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Holy Grail Found? -- 2007 Review article

page 1 preview springerlink He Jing-tang, Nuclear fusion inside condense matters, Frontiers of Physics in China, 2007. At first glance, this appears to be a general physics journal. I'll try to get a copy. --Abd (talk) 19:02, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

table of contents of issue in which the article appeared:

gives a summary of the article, Nuclear fusion inside condense matters. "Description: This article describes in detail the nuclear fusion inside condense matters—the Fleischmann-Pons effect, the reproducibility of cold fusions, self-consistentcy of cold fusions and the possible applications."

See, from this author, , abstract. This was published in 1993

Abstract A study on anomalous nuclear fusion reaction by using 10kV pulsed high voltage discharge in deuterium was completed. During high voltage (HV) pulses no neutron signal was detected, but two peaks of gamma rays were detected. The energies of two gamma rays are at 425 and 870keV, respectively. It might be explained as 108Pd* and 56Fe* excited by high energy charged particles de-exciting radiations. Neither neutron signal nor gamma signal was detected in the intervals between the pulses.

I recommend reading the original paper linked as PDF above. They mention Pons-Fleischmann, and this paper is a confirmation of anomalous fusion, fusion that seems to have a different radiation signature than expected.

I doubt that Frontiers of Physics in China is a reliable source, so it's not even a clean drinking vessel, let alone the holy grail. It's noted at Misplaced Pages:Reliable_source_examples (linked from WP:RS) that The vast majority of well-regarded journals are indexed in the ISI Web of Science., which FOPC doesn't appear to be. Biberian's "review" had the same problem. Reliable journals simply don't publish uncritical nonsense. Phil153 (talk) 20:15, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I've tried to find out if it's listed. That content seems to require payment. However, note who owns ISI: Thomson Reuters. So see this, from Thomson Reuters. What does Thomson Reuters have to say about Higher Education Press and its Frontiers series? I'm, here, countering an a priori, categorical rejection of a possible source, apparently based on conclusions. I.e., the topic is fringe, therefore the journal is flaky. Isn't that a tad circular? --Abd (talk) 00:12, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I missed this later insertion. I had no issue accessing the ISI web, I'm not sure why you can't. A search in their list for "Frontiers" in 2007 (the date of publishing) yielded 9 journals, which didn't include the above. A search of the eigenfactor rankings, which indexes all of ISI and most journals that ISI journals cite, shows up no mention of the journal.. However, your press release looks solid for the Frontiers series generally. The journal itself may well be good enough to be used as a source somewhere in the article.

I invite anyone who thinks I'm being biased in calling this "uncritical nonsense" to actually read the first page of the paper that Abd linked above. Read it carefully. It is the least scientific and most imprecise piece of crap I've ever read in a physics journal. Yes, it is "uncritical nonsense". It contains statements of unknown facts without qualifiers (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. Not "has been observed", not "X studies have reported excess heat when...". As a serious or credible review document this is a joke. And that's not even counting the spelling mistakes (self-consistentcy)!! and grammar mistakes. This is despite Springer claiming that the articles are carefully peer reviewed once translated into English. Your use of this as a platform to suggest that I am POV pushing in questioning the reliability of this source is confusing. Surely you can see how unscientific this work is?

Anyway, from your comments below I think we're talking past each other. You posted this section as if some new review had finally been found ("holy grail" - your words) vindicating cold fusion in a reliable source beyond what had existed previously. My response is that despite the reliability issues (which are real), there are major weight issues to consider, since this is emphatically not a reliable enough source for extraordinary claims contradicted by the most reliable journals and the mainstream in general. The journal had been going for 1 year - 1 year! when this study was posted (Vol. 2 No. 1), and as yet appears to be lacking a good impact factor (it's not even indexed!!), which is another thing noted at WP:RS and associated pages as being important for reliability. Journals without high impact factors haven't established reliability. These are the things I check because this is what our RS pages say. The rest is editorial decision which I will expound on in very long post later today.

The trouble with these threads, as I and others have repeatedly said, is that this is all abstract, including the issue of whether this journal is sufficiently reliable. You need to actually propose text or changes to the article that this journal is going to be used for. "A 2007 review of the field by <chinese professor> noted..." in the "experimental results" section might be ok for this source; "Mainstream reviews of the field have been mixed, with one noting..." in the lead is not ok for this source. It all depends on text, weight, position. References are there solely to support article text, and whether they can support that text depends on what the text is and where it is inserted. Without proposed text, we can't discuss any of the relevant issues, and this is all abstract meandering that is at best tangential to improving the article.

Perhaps this was all a misunderstanding and you were merely sharing your preliminary excitement about a new review which looked like it supported cold fusion. In which case, carry on and let us know when there is article improvement to discuss.

Further comments will follow in an extremely long posting. Phil153 (talk) 21:27, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Phil, you are correct. I was sharing with the editors of this article my discovery of this source, which seems to have been entirely missed. Rothwell didn't know about it. You are now conceding that the source might be used "somewhere in the article." Great! What I pointed out was that, before any edit was asserted, before any specific edit was even proposed, the source was being attacked as you repeat above, "uncritical nonsense." I will, below, review what's on the first page, perhaps in response to Enric. The lack of response says to me more about attitudes about China than about reliability. Push has not come to shove until there are edits asserted and contradiction is established. Heads up! If anyone gets a copy of this article, let us know! (I will if I do.) --Abd (talk) 13:12, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

And the basis for your doubt, Phil? This publication is associated with Springer, here is their page on it: http://www.springer.com/physics/journal/11467. The editorial board is at http://www.springer.com/physics/journal/11467?detailsPage=editorialBoard. But forget it. It's RS, it is published by an independent publisher and if you think it's unreliable, you will have to impeach it, specifically, and not with a circular "uncritical nonsense" argument. ArbComm is watching, Phil.

Members of the editorial board who have articles on Misplaced Pages: Chao Tang, Charles M. Lieber, Daniel C. Tsui. My guess is that many more are notable in China. I now understand why Jed Rothwell had such trouble with incivility here. Phil, you either want to cooperate in this enterprise or you don't. For too long we have had editors who have some fixed conclusion in mind, who have worked steadily to make sure that the article creates this impression. Where do you stand?

Now that you mention it, I should also look at Biberian's review! Was it similarly dismissed? --Abd (talk) 02:42, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm just going off the policy examples linked above, which you didn't address in your reply. Some journals are more reliable than others, and some are barely reliable at all. It's a difficult editorial weight issue, not a binary "IS RS" or "ISN'T RS". When Nature refuses to publish something and a 3 year old journal not listed in the ISI web, called Frontiers of Physics in China, publishes a summary of that same field, yes, we likely have an RS and weight problem. I'm not aware that the inclusion of a journal in Springer makes it reliable. If you want to see the kinds of articles that get published there, do a search for parapsychology.

Since I'm far from an expert on reliable sources, and the burden of proof is on the person who wants to include it, let's get some more opinions. Or maybe take it to the RS noticeboard once you actually propose text to reference from this journal instead of just making threads about "holy grails". We're here to write an article, and the best way to move forward and find consensus is to actually propose text to insert or change with references to support it. We can then discuss the text, the weight, and whether the journal is reliable enough to support that particular text. Everything else is rather academic without specifics.

As for Jed's incivility, he's not 10, and he's responsible for his own behavior. Implying he was uncivil because of some flaw in those who disagree with you and him is uncivil in itself. Arbcom is watching, Abd. Phil153 (talk) 07:43, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

This search for parapsychology is supposed to mean something? First return, sober paper, as far as I could read it. The topic exists, you know. Are you claiming that the journal that paper was published in isn't a reliable source? Phil, what exactly is the basis for that? That they publish a paper with Parapsychology in the title? Have you read Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science? Might be worth the time. Read it carefully. --Abd (talk) 23:56, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Part of the above comment by Abd was deleted in this edit. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 23:45, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

If I didn't hold Jed responsible for his incivility, I'd have appealed his block. However, his incivility took place in a context where many others were uncivil, and incivility breeds incivility, and it is very dangerous to blame just one side. As I wrote, ArbComm is watching, from the future, so if you think I'm being uncivil, do something about it. I found a source that is remarkable, a review article, by a physicist, at what appears to be a major physics institute, writing in a journal that is covered in RS as a premier peer-reviewed journal for China. Instead of just dumping it into the article, and I know what would have happened, I'm discussing it here first. You don't like that? Why? I'm not going to do some major writing just to see it reverted with the usual arguments that are applied, it's beginning to seem like to me, regardless of the actual merits, but based on results. I.e., if it looks like it supports cold fusion, it must be fringe or defective in some way, without actually investigating the sources, just assuming it. Have you actually researched Frontiers of Physics in China more than seeing where it is not listed? Have you looked at the Board? No, I don't see that you did. Instead, you simply make up all the negative arguments you can think of and ignore the positive. That is what has to stop. It's got a name: POV pushing. Show me, Phil, where you have ever found a source that might show something positive about the cold fusion idea, and you brought it here? It might cause me to revise my opinion. --Abd (talk) 22:34, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Yet another primary source from a second-rate journal contradicting the secondary sources in higher quality journals and the statements from government and scientific agencies. --Enric Naval (talk) 22:57, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Enric, too bad. You too. It's not a second-rate journal. Have you actually investigated it? What do you base that conclusion on? It's published by a cooperation between Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag. Higher Education Press is the largest publisher in China, 45th largest in the world, according to Publisher's Weekly. Frontiers of in China, covering quite a few different sciences, is China's attempt to do its best in the field of scientific publishing, and I've seen what the Chinese do when they go for their best. (But they need someone with better English editing!) The article is not a "primary source," it's a Review. Did you look? This is a secondary source, published in a peer-reviewed journal. Ultimately, peer-review depends on the review Board. I gave a link to the Board above. "Second-rate"? Tell it to their institutions. What, exactly, is contradictory? Please specify. Or stop making unfounded accusations! The journal is a general physics journal, clearly, from perusing it. It's not "fringe."

