add *[http://lenr-canr.org Comprehensive index of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions papers] (cannot even link it in this forum? sheesh!)? LENR-CANR.ORG is the best site on the internet for explaining real, observed cold fusion phenomena, and contains links to print resources and other hard-to-find materials. I have been using that site for years and never found a virus or been spammed or found anything besides accurate, truthful information. Omitting this link is a MISTAKE, or, dare I suggest it?, an intentional slur by wiki editors against honest, dedicated researchers pursuing our best hope to end global warming and the energy crisis. Thank you for your prompt attention in this matter. 70.88.48.118 (talk) 17:20, 31 May 2009 (UTC) There is a discussion taking place now at MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist#lenr-canr.org (3) on this. You are welcome to comment there, but it may be better left to editors very familiar with guidelines and policies and the history of this affair, and please avoid general accusations -- or even specific ones -- of editor bias, it will just confuse the issue. The blacklisting was originally added here by a particular administrator who was recently found by the Arbitration Committee to have done so improperly due to his involvement with the article and who was thus using his administrative privileges in support of his particular point of view. While delisting was requested here, in January, and was being discussed, he went to the global blacklist page at meta, which covers all wikipedia projects, and requested blacklisting there. As a trusted administrator, it was quickly granted, making our local discussion moot. Reversing a blacklisting at meta is not necessarily easy; the first step could be to gain whitelistings here, and that's what some of us have been pursuing. The Arbitration Committee did rule that the blacklist was not to be used to control content, only to control linkspam, which is misnamed "spam," but we are stuck with that name for historical reasons. "Linkspam" refers to the massive addition of links, not controllable through ordinary editorial process, and the links themselves might even all be legitimate, but the volume is too great. There was no linkspam. However, ArbComm doesn't make specific content decisions, so that did not automatically reverse the blacklisting; in any case, ArbComm doesn't have authority over meta, only over this project, which is why whitelisting of the site, or of specific links, is being requested here. When this discussion and process has come to a reasonable point, my plan is to go back to meta and request delisting. I agree that lenr-canr.org is one of the two best sites on the internet to find information on cold fusion or low-energy nuclear reactions. There is reliable source to that effect, in fact, and one source is cited in the whitelist discussion, a recent review of Storms 2007 book by Sheldon. However, getting it used here is, at this point, a fairly tedious process. I will look at the link above and note it in the whitelisting discussion if I think there is some merit to the usage. --Abd (talk) 17:39, 31 May 2009 (UTC) (ecX3) See discussion at MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist#lenr-canr.org (3). Apparently the site has been blacklisted at meta, [46] which means the computer won't let it be used on any Wikimedia project unless it's also added to a whitelist. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 17:41, 31 May 2009 (UTC) (edit conflict with above) However,, IP editor, your attempt to add this link to many pages was, arguably, an attempt to linkspam. Don't do that. Indeed, those attempted additions show that, if not for the blacklisting, there would be at least one editor attempting to add a link to many articles, which could, indeed, lend weight to arguments for continued blacklisting. I really wish you hadn't done that! Suggesting a link in Talk is fine. Adding them to articles might also be okay, but .... it can also trigger the antispam volunteers, who do not make content decisions, they would simply look at your edit history and see many links being added without discussion, and, bang! they'd revert and you could be blocked. Normally, this level wouldn't lead to blacklisting, but ... some editors are already a bit tetchy about this! --Abd (talk) 17:47, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

The 1989 DoE review and the 2004 review.

extended discussion

collapse by Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:20, 1 June 2009 (UTC), modified by Abd (talk) We say, in the lead, In 1989, the majority of a review panel organized by the US Department of Energy (DOE) had found that the evidence for the discovery of a new nuclear process was not persuasive. A second DOE review, convened in 2004 to look at new research, reached conclusions that were similar to those of the 1989 panel. While that statement is in the 2004 review conclusions, it drastically misrepresents the differences between the two reviews. We have a lot of material on the 1989 review. Krivit, in the ACS LENR Sourcebook, writes about Norman Ramsey's threatened resignation from the panel if the following preamble wasn't included: Ordinarily, new scientific discoveries are claimed to be consistent and reproducible; as a result, if the experiments are not complicated, the discovery can usually be confirmed or disproved in a few months. The claims of cold fusion, however, are unusual in that even the strongest proponents of cold fusion assert that the experiments, for unknown reasons, are not consistent and reproducible at the present time. However, even a single short but valid cold fusion period would be revolutionary. This is Krivit's version. Storms has the same version. Huizenga reports a version that is the same, but goes on. Huizenga calls his version the demanded preamble as modified by the committee and actually used. Taubes doesn't refer to the above statement, but to the rest of what was cited by Huizenga is below, and I've bolded what Taubes cites: As a result, it is difficult convincingly to resolve all cold fusion claims since, for example, any good experiment that fails to find cold fusion can be discounted as merely not working for unknown reasons. Likewise the failure of a theory to account for cold fusion can be discounted on the grounds that the correct explanation and theory has not been provided. Consequently, with the many contradictory existing claims it is not possible at this time to state categorically that all the claims for cold fusion have been convincingly either proved or disproved. Nonetheless, on balance, the Panel has reached the following conclusions and recommendations. What's clear from Taubes is that only a small minority of the panel supported Ramsey's position, which both Taubes and Huizenga deride. Ramsey had just won the Nobel Prize, though, they couldn't just let him resign, or, worse, file a minority report. In 2004, however, the panel was evenly divided on the crucial issue of excess heat, and one-third of the eighteen members were "somewhat convinced" of the origin being nuclear. The summary that the panel's conclusions were similar to those in 2004 was that of whoever wrote it, which we don't know. However, it's true in one way. The actual recommendations, as written, were the same, and the practical effect was the same. In both cases no major program of research or funding was recommended, but further research was recommended, as was modest funding. We have, though, source to the effect that Huizenga actively shot down all proposals, and it's clear what his opinion was, from his book, Cold fusion: the scientific fiasco of the century, and it's entirely possible that whoever was advising the DoE in 2004 on funding decisions in the field held the same opinions. I.e., "We had to say this nice stuff, but, really, I'm certain it's bogus." No funding from the DoE is known to have been provided, so, again, the result was the same. But not the implications which concern us: the level of scientific consensus on the topic. There isn't any. The panel gives us guidance as to what a sample of scientists thought in 2004 of the field, when informed. And in 2004, it's clear, it was emerging from the coffin, following the metaphor that Simon uses in Undead Science. For the moment, my concern is how we present the 2004 panel report. We do provide more information deeper in the article, but, in fact, presenting the panel conclusions as we do, in a science article, in the lead, strongly biases the article toward rejection. I believe we should cover the history of the controversy in more detail, and possibly the lead should be shorter. Nothing controversial should be in the lead, we shouldn't even have citations there, everything from the lead should be covered in detail deeper in the article, where citations are to be found. We should also be covering the threatened resignation of Ramsey, it's quite notable, and I have four sources sitting on my desk which cover it: Huizenga, Taubes, Storms, Krivit (in the Sourcebook), and I'm sure there are more. By the way, we actually have three Nobel Prize winners who have favored cold fusion in some way: Ramsey, as above, Julian Schwinger, who resigned from the American Physical Society over rejection of cold fusion papers, our article claims he wrote 8 papers on cold fusion theory; Huizenga also writes disparagingly of Schwinger; and Brian Josephson. Storms writes that Josephson sponsored a 2002 review paper for arXiv, which was nevertheless rejected (Storms, 2007, p. 38). The rejected paper is at [47]. --Abd (talk) 02:46, 1 June 2009 (UTC) Is there a proposed change to the article or is this just more pointless discussion? Hipocrite (talk) 02:47, 1 June 2009 (UTC) There are proposed changes, yes, but it may also be one more pointless discussion as long as there is pure revert warring against changes, no matter how neutral and well-sourced, Hipocrite, see below. --Abd (talk) 03:30, 1 June 2009 (UTC) Have you considered proposing your changes before edit-warring them back in? Hipocrite (talk) 03:44, 1 June 2009 (UTC) What edit warring? The changes made today were proposed above, in the section you collapsed as supposedly not containing any proposed changes. Right at the beginning, where you couldn't miss it. Nobody objected. The only one edit warring today, truly, was you. One editor beside you did two reverts; that's because edit warring invites edit warring, and what you'd done was totally outrageous, he saw you take out clearly sourced, verifiable, balancing information that allowed the patent office information to remain in spite of the objection he'd raised in taking it out. So he didn't restore his version, he restored mine, sourced to the patent, which you took out with a spurious wikilawyering misunderstanding of sourcing guidelines. I didn't do any reverts today, you did three, thus rejecting my edit, his original edit, and Coppertwig's edits, plus you mangled the lead right after the third revert, did you know that protection was imminent? WTF are you talking about? --Abd (talk) 06:17, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:20, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Reversions again by Hipocrite

(started section --Abd (talk) 03:30, 1 June 2009)

The patent issue

• [48] (Further developments: Absolutly not - OR by synth)

The edit reverted is almost a direct quote from the patent. What it shows is, indeed, a contradiction to the claim about the patent office, but it doesn't actually contradict what the article states, because the office may intend to reject claims but overlook that one claim (and a similar one before in a patent from the same inventors in 2004 that is referenced in the NET article). I'd say that explanation is a bit thin because the two patents were four years apart, and if the first patent was an oversight, someone surely pointed it out. However, the essential source here is the patent itself, and this is an example of how to deal with apparent contradiction between a secondary and primary source. Contrary to what Hipocrite asserts, this wasn't synthesis. Synthesis would have been to state a conclusion of contradiction, for example. We don't; instead, we present the evidence and let the reader decide. The article says what it says, and the patent says what it says. There may not actually be a contradiction.

The edit above was in response to an edit that Hipocrite had just reverted from another editor, which mentioned the patent in the edit summary, removing the sourced text, which wasn't proper. But the intention of that other editor should have been respected, and that's what I did. --Abd (talk) 03:30, 1 June 2009

Interjection here because the comments at this point are extensive and I simply want to note that Abd seems to feel it is OK to edit the article without getting consensus first. Please stop this Abd. Propose your changes on the Talk page and we will discuss. If a consensus can be reached an edit can then be made. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:53, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

P.S. What does noting the patent office issued a patent for a 'disguised' cold fusion gizmo add to the article? I suggest nothing, and therefore my vote would be to not add such comments to the article. Kirk shanahan (talk) 13:57, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

As the other editor in question, I replaced the deleted text. As it's entirely sourced and only reports on the language of the patent claims, I don't see how it could be either OR or a synthesis. GetLinkPrimitiveParams (talk) 03:33, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

It's OR by Synth because the patent, a primary source, does not mention Cold Fusion at all, and because longstanding agreement across the encyclopedia has determined that patents are not reliable sources for anything, including what the patents themselves claim to be true. Hipocrite (talk) 03:39, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

That's a total misunderstanding of what can be sourced from a patent. In this case, the patent itself is the subject, i.e., we have on the one hand a claim that the Patent office doesn't issue patents that claim cold fusion, and this is actually a common assertion, but there is also quite a bit of discussion in the field that Miles has managed to get around this. And there are two patents that do exactly that, one in 2004 and one in 2008. I'd actually thought that they simply didn't mention cold fusion, as with another Navy patent issued to Spzak in the 1990s, and certainly they didn't mention it by name (and their long list of peer-reviewed publications also don't mention "cold fusion," nor do most publications in the field), but when I looked at the patent, there it was, i.e., energy production from palladium and deuterium. We should let our readers do the same. What does this mean? I don't know, but I could probably find some secondary source on it, but it might be New Energy Times. That's what they do, report on the news in the field, and that may be where I read prior discussion of this issue.

The newspaper article is secondary source, the patent is primary source, and this kind of apposition is exactly how we handle contradictions between reliable secondary source and primary source. Primary source clearly satisfies WP:V for non-synthetic statements about what's in it. What it doesn't do is establish truth of claims. The patent does not -- at all -- establish that energy can actually be generated from the apparatus, but only that this was claimed. That it was claimed, though, does say something about the confidence of the Navy researchers, that they would risk rejection of the patent for this. But I certainly wouldn't say that in the article, that would be original research. Note that I did not state in the edit that the patent "mentions" "cold fusion." It mentions energy generation from palladium and deuterium electrolysis. If that's not "cold fusion," sure, but we will need a new article to cover what it is. Not a bad idea, actually. --Abd (talk) 03:56, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

What other articles where patents were used as sources have you edited, Abd? My understanding from, you know, having edited a lot of articles is that they were not acceptable. If you have some counter example, that would be great. Hipocrite (talk) 03:57, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

"Cold fusion" is a colloquial term. The text of the patent says it's a method of generating heat by the electrolysis of heavy water on a palladium-plated cathode. If you don't think that fits the description of cold fusion, why not? And for what reasons are you claiming that the text of the patent is an insufficient source for the claim that the patent office issued it? You haven't explained how your edit summary "OR by synth" could possibly apply. GetLinkPrimitiveParams (talk) 04:36, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

There are tons of sources saying that the USPTO rejects cold fusion patents. I can cite, for example, "How to write a patent application" by Practising Law Institute in 1992 and Patent law essentials by Professor of Law Alan L. Durham in 2004. Also, as a curiosity, a self published book from Cosimo editorial featuring an interview with Storms [49] published in 2004.

See, I remember some source saying that cold fusion patents slip through the cracks by not mentioning cold fusion anywhere and obfuscating the jargon. That's the source that should be used (so I'll have to search for it again...).

Some notes: Dardik, the guy who later theorized Super Waves, tried to patent a cold fusion cell shortly after F&P announcement, the USPTO "denied 'because there is no evidence that cold fusion is a reality, [therefore] no patents will be granted.'"[50]. Patterson also got two patents, but he always distanciated himself from cold fusion to avoid the stigma [51], I suppose that his patents also avoided any association. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:17, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

What's your point, Enric? There is no controversy over there being reliable source that the U.S. PTO rejects cold fusion patents. However, it is also true that the Miles patents say what they say, which is blatantly a claim that the device is useful for cold fusion, though it's arguable that we can't -- based on the patent -- state that, as such, because it involves a level of synthesis. But we can quote the patent, for sure. It's a patent from a well-known LENR researcher. And I believe I've seen discussion of this patent. So they reject patents, as a rule, and then researchers with commercial interests, and many have these, follow the alternative, which is to keep work secret, thus hindering the resolution of the whole field. Be that as it may, they do deny some patents, apparently, and we can report it, and I think it is pertinent as part of the history of cold fusion, as are the patents that have been granted which blatantly mention cold fusion, as the Miles patents do. There is a Spzak patent from the 1990s that doesn't mention an energy generation claim. If we can find secondary RS which discusses the contrast between the alleged policy and the reality, that would be great. As it is, we can source to any one or more of the RS mentions of the Patent Office stated policy (or, more precisely, who said that, how do we know it's true, or was it just a statement that got blown out of proportion and reported from one source to another. Which happens, you know.) and we can cite exact text or allowed minor synthesis (that's what I did) from the patent; basically, normal Wikipedia rewording that doesn't change meaning or implications. The patent is a primary source, and can be used if it's done without synthesis. The 2004 and 2008 Miles patents, however, did *not* avoid association with cold fusion, they openly stated the claim, they just didn't call it cold fusion and, in fact, in their research papers, they don't call it that, either. Nobody does. Take that literally? Sure, they reject cold fusion patents, but they accept patents claiming energy generation from loading palladium rods with deuterium using electrolysis. Do they do this generally or were these two patents a fluke? I'm guessing that it wasn't a fluke, because if it was an error in 2004, I'm sure they took flak for it, and they wouldn't make the same mistake in 2008. No, what I think is likely is that our reliable sources have misunderstood what's going on at the Patent Office. But I surely don't know. --Abd (talk) 23:12, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

None of the patents (7381368, 6753561, 5928483) describe fusion processes, so they should not be mentioned in this article. Olorinish (talk) 01:05, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Lots of matters relevant to cold fusion don't "describe fusion processes," but are relevant to some aspect of what we've stuffed into the article (the whole field of condensed matter nuclear science, for a start). If we have a statement that the patent office doesn't grant "cold fusion patents," or whatever wording we use, then we can have a statement that a patent that claims what amounts to the Pons-Fleischmann effect -- the generation of heat by electrolysis of heavy water with a palladium electrode -- has been granted, and, in fact, Miles has two of them, one in 2004 and one in 2008. --Abd (talk) 11:19, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

The patents describe fabrication processes and, as they put it, "electrochemical processes" but no nuclear processes, and do not assert that fusion is taking place in the devices. Yes, they are related to fusion, but since they do not describe fusion, the fact that patents were issued indicates nothing about the USPTO policy toward cold fusion. Therefore, including them in the present way gives the patents undue weight.

Perhaps those two sentences could be replaced with "However, cold fusion researchers have been granted patents describing materials used in their experiments." Olorinish (talk) 11:45, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

The two patents do more than that. The first patent, by Spzak, in the 1990s did that. This patent has Claim 14:

A method of generating energy comprising the steps of:

Providing the electrode of claim 13,

Connecting the electrode to a cathode,

Immersing the electrode and the cathode in water containing deuterium, and

Applying a current to the electrode and a cathode.[52]

Sure. It doesn't say "cold fusion." But that's what it would almost certainly be if it "works." If not for cold fusion, this procedure wouldn't generate energy, it would just move it about, from electrical energy to Joule heating or to chemical potential energy in the evolved deuterium and oxygen gases, or other forms of chemical potential energy. This could possibly be energy storage, but not generation.