If we have a contradiction of sources, then we need to weigh and balance. Okay, what source is being contradicted? Remember, from your claim above, it's a "secondary sources in higher quality journals," plus -- though this means much less, "statements from government," and I'm not aware of involved "scientific agencies," but maybe you have something in mind. --Abd (talk) 23:40, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Ah, you are right, it's a review, my bad.

It's probably contradicting the 2004 DOE report and Nature, the scientific consensus as reported by several New York Times article, the university press books that I added at Martin Fleischmann describing how most scientists don't think that cold fusion has shown any definitive proof, etc., although it's hard to say without seeing the conclusions, and the list of studies to see if it's covering experiments already covered by the other sources, and if it's raising points already criticized at the other sources. --Enric Naval (talk) 04:31, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Ah, sources contradicting each other: good, we can describe the controversy. The bit about claiming that heat "will" be produced may be a translation error: I believe Chinese doesn't have verb tenses as such; perhaps it should have been translated as present or past tense indicating that it's referring to results of experiments, presumably described in more detail later in the article. Scientific articles with many grammatical errors because the author doesn't speak English as a first language are fairly common and do not necessarily indicate that the science in such articles is not excellent. This report adds to the set of reports that talk about measured excess heat while speculating about possible nuclear reactions as explanations. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 14:14, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

How does a review article contradict those sources? How does an article which asserts a reasonable basis for a hypothesis contradict prior conclusions, made earlier, that evidence is "not conclusive" but that also indicates further research is warranted? --Abd (talk) 13:49, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

OK, sorry, I don't know whether there is a contradiction or not. If there is, we can present both sides. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 15:07, 7 March 2009 (UTC) (My comment of 14:14, 7 March 2009 and Abd's of 13:49 seem to have been an edit conflict.) ☺Coppertwig (talk) 15:14, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Abstract and first page text

first page

Abstract: The abstract could be read as POV. The language seems to assume that CF occurs. However, this is a review article and such a conclusion could be warranted, it would depend on the evidence.

Introduction: "got more energy output than they had put into the system." That's a conclusion; there is substantial support for it in the literature, it's not uncommon to consider, for example, the alleged excess energy as being anomalous, which means "unexplained." Possible POV here may be simply a translation problem: "got" might have been intended as "found." That was, indeed, their finding, and was published as such in RS. The introduction section goes on to report the 1989 and 2004 DOE reports. We've had edit warring over how to report those; the paper's description is accurate (Huizenga is a tenacious critic of cold fusion, apparently). Again, this kind of reporting may be appropriate as an introduction to a review article. Reviewers get to have and express opinions.

Reproducibility of cold fusion: This seems to be the sticking point. if the following two conditions are satisfied spontaneously, excess energy will be produced. That has a note that I haven't read. The conditions are:

D/Pd ratio larger than 0.88. This kind of conclusion has often been reported, I've seen 0.85 asserted before. It wouldn't be surprising to find that the rate of fusion, if it happens, is sensitive to deuterium density. What's surprising here is that he asserts this as definite. That could be a summary, i.e., it might represent "almost always." Or it might be that he actually found this upon review. There are lots of questions raised: how did he know the loading ratio?

The current density of the electrolysis is larger than 280 mA per cm.

What prior reviews stated was that reproducibility was inconsistent. Reporting reproducibility under specified conditions does not contradict that. However, suppose that the conditions exclude all but one or two experiments. That would be grounds for further research, at most, but if it is much more than that, it would be significant. Note that in the SPAWAR experiments, loading ratio is effectively something like 1.0, and they report very high reproducibility. There may still be additional conditions.

So where is the beef? What I see here is an attempt to define the conclusions as "uncritical nonsense" based on nothing more than a belief that cold fusion is nonsense, which I've pointed out is circular. If the source doesn't actually contradict prior work, it's usable; if there is contradiction, it may still be sufficiently reliable to use with attribution.

Further, I've asserted a number of reasons to consider the journal a reliable source, and all that has appeared are different reasons to consider it other than that, with no agreement -- or contradiction -- with the reasons in one direction, i.e., toward reliability. This, again, is typical of POV pushing, it picks arguments on one side and refuses to accept arguments in the other, often completely neglecting them. Does FPC have an adequate review board? Nobody else has even mentioned the review board; I gave evidence for it right at the beginning of this section. Is the publisher independent and reputable? Nobody has dared to challenge the reputability of Higher Education Press, which is the largest publisher in China, and it's working with Thomson Reuters, which is the largest publisher in the world. Nobody is demanding that any particular conclusion be determined in the absence of a specific edit, but if we can't even agree on background facts, reliably sourced, what chance is there that we can agree on text? In the positive direction, it's been acknowledged above, by Phil, that the source may be usable in the article. That's progress. --Abd (talk) 13:49, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I had the opportunity to look at the offending paper. I won't comment on the content because I don't feel I'm qualified even though I've actively worked in closely related fields. I did think I would be worth including this paper's reference list. For anyone who is unfamiliar with review papers most have between 200 and 500 references. Such a few number of references would never fly for a review in an ACS or RSC journal. I also expect that APS also includes more references in their reviews. The author just doesn't demonstrate a breadth of understanding with fewer citations than this Misplaced Pages page. Not to mentions more than half the citations are from talks or websites. If you think that is frowned upon on wikipedia in the established peer-reviewed science literature disdain for such sources is taken to the next level. This is very bad academic practice. If it was related to my research I wouldn't waste my time reading the review. (In interest of full disclosure; I think there might have been 10 references, one could have been lost in a copied and pasted accident. In addition I've removed portions of LENR-CANR.org address' to get this through the spam filters.)--OMCV (talk) 04:48, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

References

1. Toni Feder, Physics Today, January 2005: 31

2. Peter L. Hagelstein, Michael C. H. McKubre, David J. Nagel, Talbot A. Chubb, and J. Hekman, New physical effect in metal deuterides, LENR-CANR.org

3. Brian D Josephson, Pathological Disbelief, http://www.tcm.phy. cam.ac.uk

4. Jones S. E., Keerey F. W., Johnson A. C., et al., Neutron Emissions from Metal Deuterides,10th International Conference on Cold Fusion, 2003, Cambridge, MA, USA

5. Jones S. E., Keerey F. W., Johnson A.C., et al., Charged-Particle Emissions from Metal Deuterides, 10th International Conference on Cold Fusion, 2003, Cambridge, MA, USA

6. Kasagi J., Ohtsuki T., Ishi K., et al., J. Phys. Soc. Japan, 1995, 64 (3): 777−783

7. Takahashi A., M.Maruta, Ochiai K., et al., Phys. Lett., 1999, A255 (1): 89−97

8. Arata Y. and Zhang Y. C., Proc. Acad. Ser. B., 1999, 75: 281−290

9. Arata Y. and Zhang Y. C., 10th International Conference on Cold Fu-sion, 2003, Cambridge, MA, USA

Good point about the references. Maybe not a very reliable source. Inclines me to give more credence to the arguments about the language on the first page. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 15:35, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Notice to Abd about battling and tendentious editing

I let this slide the first few times but since you show no signs of stopping, I'm issuing you a warning, and asking other editors to please watch for your incivility. You're again accusing editors of POV pushing, and again raising drama instead of improving the article, with comments like the below and many others:

Quote from Abd
Instead, you simply make up all the negative arguments you can think of and ignore the positive. That is what has to stop. It's got a name: POV pushing. Show me, Phil, where you have ever found a source that might show something positive about the cold fusion idea, and you brought it here? It might cause me to revise my opinion.

If this continues, I'm going to ask an admin to block you for deliberate incivility and bringing WP:BATTLE to an article talk page covered by AE. This isn't an isolated case, you're continuing in the vein all over Misplaced Pages and it has to stop. We're here to write articles, not raise drama and non existent problems to help get your banned buddy's site (who you are chatting with off wiki) unblacklisted.

As for your question, both I and P.V. Keller have supported and asked for the inclusion of more material from Storms 2007, a book written by a cold fusion advocate that's highly favorable to cold fusion. It's not even peer reviewed, but an intelligent look at it suggests that it's a careful work that's cited frequently in the field, and reliable enough to be used in the article. I am doing the exact opposite of "making up all the negative arguments I can think of" on that book, so your suggestions that I do this generally is a either a deliberate or careless lie. And just like a good look at Storms shows it to be reliable, I believe an intelligent look at this Chinese review reveals it to be an unreliable source that lacks many of the requirements for a well regarded journal at our RS pages, not to mention lacking the careful language used by well regarded scientists in real reviews. It's obvious, and OMCV's observations below further bear this out. It's called editorial judgment, not POV pushing, and you are completely out of line suggesting that I am POV pushing. Did you even stop to consider that my objections to this source might be unrelated to any POV?

To further answer your question, my edit history to the article bears out my impartiality. I was the one who inserted and fought to keep text of the DOE showing the full breakdown, which was favorable to cold fusion, against those who wanted only the summary, which was less favorable. Most of the items crossed out on Pcarbonn's list are in the article now because of me. Unlike you, I'm not out to impeach people who have a different point of view, I'm here to write an article. I don't care what your history or POV is, I only care that edits and suggestions are made in good faith attempts to improve the article. Your posts have become very much like banned Rothwell's and Pcarbonn's, especially crap like this (in case that needs context - he's rudely dissing an editor's considerations and claiming that the tide of CF evidence is rising so much on this talk page that the skeptical dam holding back the CF tide from the article is breaking) . Seriously Abd, what's gotten into you?

In that vein, please cut the crap. If you want to improve the article, then go and edit it! We can always revert and discuss changes if other editors disagree. Or propose specific changes you wish to make here on talk. But please, quit raising drama, treating this as a forum, continuously bringing up ideas that have previously been rejected, and accusing multiple editors of POV pushing. It's not only against our policies, it and the rest of your activities in this area are wasting editors' time. I don't have a lot of time on here and I prefer to spend it doing useful things rather than answering your accusations. Phil153 (talk) 14:17, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the warning, Phil. Had you not already done so, I would have considered it as if it had been posted on my Talk page, and I would have place a link to this section there, for the convenience of any administrator considering blocking me. I only noticed your Talk page warning as I was looking for a link to place in this response. Now, as to the points made:

• tendentious editing The topic is a difficult one, as can be seen by the current topic bans of two editors who were active here, Pcarbonn and ScienceApologist. I don't think I've been tendentious, but vigorous debate in Talk may be essential to finding consensus. Better in Talk than reflected in edit warring in the article!
• show me, Phil, Phil showed me, which only took a few words, and it might indeed cause me to revise my opinion. However, what I saw here was serious attempt to impeach a source before it had been asserted in an edit, before sufficient details were known to judge the paper, apparently on the basis of the conclusions in the abstract, and the language used was extreme. So, for me, the jury is out. But I'm not the judge. I see long-term tendencies of some editors to argue preferentially against sources that may appear to support a disliked POV, and I would prefer for Phil to join me in considering this a problem, and in resolving it, instead of defending himself against suspicion not raised to the point of any request for intervention.

• not raise drama and non existent problems to help get your banned buddy's site (who you are chatting with off wiki) unblacklisted. The matter of banning and blacklisting is not related to this discussion, and will be dealt with in an RfC to be filed imminently, with the support of other editors. As to "chatting off-wiki," when I found the subject paper, I wrote to Jed Rothwell, who isn't my "buddy," in order to find out if he had a copy of the paper. He is utterly uninterested in Misplaced Pages and has no desire to be unblocked or delisted or whitelisted, and you might note that the only attempt I made to get lenr-canr.org links whitelisted was successful, an important link was whitelisted, which, BTW, should be linked here, we do cite the paper. http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmansearchingf.pdf. If and when I actually attempt to get the site whitelisted, I would be highly likely to succeed. I don't tilt at windmills, and I would not attempt such a possibly disruptive move without substantial support. Meanwhile, Phil, do keep WP:AGF in mind. I do. --Abd (talk) 14:55, 8 March 2009 (UTC) (continued below)

Note to Olorinish below. I'd agree that this place isn't the most appropriate one for this discussion, and I have no problem if it is archived or moved. It was placed in the middle of a discussion, I moved it to the end of the section and considered moving it to the end of the Talk page. However, since serious charges were made here, and weren't redacted or deleted, I'm responding here, hopefully briefly. To continue,

• deliberate or careless lie, is uncivil; a "careless lie" would be what I'd call a "reckless disregard for the truth," not quite a "lie," (which is necessarily willful deception) and more serious than a mere error. I have continued to assume good faith on your part, and still do in spite of this, so I urge you to be careful. Editors may push POV even with good faith, based on an assumption that their POV is NPOV. I am unwilling to believe that you are lying, and do not even suspect it, but also noted an appearance, and I haven't seen recent behavior that negated that appearance. That is not a demand that you act in any way, but was a warning, a very mild one, not accompanied with any threat other than the implicit threat of consequences independent of my actions; whereas you have now escalated by threatening me with request for block. Please, again, be careful. I do everything I do with the assumption that ArbComm is looking over my shoulder, because, someday, possibly soon, they will be, even though I do everything I can to resolve matters short of that.

• I was the one who ... Phil's contributions to the article are noted and appreciated. And, indeed, they would be even if they were "POV-pushing," I'm no fan of blocking people for POV-pushing as long as behavior remains within guidelines. We need representation of various POVs in the editorial community in order to find true NPOV. POV is a POV detector, and the most reliable sign of true NPOV is that reasonable editors, in spite of varied POV, will agree on the text.

• rudely dissing an editor's considerations. Actually, I came to the conclusion that it was rude, though quite in line with what I've seen done here routinely by editors about whom Phil does not complain, possibly even Phil himself. Nevertheless, I struck it as gratuitous, unneeded, about a half hour before Phil's warning appeared, and certainly I would have struck it on request -- given that I did so anyway!

• Unlike you, I'm not out to impeach people who have a different point of view Uh, Phil, WP:AGF? I was warning you, gently compared to a Talk page warning, not impeaching you. A warning on Article Talk doesn't establish a basis for sanctions, unless the editor clearly responds to it, showing that it's been read. If I wanted to impeach you, I'd file an RfC, and, quite simply, I don't have the evidence justifying that. Now, if CF goes before ArbComm again, and it became important, I'd research the long-term history of involved editors and would provide evidence as I found. I'll say this much: you are, if you have done anything reprehensible, far from the worst offender, and I believe that it is possible to work with you. However, I should also note that PCarbonn expressed similar sentiments about ScienceApologist and they both got banned.

• please cut the crap Sure. Point it out, specifically. However, if you see "crap," you know what you can do, because I've seen you do it, if I recall correctly. You delete it or archive it, or perhaps you collapse it, as someone might do with this discussion, whether or not it's "crap." It's not clear that Phil's screed beginning this section is helpful to the article, so .... goose/gander sauce, anyone?

• your activities in this area are wasting editors' time. I don't have a lot of time on here and I prefer to spend it doing useful things rather than answering your accusations. Simple suggestion, Phil. You had no obligation to respond, indeed, you have no obligation to read my general comments in Talk. So, if they waste your time, don't read them and don't respond to them. If you think I'm attacking you, let someone else take care of it, or just let it slide. Unless you want to take the time. Don't waste your own time and then blame someone else for it.

• Just, if Phil cares, as I assume he does, he can watch the edits to the article! My general comments here are a heads-up, and they are not essential, they are discussion, and I'm not about to make controversial edits to the article in any serious way without attempting, first, to find consensus here. I'd prefer not to waste my time. I've only been involved here a very short time, so forgive me if I raise, here, arguments which are claimed to have been previously rejected. I'll say, though, that when a consensus appeared previously in an article, helpful editors, being familiar with it, will point to it in Talk archives, instead of just, once again, putting up a wall.

• Yes, 'wall. I'll stick with the metaphor. I didn't write "CF tide," that was Phil's ABF interpretation. The tide is continued scientific examination of the issues, based on the entire record of research, and not just depending on a 20-year old rejection and a history of "pathological science" -- on both sides. Here, it would refer to a recognition that reliable source is reliable source regardless of the POV which it appears to support. undue weight is an argument I've seen used many times to prevent an article from becoming truly balanced; and when I mention this, I can anticipate a chorus of complaints, but I'm not suggesting any violation of guidelines or policies; indeed, as has been noted, I'm suggesting, instead, that we follow them and not make "cold fusion" an exception because it is allegedly a "fringe" topic. --Abd (talk) 17:16, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Let me interject here with my two cents. I would like to see much less discussion that is not directly related to CHANGES IN THE ARTICLE! If you have a text change you want to propose, type it in either here or in the main article. If you do not, please think twice before posting your comments on the talk page. I would appreciate it. Olorinish (talk) 15:15, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Abd, you seem to have lost a lot of good faith toward cold fusion editors since JzG's out of process admin actions here, which clearly bothered you. You're a fair minded person and that's entirely understandable. My warning was an attempt to get through to you in what seemed like an escalating incorrect view toward other editors on this page. It's not like you. I'm happy to move on and assume a lot more good faith toward you, and reply to the topics you raise more precisely. Phil153 (talk) 18:23, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Please, give examples, specifically. I'm claiming that some editors sometimes appear to have lost sight of some basic Misplaced Pages values, not that they are editing in bad faith. However, moving on isn't a bad idea at all. Below, I return to our regular programming, having received a response from our friend Jed Rothwell, who, in spite of what everyone seems to be assuming about him, provides a somewhat negative review of the paper in FPC. Given that I haven't seen the actual paper yet, and he has, I find it quite interesting. But do remember, he's banned, so reading his contributions may be hazardous to your mental health. Don't follow the link if you are taking MAO inhibitors, or if you will be operating heavy machinery in the next four hours. --Abd (talk) 03:45, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Continued discussion of He Jing-tang paper in Frontiers of Physics in China

As I've mentioned before, I consulted Jed Rothwell of lenr-canr.org about this paper. BTW, I'm not his "crony" or "pal," my contact with him was simply as one inquiring about something where I thought Rothwell might have something to contribute, and I was interested in whether or not he'd heard of the paper, given that Rothwell may be the most informed person on the planet as to literature in this area. (I've called him an expert, and this was derided, but "expert" doesn't mean a person who holds some set of correct opinions, but someone who has a great deal of related knowledge, and that's Rothwell. That he may have a POV is irrelevant to that. Lots of experts have strong POVs, and, indeed, experts can get into trouble on Misplaced Pages, we are famous for being hard on them. Well, Rothwell answered me, with an IP edit here, signed. There is a description of the sequence of events at . In short, I responded to the edit and my response was reverted because it quoted the comment from Rothwell. Whether that was proper or not, it's moot, because I don't need to copy that material here, anyone can read the history showing Rothwell's edit. Below is my response, reverted by Enric Naval:

This is a criticism of the He paper I introduced above. I did ask Rothwell for his opinion (as I've noted before); he had been unaware of the paper. An editor reverted this contribution because Rothwell is considered banned; the actions behind that have not yet been challenged, and for the moment, I agree that a ban is in effect. However, a useful edit of any banned editor may remain, see current discussion of User:ScienceApologist at ; if it is reverted, any other legitimate editor may bring it back in on the editor's own responsibility, which I have done (and, by the way, which I also did with a useful edit to Cold fusion by SA. The comment by Rothwell is not disruptive, it is useful and relevant discussion by an expert in the field. I had already concluded that the paper was not a general review, but rather a narrow one, from the references list provided by another editor with access to the paper, and Rothwell confirms this. I'm still interested in obtaining a copy, and I'll also be looking for a copy of Storms' book.