The 2004 patent was a bit less bold, but still referred to cold fusion, very clearly, though not in the actual Claims:

Further, the demand for energy increases each year while the world's natural energy sources such as fossil fuels are finite and are being used up. Accordingly, the development of alternative energy sources is very important and a number of potential new energy sources are under study. Although there have been many attempts to develop a palladium compound which can be utilized in processes to generate heat, such as through the introduction of aqueous deuterium, none of these attempts have been successful or repeatable, and there is thus a distinct need to develop palladium alloys which can be utilized for the generation of heat as a potential energy source.[53]

To the point, we could say that "However, cold fusion researchers have been granted patents describing materials used in their experiments[ref Spzak], or claiming the generation of energy using the materials, without using the words "cold fusion."[cite Miles, both patents]--Abd (talk) 17:23, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

OR by synth. Hipocrite (talk) 17:25, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Abd said "If not for cold fusion, this procedure wouldn't generate energy..." This is not true, since this device would generate heat energy, which is a widely considered to be a form of energy. The patents do not teach how to create nuclear reactions, and do not include nuclear reactions in the claims. This is why the USPTO did not reject the patent for, in their terminology, "enablement" problems. Any implication in this article that the USPTO granted a patent on cold fusion would be POV-pushing. Olorinish (talk) 17:49, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Tricky, actually. You are correct that we can't say "The USPTO granted a patent on cold fusion." That would be synthesis. However, could we say that the USPTO granted a patent that "claimed the generation of energy through electrolysis of water containing deuterium, using a palladium electrode?" I'd say we can, without synthesis; this is exactly what they did in the 2008 patent, quite explicitly, and a little more indirectly in the 2004 patent. The argument re generation of heat energy from electric energy is bogus, because all usage of electric power, if it doesn't result in forms of potential energy (such as battery storage, or elevation of a weight or the like), generates heat. Does the patent "teach how to create nuclear reactions?" Well, it does say what to do to create one, if cold fusion is real, though lots of details are missing, and if it isn't real, what it teaches wouldn't be "generation of energy," my electric heater does it and nobody would say that it "generates energy," though it certainly generates heat from electrical energy. It seems that some are going to great lengths to exclude what should be an uncontroversial fact from the article. It's verifiable from primary source, and the notability arises because of the apparent contrary claim in some reliable sources. We should always note when a claim from reliable source is verifiably contradicted. If a reliable source shows someone was born on a certain day, and someone looks at the birth certificate and finds that it gives a different day, we would report this, assuming that we trust the report, because the date on the birth certificate is verifiable. (And if a Wikipedia editor lies about what's on the birth certificate, there goes that account.) We would not report that one report or the other was the true one. Birth certificates can contain errors. So can any reliable source. Ideally, we find a later secondary source that looks at both facts and finds an origin for them, that explains both. Or that confirms one of them from independent evidence, such as a review of hospital records, which would ordinarily trump a birth certificate if the child was born in a hospital!

I delivered quite a few babies that were registered later, by the parents, we arranged that, by agreement with the Health Department, because our midwifery was quasi-legal, and if we had filed a lot of birth certificates, we could then have been prosecuted, as "habitual" unlicensed midwives, under the law at the time in Arizona; in the end, my wife got licensed, so did others; I didn't and I stopped assisting deliveries because there were now plenty of people with more training. My point: mistakes could have been made, we didn't have clinical records for these births that would be as time-critical as hospital records. Our primary concern was health of the mother and child, and we were not professionals at that point, we were not paid. Wikipedia isn't the first project I've volunteered for and served without compensation! We report what we find in reliable source, and when there is contradiction of reliable source, we report the contradiction without any more impeachment than the sources directly support without our comment. If there is no standing controversy, we can go with what has become non-controversial, we don't have to report every error that has been made on a topic, nor should we, unless the error became notable, in which case we do report the resolution.

--Abd (talk) 19:36, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

You are wrong about birth certificates - see WP:BLP - "Exercise great care in using material from primary sources. Do not use, for example, public records that include personal details—such as date of birth, ... unless a reliable secondary source has already cited them." I don't see how your argument has any relevence given that you misunderstand how we apply primary sources in other articles. Hipocrite (talk) 20:10, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I would not use a birth certificate to establish a birth date for an article, but if a reliable source cites the date of birth, and it came to my attention that this contradicted the birth certificate, and there was no source covering the discrepancy, and I had access to the birth certificate and so did the general public (if they go to the trouble), I would, indeed, cite the birth certificate; but it is quite possible that there is some exception that has been carved out for BLP policy. Birth certificates do include confidential details, but these would not be revealed in citing a birth certificate, and we would not link to some web copy of the birth certificate; this is the kind of thing that would be a matter of editor testimony, as with any obscure source, or by reference to reliable source, in which case we'd cite the reliable source. What I wrote was general about WP:V and the use of primary sources, which sometimes can be difficult to access. If birth certificates are confidential (I've never tried to obtain one that wasn't mine or that of my children!) then what I wrote would be incorrect, because, then, any reader could not verify the information. This, then, would be a wrong example, but not a misunderstanding of WP:V and how we apply it to primary sources.

Let's take this out of BLP territory, since that not where our question is. The person in question has passed on, maybe they live a hundred years ago. One sees a birth date in a reliable source, but happens to see the original birth certificate, available to the public. What, then?--Abd (talk) 22:49, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

a secondary source for how some CF patents are granted

I found the source, it's from Simon's "Undead science": "Alternatively, the research may be more visible but not identified as "cold fusion." The scientist might instead be studying 'anomalous properties of deuterated metal hydrides.'¹⁹"page 193 (see footnote 19 below)

"19. This is a basic strategy for CF researchers seeking grants and patents for their work. In the United States, the strategy seems to have met with little success. In the case of patenting, the very claims that make the research patentable in the first place are the ones that identify it as being related to cold fusion. For legal reasons most of these patents must mention Fleischmann & Pons's 1989 paper, and this serves to tip off the reviewing patent officer."[54] (footnote 19 of chapter 6, page 233)

I propose this text:

Some researchers have obtained patents on some CF processes by avoiding any identification with "cold fusion" and using descriptions like "anomalous properties of deuterated metal hydrides", although some patents can't avoid mentioning Fleischmann and Pons' original research for legal reasons.^{Simon, 2002, pages 193, 233 (footnote 19 of chapter 6)}

--Enric Naval (talk) 18:19, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

That's not bad. Good find, Enric. The text proposed above, which really says much the same thing, though without the secondary source detail from Simon (which is quite a good source for this, Simon heavily researched the field and talked or corresponded with most of the major players). But Simon is only talking about strategy of cold fusion researchers, and not about the actual existence of patents which do make a claim quite equivalent to cold fusion. The"Anomalous properties" articles generally don't claim fusion, they claim experimental results that might require fusion to explain. This isn't what is done in the patent case ("anomalous properties" isn't found in the patents, I think). In the patents we know, what is being patented is not exactly cold fusion, but something useful for cold fusion. The fact is that such an invention is useful and marketable even if cold fusion doesn't work, because it could be sold to people who are researching cold fusion; perhaps it more reliably shows the elusive Pons-Fleischmann effect that even our resident skeptical scientist, Shanahan, considers real. But not fusion. Patenting the electrode, how the electrode is fabricated, need not reference Fleischmann, just as if I figure out how to make better glass for incandescent lights, I don't have to mention Thomas A. Edison. I do believe we will come up with something interesting on this for the article, with complete consensus from all editors interested in the best possible article.

Just to follow up on one idea, someone could patent a material, claiming use in research into "anomalous properties of deuterated metal hydrides." That use doesn't depend on cold fusion "working." At all. It would be useful for debunking cold fusion, don't you think? It would probably have to show an appearance of excess heat in some way, perhaps by making Shanahan's explanation reproducible and verifiable. --Abd (talk) 18:59, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

The proposed explanations

• [55] (rv to coppertwig, this has been discussed and rejected scores of times)

What has been rejected?

This is discussed above. Rather than split this up, discussion should continue there. These discussions had been collapsed by Hipocrite.[56] (If there was a rejection of proposed edits there, as he seems to be claiming, why did he collapse it on the claim that this didn't have to do with edits to the article?) Before making the edit, I uncollapsed that part.

See Talk:Cold_fusion#Proposed_explanations for the intro to the section sourced from Storms.

See Talk:Cold fusion#Theory of 8Be intermediary, not simple d-d fusion where some level of consensus was found for including this theory. I also added new source, because there is a detailed Takahashi paper on this theory in the ACS LENR Sourcebook. Discussion of this should continue in the previous section. --Abd (talk) 03:30, 1 June 2009

What's been rejected is using the primary sources complied in that handbook to state that specific theories are notable at all. But, of course, you know you're not just edit warring that back in - you reincluded your Storms paragraph also. Hipocrite (talk) 03:39, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

That is preposterous, Hipocrite, a shallow rationalization pretending to be an argument. The Sourcebook wasn't there before, so it couldn't have benen rejected before. What was there before were two secondary sources. The primary source in the Sourcebook was added because its inclusion there shows a kind of additional notability due to its selection for the book, which is the first totally clear mainstream coverage of the field in depth, if we somehow think that World Scientific publishing Storms wasn't mainstream. You've picked the wrong battle here, Hipocrite, you are effectively anti-science now. This isn't homeopathy, not even close. Putting pseudoscience or pathological science in the lead? Come on! That's been rejected by consensus here for a long time. Because of widespread opinion, it's still possible to claim Cold fusion is fringe with a straight face, but rejecting sources because they are fringe because there are no mainstream sources because any source that supports cold fusion can't be mainstream is circular. --Abd (talk) 06:34, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

"No objection was raised in Talk to this. This shouldn't be controversial."[57] Abd, hum, are we reading the same page here? Remember this discussion about giving a lot of weight to Storms by placing him at the start of the "proposed explanations" section[58]? You already edit warred about that same paragraph in the same place with the same wording[59], how can it possibly be said that it "shouldn't be controversial". --Enric Naval (talk) 23:19, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

The issue of Storms' reliability, particularly in comparison to other sources, is separate from whether or not we cite him as a source for his statement on the general status of cold fusion theories. The statement he made is not controversial, and nobody has asserted, here, any contradiction to it, and unless and until someone has a notable theory to propose that contradicts it, that situation will remain. Enric, you are confusing substance (what we say in the article, the fact) with process (whether or not we agree on inclusion). The fact is not controversial. Weak sources may be used for non-controversial facts and, in fact, they can be included, sometimes, even without sourcing, though sourcing is preferred. It seems to me that we have editors, here, fighting old battles without looking at the present situation. I.e., someone thinks Storms isn't "reliable," even though he is thoroughly reliable on the point of what cold fusion researchers believe or think, so they want to keep anything related to Storms out. "Undue weight" isn't an argument to exclude a non-controversial statement from a controversial figure, unless it implies some undue conclusion. That is not the case with this edit. No undue conclusion is implied. --Abd (talk) 13:12, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

The section on theory should include an overview. If not from Storms, where from? The only recent RS with an overview of theory in the field is like Storms. The sources cited below with, for example, the "ad hoc" comment, is ten years old, weak, and prejudicial. There has been twenty years of work on theory in this field, ten or almost ten since those sources, and I'm not sure what "ad hoc" means here, but it surely does not apply to the Takahashi work, for example, in the ACS Sourcebook, which predicts 100% fusion to Be-8 on theoretical calculations in the event of double D2 confinement by the lattice, and that does, indeed, satisfy most of Storms' criteria, though, still, not necessarily all. (Basically, the high-energy alpha particles resulting from prompt Be-8 decay might be expected to generate more secondary reactions than are reported, this is the objection of Storms himself -- expressed elsewhere -- but that is completely unclear, I've seen no careful analysis of this. It's possible that the reported level of elemental transmutations, X-rays, etc., are about right.) Further, Takahashi's theory hasn't been generally accepted, nor have other theories, some of which are also not "ad hoc," but have developed theoretical foundations (even if some of them involve new physics, and are quite controversial, such as hydrino theory). It's not at all clear to me that Takahashi's theory involves any new physics, by the way, merely a more sophisticated analysis than what was done before, on a possibility that was previously neglected, the effect of the lattice on deuterium molecular confinement. If I'm correct, Takahashi also predicts practically no fusion from double or triple deuteron confinement. More about this, perhaps, in the relevant discussion section on the Be-8 proposed explanation. --Abd (talk) 13:26, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Only that you weren't using Storms to source the opinion of cold fusion supporters, you were using it to make a blanket statement about the state of the art at the very start of the section, as if that was the main view about the field.

Goodstein made an overview, and so did Park, Huizenga, Close, Simon, etc. And I mean an actual overview of state of the field, not a compilation of unconnected theories. Several media have done overviews of the field Wired[60] and Physics World[61], and some made new overviews in the 20th anniversary, like Wired, a blog in Scientific American[62] and others that were cited here and are now lost in a sea of verbiage. Also, I'll link for the Nth time here and here where I list like two dozens of mainstream sources, including frigging six university press books, written by people who, unlike Krivit or Storms, are either Professor Emmeritus of Physics, or Director of Public Information of American Physics Society, or received (several) scientific awards and medals, or been Fellows in (several) universities and/or scientific societies, or founded scientific journals, or been made board director of scientific journals, or made didactic work divulging science, or several of the above along their carreer. So pick one of those overviews. --Enric Naval (talk) 15:12, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Addition of the American Chemical Society Low Energy Nuclear Reactions Sourcebook to the bibliography

Hipocrite, with the revert above ([63] ) also reverted this addition. This is the most important recent publication in the field, though Storms (2007) is a more comprehensive overview. It's important because the American Chemical Society is as mainstream as it gets, the book was peer-reviewed (see the discussion above that was also claimed to have nothing to do with the article), and it's very recent, last year. This book has not been rejected by consensus, there has been hardly any discussion of it at all, except for the brief one above. The discussion of that book should continue in the section above on it.

See Talk:Cold_fusion#American_Chemistry_Society_Symposium_Series:_Low_Energy_Nuclear_Reactions_Sourcebook --Abd (talk) 03:30, 1 June 2009

There's been no discussions of it at all because you can't express yourself concisely so anyone can understand anything you want done to the article till you and your tag-team editwars it back and forth. Hipocrite (talk) 03:39, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Tag team? Pot calls the kettle black. The only one edit warring today was you, Hipocrite, with outrageous edits not supported by consensus. There doesn't have to be a discussion to add a source to the bibliography, but this one was discussed, and not at impossible length. The source itself explains its importance, you shouldn't remove a relevant text from the bibliography, even if you hadn't seen the discussion. It's notable and reliable on the face. --Abd (talk) 06:21, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Yes, lets's look at that section Abd. It says: "to provide a mechanism for publishing symposia quickly in book form". "Symposia" = "Conferences". "Publishing symposia"="Publishing proceedings". In conference proceedings accuracy and fact-checking are done by the editors, i.e. Krivit and associates. Per Goodstein, they stopped doing critical review a long time ago. Conclusion: The referenced book is not RS. Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:48, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Yup. It says that. But you omitted what else he says, and if this is how you use sources, you should be out of here, quickly, your expertise would be, then, dangerous. We have lots of stuff in the bibliography that isn't "reliable source," technically, that is just the opinion of an author, notable only because it was published, sometimes not even indpendently, as these were. For example, Goodstein, which you just quoted. Goodstein is a good source, but that was hardly a peer-reviewed journal.

What did the "section" say, in addition to the quote that Shanahan proceeds to OR into his apparently desired conclusion?

Before agreeing to publish a book, the proposed table of contents is reviewed for appropriate and comprehensive coverage and for interest to the audience. Some papers may be excluded to better focus the book; others may be added to provide comprehensiveness. When appropriate, overview or introductory chapters are added. Drafts of chapters are peer-reviewed prior to final acceptance or rejection,

What part of "peer-reviewed" is hard to understand? And why did the ACS decide to publish a sourcebook on low energy nuclear reactions, if the field is truly a pariah field? Pseudoscience? Pathological science? Fringe? Indeed, why did the DOE in 2004 go to the trouble of putting together a review panel, if the matter was closed? And that review panel certainly did not conclude that it was closed, so where does the idea come from that that old conclusion stands? Where was that conclusion made? I can think of only one body, and, as we know, there is quite a bit of reason to believe, and reliable source on it, that the majority on the body that probably did, indeed, conclude that there wasn't any evidence -- but didn't actually say that in the report -- made that conclusion prematurely, before there was time to actually gather the evidence on what Ramsey noted could be a rare, elusive effect, as it turned out to be until how to find it was much better understood, which took years.

Goodstein doesn't cover Krivit, for sure, and probably not Marwan. Krivit I know had no involvement in cold fusion at that time. What Shanahan is doing is what he's been consistently doing, he's got a "they" in his head which defines everyone involved with cold fusion as being some kind of nutty monolith, closed-minded, ignorant, and stubborn. --Abd (talk) 15:51, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Who do you think peer-reviewed it Abd? An unbiased crowd of people who had no preconceptions about 'cold fusion' or the typical crowd of CFers? Who picks the reviewers do you think? The editor of the volume maybe? The organizer of the Symposium? Or an uninvolved but competent scientist on the staff of the ACS publications organization? Get real.