For our purposes on Misplaced Pages, the Storms book and this Chinese paper can be considered WP:reliable source; conference papers are more problematic because of lack of peer review; they can still be useful, sometimes, if attributed as the opinion of the author, and if the author is notable in the field. Further, they can sometimes be extremely useful in background discussion. Some editors are wondering why I'm discussing all this in Talk and not just editing the article. To me, discussion is essential for editing in controversial fields, and I know full well what will happen if I start dumping what I'm finding into the article without warning and without discussion. I'm not going there. There will be edits, as certain matters become clear and have been refined through discussion, and there are already edits influenced by my discussion here, for example, this. There was an attempt to slap me with a wikitrout as a result of my initiation of discussion of that usage of "cold fusion," the charge was led by SA, and ... SA is now blocked for 24 hours, not because of that incident but because of many like it, and ArbComm is considering making it three months, one more arb and it looks like a done deal. If any editor doesn't like this discussion, I'd suggest not reading it. In the end, only the article counts, discussion here can usually be ignored until there are edits to look at. Silence is not consent unless there has been notice and clear opportunity to comment. --Abd (talk) 03:38, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I have removed the edit you mentioned. It's an informal usage that's barely used, the explanation given is kind of OR and isn't supported by the source. It doesn't deserve mention in the lead. Not to mention, the non OR stuff is already covered by the previous text. We previously had text that clearly mentioned a variety of alternative users: More broadly, but less commonly, it can be used to refer to any real or proposed routes for nuclear fusion to occur without the extremely high temperatures (millions of degrees Celsius) required for thermonuclear fusion , but it was removed by a cold fusion SPA who also removed "postulated" and "disputed" in the same edit... this edit made by Phil153 04:07, 11 March 2009, note by Abd (talk)]]

The usage isn't informal if it is used in the title of a peer-reviewed paper. I replaced the mention, attempting to address the issues. Please don't bring up OR if there isn't any factual problem, the level of OR here is trivial, and OR prohibitions don't prevent us from stating what's obvious by consensus. The prior mention you describe did not cover this high-temperature usage of "cold fusion." I may have done it better this time, I hope it is acceptable. Otherwise, that this information is missing from Misplaced Pages may lead to other confusions like my initial puzzlement at the usage. I find it puzzling, still, that "cold" is used to refer to energies adequate to cause significant (usable for practical purposes) reaction rates; I'm not sure of the temperature equivalent to particle energy just barely adequate to overcome the Coulomb barrier, and it's not important enough to look up now, but that fusion is very, very hot, in ordinary language, and there is utterly no controversy over this kind of "cold fusion." It is, as we have been using the term, "hot fusion." I called it "lukewarm" in the edit summary, i.e., just barely warm enough to be not cold. --Abd (talk) 16:17, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

The new version is an improvement, although the lead still needs work. Your previous edit stated that Cold fusion also can refer to fusion at energies just barely sufficient to overcome the Coulomb barrier, but not hot enough to encourage immediate fission. This is wrong/misleading in several ways, and unsupported by the source, hence me calling it OR. There was no bad faith mention of OR. There never is bad faith with me; you'd do well to assume that. Phil153 (talk) 16:48, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Phil153, your comment about "bad faith" seems to assume that it was alleged, or even that it crossed my mind. It did not. Had you simply improved the language, no need for discussion here. That language is more deeply explanatory than what I next put in, but that explanation, to my knowledge, is not at all controversial. That explanation, too, isn't perfect. "Just barely sufficient to overcome the Coulomb barrier," could be misleading. The energy might not actually "overcome" the barrier, but bring the nuclei close enough together that the reaction rate reaches a practical level. My guess is that the ideal energy brings up the reaction rate to maximize net yield, i.e., as many desired nuclei are formed and stick around instead of fissioning. Higher energy equals more fusion, lower energy means less fission. There may indeed be reliable source on all this, but it isn't the topic of the article, and the only purpose of the mention there is to differentiate between this usage and what the rest of the article covers, where the energy is such as to be far, far below the level needed to overcome the Coulomb barrier. If there is reliable source on it, some enterprising editor might get to create an article or a section probably in Nuclear fusion. With reference here that becomes much simpler. --Abd (talk) 17:35, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Goodstein's analysis of the cold fusion history

We currently use Goodstein (1994) as a source for this:

In 1994, David Goodstein described cold fusion as "a pariah field, cast out by the scientific establishment. Between cold fusion and respectable science there is virtually no communication at all. Cold fusion papers are almost never published in refereed scientific journals, with the result that those works don't receive the normal critical scrutiny that science requires. On the other hand, because the Cold-Fusioners see themselves as a community under siege, there is little internal criticism. Experiments and theories tend to be accepted at face value, for fear of providing even more fuel for external critics, if anyone outside the group was bothering to listen. In these circumstances, crackpots flourish, making matters worse for those who believe that there is serious science going on here."

We also refer to this source for the statement that:

The speed of the decay process together with the inter-atomic spacing makes such a transfer inexplicable in terms of conventional understandings of momentum and energy transfer.

So far, so good. But Goodstein actually gives information about both sides of the cold fusion debate. This was 1994, not 2004 or 2009. I recommend reading the whole article if you are interested in the cold fusion issues.. Goldstein is saying that, on the one hand, there are very good theoretical reasons to consider cold fusion, of the "bad kind," i.e., massive heat, impossible. But, on the other hand, there are some very solid experimental results that don't seem to be explicable any other way. And he laments the situation that, because of problems with the initial announcement, the rush to judgment, the mistakes that were made, the physics world isn't taking the later, more cautious, results seriously.

I'm beginning to think we need at least two articles: one of them on the Cold Fusion affair, as an example of "Bad Science," which doesn't mean that Pons-Fleischmann were "Bad Scientists," though hardly anyone (including Fleischmann) thinks that they made no mistakes, but that the process of science by press conference, rushed attempts to confirm, rushed negative conclusions, etc., etc., was seriously defective, and there are enough sources on this to justify an article. What would the other article be? Well, what is "cold fusion" as an alleged phenomenon? What is reported? What theories have been published in reasonably reliable sources to explain the experimental results? (Which would include Shanahan's attempts to explain the alleged heat, etc., Kowalski's theories about non-nuclear damage to CR-39 chips, etc.) We can do all this without review articles, if we attribute opinions and simply allow what appears in reliable sources to determine balance. What must stop is the highly selective application of RS guidelines to exclude some material while including other material just as reliably sourced. It's going to take patient work to find consensus, but I believe we can do it. Goodstein gives very good experimental detail about Scaramuzzi's experiments, how much effort they put into addressing the criticisms of prior work. Did they succeed? Goodstein says that he still "believes" cold fusion is impossible. But he also "believes" that there are these experiments that haven't been explained any other way. That kind of tension is actually what makes for good science. His position was, in fact, reflected in the 2004 DOE review. Something is going on that hasn't been adequately explained. While there are still very good theoretical reasons to think cold fusion impossible, until the contrary experiments are more carefully reviewed and reproduced or rejected, we really don't know bleep. Theory is still theory, and science grew up when it abandoned theory as the basis for truth. Meanwhile, Goodstein reports Scaramuzzi as having figured out why the Fleischmann effect was so hard to duplicate, a loading ratio below 85% (which is hard to obtain), no heat. Above that, he reports Scaramuzzi as claiming 100% reproducibility.

As an example of problems that may still exist in the article, there is a section on non-nuclear explanations for excess heat. However, what's missing is that many experiments considered and ruled out these explanations. Further, experiments where ordinary water was used as a control have been performed. Apparently, Fleischmann and Pons did these experiments and were reluctant to report the results. Why? They indeed found some excess heat in them. However, there are more recent experiments that show the same: some excess heat from ordinary water. I think there are some SPAWAR experiments, and what they note, as I recall, is that the excess heat is explainable by the amount of deuterium present in ordinary water. I.e., much less excess heat. My point is that the article is presenting, in that section, "one side." Is there reliable source for the other side, of similar quality? (By the way, I'm suspicious of the ordinary water results, because, remember, loading factor of 85%? But maybe loading with mixed hydrogen and deuterium does something we don't understand.) --Abd (talk) 21:27, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Executive summary please. Verbal chat 22:11, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Sure: If you want to understand the topic, you'll have to do more than make brief, knee-jerk comments. You might actually have to read some sources, and think about what people write. One is mentioned. Goodstein (1994). It's cited in the article. Come back when you've done your homework. --Abd (talk) 02:45, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Ignoring your patronising attitude, your comment is longer than would be allowed in the article. Now that is fine, but it is not clear in the first few paragraphs what you are proposing. Conciseness is a virtue. So that we are all on the same page you should explain you proposal concisely, and then move on to justification - which should also be concise. If there are questions then this can develop into a discussion. Long comments just invite WP:TL;DR style responses, or will just be ignored. If they are ignored then they are useless. Basically, long comments aren't useful and do not help improve the article. Verbal chat 13:35, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

My attempt at summarizing Abd's comment:

• Abd proposes splitting this article into two or more articles: one about the Cold Fusion affair (history of science), another about cold fusion and excess heat measurements as alleged phenomena and explanations for them.
• This article cherry-picks from Goldstein (which Abd recommends reading ) and needs to present the other balancing views that Goldstein expresses.
• Selective application of RS guidelines must stop.
• The article has an incomplete, unbalanced presentation of non-nuclear explanations, and needs to add arguments refuting these explanations, including information on control experiments using ordinary water. This is an example of a problem with the article.