Goodstein is just the icing on the cake so to speak. We have numerous books from that period declaring the field a 'fiasco', etc. We have the abrupt change in the makeup of the ICCF conferences between ICCF4 and 5, where, suddenly, all the negative publications vanished. Mainstream science setermined c. 1995 that CF was bad science, and the rest follows naturally from that. There is no evidence that that has changed. And my personal experience confirms the pathological, psuedoscience stigma that goes with the field.

The DOE went to the trouble because Eugene Mallove and friends got their New Hampshire Congressman to pressure DOE into it. I firmly believe that's why they did such a poor job. It was just for 'show' to satisfy the Congressman. That's also why they concluded essentially the same thing they did in '89, to point out that no progress has been made since then. Unfortunately, if they had done a better job, they could have really coame down on the CFers. Instead, we have another 20 years to look forward to.

"We have lots of stuff in the bibliography that isn't "reliable source,"" - You're just figuring that out?? Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:01, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I was not born yesterday, Shanahan. World War II had not ended. It would be another year. Self-published material, for example, isn't generally reliable source. I was speaking generally. However, some publications that aren't generally reliable can be reliable for certain purposes; a self-published document by a notable expert, in the field of notability, as an example, can be considered reliable for showing the opinions of that expert. Attribution would generally be necessary. Kirk, lots of stuff has been tossed at you by wikilawyers who wanted to get rid of something from you, or by good-faith editors who didn't explain the rules completely. The rules make much more sense than you might think. If you spend a couple of years meditating on how Wikipedia might run, practically, as a user-edited encyclopedia with some necessary standards, you might realize that the theory is quite good, it's not as stupid as it might seem. But there are practical issues of implementation that are still unresolved. Gradually, we get there.

I predict the demise of mainstream resistance to the cold fusion experimental results, within a year or so. It's really already ended, but the news hasn't spread. That's why we have increasing reliable source that is positive. 2004 was the tip of the iceberg, showing what happened when you got a representative panel together and showed them the research. Given how brief it was, that the Hagelstein/McKubre presentation wasn't the best designed, that as many were reasonably convinced as actually were is striking. (I'm starting to think, it was too academic, actually, too much dependent on normal academic assumptions, i.e., that reviewers would actually check out sources, and actually absorb what was stated, instead of depending on memory biased by prior judgments; McKubre et al didn't sufficiently factor for how brief the actual meeting would be. One day isn't usually enough to change deep-seated beliefs, I'd have been shocked at such a change in 2004, the ground had not been prepared. I'd have tried to postpone the actual meeting, have some round of communication before, so way to establish time to think about the stuff, and probably a longer meeting. What was expensive was getting the experts together in one place (the nine?). Extending it to three days, say, would have been relatively less expensive. And the result might have saved the world a lot of money, in the end. Or not. At least we'd have seen a deeper review. Then, the final reports should have been subject so some kind of back and forth, so that the blatant errors, like the one I found and report on above, would have been caught, and maybe even more subtle errors of interpretation. And, yes, your POV should have been better represented. That could have been done by having a period of public comment and a report prepared condensing it.

However, my predictions are only for the purpose of disclosing the opinion I have formed from almost five months of researching this topic, buying many of the major books (including those by critics and skeptics); I read every day on this. I would never put this in the article. And I pay attention to what critics say, like Shanahan. And if I don't understand it, perhaps it hasn't been well enough explained? Or perhaps I'm dense. My friends tell me otherwise, but maybe they are just trying to make me feel good. I hope not. Friends, if I'm dense, help me out, don't let me live in a dream world without warning. -Abd (talk) 17:35, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

A POV-pusher manifesto if I ever saw one. And based on 5, count 'em, 5 *months* of light reading. On the other hand, I've spent 14 years *studying* the issue, and _I'm_ a kook. Right... Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:39, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Tempting. The 5 months of (heavy) reading, plus my early education in physics (Richard P. Feynman) and chemistry (Linus Pauling]], both of them in person, both of them mavericks who didn't accept the status quo as authoritative, plus debate and discussion with others, some of whom (as to off-wiki discussion) are world-class experts on the topic, recognized as such (Shanahan is not so recognized, and his opinion outside calorimetry is of no notability at all, and his narrow calorimetric work is of questionable application, but PR published and therefore notable), places me, probably, among the most knowledgeable Wikipedia editors on the topic. And with that and twenty-five cents, I could get a ride on the subway, back when. --Abd (talk) 16:52, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

You have real credentials in Physics and or Chemistry, or you were just an undergrad when they were teaching, insulting people with, you know, actualy phD's as being not "experts?" Wait, don't answer that. Hipocrite (talk) 16:55, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I have no credentials in Physics or Chemistry, just personal contact with the two mentioned. Freshman and sophomore physics with Feynman, plus he visited Page House and told the stories that were later published. Freshman Chemistry with Pauling. I remember Feynman much more clearly, and his attitude is what stuck with me. I've had some similar experiences as he did. As to "experts," that must refer to Shanahan, and I haven't insulted his expertise and I've repeatedly referred to him as an expert. Here is what I see, Hipoocrite. You can't see what's in front of your nose, but you presume to judge what others can see. Sorry, too late. If you don't want me to answer some of your brief but intensely biased ravings, don't post them. When you write that "don't answer that," take it as a sign you should close the window and not save it. --Abd (talk) 11:27, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

(can't resist...can't resist...) he must of got his science by osmosis... Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:06, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

If I gt this straight, the book is a collection of unpublished papers and conference papers? And we don't know who peer-reviewed the papers? --Enric Naval (talk) 23:25, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Not straight. Generally, like most review publications from the ACS, and, in fact, like most peer-reviewed publications, it is a collection of papers not previously published, and it is peer-reviewed. As is common, we don't know who the exact reviewers are. (Sometimes we know the "review panel" for a journal, for the 2004 DoE panel are anonymous, and I've never seen "so-and-so reviewed this paper." What we have is the clear statement from the ACS that the papers are peer-reviewed as part of the selection and editing process. There are one or two papers, I forget, in the book, that were previously published as conference papers; their inclusion in the book moves them from the class of "conference papers" -- which isn't any kind of negative, it merely means that they haven't yet been peer-reviewed -- to "peer-reviewed papers," for our general purpose. Lots of junk gets presented at conferences, and also lots of very good and careful work, work likely to pass a fair peer review. What's been happening for almost twenty years is that papers would be rejected without being submitted to peer review, because the entire field was effectively blacklisted. This isn't a wild claim, and it affected negative work as well as positive. We should mention this in the article, I'll dig up some RS for it. --Abd (talk) 11:30, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I believe, but might be wrong (anything in the book to contradict?), that the 'peer-review' is set up by the editors. Both are confirmed cold fusioneers, and I have serious doubts about them getting anyone but other confirmed cold fusioneers to do the reviewing. This is *standard* with conferences and symposia. The papers usually get circulated to the conference participants for review, and there is often time pressure to get the review done quickly (don't know if that's true in this case). That's why in the hierarchy of things, 'proceedings' are not considered as significant as regular journal articles. Now, one problem with psuedoscientists is they don't participate in the normal scientific progess. The extreme of that is some guy who hides out in his garage and then rants and raves from there. A less extrme form is evidenced by the cold fusioneers, in that they have set up their own journals and conferences, and they don't hold to the same standards of how to do peer review. As Goodstein wrote, they have stopped any critical review, and that's what peer review is supposed to be. So, unless there is evidence to the contrary, we should assume the book in question was 'reviewed' in this fashion, i.e. inadequately. RS policy seems to me to require critical review, not a non-critical review. Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:49, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

What is missed here is the role of the publisher. The publisher approves whatever role there is for the editors. I agree that the publication process is not exactly the same as with, say, a peer-reviewed mainstream journal. However, it is close enough, and the details obscure enough, in both cases, that we must consider this as reliable source. Note that "reliable source" isn't equivalent to "unbiased." It is still subject to general comparison with other reliable sources for balance and due weight, but we have clear guidance from ArbComm that the balance should not extend to exclusion of reliably sourced content, and the book is definitely reliable source in this extent. "Reliable" in "Reliable source" doesn't mean that citation to the source proves a fact, where there is controversy, it should not be confused with the ordinary meaning of "reliable," we are using a technical Wikipedia meaning here. Shanahan is probably correct that peer review is set up by the editors. Is this not true for any peer reviewed publication? The publisher selects or chooses or accepts the editors, just as a standard book publisher does the same with authors. That's why I've been saying that the nature of the publisher is critical in any determination of "reliable source." --Abd (talk) 12:29, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

That's not what Wikipedia:RS#Scholarship says. Hipocrite (talk) 12:47, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Let's look at that guideline. Citing a guideline without going into detail as to exactly what part of the guideline applies and why is a classic POV-pushing technique. Here is the guideline text cited: My comments are in italics, interspersed:

Further information: Wikipedia:Verifiability § Reliable sources

Many Wikipedia articles rely on scholarly material. Academic and peer-reviewed publications are usually the most reliable sources when available. However, some scholarly material may be outdated, superseded by more recent research, in competition with alternate theories, or controversial within the relevant field. Reliable non-academic sources may also be used, particularly material from reputable mainstream publications. Wikipedia articles should cover all significant views, doing so in proportion to their published prominence among the most reliable sources. The choice of appropriate sources depends on context and information should be clearly attributed where there are conflicting sources.

So far, so good. This is confirming what I've been saying. What is below actually doesn't deal with reliable source, but with how to handle balance, in the event of conflict of sources, so it begins to discuss relative reliability.

• Material that has been vetted by the scholarly community is regarded as reliable; this means published in reputable peer-reviewed sources or by well-regarded academic presses.

Here the guideline confirms my claim, that the identity of the publisher is very important. If we are addressing conflict of sources, then we look to indications of the quality of the source, and they point, first, to the kind of publisher. How about Oxford University Press and the American Chemical Society as publishers? And we can also ask if World Scientific is a "well-regarded academic press." I really don't know, but I do know that unless we have conflict of sources, it's disruptive to make wild claims -- or even reasonable claims -- that are really about relative source reliability.

• Items that are signed are preferable to unsigned articles.

Example of unsigned source: the individual reviewer comments and the summary issued as the 2004 Department of Energy report on low energy nuclear reactions. Again, it's clearly notable, but if there is a problem with conflict of sources, we need to be very careful about how we use it.

• The scholarly acceptance of a source can be verified by confirming that the source has entered mainstream academic discourse, for example by checking the number of scholarly citations it has received in citation indexes. A corollary is that journals not included in such indexes should be used with caution.

Again, we look at this if there is contradiction. When a source is attributed, contradiction issues actually don't arise directly, but do remain important as to balance and due weight, which balance does not extend to exclusion of reliably sourced information but only to how we balance it.

• Isolated studies are usually considered tentative and may change in the light of further academic research. The reliability of a single study depends on the field. Studies relating to complex and abstruse fields, such as medicine, are less definitive. Avoid undue weight when using single studies in such fields. Meta-analyses, textbooks, and scholarly review articles are preferred to provide proper context, where available.

Once again, this substantiates what I've been claiming. "Isolated studies" would refer to studies that haven't been confirmed, or that haven't seen secondary review. Storms and Marwan are secondary sources reviewing primary sources. They are, where they are analyzing work in the field, are the kind of sources we should prefer. Because the field remains controversial, my present position is that what they report, if a reported fact is controversial, we should still attribute and report any balancing information, if available in other reliable source of similar (or better) quality, being careful about how we handle conflicting sources of lower quality. I'm not convinced at all that a 1998 secondary or tertiary source, originally qualifying as RS, making claims that can now be seen as obsolete, should now be cited at all, unless we are covering the history and the source is important to that, when we have much more recent source that is based on wider information, not available when the earlier review was written.

As an example of unconfirmed studies, Vyostoskii's work on nuclear transmutation has not been confirmed. Its inclusion in the Sourcebook shows notability and interest in it, but how this would be reported in an article would require great caution to not imply that the work is valid. It's of interest, and I believe we should note that it exists, but not with any implication that, for example, biological transmutation is real, unless we can find more extensive sourcing (it's possible; Vysotskii wasn't the first to report biological transmutation, but I'm simply saying what we can do based on Vyosotskii's paper in the Sourcebook. Its inclusion means that the work appears interesting, probably worthy of replication efforts, on the face, but isn't enough, at all, to consider the results to be factual, only the existence of the paper, its text for reference, its conformance with basic standards (they would not include pure junk or nonsense-on-the-face, which would needlessly damage their reputation; rather, I conclude they felt more or less forced to include the paper because Vyosotskii submitted it, is a well-known scientist, the conclusions seem reasonable from the experimental evidence presented, and the only reason to exclude it would be political, and these people are understandably averse to that, they have all suffered from it), and its notability are established by the Sourcebook.

--Abd (talk) 18:32, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

The base problem Abd, is that the CFers have withdrawn from participation in the normal scientific process. They have difficulty getting their pubs past knowledgeable reviewers in the journals that traditionally deal with 'CF' issues, so they go places where they have never gone before and rename their field to hide what it is from the novice reviewers (in CF technology) in the previously untouched journal they are now trying to get to publish their work. Or, they just self-publish (as a group), as in the proceedings of such-and-such CF conference. The Wiki RS guideline is supposed to be applied using common sense. The 'common sense' of this field is that CF is pariah science, bad science, pathological science, and anyone claiming to have discovered 'proof' of it must necessarily be subjected to extremely close scrutiny. There are clear signs the CFers don't do an adequate job of conforming to base scientific standards, thus all their publications are suspect, *especially* when a layman to the field tries to interpret them, such as you do, because they are psuedoscientists and *their work _looks_ like real science to an untrained eye*. In order to present both sides of this controversy fairly, we will have to allow a bit of questionable material in, but not the scads of stuff you want AND you also must let some of the mainline points in as well, and not Wikilawyer them to death, as you have been doing. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:01, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Kirk, I've considered you an expert, and would generally defend your participation here, it can be quite valuable. But much of what you say is highly misleading and not based on your expertise, and this is a real problem. The "CFers" have not "withdrawn from participation in the normal scientific process." Rather, those standing at gateways in that process decided, in 1990 or so, to exclude anything on the topic. Yes, this damaged the field, because without that process, and the vigorous back-and-forth debate that it encourages, the quality of the work suffers, because negative work can't get published either, and positive work, even though it answers the previous objections, doesn't even make it into peer review. However, some researchers did, steadfastly, pursue publication in peer-reviewed journals, most notably and effectively, the SPAWAR group, whose work you have most noticeably avoided mentioning. Your "common sense" is simply your personal opinion and is not supported by recent reliable source; what reliable source we have on it is not peer-reviewed review of the field, at least as far as anything I've seen. If you want us to rely on this, you will need to assert reliable source for it, and the only reliable source that I know on this is non-peer reviewed non-academic source; for example, newspaper reports of the massive rejection by physicists at the notorious 1989 APS meeting, where the tradition of academic courtesy was totally abandoned. On the other hand, we have plenty of recent reliable source, both popular and peer-reviewed or academic, that treats low energy nuclear reactions as a viable field, with active research and publication in mainstream peer-reviewed journals, a notable example being Naturwissenschaften, and as to book publishing, most recently (and therefore most authoritatively!), World Scientific and Oxford University Press and the American Chemical Society. Indeed, the older 2004 DOE review also treats it this way, quite clearly. Sorry, but your "common sense" flies in the face of what we have as reliable sources.

In spite of the strength of this, I have done nothing to exclude the alleged mainstream position that was asserted in sources long ago. Please show one example of my action to exclude something reliably sourced, other than possibly as a transient effort to find balance. (I can think of an example you might claim: in the section on Proposed explanations, we have text on about cold fusion theories that claims that all such theories are "ad hoc," or the like. That is an old source, and it can be argued that it might have been true when written (though I think not, Preparata's work wasn't "ad hoc," and the original Fleischmann work did have a theoretical basis for investigation, it wasn't a total stab in the dark, though Fleischmann though that the reality would turn out to be so close to classical quantum mechanics that the difference would be undetectable, that part was a long shot, and he knew it), but it clearly doesn't apply, for example, to Takahashi's work on the Be-8 hypothesis, which starts from studying, mathematically, the behavior of deuterium molecules at the edge of lattice confinement.) (Behavior inside the lattice would presumably be the same, except that deuterium dissociates inside the lattice, and exists only as deuterons there.) Still, I only took that out once, I think, then left it in, because I believe that the priority at this point is getting what is reliably sourced, from academic peer-reviewed publications, into the article, not taking out negative material that might be reliably sourced, but that is weak or obsolete by comparison.

extended response to Abd, contains some 'relevant to article' material

”much of what you say is highly misleading and not based on your expertise” – Unless you can specify examples, this is a personal attack. I have repeatedly pointed out that you are a ‘newbie’ to this field, and I do that because you show clear signs of being completely suckered by the CF propaganda machine. Further, when I try to explain it, you don’t comprehend, indicating that in your personality, you find ‘conspiracy theories’ satisfying. Please stop the personal attacks or specify exactly what you are talking about so I can correct you. “those standing at gateways in that process decided, in 1990 or so, to exclude anything on the topic” - more CF propaganda. The fact that you write this shows you have taken it in ‘hook, line, and sinker’. But, as you have pointed out many times, there are lots of peer-reviewed publications post-1990 (or so). What did happen is that scientific journals with a reputation for publishing ‘hot’ topics gave CF its shot, and then decided that the topic had moved from ‘hot’ to ‘warm’ and thus was no longer appropriate for their journal. Meanwhile, lots of other journals whose topic list included ‘low energy nuclear reactions’ continued to publish papers. However, the CFers decided that being named a ‘non-hot’ topic was an insult, and they started refusing to take the criticisms leveled against them to heart (actually this was true thoughout, and part of why the big name journals moved them to 'non-hot' status), instead blaming ‘bias’ and ‘pathological skepticism’. That’s when the withdrawl began. It continues today. They formed their own societies, published their own papers, and generally thumbed their nose at ‘the Establishment’. That’s called ‘withdrawl from the scientific process’. You don’t quit and run away to your own little corner, you do the work necessary to earn the respect for your work, and _you_ don’t get to decide what that work is alone, the rest of us participate. Case in point, the CCS problem. Another case in point, the 4He measurment issue. “However, some researchers did, steadfastly, pursue publication in peer-reviewed journals, most notably and effectively, the SPAWAR group, whose work you have most noticeably avoided mentioning.” – What are you talking about?!! Do you have any grasp on reality?? My second pubication is a direct response to a paper from that group, with Fleischmann and Miles as co-authors, that denigrated my CCS proposal. I showed how it applied to THEIR WORK and how it was reasonable by taking their excess heat claims apart, just as I did with Storms, except S, M-B, M, and F didn’t publish any calibration data, so I coundn’t be as prescise. I suggested here and on my talk page many times that the CR-39 stuff is JUNK. Let me be perfectly clear. Read my lips. The SPAWAR stuff is no different from the rest! It is also psuedoscientists calling out “It’s Nuclear. It’s Nuclear.” with little to no thought about alternatives. Is that clear enough for you?? “Your "common sense" is simply your personal opinion and is not supported by recent reliable source” – Incorrect. HYour unwillingness to count my 3 per-reviewed publications, and Clarke's specific one (out of many), plus as I reacll Enric pointing out that the Clarke companion paper to the one they referenced in the DOE white paper also pointed out how badly they do 4He, as RS clearly shows your bias. “On the other hand, we have plenty of recent reliable source, both popular and peer-reviewed or academic, that treats low energy nuclear reactions as a viable field,” – No you misread most of what you are referring to, or assign far to much notability to it. When a cold fusion fanatic writes a review, it _automatically_ is less notable than any other source. All reviews I’ve seen recently were by CFers, i.e. not reliable in any real sense. Or, you are citing newspaper articles. Hint: newspapers don’t define scienctific advances. In fact, one of the great signs of the CF psuedoscience is F&P’s announcement of the ‘discovery’ via press conference *before they ever published a word on it*. Even today, ‘science by press conference’ is a derrogatory term. “On the other hand, we have plenty of recent reliable source, both popular and peer-reviewed or academic, that treats low energy nuclear reactions as a viable field, with active research and publication in mainstream peer-reviewed journals, a notable example being Naturwissenschaften, “ – As I’ve said, this is junk. It is also recent, and thus it might be expected that there would be further publications on it, but I suspect not. The point is that it is RECENT. It is giving it undue weight to seriously consider it for the article. “and as to book publishing, most recently (and therefore most authoritatively!), World Scientific and Oxford University Press and the American Chemical Society.” - “ – and we’ve been discussing these haven’t we. You are the only one so far that seems to think these are 100% trustworthy, seminal pieces of scientific breakthrough research reporting. The rest of this say ‘non-RS’ but possibly useful for specific purposes (as per RS policy). To base your whole worldview on these books is to suckered by the CF propaganda machine. Look for and examine the alternatives with as much vigor. “In spite of the strength of this, I have done nothing to exclude the alleged mainstream position that was asserted in sources long ago. Please show one example of my action to exclude something reliably sourced, other than possibly as a transient effort to find balance” – I can’t, because you have never let me get that far. You might go back in the Archives to around Sept. 17, 2008 and then pick up where I tried to explain why my additions were all RS to Pcarbonn, but that’s probably too much work for you. So, let’s take something a little more recent. When I made my proposed suggestions for change to the article, you wrote: “Some of what you assert seems false and not supported by sources.”. So, did I get an opportunity to explain why you were wrong? No. You have already decided what should and shouldn’t be in the article based on your 5 months of light reading. For that reason, you didn’t even find it necessary to pinpoint what ‘seems false and not supported by sources’. Real unbiased editing there Abd. Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:46, 3 June 2009 (UTC)\ This has, indeed, gone way beyond what's appropriate here. I'm responding, first, to the last paragraph. "You never let me get that far." I have no power over you, you can go as far as you want in telling me what you think, I can't stop you, I'm not an admin, and even if I was, I certainly would not touch you with admin privilege. I'm not Pcarbonn, so how what Pcarbonn may have done or not done is related to my possible exclusion of mainstream opinion is beyond me. What I wrote was correct, i.e., about "some" of what you assert. This is a common problem with experts: they write from their own experience, which may very well be quite true, but we cannot base our article on that. I solicit opinions from experts because, when they do explain the topic well, and when they do point to sources, we can end up with much better understanding, and, I know that while some editors imagine it's possible to write a good article without much understanding of the topic, simply by following "reliable sources," it's actually hit-or-miss. Yes, you have every opportunity to "explain," Kirk, but it seems you spend your time complaining about how dense other editors are, instead of actually explaining clearly, a common problem with. You are an expert, probably on calorimetry and the palladium deuteride system (its ordinary chemistry) and you have, of course, a general background expected of someone working in your field, but this is also true of many of the experts you deride so freely. It's our job as Wikipedia editors to sort through this and try to make neutral decisions, and, it's quite obvious to me, if we simply did what you wanted, we'd have an article biased toward your point of view. Your knowledge and skills are not pedagogical. Your point of view is not "science," it's your opinion; people informed about subjects still have opinions, and some of them become quite attached to them and go to their graves that way. As to your general knowledge of the field, you have longer exposure to it than I (though my interest was high in 1989, I dropped that interest, as did most people, with the general rejection, which I more or less thought was correct, and I did -- incorrectly -- assume that if there was some major development, it would all come out and, of course, everyone would recognize it and say, Gosh, we were wrong, this really is sound research. Naive, in hindsight. I imagined that scientists were somehow different from other people, and they aren't. Except a few.) You want me to specify what seemed false or not supported by sources (those are separate issues, and the one that is really important is the "not supported by sources" part? Sure. I don't recall where that discussion was, can you point me to it? You see, Kirk, I don't challenge, personally, unsourced text that seems clearly true to me. Others may, but I don't do it. I don't assert such text myself unless I believe that finding reliable source will be easy, and it can come later. Wikipedia was built this way, as people wrote articles based on personal knowledge (which is much easier than writing a fully sourced article) and the wiki theory is that this gets corrected if it is wrong, removed if it's controversial, and eventually, if there is the slightest doubt about it, it gets sourced or removed. That works with articles where there aren't opposing interest groups. There is so much garbage on the project that I'm not going to worry about matters of common knowledge to those who know a field. You have also confused, Kirk, exclusion of material with my not personally accepting it and asserting it. I cannot exclude your material; rather, this is a community decision. I could act to exclude material, but I can be reverted and, in the end, the decision is made by consensus, it is not mine. I'm not going to assert an edit that I don't agree with, personally, unless it's clearly supported by reliable source. (Note that "reliable source" doesn't make something actually reliable, RS guidelines really prove notability, not truth or actual reliability. I don't see that you have ever understood this, but if it's any comfort, neither do many Wikipedia editors. The debate over "reliable sources" is mostly based on a misunderstanding of what it means to be RS; thus you can talk about some publisher being deluded by a fanatic author, as if this were relevant to RS. It isn't. If a publisher puts the money into it, that indicates notability, and, yes, sometimes the book was published because somebody knew somebody, or even worse. If it's independently published, it's notable. To explain how that works, first of all, we don't usually consider self-published works notable. (Almost all Wikipedia guidelines have exceptions, because Rule Number One is ignore all rules, which is worthy of meditation. People sometimes think this is some New Age radical idea, but it's actually an ancient common law principle, Public policy. The view you push, if accepted, would create an inescapable circular definition, creating huge hysteresis in our feedback loop between source and text. Essentially, it seems, you'd want us to have different reliability guidelines for sources which supposedly support cold fusion and sources which supposedly impeach it. If the source -- we judge -- supports cold fusion, it's "fringe," ipso facto, and can't be reliable. It can't be reliable because it's "not mainstream." We know what is "mainstream" by the weight of reliable sources, and, since we have now, by definition, excluded all reliable sources that seem to support cold fusion, we have a solid basis for asserting that the field is fringe and the sources therefore not to be used. It's perfect. And very much not science. In normal scientific inquiry, all peer-reviewed sources would be considered reliable. Which isn't at all the same as "true." Mistakes are made. More to the point, though, experimental results may appear to support conclusions, whereas actually, they represent something else, such as artifact, analytical error, or premature conclusions. It's very clear now, that negative replications in 1989-1990 were simply results of not setting up the conditions to show the P-F effect. The recent Bayesian analysis presented at ICCF in 2008 showed that finding excess heat was perfectly correlated (to my memory of it) with four characteristics of the research reports, which are connected with setting up what later became known as the necessary conditions (such as high loading ratio). All that negative work was accurate. Do what they did, with what they worked with, predictable: no heat. Where the field went astray was in assuming from that that the reports of excess heat were false, that was unwarranted. It was in some ways an understandable error -- and you know, yourself, that the P-F effect only shows up under certain circumstances, you merely explain it differently than most. Your argument is quite convincing with respect to some reports, as to a possible non-nuclear explanation of the P-F effect, but in other respects it seems quite a stretch. You've acknowledge elsewhere that you don't know how to apply your ideas to, say, an Arata cell, where the ongoing generation of sufficient heat to maintain the cell temperature difference from the environment, with a double-cell (i.e, inner experimental cell containing nanoparticle palladium alloy and deuterium gas under pressure), and an outer cell, and with no energy input other than the heat of formation of palladium deuteride, which completes rapidly and with controls settles to ambient temperature within a few hours at most, whereas the ongoing heat lasts at least 3000 hours, showing no decay even that far out. You've long criticized the CR-39 work, asserting artifacts as speculations that, if you read the fuller publication of that work, you'd see have been covered by controls. Sorry, the pits found by the SPAWAR group and confirmed by others simply don't match what a burn would do, the would not have the conical shape, and burns definitely don't create triple-tracks on the back of the CR-39 or in areas not contacting the cathode, and they would not create tracks on CR-39 outside the cell (through a thin plastic window, the cathode being next to the window). They would not create the lower levels of tracks found in an Oriani experiment, with the CR-39 suspended above the cathode, not in contact with it. And they definitely would not create neutrons, which were long found at very low levels (suspiciously close to background), but only conclusively demonstrated as shown in the Mosier-Boss paper. We still won't report that finding as conclusive, but only as highly notable, due to all the publicity about it, but ... Kirk, it's conclusive. This is very solid research, with a history of avoiding wild claims, of building up their publication history in mainstream publications even as they also presented to conferences. You can criticize the individual reports of helium, and the individual reports of excess heat, but what will be much more difficult for you, if you are willing to face it, and I've seen no sign of that, is the correlation between the alleged helium error and the alleged excess heat error. Errors generally don't correlate unless they have a common cause, and that these alleged errors, in multiple reports using multiple methods, somehow conspire to come up with a Q ratio of what Storms estimates at 25 +/- 5 MeV/He-4, is quite a coincidence, if it's based on double errors. That could be off by a large factor and still be quite striking. This is the issue of "associated with," in our article, and that you, as a scientist who should well understand this and support what I've been saying on the importance of association, and that our article is way off by presenting, as "association," unassociated results (following the DoE error, actually, without balance), shows me that you are pushing a point of view here, not seeking balance as well as accuracy. That's why you are properly considered as having a conflict of interest and not to edit the article in any controversial way. You are, as a published expert, with your publications focused on this field, likely to have a bias toward your own work and approach. To me, you are quite valuable here, but that value is reduced or even lost if you consistent and with fervor push your own point of view, without caution and balance. You have a PhD, for sure, but if you were my doctor, I'm afraid I'd fire you -- unless I couldn't find someone better. It might be important to point out that you are the only published expert in this field, on the skeptical side, who has participated here. I think that means something. We've banned the only expert from the other side, Rothwell. (He's an expert of a different kind, to be sure, but he's published books and is widely known, mentioned in reliable source -- much more widely known than you --, and you have, of course, been quite aware of him at least as far back as 1995.) --Abd (talk) 15:22, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to point out that there is nothing necessarily wrong with the standard approach to peer review of conference proceedings described above by Kirk. Yes, the reviewers are typically drawn from the conference participants (and especially from those who have themselves submitted a paper for review), but this group is also highly likely to have knowledge of the field, its practices, and the relevant literature. I have certainly needed to rework conference papers based on the comments from the referees, and that is as it should be. The smaller referee cohort and the generally more limited length of such manuscripts means that quality results will likely ultimately go on to publication in relevant journals, and as sources those journal publications are superior and supercede any preceding conference publication. Nevertheless, there is (and should remain) a presumption that peer review of conference proceedings makes those sources reliable. The problem which Kirk describes arises because any presumption can be rebutted. Conference publications become unreliable if the integrity of the peer review process is compromised, such as when the conference organisers deliberate shun the mainstream, or deliberately seek out sympathetic referees. As Kirk noted, in such situations the review becomes inadequate and the presumption of reliability becomes unwarranted. In an area where there is considerable controversy, any conference proceeding where it is unclear that both (or all) sides were represented at the conference (and thus amongst the referees) automatically raises questions of reliability. EdChem (talk) 12:52, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

(ec) It's a false assertion that "the publisher determines whether a source is reliable". Storms is banned from the Cornell arxiv. That is a problem; fairly rare for a retired academic formerly attached to the institute where the archive was originally hosted. Storms' theories have been criticized in print by Kirk himself. And World Scientific has a patchy publication record: in my own subject they have published encyclopedic tomes on operator algebras which are by total unknowns. These publications could not be recommended; a fortiori they could not really be used as principal references for a wikipedia article. How many times does Abd be need to be told these things before it sinks in? Dogged persistence in repeating the same false arguments will not him an argument (cf his endless comments on the whitelist page, until he was trumped by a sock of Jed Rothwell). Mathsci (talk) 12:58, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

The ban says more about how the cold fusion work was moved outside the mainstream and set up as being in apparent opposition to it, and I'd say that if we have reliable source on the ban, we should report it in the article. But that is irrelevant to WP:RS determinations, and this is well-established. Likewise any publisher may have published something that was later found to be totally bogus; the source remains WP:RS and would be used in an article, if sufficiently notable for the topic of the article, which is a topic by topic consideration, it would then properly be balanced by other RS. If the bogus work is no longer controversial, then it's probably not notable except in a report on the history. That Mathsci is strongly opposing this shows merely that this editor hasn't accepted the fundamental basis on which Wikipedia RS is established, reliance on decisions by responsible publishers, who have a stake in publishing what is notable, because if it isn't notable, they will lose money and reputation. We depend on the mass of those decisions; our judgments of reliability and notability should not be our own synthetic conclusions, and Mathsci's position, if confirmed, would create mass chaos on Wikipedia, as editors debate each source from their own POV. It happens, to be sure, but this is almost all actually in violation of WP:RS. WP:RS determines inclusion, and we should confine our debate to balance, which should not involve exclusion of fact based on reliable source, but rather the placing of such fact in context, with emphasis on the mainstream.

So what's the mainstream view? Is this something that we determine by how many editors are on one side vs. the other? No. It's determined by the weight of reliable source; if a view is not mainstream, it will not be reflected in most available reliable source. For a science article, we rely on the scientific mainstream, which is, again, found by examining what is in peer-reviewed publications and other academic source (by which I mean publication where the audience is itself academic, not what are popularizations and tertiary sources, intended for general readership, non-technical, and where gross generalizations may be made for simplicity, and which happen to have been published by some academic institution; these publications, like print encyclopedias, may reflect a general consensus that existed much earlier. They may still be reliable source, but only as to the consensus at some earlier time). With academic sources, in cases of contradiction, later sources should trump earlier ones, because later sources will generally show the current state of the field. Outside, just as with Wikipedia, consensus changes.