Paraphrasing Abd, ☺Coppertwig (talk) 15:00, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Obviously, Coppertwig has read well. Thanks. As to tl;dr, that's usually five characters too much for a response. There are how many million editors who didn't read a comment? Unless it's on your Talk page, if it's too long to read, don't read it, and tl;dr can be very appropriate on one's own Talk. Nobody has an obligation to read anything on this article Talk page, unless they plan to revert an edit explained here, and even then, it's not really a problem, what's important will come around again. --Abd (talk) 15:11, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I read and enjoyed the Goldstein article. Thanks for recommending it. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 00:10, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Having taken freshman physics from the man years ago, I can assure you that his name is spelled Goodstein. Sorry if that comes across as too picky, but given that "Goodwin" is also being used on this page (though that has been partially self-corrected) I felt the need to clarify. --Noren (talk) 14:28, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

The probability of reaction.

Cold_fusion#The_probability_of_reaction. Goodwin Goodstein (1994) covers this in some detail. We have this:

Because nuclei are all positively charged, they strongly repel one another. Normally, very high energies are required to overcome this repulsion. Extrapolating from known rates at high energies, the rate at room temperature would be 50 orders of magnitude lower than needed to account for the reported excess heat.

Sounds devastating (assuming that the reader knows what an "order of magnitude" is, many wouldn't). However, Goodwin Goodstein, note 87 at this point, also points out that this figure is based on the normal distance between deuterium nuclei at room temperature.

At the inter-nuclear spacing in the deuterium molecule, the probability is too small by forty or fifty orders of magnitude. Physicists love to throw around phrases like that one. An order of magnitude means a factor of ten. Too small by forty or fifty orders of magnitude really means too small beyond discussion, beyond imagination, almost beyond meaning. On the other hand, that probability is insanely sensitive to how far apart the nuclei are to begin with. To increase the probability by the requisite 40 or 50 orders of magnitude requires getting the nuclei closer together by just one order of magnitude. It is extremely difficult to imagine how -- given the well-known forces involved -- they can be gotten closer together by a factor of ten in an experiment on a table-top. In fact, the whole purpose of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on hot fusion is to produce exactly that result. Nevertheless, once we have been anesthetized by talking about 40 or 50 orders of magnitude, the idea that a one order of magnitude gap might somehow be overcome is not so hard to swallow.

I'd like to interject a statement to the effect that in 1994 the Farnsworth–Hirsch Fusor was not as widely known about as it is today. That gadget easily fits on a tabletop and causes fusions. Farnsworth actually beat everyone else in the hot-fusion field, to making a significant-quantity controlled-fusion device; it just wasn't talked about much, for four or five decades. V (talk) 03:22, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually, no. It was known for a very long time how to get fusion, and was done in lab devices since way back. He created a practical application (ultimately a neutron generator), but it's not an energy-generating device. Basically, it's hot fusion, on a very small scale. That's why it's "controlled." There are claims it could be scaled to become a power generating device, but the engineering hasn't been developed. Same with all other hot fusion, really, though I understand the big ones are getting close. This has nothing to do with cold fusion; same with Sonofusion, except that people make the mistake of calling that "cold fusion." --Abd (talk) 22:11, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Abd, I was responding to the statement, "It is extremely difficult to imagine how -- given the well-known forces involved -- they can be gotten closer together by a factor of ten in an experiment on a table-top." Sure, I know the Fusor is a hot-fusion device, but that was not the point; its ability to fit on a table-top was the point. (Even if CF is real, they don't yet get very useful quantities of energy from a table-top device, so the break-even aspect is not a factor.) Also, this article popularized the Fusor in 1998, which is after 1994, lending support to another part of what I had written: http://www.fusor.net/newbie/files/Ligon-QED-IE.pdf High-school students started building working fusion reactors not long after that article was published, and they didn't care about break-even, either. The article mentions Dr. Robert W. Bussard, and hints at a variation of the Fusor that would use magnetic fields for confinement, eliminating one of the key energy-sapping problems with the Fusor. Bussard himself described some of that work to a crowd at Google headquarters: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1996321846673788606 There is also an inside story about that project, available here: http://www.fusor.net/files/EMC2_FusionToPost.pdf (OKAY, gotta stop being off-topic!) V (talk) 23:34, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

He is, here, explaining why some physicists didn't immediately reject the possibility. There is another problem with the claim about physics here. "extrapolating from known rates at high energies." All this is saying is that if the materials behave at low temperatures as they do at high temperatures, then we'd expect this rate. But we already know that materials in a crystal lattice behave differently, and Goodwin cites the Mossbauer effect to show this. Goodwin Goodstein is still convinced that present theory rules out cold fusion. But he's also aware that "present theory" could be wrong or inappropriately applied. What the argument really shows is that if cold fusion works, it isn't the same mechanism as hot fusion. That "extrapolation" depends on an assumption that it is the same mechanism. --Abd (talk) 22:19, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

To sum up both sections, I don't think your summary of Goodstein (I assume that's who Goodwin is?) shows an appreciation of how he weights each of his arguments. Furthermore, you've misunderstood "extrapolating from known rates at high energies". The energies are irrelevant (see muon catalyzed fusion, for example). It takes between 0.01 and 0.1 MeV to overcome the barrier between nuclei, leaving 24MeV of energy that has to go somewhere. As I said before, it's like flying a toy plane into a tornado - the incident energy is irrelevant. And the energy goes somewhere in a very specific way, whether the temperature is at 100 million K, a million K, or 300K. I'm not an expert on nuclear physics (my experience is limited to three years of college, which, incidentally, is three years more than our "expert" Jed), but I'm pretty sure that if unusual reaction pathways were observed in any of numerous isotopes tested in muon catalyzed fusion, it would be a massive event in physics. I'd suggest that you're trusting the cold fusion true believer rhetoric, that "hot fusion reaction products can't apply low temperature cold fusion", a bit too much. Phil153 (talk) 23:21, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, Goodstein. The language about "extrapolating from high energies" and my comment about it remain and aren't contradicted by what you stated, Phil. I actually only have two years of physics. With Richard P. Feynman, who greatly influenced how I approach the subject and the world. (I also had Linus Pauling for Chemistry, which probably also explains a lot, and I worked with the Mossbauer effect in sophomore physics lab, hence it was pretty easy to read Goodstein on that and understand what he was saying). Frankly, I don't see that you understand the statement in our article. You are making a different argument, one that Goodstein also raises: where does all the energy go, if we do get fusion. That's the third theoretical incompatibility. What's above is the first. Yes, I'm really getting it, why Jed burned out here. Pay attention, Phil. You don't understand what's right in front of you. Jed is an expert because he has soaked himself in the topic for years, he's probably read about everything that has been written on it. He's also an abrasive personality and probably not suited to being a Misplaced Pages editor, but he abandoned that idea long ago, and just made occasional comments in Talk. Most of them were quite cogent, if occasionally uncivil, and he was faced with a very hostile environment, I've been reading over the article history in detail, preparing for What Shall Not Be Mentioned. Basically, cold fusion isn't hot fusion. That should have been obvious from the very beginning. If it happens, it isn't happening -- almost certainly -- because some local forces are causing brute-force reduction in nuclear distance. Essentially, it must be some other mechanism, some other pathway, and we really don't know what it is, though there are theories. It's totally correct, if what were happening in the palladium was the same as hot fusion, dead graduate students. Neutron flux has been found (in spite of early failures), but way, way below the level expected from hot fusion. Indeed, the SPAWAR evidence is now for neutrons in addition to ionizing radiation (probably alpha particles, i.e., helium nuclei).

Does it appear that I'm pro-cold fusion? I wouldn't be surprised. However, I'm really pretty solid with Goodstein's position. It seems to violate known physics. Yet there is some solid experimental evidence that doesn't seem to have any other explanation. Goodstein was writing in 1994. Do you have any idea how much work has been done since then? --Abd (talk) 03:06, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

No, you're confusing Goodstein's position. Pay attention Abd (stupid thing to say, isn't it?). The statement "Cold fusion isn't hot fusion" is manufacturing a distinction that doesn't exist. You see, there's a thing called fusion that happens when nuclei get within close enough range of each other. Incident energy, or even muon shielding, is irrelevant to how it works and what products it creates. This is proven beyond doubt. You appear to not understand that. Unless you are suggesting that there is some entirely new, non fusion process going on like Blacklist Power's mechanism, which let's face it, is desperate grasping at straws that even the cold fusion advocates usually reject, this is fusion involving the nuclear force. Most agree on that.

I'd like to interject a remark to the effect that although "fusion ... happens when nuclei get within close enough range of each other", this only happens after at least one of those nuclei has escaped its electron shell. As was specifically pointed out in a reference I found some time ago, for hot fusion. http://books.google.com/books?id=KKW908I8TzIC&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=%22nuclear+fusion%22+%22electron+shells%22&source=bl&ots=FUugDw4T2o&sig=bIs6rJSyuXKt2MoCeLOjf8cwUFw&hl=en&ei=SYyQSfyRG8H7tgf1zKCsCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=4&ct=result But why that fact seems inappropriate in an article about cold fusion has yet to be explained by anyone posting to this discussion page. ESPECIALLY is that fact relevant to the article if there is truth to your statement about "manufacturing a distinction that doesn't exist". V (talk) 06:16, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't recall seeing any document which mentions electron shells as a barrier to cold fusion. Does anyone else know of one? My take is that in cold fusion, supposedly the deuteron does not really have a shell of its own, but instead occupies space in between the Pd atoms and shells, inside pockets that make it likely that deuterons spend a lot of time close to each other. In this scenario, the deuterium shells are not really a barrier at all. Olorinish (talk) 12:34, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Well clearly it would be an electrical force - in addition to the protons in the nuclei - to overcome. probably much easier since the distances are greater at that point and the particle is orders of magnitude lighter. I recall seeing it mentioned on a book i read on cold fusion, in the phrase "electron screening". But the thing is, one could argue that this doesn't really apply so much in a plasma because the electrons are freely floating anyways. That might be why you've never seen it mentioned. Or it could be that the mass and distance ratios in comparison to protons make the effect relatively insignificant. I wouldn't know - i'm not a scientist. just sort of a (semi-) educated guess.