As an example of conclusions that were published, and which were rejected and which are no longer controversial, we need look no further than Fleischmann's original radiation report. It was experimental error, Fleischmann retracted it, it was widely lambasted, and nobody is defending it. He was wrong; it was an easy mistake to make, though, because his excess heat work was solid and everyone, including him, expected that if the excess heat was real, there would be very significant radiation of that kind, so when measurement later shown to be defective showed it, he reported it. It's quite clear that the P-F effect, whatever is causing it, doesn't produce much radiation, beyond alpha radiation which was not detectable using external detectors because of the short range, until experiments were designed that specifically looked for this. Nobody expected significant alpha radiation because the theoretical basis hadn't been developed; the known reaction d + d -> He-4 plus gamma would have produced massive gamma radiation unless some new mechanism of lattice absorption were hypothesized, and the field hadn't gotten to that point at the time. The known hot fusion branching ratio predicted 50% of the fusions would produce neutrons, and only a tiny percentage, nearly insignificant, would produce gammas. That level of neutrons, as expected from the reported heat, would have produced the "dead graduate student" effect. Nobody thought of, for example, double-deuterium molecular -> nuclear fusion caused by lattice confinement at the surface, which, indeed, would predict He-4 generation at levels commensurate with the excess heat, heavy alpha radiation, the helium being generated at the surface, not deep in the bulk palladium, the absence of neutrons except at very low levels resulting from secondary reactions from hot alpha particles (i.e., hot fusion), and many other aspects later found and confirmed, and the work to validate this specific theory, probably by measuring exact alpha particle levels and energies, has yet to reach publication, to my knowledge, except that Mosier-Boss (Naturwissenschaften, 2009, does some level of work on this, and this is, with respect to that theory, a reliable secondary source. --Abd (talk) 14:04, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Techhnically, we are discussing Krivit's book, but your confusion is understandable, as the Storms book has a similar problem. In that book's case, we have a single author who has convinced a publisher to publish it. It is a compendium of results, with the problem that no quality assessment is done on those sources. My quick perusal of the references of one chanpter (over 600 refs there) showed about 60% were to 'Proceedings of the xth ICCF'or an equivalent type of conference. Further, his misrepresents my work, concluding he has rebutted it when in fact I rebutted his rebuttal point by point, and he knew this. And, he ignores the Clarke, Oliver, Bos work that shows He measurment is still unreliable in this field. That makes his book 'unreliable' in the scientific sense. For Wiki, in the end, it seems to be consensus. As I've said before, we should/could use Storms because it is a compendium of non-peer-reviewed stuff (which implies inadequate peer review of most CFer conference proceedings) and it provides a framework for discussing the claims for the CF article. However, the Krivit book adds nothing new, therefore we shouldn't use it. 13:42, 2 June 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kirk shanahan (talk • contribs)

This has, unsurprisingly, been driven wildly off-topic. The discussion was the reliability (or lack there-of) of the Steven Krivit conference proceedings. I believe that the commens were wildly in agreement that the source was not reliable. Is that an accurate read of everyonebutAbd? Hipocrite (talk) 14:11, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

• Not conference proceedings. Published book by major mainstream publisher, collecting edited and reviewed papers, only one of which was previously presented at conferences (Fleischmann, 2003, ICCF10, published by World Scientific, 2006), and which we'd be able to cite anyway because of the notability of the author (we have actually cited a less well written paper presented a previous year, this one is more definitive). The other 15 chapters or papers are original, copyright 2008 by the ACS.
• Lead editor is Jan Marwan. Krivit is co-editor, and contributed an overall review of the field as the first chapter, Introduction and Overview.
• WP:NOTAVOTE. The claim of unreliability has only come from yourself, with all that this implies, and from Shanahan, who is COI on the topic and highly biased. As to Shanahan -- and yourself, probably -- the "Reliable" in Reliable source has been confused with the ordinary meaning of the word. RS doesn't establish freedom from bias, it establishes notability and verifiability of properly attributed text. Other editors have asserted or accepted that Storms is RS, we have many other references to Storms, which were generally accepted until you arrived, and this book is even more solid. I don't accept claims that World Scientific is a shoddy publisher, they are irrelevent, but, even if we accepted that, a book published by the American Chemical Society, the largest scientific society in the world, has been accepted as worthy of discussion by the mainstream, just as the longer seminar held in 2009 by them shows exactly the same thing. --Abd (talk) 16:42, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Jan Marwan... Has he ever even been a professor of anything, anywhere? I'm interested in hearing from the people who haven't already expressed themselves, though, Abd. We know you can drown us in text. Hipocrite (talk) 16:45, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Go to Google Scholar and do a search on "jan marwan". Seems he was at Univ of Southhampton (Fleischmann's old stomping grounds in 2003, from then till ~2007 he was at U. of Quebec, then he seems to have become self-employed and set up his current situation. No guarantees this is exhaustive. Kirk shanahan (talk) 19:21, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Totally irrelevant. Publishers choose editors based on their own lights. I'm interested in hearing from others as well, and I'll take steps to make sure that all of us have the opportunity to see that: me, other editors here, and, especially, you.

However, Oxford University Press says about Marwan:

Jan Marwan, who built up his own research laboratory in Berlin, Germany, to deeply investigate cold fusion processes, is a specialized electrochemist and focused his research on the electrochemical properties of metal hydride systems.

There is a self-bio at: [64]

Krivit is a journalist, editor of New Energy Times, widely noticed because of major media reports, quoting him, about the recent ACS seminar.

I'm not asserting professional notability for Marwan. Krivit is actually more notable, as a journalist covering the field, who has interviewed most major involved figures, including as many critics as were willing to talk with him, and who has been noticed by major media.

--Abd (talk) 17:06, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

"The claim of unreliability has only come from yourself, with all that this implies, and from Shanahan, who is COI on the topic and highly biased"[65] Erm, you are forgetting other people that have expressed doubts about the reliability of this source, namely myself[66] and EdChem[67]. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:43, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

(noindent) Abd seems to be in a minority of one about these sources. He doesn't appear to take any notice of what anybody else says, particularly academics. It is indefensible that he pushes Krivit as notable: what is true is that Krivit has some notoriety in making defamatory statements on his website about scientists; otherwise he has no scientific notability at all (which is what is relevant here). Likewise Abd is desperately trying to push Storms as a mainstream scientist, which is evidently not the case, because of his lack of government funding. If this disruptive "last stand" by Abd continues, it might be an idea for a topic ban. I can see why Kirk Shanahan can speak here with some authority; this does not appear to be the case with Abd, despite the disproportionate number of kbs he contributes here. Mathsci (talk) 21:09, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Academics aren't editing here, to my knowledge, and I'm not sure I'd consider Shanahan an academic, though he has a PhD, apparently, and has, indeed, published, several papers or replies on cold fusion calorimetry in Thermochimica Acta, outlying analysis, unconfirmed. It appears that he is or was employed by the United States government, at Savannah River National Laboratory.i.e, he is part of the U.S. Department of Energy establishment.[68]. From googling his name, I see that he's been active in opposing Cold fusion for quite a while, possibly a decade or more. I found an interesting page at [69], which refers to an attempt to measure excess heat from "Kirk Shanahan's beads," the linked heat record has a date of June 30, 1996. This is a 1996 report by Shanahan, on some cold fusion work. Mentions Rothwell. And this appears to show that he's been promoting his "bubbles" since 1995. (I.e., the theory that his calibration constant shift is caused by bubbles of deuterium gas that oxidize at the surface of the electrode, causing a hot spot.)

Now, as to editors supporting Storms or Marwan as reliable source, see Objectivist (V), Kevin Bass, Coppertwig, and, of course, myself and Wikipedia guidelines on reliable source. Now as to the other barrage of cheap shots -- it takes a few words to fire off a cheap shot, and many words to refute it, which is why, in the end, sometimes we topic ban editors who debate as Mathsci is, it stimulates huge amounts of wasted text and time -- nobody has been asserting here, what "academics" say in reliable source, except for me; for example, Mathsci kindly provided an academic source that describes Storms in detail and recommends the book. That academic remains a skeptic, but that is irrelevant, and the skeptic seemed to me to be maintaining an open mind. He's not going to be knocked over if it turns out that cold fusion is real. Mathsci, apparently, will, I suggest sitting down when reading recent reliable source on the topic. I DGAF, what I care about is hewing to balance as determined by what's in reliable source, and as interpreted by ArbComm in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science, which I suspect, with some evidence I could provide, that a few editors here have not accepted. What does government funding have to do with the definition of "mainstream science"?. Scary if it did, I'd think. However, most some of Storms original work was indeed governmentally funded, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory. As to Krivit, I assert he is notable, not for the reasons Mathsci claims, but because (1) he's described as an expert on the topic in plenty of media source in March of this year, (2) his on-line newsletter, New Energy Times, is given as a resource in reliable source, and because I personally find that resource invaluable for finding stuff on the topic. I can even read some content there for free that I couldn't read elsewhere, because he's bold enough to host a few recent and important papers under a claim of fair use, which he can do, probably legally, i.e., without legal consequence, as a nonprofit, he simply has to take it down on request. We can't link to those papers by our policy, but, nevertheless, it's been quite useful to me. He has also been nice to me, which is more than I can say for the other side, here. So I'm prejudiced, get over it. I'm not asserting anything outside of propriety, and that a subject has been nice to an editor doesn't establish a COI. Indeed, we should encourage good relationships with outside experts, we need much more of this, from all sides. Could anyone get Gary Taubes to post here? It would be fabulous, I certainly have a lot of questions to ask him. --Abd (talk) 00:22, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Storms was not funded by LLNL. He worked for Los Alamos Nat'l Lab. for many years. He did his first CF work there during the '89-'93(?) timeframe. He retired c.'93 or '95, (can't quite remember) and retired under their first big retirement push. Krivit is a journalist, and any referenceing to him should be only on this basis. No different from any other journalist. NET is a pro-CF magazine, not reliable. (potentially useful, as I and others have noted, but not RS). Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:46, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

P.S. Go to Google, enter "Google Scholar" , enter "Kirk Shanahan". read and enjoy. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:52, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

<off-topic> You've written a lot about Kirk Shanahan. Do you have a Ph.D.? I'd assume Verbal is an academic with a Ph.D., like me. I know Cliff Taubes, Gary's brother, but why should Gary have any interest in interacting on the internet with someone like you? </off-topic> Mathsci (talk) 09:02, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I've written less about Shanahan than he has written about me, and I finally decided to look him up. No, I don't have any advanced degree, I dropped out of Caltech as a junior to pursue other interests. Maybe it was because Feynman only taught undergraduates when I was a freshman and a sophomore. As to Taubes, he wrote a major book on the topic, heavily researched, still quite valuable because of the depth of his research, apparently quite reliable on facts and awful when it comes to his inferences about people's motives, but it enabled him to tell a compelling story. Much more interesting than Huizenga, though Huizenga is deeper on some of the pure science stuff, I think. Haven't read all of either. We also have quite a bit of source about how Taubes did the work, and he seemed to have assumed that some of the research was fraudulent, and he is the one who stirred up the probably false misbehavior charges against Brockris. Basically, the assumption would have come from a belief that cold fusion was impossible, therefore the evidence indicating it must be fraudulent if not experimental error. Understandable, but very mistaken. He's written a totally excellent book, Good Calories, Bad Calories on another major scientific error that arose in the 1970s. Maybe he'd see the similarity. As to why he'd want to communicate with me, that would, obviously, be up to him, but I find that the smarter people are, the easier it is for them to understand what I'm saying and to either get it and agree, or tell me exactly where I'm wrong. Sometimes it takes two words from such a person, and I go "Oops! You're right, why didn't I think of that?" In person, sometimes all it takes is a glance. "Magnetic deviation." Ask me on my Talk, and I'll tell you the story. Already too much for here. --Abd (talk) 11:21, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• It probably won't help much, but in my experience, in academia journal papers in top tier journals are considered the most reliable sources, due to the extensive peer review process that is generally followed. (anyone who's looked into the submission process for a top tier journal would know how difficult it can be). Other peer-reviewed journals come next, followed by conference proceedings using double-blind peer review. So conferences can be high, but only if the peer review process is considered satisfactory, and that relates to both process and the quality of the reviewers. Collected papers are a bit more iffy, but are probably rated above non-peer reviewed conferences. The problem there is the peer review process, which tends to be more narrow than the bigger conferences, and depends a lot of the publication of the review panel and the standing of the authors (Krivit would be quite low on this side, but Marwan would certainly be of higher standing, academically). Books and non-peer reviewed (or "by abstract") conferences are down the bottom in most fields I've worked with, because of the lack of peer review, but I know a few fields which rate books a tad higher (such as archaeology and philosophy). The point being, I guess, that it isn't a matter of saying "conferences are bad" or "the publisher is the main determining factor". I'd rate Storms pretty low, on that scale, as it is a non-peer-reviewed work, but the sourcebook would be higher. - Bilby (talk) 14:59, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• It won't hurt. Yes. I agree with all of this, except maybe "Storms pretty low," but that's actually moot. He's lower on the scale than Marwan and Krivit, but because the ACS is probably a more reputable publisher. On the other hand, Storms is highly knowledgeable and credentialed, highly experienced. If you read the actual book, it's quite solid, with some speculation in it that is clearly set off as such, not reported as fact. "Most reliable" is a comparative rating, and only comes into play for Wikipedia for source conflicts, or for otherwise unknown and extraordinary claims with no extended support. For general Wikipedia purposes, the basic determination of source reliability is made based on the publisher, not the author; the author may be, for example, otherwise unknown, not notable. If the publisher is independent and not some fringe focus publishing house, the publication becomes reliable source. But that doesn't mean that it would stand against, say, a peer-reviewed journal in a conflict. The problem, Bilby, is that "unreliable" is being asserted here for publications that would routinely be considered reliable and without there being source conflict. The sources are being asserted as unreliable based on the content, that's blatantly clear, and it is that which is directly contradictory to what Arbcomm has ruled with regard to fringe science. The very determination that cold fusion is fringe science is contaminated by failure to hew to the best sources, which show, not fringe science, but a highly controversial field, one clearly with some level of respect in academia, as well as a lot of rejection that, itself, is largely based on old opinion, and not on review of recent work. I'm not claiming that cold fusion has been "accepted" by the mainstream, but I'm really not clear as to how we'd determine that. That it was rejected twenty years ago, we have plenty of source on that. (Not, by the way, peer-reviewed reliable source, but sources of lower quality, but still reliable source for our purposes, such as media sources.)
• So what do we do if we have sources of low relative quality from 1990, say, that on the face show a contradiction as to the present state of the field, with sources from 2009 that show an emerging science, beginning to gain recognition. The guidelines are actually fairly clear, in general, but they don't make specific decisions. We do. The overall weight of publications in peer-reviewed journals shows support for cold fusion: further, the recent publications, though definitely reduced greatly in number, show an increase over the last five years and the weight is almost unanimously support of cold fusion. Normally, we'd use the weight of such publication to gauge due weight. These are publications, many of them, in mainstream journals, such as Naturwissenschaften. Why should we make an exception here? It's a question, not rhetorical. I'm quite willing to allow the article to continue to show a general rejection of cold fusion, because I think that is still true. But I'm not sure how much this affects the science we report. That general rejection is a social phenomenon, not actually a scientific one, where it is the opinions of those familiar with the research that would count, not "scientists in general." --Abd (talk) 16:17, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Page protection

I've fully protected this page again, this time for two weeks. I hope you guys can use the time to either sort out this dispute, and failing that, find it in yourselves to stop using reverting as an editing technique. After this protection is lifted, it will not be protected again, and disruptive editors will be blocked. Use dispute resolution. Thanks, --causa sui ^talk 03:53, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Ryan. Please. --Abd (talk) 04:00, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Two reverts is an edit war? This isn't on article probation as far as I can see. Now I remember why I stopped editing here. GetLinkPrimitiveParams (talk) 04:43, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

No, it's not. But maybe it should be. --causa sui ^talk 05:07, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, Ryan, there was edit warring here about a week ago. This time it hit 3RRfor Hipocrite. What's been going on is that Hipocrite has been using bald reverts as an "editing technique." He's been doing it for some time, to the point that I said I wasn't going to edit the article substantially until the situation cleared, because I'd spend several hours researching and writing and formatting references and it would simply disappear in a minute. And I mostly have done little since then, except to modify text he'd been removing to satisfy his stated objections about sourcing. So a bit more than a week ago, I replaced text he'd removed, with additional reliable source, he removed it, and we ended up each hitting 3RR, and if my first edit -- which was not a revert, in my opinion -- is considered a revert I was at 4RR. In fact, some progress was being made, some text and changes were accepted. The article was then protected. This time, Hipocrite hit 3RR, nobody else did more than 2RR, there were multiple editors with Hipocrite alone against them all. I didn't do any reverting this time, though I was quite tempted, he's basically trolling for it, it looks like to me, with the edit summaries and other behavior. He hit 3RR, then massively modified the lead, not with consensus, just before you protected. I think that a review of his editing will show consistent edit warring here, and it's just been the restraint of others that made it appear that there wasn't edit warring. This article wasn't nearly as contentious before he showed up, though there were certainly problems, but it was possible to negotiate text. Hipocrite showed up here after ScienceApologist was banned, and appears to have considered it some kind of obligation to carry on SA's work. For which he was banned. Hipocrite's edits here are consistently violating Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science by attempting to totally exclude alleged fringe sources, even when the publishers clearly meet RS requirements. --Abd (talk) 06:05, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

See comment in above section. Krivit's book is not RS. Nor is Storms' really. I recommend it only because it lists a lot of non-peer-reviewed sources, which the CFers use liberally. Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:51, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Given ArbComm's related ruling on Fringe science, which was partly about editors active with this article, it's not going to be enough to simply assert that a source isn't reliable. Rather, decisions about reliability will have to be made objectively, and, in the absence of issues of contradiction of sources, a source is then either reliable or it isn't. That still doesn't make a fact stated there true, but it does make it notable and usable for verification, even if attribution is needed. I could take the position that if there is no contradiction of sources, attribution isn't needed, but, hey, this is a wiki and we must work to get along. Attribution is often a simple way to move beyond POV conflicts, when editors are reasonable. After all, Storms did say what was attributed to him. It's verifiable, it's notable, and it violates policy to arbitrarily exclude it, or to exclude it on the grounds that it is fringe. --Abd (talk) 15:56, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

As notification, I should put this here. permanent link for ease of reading diffs, etc., and for seeing response. I've informed the protecting administrator of the circumstances around the protection, which should not be discussed here, I suggest, this isn't about the article, or even the topic, it's about editorial behavior. --Abd (talk) 16:55, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Specific edit requests

I suggest that as soon as this page is off of protection, the discussion of exactly one patent, the 4body fusion explanation and the "According to Storms (2007), no published theory" section be removed from this article, the tags I added be removed and the intro returned to the old version. This is the status-quo ante. Storms is not a reliable source (this is settled, above), patents are not reliable sources, and the two papers on 4body fusion are far from reliable sources, regardless of the fact that they were reprinted by Krivit. While, of course, I actually engaged in discussion regarding the intro, I was happy to you know, finish that discussion before reverting back the changes I wanted over and over again like some others may have done.

I further suggest that we construct an article RFC, submit that RFC, and NOT PESTER THE RESPONDERS TO THE RFC, such that we can see what people who have not previously edited this article think about the entire mess. By NOT PESTERING, I mean no responding to the individuals who have not previously edited this article, and no responding to the RFC ourselves. Thoughts? Hipocrite (talk) 03:56, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

There is only one editor here consistently using reversion as an editing technique, and he signed above. No basis has been asserted for the removal of the section from Storms. The claim that Storms is not reliable source is preposterous; Storms is certainly notable, from the paper Mathsci was so kind as to provide to me and to Enric Naval, and possibly others. If we are going to have an RfC, the questions must be agreed upon, otherwise it is essentially editor harassment, because one RfC is created which asks misleading questions, then another one is needed to ask different questions, and sometimes even more is needed. So we need to work on an agreement on an RfC first. It can easily be done. I tried to ask the most important and simplest version above (which version was better) rather than a non-comparative, absolute question (is a source reliable), because the latter actually asks for an abstract judgment absent specific situation, and reliability of sources varies with what is being sourced.

There can be some merit to the suggestion of not responding to the RfC ourselves; however, the editors who actually know this field are the editors of this article, for the most part. So a middle path is needed. By the way, nobody is harassed because someone responds to a comment, because there is no obligation to respond to comments. But I do understand that it can feel that way.

For RfC to work, the evidence must be laid out coherently and simply, and likewise the arguments and the questions. All of them, presented neutrally. User RfC process can be a guide, likewise ArbComm process.

I don't think that Hipocrite gets that the Takahashi paper wasn't reprinted by Krivit. Krivit was merely an editor of the book, the Low energy nuclear reactions sourcebook. It was published by the American Chemical Society in cooperation with Oxford University Press. Definitely not a fringe publisher. It is the publisher which determines what is reliable source, not the author. So we had three sources on the Be-8 theory: secondary sources being Storms (World Scientific and the Chinese paper, effectively published by Springer-Verlag, and primary source being the 2008 Takahashi paper, notable for being included in the ACS Sourcebook. And against this, it appears that Hipocrite wants to assert passing mention in old secondary or tertiary sources as being adequate on the topic. It's obvious what's going on.

There are also issues here that might not be resolvable at this level, but we will cross that bridge if we come to it. Most important is [[Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science#Prominence|]] and Advocacy. Generally, we judge prominence by preponderance of publication in reliable sources, and, in a science articles, by publication in peer-reviewed or other academic sources. The problem is that by this standard, the predominant view in recent years would be that cold fusion is real. Negative papers on cold fusion have not outnumbered positive ones since 1989; in 1990, they were in balance, and every year after that, positive papers outnumbered negative ones. I'm not proposing that we present cold fusion as scientific fact, don't worry. It's clearly quite controversial. But my point is that we should be very careful about supporting one side of the controversy over the other, and, in fact, once we open up, we will see that there are intense controversies within the field.

I oppose any more individually-initiated RfCs unless we have consensus on holding one, and, please be aware: if an RfC isn't propoerly formed, it will inhibit consensus, and if we can't find consensus, the matter will escalate until some final decision is made. --Abd (talk) 04:29, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

So to summarize, you have no comment on my proposed return to the status quo, and you oppose seeking outside advice through RFC. Hipocrite (talk) 16:53, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

No, not a summary. Here is my brief statement: We should negotiate specific changes here, from the article as it exists;given how much dispute there is from a few editors, we should work on the smallest and simplest changes first. We should request those changes if we can find sufficient consensus to convince an admin to edit the article. If we are going to use RfC, because we can't find consensus, we should design the RfC to ensure that all reasonable evidence is shown, that all arguments still standing after discussion are included -- I'd say that any argument should ideally be seconded to be included, i.e., not just one editor's position, but I also think that solitary arguments can be included if someone really insists -- and the RfC itself should then present all this coherently and concisely (if longer arguments or evidence is needed, this can be done through references or collapse boxes.) In other words, we want to resolve the issue, having insured that all reasonable arguments and evidence are easily accessible to any new, neutral editor. And, then, if further process is needed, there is a clear basis, already compiled. Probably it won't be necessary if we do our work well. POV-pushers usually give up at this point, if they haven't before, because they see what will happen if the matter escalates. It's more work, perhaps, than BRD, and certainly than simply revert warring, but, in the end, the results will stick. --Abd (talk) 17:11, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

So, to summarize, you're finally going to propose changes to the article on the talk page instead of just making them over and over again? And your thoughts on returning the article to the stable status quo? Hipocrite (talk) 17:20, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Hipocrite, above you noticed what could be taken as a leading question and you objected to it with the standard "When did you stop beating your wife" remark; I then looked down and saw many leading questions from you, like the one above. I'm going to do what I've been doing all along, improving the article through seeking consensus by various means, sometimes by discussion before editing(which you don't like) and sometimes through actual edits that incorporate improvements as a suggestion when I think it possible they will be accepted, even if not discussed in advance (which you also don't like). A little while ago, almost all these direct, non-discussed edits were accepted. That changed when you arrived.. In the end, it's not about you and not about me, it's about the community. --Abd (talk) 17:45, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I support reverting the article to a stable version and the discussing these changes individually on the talk page. Verbal chat 17:24, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

That's okay, it's better than the intro Hipocrite mangled just before protection, having exhausted 3RR and it wouldn't be considered a revert, I assume. We can still do the rest, then. I'm not attached to any changes I made yesterday. I propose we each pick a version to revert to, because then we can compare and say, "This is best," or "That is best." If we can find consensus on a version, it will be trivial to find an admin to make the change. Every disagreeing editor is likely to make it more difficult, and we should ideally aim for unanimity, but, here, I don't know how possible that is. We'll see. Maybe it will be the first time that we all agree on something. After all, just about any recent version would be better than the way it was left. This could be fun. --Abd (talk) 17:45, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I wouldn't have said this before, but now I will. Hipocrite rushed to make the changes because he knew the protection was coming, because he requested it. I wasn't edit warring, I didn't make any reverts, rather I added some material that had indeed been there before, so it could, by some, technically, be called a single revert, but it had been discussed, most of it. The one edit warring was Hipocrite, hitting 3RR just before changing the lead, and he played it well here, except for one thing: his move was blatant, because after I wrote the above, I thought, what if this was deliberate? So I looked at his contribs, and there it was. Someone can ping causa sui|causa sui, I don't know if he realizes what happened. And this is also noticeboard material, if anyone has time. I don't right now. "Skeptical" editors, be careful of this editor, his goal is to disrupt this article, that's what he started doing a month ago, and, indeed, from what I'd seen before, his goal is to disrupt Wikipedia over the Fringe science arbitration. I can, and will, establish this with evidence in the appropriate place, I'm through discussing it here, and his Talk page is already prohibited to me. --Abd (talk) 17:59, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Your assumptions of bad faith are galling. "This shouldn't be controversial." reverted back in the highly controversial highly controversial Storms-as-arbitor-of-theory sectionm, and your "based on talk discussion" revered back in the highly controversial 4-body fusion claims. If you were able to actually discuss article changes on a talk page without drowning everyone in reams of text, you'd know you didn't have consensus for either of those changes. But, you know, keep right on threatening to take me here, take me there, noticeboard this, report me to that, whatever. It's exactly what you were told to stop doing in your last ArbCom fiasco, and it's exactly what you'll be told to stop doing in your next ArbCom fiasco. Hipocrite (talk) 18:08, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

No threats, I'm done here. A threat is an attempt to alter editor behavior through intimidation. I now care nothing about what Hipocrite does here, and I'm not asking him to change. The comment above was for the information of editors of this article, who should know what was done, because I think it likely that the article will be unprotected shortly. The poll below is still a good idea, we simply include the present version and we could even make it a standing poll allowing us to monitor the progress of the article toward full consensus, which is my goal. I'll do what I do, beyond this, and it really has almost nothing to do with this article any more, it is not a content dispute. That's why it would be inappropriate to discuss further here. If someone thinks I've done something wrong, my Talk page is thataway --> --Abd (talk) 18:23, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Abd has inserted a comment above out of sequence. But I answer it here:

Abd is really giveing a biased interpretation of the events. If you check the revision log of the Cold Fusio article for June 1 for example, you find multiple non-minor edits by Abd. And I emphasize here and now, *this was done without ANY concensus to do so*. properly, all those edits should be deleted, and were. And then Abd has the gall to clain the reverter was violating Wiki policy. Abd, YOU are the problem here, with your POV-pushing. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:18, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

The last stable version I recall was before the then current crop of editors decided that the article needed some mainstream viewpoint to get NPOV. That's when they emailed me and asked for my input. I did that on Sept. 17, 2008. Unfortunately, that's when all this garbage started, because the then current and today's current crop of editors were pro-CF biased, and they didn't like my input. I recommend we go back to then, with the understanding that we are going to be adding mainstream view, and start editing there. We also need to ignore all the trivial pursuit-like junk that had dominated the Talk page since that time. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:47, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Pick a revision, Kirk. Make it your best shot, but do try to consider what other editors might accept, you might be more likely to get it. Or, for efficiency, pick the best revision, in your view, and then also pick a compromise that is at least better than the status quo. Maybe at the end we would compare those two! Presumably either would be better than the present. Or you can pick the present version as one choice. I propose using Range voting for polling (not to make the decision, just to judge how it's going): each editor can rate each proposed revision on a scale of 0-10, with 0 representing the worst and 10 the best, and 0 would be presumed (i.e., you can vote just for your favorite. You can also vote Yes or No to each version, which I'd interpret for my own use as 10 and 0, respectively. (There is debate among range voting advocates as to whether or not to count abstentions as 0 or to exclude them from the average, but because we aren't necessarily making an actual decision by this, it's purely advisory at first, it really doesn't matter, and we can present results both ways for final review. This could be very quick, actually, we should probably not debate it, but just propose revisions and rate other ones that have already been proposed, then, hopefully, later, come back and rate any overlooked, and maybe change the !votes. I'm not proposing a revision yet, I don't have time to research it. --Abd (talk) 18:13, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Does anyone else here understand how poorly Abd reads??? Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:25, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Poll to find quick rough consensus for change under protection

Comments on process

[this next comment preceded the poll in the original poll subsection. Then the poll followed, and then some attempt to correct errors that got thoroughly confused (on my part), then the comment from Woonpton below. --Abd (talk) 14:18, 5 June 2009 (UTC)]

Above, I suggest we poll editors as to a reversion to return to pending unprotection of the article. I have requested unprotection of the article based on a review of the history, see discussion there Unprotection was not granted. This poll, however, was supported as a good move. I'm going to suggest two revisions, one preferred by me and one rejected. Beyond a brief statement from the one proposing a revision as to why it's proposed, which is optional, I'm suggesting we do not debate this in this subsection, because the goal here is to quickly find some reasonable compromise so that we can fix the article, which has been protected into a state with a mangled lead. Please !vote on these revisions, and suggest new ones if you prefer some other revision to what is already listed. Please !vote using a number, 0 to 10, with 0 indicating unacceptable, and 10 indicating the preferred version. You may vote 0 to 10 for more than one, in which case it will be taken as rejection of all of the 0s and full acceptance of all the 10s. These numbers will not, in themselves, determine the outcome, but may be used by any of us to quickly seek the most acceptable compromise. You may change your !votes at any time, it's not necessary to strike out the old one, since there should be no discussion of specific !votes, the whole point is to avoid debate. --Abd (talk)

I call shenanigans. Please do not remove this comment. The version I chose as the better of the three and !voted for, as you can see by the diff of my !vote, was the version of 19:54 September 17, 2008 My !vote has been moved to the version of 15:48 September 18, 2008. I have struck my !vote for the moment, but after people have an opportunity to see what was done here, I will be removing my !votes entirely. I will not participate in a poll where the options keep changing and people move !votes around; this is not okay. Woonpton (talk) 03:48, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I apologize, Woonpton. The link in the place where you voted was to the Sept 18 version, accidentally, not the version suggested by Shanahan. My move was entirely intended to represent your intention, so I don't know why you struck the vote. There was an error made, Woonpton, maybe two. Let's get it clear:

:19:54 September 17, 2008, as you specified it as being the version you preferred, is actually the revision of 15:48, 18 September 2008, which was the Pcarbonn edited version of Shanahan's proposal of September 17, as you can see. If you look at the version now shown for Shanahan's version, and you can look at the diffs in the matrix below to compare any two versions, I think you will see that v4 is substantially better than v3, Shanahan is a COI editor and simply wrote in his POV, and wasn't experienced at avoiding POV text. It's quite hard to compare the 1&2 versions with the 3&4, because there have accumulated such massive changes.

Please, AGF. I have no intention here other than to gauge editorial consensus, and I apparently made a mistake in setting up the reference to the Shanahan version and linked it to the next reversion, by Pcarbonn. I think your !vote is in the correct place now, and if you want to restore the comment you struck and I then deleted, that's absolutely fine with me. If I'm wrong about the place, move your vote to the right place. I want your !vote to represent your intention, and nothing else. I will point out, however, that with Range voting, to not vote the full range is to cast a weak vote, which is your total privilege. It's appropriate if your opinion is weak and you wish to defer to the opinions of other editors. Otherwise, I'd recommend that you !vote a 10 for your favorite and a 0 for the worst, and what you do wtih the rest is up to you. You can vote 10 for the favorite and 0 for all the rest, or whatever. There are two ways to analyze range votes: one is simple sum-of-votes, and the other is average vote. With sum-of-votes, abstaining on voting for a version is the same as voting 0 for it. With average voting, an abstention doesn't affect the average. My plan is to look at both figures.

(ec) And this is even less okay, especially the edit summary "Woonpton seems to have accepted the move of the !vote." after my strong objection to the move had already been registered. And this is likewise not okay, removing my struck comment and leaving the vote intact. You do not have permission to (1)move my votes, (2) remove my comments or my !votes. (3) edit my comments. Please cease and desist.Woonpton (talk) 04:51, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

(after reading intervening edits) You're simply wrong about the links. If you'll look at the link that was there when I voted, the link I voted for, it is the version of 19:54 September 17, 2008, just as I have said, not the version of the next day that you moved it to. Anyone looking can see that this is the case. Do not take any more action on my edits, please. I will do with my edits what I think is appropriate at the time I decide to do that; you may not. Thank you. Woonpton (talk) 04:51, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Woonpton, please AGF, again. When I wrote the "Woonpton seems to have accepted the move," that was when you had struck the text of the vote, which implied to me that you did accept the place of the vote, so I deleted that struck text, because in the poll section, there is no back and forth, no debating with comments, and, at that point, nobody had responded to your comment, so no reason to strike rather than delete. The goal here is consensus, Woonpton, I apologise for any offense. It can all be fixed if it's wrong, this is a wiki. The point is for the poll to show a simple result, and what's important is the most recent !vote in it, not how we got there. This is a little different from discussion process. Any of my edits touching your vote, you could have reverted, no problem, not edit warring. I almost put "revert if I'm wrong" in the edit summary but thought, no, that is implicit.

By the time I read the above request, I'd already moved Woonpton's vote back to where it's been said it should be. I'm not going to touch it again! This is a poll where !votes can be changed (by the editor who made them). Because, for a time, I believed that I'd made a mistake (it was a misunderstanding of how version numbers are used in certain contexts), I was totally confused about which version was which. The two versions are contiguous, so Pcarbonn's version can be referred to by the number of Shanahan's version with a paradoxical (counterintuitive to me) oldid reference, and I missed it. Won't do that again! --Abd (talk) 05:12, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Woonpton ended up removing the !votes entirely. (Quick summary: v1 and v2 -- both recent versions -- were rated 0, v3 was rated 7, there was no rating on v4.) That's up to that editor, but it's a bit mysterious to me why a transient problem with some confusion over version numbers and intention resulted in total removal, but editors in the poll subsection are completely free to change their !votes, including removing them , because !voting in that section is not debate, please delete rather than strike, or just change the rating number if you change your mind, and not only do you not have to explain, it's preferable that you don't. The status of the poll at any given time will show the sense of our opinions at that time, and, while there may be some trickiness to interpreting the poll, I think that after a couple of days, it will be obvious enough to ask an admin to make the reversion to prior version. This is much simpler, I expect, than trying to debate specific changes at this time. (If we had polling software, typically a user might change a vote at any time, and it would be the vote at close that mattered, not the intervening history.) If it were up to me, from universal practice in Parliamentary procedure, there would be no comments with !votes, they would be pure Yes or No votes, which has here, for polling purposes, been made more flexible by allowing intermediate ratings.