As to your take - that is a common theory. i think p and f proposed that themselves. multiple d2s get packed w/in a single Pd lattice, (while their electrons become part of the Pd crystal, thus not being a barrier between said d2s anymore) thus getting closer to fusionable distance. Now it's rather trivial to show that the packing ratio does, in fact, exceed 1, but that still leaves you pretty far from fusionable distance. One could argue that the relative elctronegativity of the surrounding crystal would push the d2s towards the center of the lattice, cutting the occupied space in, for example, half, but i don't think that would make that much of a difference. All in all, it's a decent start but it's not sufficient. Kevin Baas 13:28, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

If that is a "common theory", then why isn't it in the article? (Oh, all the references to it are published in "unacceptable" sources?) Here are a few known facts: Electrolysis of water can yield hydrogen. Typically the hydrogen appears as a gas, two-atom molecules, each with two nuclei accompanied by electron shells. Hydrogen molecules are significantly larger than helium atoms: http://www.standnes.no/chemix/periodictable/atomic-radius-elements.htm Yet hydrogen can permeate various metals (such as palladium) while helium cannot: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6103028.html (scroll down toward the bottom, at end of second paragraph of Example 4). Therefore it logically follows that hydrogen is doing something special, when it permeates metal. If it is interacting with the conduction band of the metal, per the above theories, each atom of hydrogen giving away its sole electron to that band, then it would be obvious how the hydrogen can permeate; the bare nucleus is about 1/100,000 the size of the atom. On the other side of the metal the nuclei would take some electrons back and emerge as gas once again. INSIDE the metal, of course, is where Cold Fusion is claimed to happen. Why should the article not contain an explanation of why electrons shells are not a factor in the CF enviornment, when we certainly have a reference indicating they are a generic barrier to fusion??? IF they are not a factor, of course! V (talk) 14:10, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't think the electron shells are much of a barrier to fusion. For one thing, it's easy to strip the shell from hydrogen or deuterium; in normal water, neutral pH, one water molecule per 10^7 has been dissocated into a hyrogen ion (H+), no electron, plus a hyroxyl radical (OH-). In a strong acid, dissociation is complete (pH 0). In electrolysis, hydrogen ions, basically free protons (though they keep gaining electrons and losing them, passing them along) are attracted to the cathode, where they gain electrons from the cathode (the electrolyis current) and combine with each other to become H2 gas. With most electrodes, this bubbles out, but with a palladium electrode, if I'm correct, it's absorbed for a time, until the electrode is saturated. No, the barrier to fusion is the positive charge on the nuclei, they repel each other, strongly. The electrons are very weakly bound, and they are "spread out," so the charge isn't heavily concentrated where two atoms might be approaching each other. And that's as far as I'll go now, before I stick my foot in my mouth.

Okay, here goes the foot. Above, the image is of hydrogen molecules (neutral charge overall) being stripped of their electron by the metal. I don't think that's what happens. The hydrogen is not attracted by the charge of the cathode, only dissociated protons are. But there don't have to be very many of them. --Abd (talk) 19:02, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Abd, in one sense I don't care how trivial a barrier the electron shells are, to fusion. Remember the phrase "a little bit pregnant"? If electron shells are in fact even the slightest barrier to fusion, then fact is fact, and an encyclopedia is supposed to be about facts. In another sense, though, Things Are Relative. How much would it cost to give a mass equivalent to your body kinetic energy such that it could orbit the Earth? In terms of pure energy, purchased from the electric power grid, maybe $10. In terms of the way we actually apply energy to accomplish the task, hundreds or thousands of dollars per pound. Electrical systems can be quite efficient at accomplishing tasks, and that ease can cause forgetfulness about various difficulties that might previously have been associated with certain tasks. Remember how messages were sent before the invention of the telegraph? Temperature is a brute-force way to strip electrons from an atom; electricity is an efficient way. I'm saying here that this efficiency should not lead to ignoring the existence of the problem it solves. V (talk) 21:30, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

In the separate comments I've made above, among these indented paragraphs, I'm trying to point out a certain logical thing. (1) If fusion is fusion and cold fusion should be compared on an equal basis with hot fusion, then electron shells are a factor, a problem to solve, worthy of mention in the article, because the temperatures that break electron shells, for hot fusion, are not present in cold-fusion conditions. (2) If cold fusion should be treated differently from hot fusion, such that electron shells are not a factor, then in essence we are saying that the thing known to be a problem in other circumstances is not a problem here --yet no explanation of why it is not a problem is given in the article.

There seems no logical reason why nothing on that topic should exist in the article. V (talk) 15:22, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Find some reliable source on what you are saying, it could be in the article. Otherwise, I'd say, it's a diversion. We don't need to explain why something is not a problem. There are millions of possible things that aren't problems. In a metal like palladium, if I'm correct, the electrons are pretty much smeared out, they don't belong to any atom, and I'd think that the same would be true for the absorbed hydrogen or deuterium. Indeed, in that environment, hydrogen may behave like a metal. Somebody help me to stop! I haven't studied this stuff for more than forty years.... I really am working on the article and want to find sources, not just make up science from my imperfect memory and poor analysis, which may or may not be better than that of some others here. I found a very interesting source yesterday and notified the editors of it here, a 2007 review article in a peer-reviewed journal that somehow escaped the notice of lenr-canr.org, as well as, possibly, Storms and others. (I wrote to Rothwell, who was offended by the bad English in the article. Goes to show. Spelling above substance, I've always said, Right?) I'm sure we'll be looking at it. Once I can get a copy.--Abd (talk) 22:04, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

"I'd say it's a diversion" --that's opinion, not fact. The existence of electron shells is a fact; that two nuclei cannot interact without at least one losing its shell is a fact (even muon catalysis requires getting rid of at least one electron shell). We have a reference regarding generic fusion and shells; we have Phil talking about a distinction that does not exist, with respect to cold and hot fusion (he's talking about the event, not whatever might lead up to it, and I tend to agree that much of the actual event is indeed going to be independent, since the Strong Nuclear Force is known to be overpoweringly stronger than anything else in Physics). At least one of the distinctions that do exist between cold and hot fusion must, logically, somehow be associated with whatever mechanism enables CF to occur (provided it does indeed occur, of course). So long as we don't know which distinction is the key, why should any of them be left out of the article? The article could present a list of those distinctions, and plainly state the Simple Obvious Logic that if CF is real, it somehow depends on at least one of them, and nobody yet knows which, or how --and that lack of knowledge, even after 20 years of theorizing, is exactly why many physicists have assumed and continue to assume that CF cannot be real. V (talk) 15:04, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Back to his other point about experimental evidence, which I did not address. Goodstein's position is clearly that there is no cogent explanation for what's been observed, but that this is not evidence of much weight toward a new process. There's a monstrous difference between "While these are apparently careful scientists, we don't know every possible detail of the experiments and how error and bias could have arose, and a cogent explanation is lacking" and "There are careful scientists, and the lack of cogent explanation for their results gives a good chance that there could be something new and exciting happening here". Goodstein is very clearly in former, even if he doesn't explicitly spell out every step in his reasoning. Especially since he goes to pains to point out how theories have been wrong before, and how experiment is king. For him, P(experimental results on their own->cold fusion) is very low, which is why the theoretical objections are king. As for "having any idea how much work has done since then", I'm not sure if you have any idea how it's basically the same kettle of fish. When Arata produces nonsense like his tiny temperature differential in 2007 as proof of something, and gets excited about it, 13 years after Goodstein, you can see the field isn't producing much new. The CR39 stuff is interesting to layman like me who doesn't know the first thing about CR39, but not enough, by itself, to indicate something given the burden of proof. BTW, Goodstein published this paper in 2000 (can't remember the journal) so presumably he still stood by it then. Phil153 (talk) 03:54, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Let's start with what is clearest. Phil, above, confused the first theoretical reason, given in our article, why "cold fusion" is impossible, with the third reason. That is, in an argument about nuclear distance and the extremely low rate of fusion "extrapolated from known rates at high energies," the first argument in our article, he raised the issue of where the excess energy would go if fusion occurred. That's the third argument, not the first. The third argument would lead us to expect gamma rays from deuterium fusion, and since gammas aren't observed, Q.E.D. The first argument is one that, if correct, would lead us to think that fusion wouldn't happen. Except, of course, fusion does happen at low energies, under the right conditions; that is, there isn't any doubt, Muon-catalyzed fusion.

I did not claim that Goodstein was claiming "weight toward the discovery of a new process." I simply noted that Goodstein points out the problem: theory that indicates one thing, and experiment that appears to indicate something different. If this were just one isolated experiment, it would be one thing. Some things will never be explained. However, it's many experiments, and many of the shortcomings of the early work have been addressed and overcome. For example, stirring the electrolyte! Better neutron detectors. Running the experiment inside a mountain to greatly reduce background radiation. Better calorimetry. Recombination of all the electrolytically generated gases. And on and on. But the more recent SPAWAR work is terrifyingly simple. Kowalski, while appearing to debunk the SPAWAR CR-39 results (not successfully, mind you), actually verified the basic experiment. The biggest problem, cited over and over again, has been the difficulty of reproducing the excess heat and other phenomena. Yet, it appears, reproduction rate has steadily increased, as more and more was understood about the specific conditions that generate the effect. In spite of the early reports, such as the New York Times article that is cited in the lead (and which had a fabricated title! -- I just fixed it), that Fleischmann had supposedly produced fusion "in a jar of water," implying simplicity, it was far from simple and far from easy. The claims of vast, cheap energy might turn out to be just as impossible with the Fleischmann effect as with muon-catalyzed fusion, not because it doesn't happen, necessarily, but because it is so difficult to set up and maintain the reaction. Those electrodes disintegrate, weird stuff happens with them. And palladium is expensive (though it isn't consumed, there would be costs to recycle it). The SPAWAR group uses co-electrolysis to simultaneously plate the electrode with palladium and generate deuterium gas, so the built-up palladium is immediately fully loaded, and, as prior work might lead one to expect, excess heat begins immediately (they claim, and there isn't any particular reason to doubt this observation). Right away, this disposes of the whole idea that power has been stored up in the electrode from all the "dead time." But using this for power generation isn't necessarily simple, and it could prove to be impossible. Abd (talk) 04:29, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I was definitely confused what you were writing about and admit to skimming your long post. Your last paragraph says:

He is, here, explaining why some physicists didn't immediately reject the possibility. There is another problem with the claim about physics here. "extrapolating from known rates at high energies." All this is saying is that if the materials behave at low temperatures as they do at high temperatures, then we'd expect this rate. But we already know that materials in a crystal lattice behave differently, and Goodwin cites the Mossbauer effect to show this. Goodwin Goodstein is still convinced that present theory rules out cold fusion. But he's also aware that "present theory" could be wrong or inappropriately applied. What the argument really shows is that if cold fusion works, it isn't the same mechanism as hot fusion.

There's been a lot of discussion and theory about the probabilities of various reaction product and I thought you were continuing that vein. Goodstein mentions the Mossbauer effect to discuss why physicists suspended judgment about the reaction products (it's directly relevant, since it involves the way nuclear products can behave differently to expected).

Since you're talking about the initial reaction, I have no idea why what you're talking about is relevant to the article. Cold fusion requires a different mechanism to overcome the electric repulsion...we know that. Neither Goodstein nor anyone else thinks this repulsion magically disappears in a crystal, so I don't see how it matters. Could you summarize your point for creating this section in two sentences max? Or maybe summarize text you propose to include? I'm struggling to see how Goodstein affects anything on the repulsion side of things (although it's clearly relevant to the end products). Phil153 (talk) 04:52, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm usually talking about more than one thing at a time. Sorry. Look at the beginning of this section. I quote what's in our article, which sounds like a very strong argument, with this huge number, 10^50, as the ratio between an extrapolated reaction rate and what is necessary for the reported heat generation. When I was young, I read a book, How to Lie with Statistics. Basically, you can present numerical data in ways that will create a false impression without actually lying. One of the things Goodstein points out is that, sure, that's one way to look at it (but he says 10^40 -- 10^50), but then he points out that the necessary reduction in distance between the nuclei is only 10^1. I.e., one-tenth of the normal separation. (By the way, this isn't a simple calculation, it's not specified in sufficient detail.) So what does CF require? A change in a value by 10^50 or a change in a value by 10? The statement in the article is what has been referred to by others as a "negative" about cold fusion without any counterargument. Is there a counterargument? Why is this an argument showing a "violation of basic principles of physics"? I'm aware that we can find reliable source for such a statement, but it's certainly not clear in itself.

Predicting the frequency of am emitted photon for an excited nucleus, when the photon is free, not bound, is fairly straightforward. However, when the nucleus is part of a crystal structure, it can be different. A nuclear process proceeds differently in this case. This is the Mossbauer effect. The nucleus, unbound, would emit the photon (a gamma ray) and recoil, to conserve momentum. But when it's in the crystal, it can transfer the momentum to the whole crystal, shifting the frequency of the emitted photon a bit. The crystalline environment is affecting how the nucleus behaves, even though there are, we might think, these "vast spaces" that would make this impossible. (This touches on argument three.) Mossbauer won the Nobel Prize for his work, the year I became a freshman at CalTech, which was his school.

In the end, what is important here is, indeed, the article. But what we do here is to discuss the article, which necessarily involves discussing the topic, as background. I find the current text *in that section* to be POV imbalanced. So I'll be looking to find ways to balance it, if possible. Consider this a request for assistance. --Abd (talk) 19:39, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Abd, I have been following this talk page for a long time, and I can honestly say that I don't understand what assistance you are requesting. Can you summarize in two or three sentences what you want to change about the article? Olorinish (talk) 20:05, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

(Long thread moved to its own subsection below, to preserve the sanity of people trying to make sense of the indentation) --Enric Naval (talk) 00:18, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Phil, some of what you wrote is exaggerated. In hot fusion the 24MeV, when that is what the fusion produces, mostly takes the form of a gamma ray. As you know, that is rare; most of the time the products of hot deuterium fusion are associated with about a sixth of that much energy. You may be aware that some of the CF people claim to have found those other reaction products. If true, and regardless of whether or not enough were found to explain the total heat measured in CF experiments, those products would indicate that somehow SOME cold fusions had happened in spite of the Coulomb barrier. I would consider that to be a significant chink in the wall of objections raised by the detractors; it would mean they are at least partly wrong. It would mean it would be worthwhile investing some thought into how those few cold fusions managed to happen. It might mean that after that problem was solved, the answer might point the way to solving the objections regarding how 24MeV could appear as heat instead of as a gamma ray. One kind-of-fun thing to think about: BOTH the CF people and Kirk Shanahan could be right. Heh, Kirk's work could explain where the 24Mev went (it didn't happen), and the CF people could still chortle over the few cold fusions that actually happened. After all, how often is it, in other heated arguments, that the truth lies in the middle? V (talk) 03:23, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

POV problems in "incompatibilities" section

(this thread moved to its own subsection, for clarity) --Enric Naval (talk) 00:18, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

(dedent) Sure. Request assistance in balancing apparent POV in Cold_fusion#Incompatibilities_with_Established_Physics section. The very title is POV. However, certainly there is allegation that Cold fusion is "incompatible with Established Physics." It's a claim that has long been made, and there is broad -- but uninformed -- opinion about this, and lots of RS, in fact, on the issue of Bad Science, i.e., scientific consensus by press conference and mass opinion, as distinct from peer opinion. But this shouldn't be presented as a fact. It's not a fact, it's an opinion, even if widely held among those who haven't studied the field and especially the more recent evidence. What do we have on the other side? Anything? I can find things, but I'm asking for assistance!

(Editors here have insisted on peer-reviewed, reliable source for anything that smells like support for cold fusion; okay, do we have such source for the claim about incompatibilities?) Sauce for goose is sauce for gander. I'm not implying that the sources there can't be used, but only that we should use the same standards for all sides. --Abd (talk) 21:52, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

That section seems pretty NPOV to me, including the title (which I wrote). Olorinish (talk) 02:29, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I've reviewed that section a bit, and I can't find POV problems. The sources are from Accountability in Research journal, an article from knowledgeable source David Goodstein at some silly publication from Caltech (American Scholar), and Scientific American, which look adequate for unchallenged statements. What part are you exactly challenging? (and I mean that you challenge the content so that better sources can be looked for) --Enric Naval (talk) 04:07, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

It may be time for editors here to re-read the WP:REDFLAG section of WP:V.LeadSongDog (talk) 17:16, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

"Exceptional claims require exceptional sources"? OK, since sources such as New Energy Times and Infinite Energy have been excepted from the mainstream, they qualify as "exceptional", right?  :) In a more serious note, what if the title of the section was changed to "Cold Fusion vs. Hot Fusion Theory"? V (talk) 18:10, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

The sources aren't pitting cold fusion against hot fusion, they are comparing cold fusion against several nuclear fusion phenomena, conventional nuclear physics, fundamental laws of physics and existing physical theories.

--Enric Naval (talk) 20:09, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough in what I meant by the proposed title. " Cold Fusion vs Hot-Fusion-Theory " --that first quote, Enric, seems to partially equate hot fusion theory with conventional nuclear physics. The section is not about "Cold Fusion Theory" vs "Hot Fusion Theory". Note that the first Big Problem, getting the nuclei close enough, has a known CF-type solution (muon catalysis) that does not violate any aspects of physics, yet was totally a surprise when it was discovered. (A similar discovery would make the Scientific American conclusion just as totally surprised/wrong.) So, regarding "miracles", I might recommend reviewing one of Arthur C. Clarke's Laws, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." A miracle is simply something we don't understand YET. V (talk) 21:07, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

How about "Incompatibilities with conventional nuclear physics"?