I added the matrix of diffs so that editors can quickly compare any pair of versions. It's quite sensible to give the same rating to versions, even if your opinion of them is different, perhaps doing what's called "bullet voting," i.e., yes or 10 for your favorite, and 0 for all the rest, but we will find consensus more quickly (usually) if there is more flexibility, either by fully accepting more than one version, or by giving an intermediate rating that is better than the worst and worse than the best. In real practice with Approval voting (all 0 or 10), there are usually rounds until some proposal has a majority. We'll have to feel this one out as we see how it goes, but one result is already obvious, both from the poll and from the prior discussion: nobody has been willing to acknowledge that they favor the article as it is. --Abd (talk) 14:46, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

[moved from being a response to the poll in the poll subsection to here. This subsection has also been moved up to precede the poll itself to give it prominence --Abd (talk) 14:11, 5 June 2009 (UTC)]

This is a totally ineffective way to progress on the article. Abd is not the person to lead discussions here. Mathsci (talk) 06:54, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Verbal chat 07:27, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Expected. Mathsci and Verbal, both of you have consistently pushed an anti-fringe agenda here of exactly the kind that got ScienceApologist banned. You do not appear to be here to improve the article, only to complain about an editor. The article is under protection due to edit warring from an editor with whom both of you have aligned in discussion. Nobody else was trying to deal with the protection, and I think you like it, because the article then says what you want, something that the community has rejected, the claim and bald statement that cold fusion is pseudoscience or pathological science. Definitely, there is old source that makes that claim, and it's part of the social history of cold fusion, but it's also clear that there is no peer-reviewed reliable scientific secondary source that claims this in recent years, and there is plenty of reliable source of all kinds, from this period, to show the opposite. Stop it, or properly seek editorial consensus. Don't like the poll above? You are not obligated to participate, nobody is. But please stop trying to disrupt efforts to determine consensus here. The poll above is nonbinding, and is not an RfC. It will be used to make a quick request for a change to a prior version, and the number one proposal was to a version that Hipocrite edited after proposing page protection. I'd allow the tags, to, but since he mangled the introduction, first, I pointed to the best available version that didn't toss all the prior work that he had, at least provisionally, accepted. All this does is to undo the gaming of protection. Please help or go away. --Abd (talk) 14:29, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Abd, stop moving other people's on topic comments, you just confused the hell out of me. Also, don't forget to assume good faith. You can't just discount opinions because you term them "anti-fringe" - which I'm not, but it's hardly an insult. Verbal chat 14:40, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

It's time for you to drop the stick and back away, again, Abd. Your proposed methodology is terribly complicated, and moving peoples votes is in poor form. I'll show you how we do things at the bottom of the page. Hipocrite (talk) 14:32, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Also, please try to avoid speaking for me. I accept no version that includes 4 body fusion or the Storms quote, currently. That I self reverted a misclick does not mean I accept something. Hipocrite (talk) 14:44, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

• Agree that this poll is ineffective Abd is acting as if he owns this poll, moving others' comments and even their votes about. This is no way to run a poll, the results would be meaningless. --Noren (talk) 14:34, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
• Agree that this poll should be closed and following the recent arbcom decision made against Abd's editing style he needs to stop filling this page with kilobytes of irrelevant material which is stifling discussion and often off topic. Verbal chat 14:40, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
• Moot. Poll cannot be closed except by neutral admin, I'll stand with that. Noren, this poll is quite integrable with the alternate poll started below by Hipocrite. There was an error made by me in the revision numbers while I was working on the matrix, and, in the confusion it appeared to me that Woonpton had been looking at one version when !voting for it, when the permanent link had led the editor to another. I'd actually started out with the right permanent links, so that Woonpton's !vote was indeed in the right place, and it ended up back there, but after that Woonpton removed the !vote, reason not really explained. As to editing style, if I'm verbose, it's rejected. And if I'm succinct -- the poll itself here is ultra-succinct -- it's rejected. Instead, I'll let ArbComm speak for itself. I wasn't sanctioned for verbosity, and a host of editors, including Hipocrite and Verbal, tried their best to get me topic banned. It didn't fly. This whole process to find consensus on a version was occasioned by Hipocrite edit warring, requesting article protection, and then making a highly controversial edit that nobody is supporting, including Hipocrite, and you want to complain about my behavior? Your POV is showing, Noren. This poll is not an RfC. As to ownership, I asked, with this poll, a very specific question, and expect to be able to manage the process to get specific answers; no repression of comment has taken place, only organization of comment into sections, and I'll again, stand with that. I'm not going to reorganize Hipocrite's poll or try to remove or close it, even though it's the fox polling the chickens. Refactoring of Talk content for clarity is allowed. --Abd (talk) 16:22, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Poll, reserved section

Please do not use for general comments or debate, only to propose additional revisions (please follow form already used) or to rate proposals. Comments or debate, beyond brief specifics about a version, should be in reserved comment subsection above.

Note that an alternate poll was started by Hipocrite below, at Talk:Cold_fusion#A_poll_to_determine_a_working_starting_point_for_this_article. This alternate poll does not include versions 1 or 2. Editors may !vote in either poll, or both, we can sort it out when analyzing !votes. Votes here are in the form of 0 - 10, with 0 indicating "worst" and 10 indicating "best." One may vote 0 or 10 or any other number for more than one version. In comparing this poll with the other poll, "Acceptable" will be interpreted as 10 and "unacceptable" as 0.

v1. [70] proposed because it was an edit where Hipocrite accepted Coppertwig's edit, by self-reverting back to it after reverting, but before he changed the lead. --Abd (talk) 02:08, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• 10. Abd (talk) 02:08, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
• 10. Krellkraver (talk) 10:29, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
• [add !vote here}

v2. [71] version as protected, proposed for comparison. --Abd (talk) 02:08, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• 0. Abd (talk) 02:08, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
• 0. Clearly not NPOV, containing numerous opinionated statements without attribution or sourcing. Krellkraver (talk) 10:29, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
• [add !vote here}

deprecated proposals, withdrawn by Abd

v3. [72] proposed by Kirk shanahan with the version of Sept. 17, 2008 is very much better than we have today, but certainly is not a finished work. --Abd (talk) 18:26, 4 June 2009 (UTC) 0. Abd (talk) 04:12, 5 June 2009 (UTC) [add !vote here} v4. [73] above version involved substantial edits by Kirk shanahan. Pcarbonn accepted part and removed part, particularly unsourced POV. --Abd (talk) 01:21, 5 June 2009 (UTC) 0. Abd (talk) 04:12, 5 June 2009 (UTC) [add !vote here}

v5. [74] this version was proposed by Hipocrite, and is the prior version as protected, 21 May, 2009. --Abd (talk) 15:19, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

• 6. Abd (talk) 15:19, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

v6. [75] version of 31 May also proposed by Hipocrite, plus Hipocrite added a single-word change, "most scientists" to "most physicists," per the source. --Abd (talk) 15:19, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

• 8. Abd (talk) 15:19, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Matrix for comparison of versions

Please fix any diff errors found here.

Extended content

This matrix is often innacurate at this point in time. Individuals who would like a corrected dif should feel free to approach me either here or on my talk page and I can provide them. Hipocrite (talk) 16:16, 5 June 2009 (UTC) I think maybe Hipocrite is correct, I'm checking it. Correction of errors is appreciated, but if there is an error in the top row, it may have been replicated down (this would have been part of the confusion over Woonpton's !vote). I'll fix it ASAP --Abd (talk) 16:30, 5 June 2009 (UTC) I believe all errors have been fixed, if not, please fix them! --Abd (talk) 17:33, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

version/version diffs	v1[76]	v2[77]	v5[78]	v6[79]
v1[80] 2009-06-01 02:54	*	[81]	[82]	[83]
v2[84] 2009-06-01 03:51	[85]	*	[86]	[87]
v5[88] 2009-05-21 19:01	[89]	[90]	*	[91]
v6[92] 2009-05-31 16:51	[93]	[94]	[95]	*

edit signatures/notes:

• Abd (talk) 04:05, 5 June 2009 (UTC) created table.
• Abd (talk) 16:02, 5 June 2009 (UTC) added v.5 and v.6.
• Abd (talk) 17:31, 5 June 2009 (UTC) fixed errors and removed v. 3 and v. 4 for simplicity, no maintained support.

reference to add

http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v106/i2/p330_1

thanks... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.86.201.173 (talk) 14:23, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Why? has nothing to do with 'cold fusion'. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:02, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually, that's not true, Kirk, and you know why. But this article isn't the place for that source, it belongs with muon-catalyzed fusion, which is certainly fusion and it is certainly cold, but we keep the topics separate, largely because MCF is accepted and other forms of low energy nuclear reactions aren't, at least not generally. There are, in fact, other known LENR reactions that are accepted, such as the modification, sometimes drastic, of isotopic half-lives by the chemical environment, as with Be-7. We will have a bit of a problem here until we more accurately classify parts of the topic. MCF is a low-energy nuclear reaction, albeit not chemically catalyzed, as would be the claimed Pons and Fleischmann form. "Cold fusion" is a popular and colloquial term, with rather plastic meaning. --Abd (talk) 16:22, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I think this guy said that everyone interested in cold fusion should read that paper, and therefore reference might be useful for this wikipedia article. 93.86.201.173 (talk) 16:50, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Duncan is not writing a Wiki article on CF, he is promoting a new idea he just discovered. Hopefully, with more study, he will discover his mistake. Time will tell. However, I repeat, no relevance to 'cold fusion' except one historical tidbit. Kirk shanahan (talk) 19:24, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Hahaha, I wondered why you provided such an emotional response, and then i stumbled upon the paper titled "...to explain anomalous heat generated by cold fusion". 93.86.201.173 (talk) 15:48, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

No idea what you are talking about. Please explain. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:56, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Robert Duncan (physicist) didn't simply "discover" cold fusion, he was asked by CBS as a neutral physicist (skeptical, actually), to investigate the topic, and he read the literature and travelled to Energetics Technologies in Israel to see their work. (Note that a paper where Michael McKubre precisely replicates Energetics Technologies cold fusion work is included in the ACS Sourcebook. The idea that cold fusion experiments aren't reproducible is squashed old hat.) --Abd (talk) 00:43, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Dardik et al, of Energetic Technologies have slides from ICCF12 and a paper from ICCF14 (2008) posted on Rothwell's web site. In both, they show an artist's drawing of their calorimeter, which contains the thermocouples, which are designated Tcell and Tjacket. The drawing and these designations are for what is known as isoperibolic calorimetry. In the text of the ICCF14 paper, the claim to be using a flow calorimeter, but what they show is NOT that. Isoperibolic calorimetry is what F&P originally did and were critcized about in the '89 DOE review. Storms has written several times that flow calorimetry is superior to isoperibolic, and he even admits that iso. calor. 'might' be affected by the CCS (while flow certainly isn't, nevermind that his flow calorimetric data is what I analyzed to find the CCS.) And you expect me to believe them? And you even more expect me to trust the opinion of someone who is new to the field and thinks ET is a great company?? What planet do you live on? Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:09, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Earth. Why do you ask? Are you unfamiliar with our customs? There is a mailing list response to the above from Jed Rothwell and from Edmund Storms, quoted by Shanahan at permanent link, together with Shanahan's comment on that, which I found fascinating, in a perverse sort of way. It reveals the nature of this controversy, quite clearly. --Abd (talk) 17:54, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Shanahan writes as if it were simply Duncan being deluded by Energetics Technologies. However, I'd pointed to a 2008 paper by Michael McKubre replicating the ET work. Perhaps Duncan is new to the field. That cannot be said about McKubre, I think he started working on cold fusion in 1989. --Abd (talk) 17:54, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

A) MuKubre is as deluded as Duncan - how's that? Actually, he's worse, as he's been in the field for a long time and done lots of measurements. He is another of those people who have a highly vested interest in NOT accepting my explanations. He's spent millions of EPRI and other funder's dollars looking for CF. B) Where is this paper? C) My position on Duncan is that he is an unknown in the field, at least to me, and I follow the field somewhat closely, therefore he is unlikely to be aware of the controversy, especially since the CFers have actively suppressed my and Clarke's contributions in their propaganda. (See the comment by Storms in the section that Abd finds 'perversely' interesting.) What are Duncan's qualifications that makes him an 'expert' in this arena? D) The CCS arise from real causes. If one scientist sees a response that might be a CCS and calls it something else, I would *expect* someone trying to replicate to have a reaasonable shot at partially reproducing it. However, exact replication, the gold standard of science, is going to be nearly imposssible to attain if you don't understand what is going on. There, you end up trying to control the wrong things and not controlling the right. The upshot is that if you manage to get the effect, it likely will not be at the same levels or behave similarly to the work you're trying to replicate, which is a perfect description of CF research results. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:14, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

This is Duncan speaking at the Missouri Energy Summit. Yes, he mentions the paper, and recommends it as one of the best papers he's ever read. We do need to mention muon-catalyzed fusion when we mention the Coulomb barrier as supposedly insurmountable except through the brute force of high temperature. That much, certainly, is relevant here. There are some theories of cold fusion that assert other forms of catalysis or intervention that may also lower or bypass the coulomb barrier. Hydrino theory, for example, with the reduced electron orbits that are hypothesized, could allow electrons to serve for the same kind of shielding of the repulsive forces that muons accomplish. Normal electrons can't do it. Others assert some kind of distributed electron effect, if I understand it. Hydrino theory is sufficiently notable that we can mention it. Still, we wouldn't cite this article here, but at muon-catalyzed fusion. We would simply refer to MCF here, where it's appropriate. MCF is generally mentioned when considering this topic. For example, Hoffman mentions it in 1995 (see our bibliography, it's page 10. --Abd (talk) 17:37, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

By the way, the speech is excellent, going over the history and why cold fusion was so vehemently rejected so quickly. Basically, he notes that the P-F announcement by press conference diverted maybe 60% of the NSF research budget, immediately, into cold fusion verification work. But P and F, when they exhausted their original supply of palladium, and got more, found no excess heat. Oops! And other researchers, using different palladium as well, found the same. No results. They were pissed, quite understandably believing that they'd been duped or deceived, maybe deliberately, or at least by very bad research work. However, buried in the noise was other replication by a few researchers, and that continued, and the researchers learned what conditions work to generate excess heat and what ones didn't, to the point that many groups are now reporting very high reproducibility, even 100%. The P-F method remains difficult, I don't think anyone is asserting 100% following the P-F method, but other methods do seem to reach that, such as codeposition, which avoids the whole problem of reaching deuterium saturation in bulk palladium, or nanoparticle palladium alloy gas-loading, as in Arata's work in Japan. Peer-review published, by the way, all of it. --Abd (talk) 17:45, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Peer review doesn't prevent fraud, nor does it prevent people who are sympathetic to a viewpoint from putting in something awful. The reality is that peer review isn't really designed to detect sloppy science, so if you make a mistake, but make it impossible to tell that you made that mistake on cursory examination, chances are you'll pass peer review. The REAL peer review is when everyone else in the world reads it and criticizes it. People stretch their results all the time in papers which pass peer review. The reproducibility, as far as I'm concerned, is 0% - nothing useful has come of it, it hasn't done anything useful, and no one useful has reproduced the result. People report effects all the time, but unless and until they build something out of it, it remains nonexistent. This may sound harsh, but as someone who has read numerous papers claiming genes do various things, I can tell you that many, perhaps most papers making such claims are in fact wrong, and publication bias, as well as the bias of the authors of the paper, play a huge role in this. People doing such research have great vested research in the effect being useful, and I see scientists convinced that something which is obviously worthless will someday pan out, despite seeing math myself which demonstrated that what they're working on will never pan out, either being already inferior to what exists or simply not being feasible to do in the first place.

Anyone who is interested in science has to gain the ability to read papers and see whether or not they're useful. This stinks of uselessness, and ergo, I don't think it is particularly worthwhile. You can publish about claimed effects all you want, but until you or someone else makes something based on the effect, it almost certainly doesn't exist. Titanium Dragon (talk) 02:32, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps we should put a note in muon-catalyzed fusion that it doesn't exist, based on this argument. There has been tremendous confusion over an assumption that the reliable source guideline means that particular sources satisfying it should be actually true or actually reliable. No source is infallible, peer-reviewed papers can be based on fraud, may have errors large or small, etc. However, the assumption in the guideline is that papers published as described establish notability. Notable facts should be in the encyclopedia; how we handle fraud would be to balance the fraudulent publication with other reliable source showing the fraud. If there is a fact asserted in a reliable source, as defined in our guidelines, then we have something potentially notable. Some RS peer-reviewed research is primary source. But when there is coverage of these primary sources in a reliable secondary source, then we have clear notability, it's no longer isolated primary source. Encyclopedias are about knowledge, not necessarily practical application. It is possible that there will be no major practical applications for low energy nuclear reactions, the effects may be too fragile; on the other hand, I wouldn't bet on it. I can already think of one application for the existing LENR technology. Secret, of course, though it's not rocket science. If I actually start to do something with it, I'd immediately become COI (and I would disclose this).

(Plenty of things have been made based on the effect, such as the co-deposition cells of the U.S. Navy SPAWAR group. What are they used for? For demonstrating the effect! Reliably. They are nifty devices, also, for pitting CR-39 plastic in patterns that certainly look like those of alpha particles, and, as well, a few neutrons, and for fogging X-ray film, in case you want to do that.) I think that something should be made very clear here: this article is about science. Fleischmann's research wasn't about solving the world's energy problems, it was about exploring the boundaries and limits of quantum mechanics. He found an example where standard QM, apparently, is inadequate to deal with the complexities of the condensed matter environment, to more accurately predict nuclear behavior, Quantum electrodynamics may be needed. It was pure science research, not engineering, but his discovery pointed to what might become, with a lot of work, an engineering reality. He estimated that it would take a "Manhattan-scale" project to realize this. It is not simple to scale up the effect he found. My concern is the science, not hype about free energy or whatever. And here, my concern is what we can present based on reliable source, by the Wikipedia definitions.

There are plenty of anecdotal reports of "heat after death," often with very substantial amounts of heat generated, but nobody has found how to make this happen reliably, so far, it's not reproducible. If it could be figured out how to control this, there would be something quite practical. But there are other forms of generating heat (and radiation, and helium) from palladium deuteride that are reliable, but low-level, not useful for anything but demonstrating the effect, and we have not only the primary sources, but reliable secondary source on this. Excess heat from palladium deuteride has been confirmed in 153 peer-reviewed papers, and those publications have continued. We are, here, working on building an encyclopedia, not in arguing over the reality of cold fusion. Quite simply, that's irrelevant. What's relevant is what is in reliable source; we sometimes discuss the "reality" here, but only for background, and editors can cheerfully disregard it. If it doesn't go in the article, and if it doesn't help editors understand the topic, it can quietly disappear into the archives, and it doesn't matter. --Abd (talk) 03:18, 5 June 2009

Thing is, the reliable source guideline is often misinterpreted in the way you are misinterpreting it; just because something appears in a reliable source does not mean that Wikipedia should include it, should include it uncritically, or even that it is notable. I understand what a reliable source is; it is a criteron for usability as a source. Being found in a reliable source doesn't mean it is NPOV, though (it seldom is), which means we have to adapt it, or consider whether it is useful at all for our purposes. If something is highly dubious or controversial, even if it does show up in a reliable source, that does not necessarily mean we should include it on Wikipedia; typically speaking, we shouldn't, as Wikipedia isn't a Crystal Ball, and if we are unable to write a NPOV entry about it (as something which is new, incredibly dubious, but obviously hasn't been specifically disputed yet because it is new or simply isn't noteworthy in the first place, as cold fusion articles tend not to be as they are seen as pathological science and therefore receive relatively little attention) we shouldn't be writing about it at all, as most likely it actually isn't notable. Just because a paper has been written about it, or a newspaper article, does not mean it is actually notable. Recentism is bad, and there's a reason there are so many junky articles about recent events and so few about random events in 1893. This is not to say we cannot include new papers or research on Wikipedia, but we should be very cautious in so doing, as we have to keep in mind that it may not really be noteworthy or worthy of inclusion. This is particularly true in this case; cold fusion is not viewed as plausible by most scientists, and as such a random article about cold fusion is unlikely to be specifically rebutted but is very likely not to be worthwhile at all, because it probably isn't notable in the first place, and probably doesn't contain useful content. The consensus of the scientific community is that cold fusion is nothing more than bad measurements, and as such papers about cold fusion are very unlikely to be noteworthy at all because no one comments on them but a small community convinced that the effect is real. There are parapsychologists, but that doesn't mean that scientists consider that science either. Our ultimate goal is verifiable accuracy. Claiming that cold fusion is science is the opposite of that. Titanium Dragon (talk) 08:23, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to comment on the statemant "cold fusion is not viewed as plausible by most scientists" --so what? The article can say that, fine. BUT that is no excuse for anyone to try to prevent CF data from being included in the article. Data has precedence over theory, for any REAL scientist. My biggest issue here is that almost all the anti-CF data is about 20 years old and despite that, constantly keeps getting referenced, while new data has been steadily accumulating since (some of it in ways that specifically address some of the "bad measurements" claims). Since when, in any scientific field, does old data ALWAYS trump new data? (Note to Kirk S: this is not about interpretations of the data; we are both agreed that lots of new data has been collected, right?) V (talk) 17:52, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

TD, you've made several mistakes. First, no claim has been made that just because something appears in a reliable source, it must be permitted. However, if something appears in multiple independent reliable sources, exclusion starts to look like it's POV motivated, and your continued argument shows a very clear POV that isn't something we can have in the article; it's there now because it was asserted by an editor who requested page protection, then immediately added it. And when there is a secondary source, a peer-reviewed review of the field, excluding it becomes almost certain to be POV-pushing, and when there are multiple secondary peer-reviewed sources, and they are all being excluded, it's certain. The only argument for exclusion in this situation would be multiple sources of equal or better quality rejecting these reviews as junk. And in that case, really, inclusion of both would be warranted, with proper balance. Do not mistake "inclusion" for "presenting as fact."

But this isn't the situation. The situation is that we have a pile of secondary sources, peer-reviewed, plus independent academic source, treating cold fusion as a scientific reality, with no sources of equivalent quality that are recent, I know of nothing in the last six years. Your previous engineering argument is totally bogus, the existence of practical application is not relevant. The alleged consensus of the scientific community, taken as a whole, might be as you state. It's probably not the consensus of chemists, at this point -- unclear -- it might be the consensus of physicists, but we have some notable defectors, and, remember, three Nobel prize-winning physicists supported cold fusion, two directly, one supporting that research should be done. The 2004 DoE review very definitely treated cold fusion as science; that is, the field of research is science. That is not the same, in general, as agreeing that low-energy nuclear reactions actually take place, aside from a few accepted examples (muon-catalyzed fusion, alteration of isotopic half-lives by chemical environment, and one might classify the Mossbauer effect as related). But if we only based our text on recent secondary peer-reviewed source, many reviews, last five years, we'd present cold fusion as a fact. In 2004, the DoE review, with all its problems, still showed 6/18 experts concluding that evidence for nuclear reactions was somewhat persuasive, half concluded that evidence for excess heat, anomalous, unexplained by accepted theory, was "convincing." This isn't pseudoscience. It is controversial science. You seem to be triply confused. Please reconsider. --Abd (talk) 11:32, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Links available for article, mostly convenience copies.

Some additional links have been whitelisted to lenr-canr.org, based on a list I came up with from pages there which could be used as convenience links. They are:

• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BeaudetteCexcessheat.pdf
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BockrisJaccountabi.pdf
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/BushBFheliumprod.pdf
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanbackground.pdf
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/HublerGKanomalousea.pdf
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/IwamuraYelementalaa.pdf
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/JosephsonBpathologic.pdf
• http://www.lenr-canr.org/LibFrame1.html
• http://lenr-canr.org/DetailOnly.htm
• http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/RothwellJtallyofcol.pdf

Beyond convenience links, the last three are direct links to the bibliography (two forms, the master set of frames, and then the detailed, complete bibliography -- the master, top-level set doesn't have all lead authors in the list, I've found). Rothwell actually recommended the DetailOnly form, thus actually breaking his prior claim that he didn't want to be helpful), and the final link is to Rothwell's study of peer-reviewed publications, largely based on the bibliography of Dieter Britz, which I requested for our use here in Talk, though the important stuff in it is quite verifiable. I expect I'll be adding the convenience links to existing references, if somebody doesn't beat me to it. After the article is unprotected, of course.

It was a bit of work to get these whitelisted, there are some editors who really didn't want to see it happen, the discussion is at MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist#lenr-canr.org (3)

If it is missing from the current reference, there is bibliographic date, DOI, etc., in the discussion there on the specific link involved, in the end, each link got its own discussion section.

I only requested the first half, alphabetically, of the possible convenience links from the current bibliography, so there will be a few more, I expect. --Abd (talk) 03:46, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

A poll to determine a working starting point for this article

You may add simple history links along with a short description of the article you suggest. If there is some sort of hybrid version (prior protected version with paragraph x from current version), then please try to be clear an succinct about it. Try to avoid adding links that are obviously unacceptable to the "other" side, like ones that call Cold Fusion a pathological science or include explanations about 4body fusion, regardless of how absolutely correct that version might be.

Prior protected version

[96] Hipocrite (talk)

Acceptable

1. Hipocrite (talk) 14:39, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
2. Verbal chat 15:28, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Not acceptable

Discussion

Prior protected version with some seemingly innocuous changes

[97] Additonally, changes in this diff are included. Suggested by Hipocrite (talk)

Acceptable

1. Hipocrite (talk) 14:39, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
2. Verbal chat 15:28, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Not acceptable

Discussion

I don't object to either of the two earlier versions. I do think the lead paragraph should be more about the definition and scope of the article (as I suggested/proposed/wrote on this page some days ago), than about conclusions, primarily because the topic is, indeed, controversial. V (talk) 18:09, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Discussion on the poll

I object to this new poll as splitting and confusing work on this issue. This poll entirely duplicates the poll above. I will add the prior protected version to the poll above. (But when it comes time to assay consensus on versions, !votes from here might be integrated with what is above, it's easy to do that by considering support here, unless there is a more refined vote from the same editor above, as if it were a 10 above, and specific opposition to a version, or easily inferred opposition, as a 0. Hipocrite caused the protection first by edit warring, by requesting protection, and then mangling the lead while he knew protection was pending. Above, I proposed as v1 the version that he had accepted, except for tags he added after making huge changes to the introduction that he must have know wouldn't be acceptable, and he doesn't even propose his own final version here, and it is the current protected state. --Abd (talk) 15:01, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Your unique methology and percieved vote tampering (I decline to comment on the accuracy of that perception) has depreciated your odd experiment in polling. Hipocrite (talk) 15:03, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

And I told you above not to put words in my mouth. I accept nothing. My self-revert of a misclick should not be read to include me as accepting anything. Hipocrite (talk) 15:04, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

(ec with below) It may seem like an experiment to you, Hipocrite, but this is only slightly more sophisticated than Approval voting, which I've seen used to rapidly find consensus in real life. Your edit record showed that you reverted an editor, immediately, next minute, then undid it two minutes later and did not remove the same material (had you not self-reverted, you'd have been at 3RR and much more likely to be dinged by an RfPP admin) and then you made massive non-reversion (?) modifications to the lead, pending protection, and then you added tags. Basically, v1 above undoes what you did after you requested protection. Didn't accept the changes that you tagged? If you had merely tagged, instead of editing in a way that you clearly know, from your comments above, would be provocative and unacceptable to most editors, you'd have your tags, even protected in, and we wouldn't be going through this exercise. Yes, there was "perceived vote tampering," but, remember, this is a wiki and all changes are visible, I apologized and clearly was attempting to handle the editor's vote according to the editor's intention. It's moot now; I hope the editor reconsiders and expresses an opinion. "I accept nothing." Interesting. Explains a lot. --Abd (talk) 15:36, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

You're going to have to try working with me, as opposed to against me on this, Abd. Please try to find a solution that everyone will be happy with - for instance, you suggest above that we revert to your preferred version, though you are fully aware that a score of other editors would be dissatisifed with that. I don't propose we revert the article to my preferred version (in fact, the article has never touched my preferred version), because I'm not trying to win a conflict with you, I'm trying to fix an encyclopedia article. Please try to refocus on the article, as opposed to your consistant drumbeat of discord against me. Thanks. Hipocrite (talk) 15:44, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Your personal position on that material isn't consensus, Hipocrite. I picked that one version because (1) if you had sincerely requested page protection to stop edit warring, you'd not have made massive new changes. That edit is the page as of your request for protection, just before your edits making changes you knew would be unacceptable. Sure, it's my preferred version of all the versions listed. You are trying to "fix" an article that reflected, when you started, a developed consensus that was still in process. You used reversion as an editorial tool to prevent the addition of sourced material to the article, asserting "unreliable source" for sources that do meet WP:RS, quite clearly, and without the kind of conflict between sources that would justify weighing source details, appealing to content judgement of sources; and you were clearly willing to edit war to maintain your position; the only thing that prevented earlier edit wars from arising was that other editors didn't oppose. They, including myself, started to insist, hence the two edit warring episodes. You misrepresented it at RfPP, I wasn't edit warring with you at all on June 1. An editor who hadn't been active here did hit 2RR, and if you had insisted on the 4-d fusion matter, you'd have hit 3RR, that's the only thing that stopped you. You gamed the system, it's blatant, and it's been seen and acknowledged. There is nothing wrong with me proposing that version; it's up to the community of editors rate it. It's not being pushed, my poll was deliberately designed to avoid debate and to focus on simple comparisons. This has gone beyond the pale, Hipocrite. I think you know that, and I think you don't care.--Abd (talk) 17:08, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Since a number of editors have objected to "Abd's poll", this one seems superior for many reasons. Verbal chat 15:32, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I've integrated them, above. You prefer to !vote here, your privilege. Polls will be interpreted by an admin deciding to look at editor consensus. --Abd (talk) 15:36, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Admins don't rule on content, Abd. Hipocrite (talk) 15:40, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

That's right, Hipocrite. They can interpret polls, though, judging consensus is indeed what an admin does in reviewing a request to edit an article under protection. --Abd (talk) 16:08, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

No admin is going to accept a {{editprotected}} that doesn't have all of the principal actors on the same page. Please try to come to some sort of agreement with the rest of us in a format we can understand, without cluttering things up too much. Thanks. Hipocrite (talk) 16:13, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Please don't jump to conclusions. I'm doing nothing to stand in the way of agreement. I accepted your proposal on temporary topic ban, you did not acknowledge. I wasn't involved other than making a single new edit in the last edit warring, Hipocrite, and the other editors who were haven't shown up yet. Give it some time. Your proposed versions are included in my version of the poll, so what is the problem, exactly? You don't like my poll, you can ignore it, editors can make their own choice. Or they can !vote in both. Doesn't matter. I think your starting a separate poll was disruptive, and that's, again, how I will proceed. But I'm not in charge. --Abd (talk) 16:57, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Is it too much to ask to post a diff between the two versions? Kevin Baas^talk 15:38, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

What diff would you like? Between what and what? Hipocrite (talk) 15:40, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

All the diffs between all six proposed versions are above in the original poll section, in the subsection Matrix for comparison of versions. --Abd (talk) 16:52, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

I just want to say that I am abstaining from any polls unless one can be produced which is MUCH simpler to understand. In particular, it is confusing that there are so many differences between the versions in the table above. I am not saying I don't have opinions; rather I am saying I have no confidence that complicated polls like this will help build consensus. Olorinish (talk) 17:04, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Olorinish. In my section, you can just vote 10 for any version you prefer -- pick one or more! -- and 0 for any version you don't like. And you can abstain from any version you don't want to consider. It's complicated because editors suggested old versions, where the diffs are outrageously different. I'd have kept it much simpler, to just two or three recent versions.... but I was duty-bound to include whatever suggestions were made. You may just want to consider the four recent versions, in my scheme these are versions 1, 2, 5, 6. If a little more time passes, and there is no more support for 3 and 4, I might, with consent, eliminate those, which would make it all much simpler. Let me point out that this isn't an RfC. This is intended as a quick process to pick a version to revert to, to deal with the mess from the edit warring. It's gotten much more complicated because Hipocrite set up a separate poll. You could, if you like, ignore the table above. You could just !vote on the versions Hipocrite suggested, or any others. In my section, I voted on the Hipocrite versions, they aren't bad, so if people want to seek consensus here, I'm certainly not standing in the way. The Hipocrite versions simply lose a little work, that's why they aren't tens. What I'm really seeing here is that versions 5 and 6, which was the status quo before Hipocrite started edit warring again, have strong support. Nobody supports the version that Hipocrite created while waiting for RfPP to do the deed, so nobody supports the current version. Doesn't matter. Pick one, pick many, pick all.

In fact, I'm going to strike versions 3 and 4. No support has appeared for them, except for the withdrawn transient support from Woonpton. If someone disagrees, they are welcome to revert me. --Abd (talk) 17:22, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

Mediation process

I have been asked to mediate this content dispute. I have set up a separate page for this mediation here. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 19:23, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

AN/I report

I have reported the vote-moving incident to AN/I. Woonpton (talk) 19:57, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

A simple proposal?

I have not really contributed any content to this page, but by means of full disclosure I was involved in some of the ArbComm discussions regarding the Jed Rothwell "banning" and I have collaborated with Abd in the past on various topics.

I do not wish to start yet another poll, and I do think that neutral mediation would be of great benefits under these circumstances so I encourage those involved to engage in the process that is being proposed. In the interim, however, the content of the page as it has currently been protected is clearly controversial among those who are actively involved here, as is the version previously protected by wikipedia user WMC. This latter part is an assumption based solely on the fact that the page was protected in the middle of an edit war which never seems to leave things in a non-controversial state.

I would recommend reverting all the way back to 15:19, 14 May 2009. I selected that version for the following reasons:

1. It pre-dates BOTH of the most recent edit wars.
2. It was last changed by someone other than Abd or Hipocrite.
3. It somehow managed to stand on its own from a whopping 5 days (give or take).

Any work that is lost can easily be reapplied within the context of a mediation moving forward.

Thoughts from those actually involved here?

--GoRight (talk) 20:26, 5 June 2009 (UTC)