Rationale: I pick the wording from the guy that makes TV programs that educate the masses in Physics-related matters. I suppose that he chose in his article the wording that would be more understandable for the layman reader, which would fit the goals of wikipedia. The Scientific American wording is "existing physical theories", which, honestly, sucks a bit. Scaramuzzi wording is "fundamental laws of physics" which will probably be more protested than the actual one. --Enric Naval (talk) 00:07, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

That's not unreasonable, and the biggest strike against my suggestion was how easily it could be misinterpreted. However, I happened to think that if the words were switched around, "Hot Fusion Theory vs Cold Fusion", that problem would be solved. Another problem, though, is that too many casual readers don't know that a modern Theory is more than just a guess, so using that word can lead to other misinterpretations. ("Evolution is just a Theory", see? Of course, the correct response to that is, "Creationism is just a Hypothesis!", followed by encouragement to study the meanings of those words as used in Science.) And then there is another problematic aspect, which I didn't originally consider: muon-catalyzed fusion is not hot fusion, but has the same product yields as hot fusion. So, how about "Known Fusion Facts vs Cold Fusion Data"? It is the CF data, after all, that encourages proponents to think that fusions happen in that environment. That they don't match up well with known fusion facts, that IS what that section is about! V (talk) 14:52, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Sources are not comparing against fusion "facts", not even against fusion theories, they are comparing against physics theories or nuclear physics.... It's not a comparison of one type of fusion against other.... --Enric Naval (talk) 00:16, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I went ahead and changed it to "conventional nuclear physics". (funny how the old title had "Established Physics" in capital letters) --Enric Naval (talk) 02:27, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Enric, you seem to be missing the point that "fusion" is not the whole of "nuclear physics", conventional or otherwise. And it is glaringly obvious that various facts about already-observed fusions are on stage front-and-center, in basically saying that there are difficulties with CF as an explanation for observations of excess heat, in that section of the article. Why is it not equally obvious that IF cold fusion really occurs inside deuterium-saturated metal, and typically does such things as the D+D->4He reaction, yielding heat instead of gammas, then certain details about how fusion takes place there must be different than the details of either hot fusion or muon-catalyzed fusion? V (talk) 08:04, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

For the section title, how about "Difficulties with nuclear explanations"? I think the current title "Incompatibilities with conventional nuclear physics" is better than the previous title, but still find it non-NPOV: If a nuclear explanation is later established for the (alleged) phenomenon, I'm not convinced that that explanation will necessarily be incompatible with current established nuclear physics. I don't think conventional nuclear physics enumerates all the possible things that can happen with those materials: for example, muon-catalysed fusion would not have been listed before it was thought of or discovered.

Re a systematic examination of the sources: that's a necessary step to establishing due weight for the article, therefore an appropriate topic of discussion on this talk page. The discussion should not aim to establish "truth", i.e. things like whether or not there really is excess heat produced not explainable by things like experimental error, whether or not cold fusion is occurring etc., but to establish how much weight to place on various POVs about various aspects of the topic, as well as the relative weight on the aspects of the topics themselves, i.e. how much space in the article to devote to each aspect of the topic in this article. There can also be subarticles expanding on various aspects. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 20:05, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

@Coppertwig, "If a nuclear explanation is later (...) will necessarily be incompatible with current established nuclear physics. I don't think conventional nuclear physics enumerates all the possible things that can happen with those materials (...)", aka WP:CRYSTALBALL (that being said, replacing "conventional" with "current" on the title could solve this problem.

Ah, I think I found the problem, I separated the "cold fusion as a nuclear reaction" from the rest of explanations. Now go find reliable sources for those. --Enric Naval (talk) 00:14, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

OK, let me put it this way: the section title "incompatibilities with current physics" violates WP:V by implying that there are incompatibilities between cold fusion results and current physics. Not being explained by current physics is not the same thing as being incompatible with it. If it violated the law of conservation of energy, for example, we could talk about incompatibility. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 01:11, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

(I cut your comment above to create a new section and re-signed it) "problems posed by current physics"? :P The results are not compatible with current physics, you know, that's why they are called "miracles". --Enric Naval (talk) 03:23, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

No problem: just please provide a source to verify that statement. Just now I re-read the Incompatibilities section of this article. The only statement in the section which seems to me to be asserting that the alleged phenomena are incompatible with current physics is the last sentence, "The speed of...", which gives as a reference Goldstein, who says "It proved that there are still genuine surprises waiting for us that, once understood, don't violate conventional physical laws". I still think "difficulties with" is a better description of the section than "incompatibilities"; no one has provided any argument against using "difficulties with". I suggest "Difficulties in reconciling with current physics". ☺Coppertwig (talk) 14:50, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I think I'll "second" that motion. V (talk) 16:03, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The label "difficulties" is more vague than "incompatibilities," so I oppose using it for this title. The current references 7-9 document the view that CF is incompatible with established physics. Olorinish (talk) 18:00, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

So, we have documentation for a particular POV? But the article is not supposed to reflect a particular POV; it is supposed to be evenhanded in its descriptions. I would not object to statements indicating there is a POV that considers CF to be incompatible with what we know, so long as there also are statements indicating that muon-catalyzed fusion was a wild card, too, before its mechanism was understood. That is, some proponents hold the POV that CF may also fit neatly into current physics, once the mechanism is figured out. (Denunciations by Authority, of course, merely turns brainpower away from trying to figure it out.) Anyway, the point is, the section heading should be NPOV --and as previously pointed out, even CF proponents admit the theoretical problems are difficult. V (talk) 20:33, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

(<<outdent) I suggest "Lack of explanation compatible with nuclear physics" as the section heading (or "Lack of explanation compatible with conventional physics"). Note that I consider the current heading to violate WP:V, so it's urgent that it be changed; the suggestion with "difficulties" has been criticized as being less specific, but that seems to me to be a much less serious problem than violating WP:V. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 13:36, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Coppertwig and V. However, I'm not the Lone Ranger. I'm already making more possibly controversial edits to the article than I like, or at least it is possibly being seen that way. I'll be happy to support a better title. The "conventional" title suggested above is fine with me. Cold fusion definitely is that, it is the very paradigm of incompatibility with "conventional physics," i.e., it almost certainly requires new theory. Consider this week's reports of neutrons (which merely confirm and demonstrate the notability of what was actually reported last year or even earlier). If anyone can figure out a "conventional" explanation of the observations under the reported experimental conditions and observations, I'm all ears. Even determined skeptics are starting to say, "Well, okay, neutrons, but no proof that they are caused by fusion. Fine. Occam's razor isn't a proof of anything, but it sure is a wise guideline. The real point, made and understood among those actually familiar with the field, as distinct from those "experts" making off-the-cuff remarks, eagerly reported by writers looking for "balance," is that evidence of nuclear reactions in the palladium deuteride environment has passed the point of no return. It's now a strong experimental result, which has been confirmed in most -- if not all -- details, and, because, compared with the original CF work, it's relatively easy to confirm, the shoe is now on the other foot. As to the present point, yes. Specifically, the experimental results require a revision of the concept that quantum mechanics is adequate to describe nuclear behavior in the condensed matter environment, and the more difficult quantum field theory or quantum electrodynamics is needed. This vindicates Fleischmann's original research goal, to show exactly that. He wasn't looking for an energy source, he was doing fundamental scientific investigation, probing the boundaries of what is known. Pd catalyzed fusion was only an example. --Abd (talk) 15:41, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Other explanations of cold fusion

From Storms 2007:

Anyone has a problem with this list going under the new "Explaining cold fusion as other phenomena" section? --Enric Naval (talk) 03:23, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Technically, alas, yes. The way that new section is worded (in the article body, not above), it appears to be wanting NON-FUSION explanations for the observed heat. You appear to be listing explanations for why fusion might be able to occur (and thereby produce heat). While both types of explanations should be in the article for balance, the current wording would appear to preclude one type. V (talk) 06:20, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. Also, the third miracle has to do with propagation of heat and has noting to do with nuclear theories, so back to "physics theories".

I now divided it into 3 sections: "incompatiblities with current conventional physics theories", "Unproven explanations" and "Proven explanations". And, err.... well, I had a bit of a problem filling that last section.... --Enric Naval (talk) 07:37, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

SOMETHING ODD: There is a subsection titled: "Non-nuclear explanations for excess heat", immediately followed by the "Explanations for cold fusion", inside of which is a "Proposed explanations" subsection and a BOX containing this: "Please help improve this section by expanding it with attempts to explain cold fusion as something other than a nuclear fusion reaction." I would say that box is out of place. V (talk) 14:01, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

OK, I see someone has done something about that; thanks! V (talk) 13:55, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

40 or 50 orders of magnitude

(section cut from above --Enric Naval (talk) 03:23, 9 March 2009 (UTC))

This statement seems too strong to me: "Extrapolating from known rates at high energies, the rate at room temperature would be 50 orders of magnitude lower than needed to account for the reported excess heat." It needs qualifiers. For example, perhaps it should say "in the absence of muons". There could be other assumptions also needed. "unless some unknown process is affecting the rate"? "under ordinary conditions"? "under any conditions anyone has thought of yet"? Physics doesn't dictate that the rate is necessarily 50 (by the way, should that be 40 to 50, per Goldstein?) orders of magnitude lower; it might dictate that under some set of assumptions (including the absence of muons, as well as temperature, and perhaps some other things) that that is the rate. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 01:11, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

That sentence is a quote from Scaramuzzi (see cites below). Goodstein says "40 or 50", Scaramuzzi says "more than 50". This refers to the distance between deuterium nuclei in a deuterium molecule. None of the two mention anything other than high/low energy or room temperature that migh affect that rate.

Please note that the above description explicitly specifies whole deuterium molecules. That means the deuterons are surrounded by their electron shells. This is why it should be obvious that getting at least one deuteron out of its shell is pretty important! Why, I might wager that if a deuteron could escape its shell and hover over the shell of a neighboring deuterium (meaning that the original distance between the nuclei is halved), then the probability of fusion occurring at that distance would increase significantly. It might now be unlikely by only twenty or thirty orders of magnitude, instead of forty or fifty! :) V (talk) 06:09, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

--Enric Naval (talk) 03:23, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

(unindent). What should be clear is that the spontaneous reaction rate for unassisted deuterium fusion at room temperature would be 40-50 orders of magnitude lower than necessary to explain the heat generation. This is really nothing more than saying that if you have some pure deuterium at room temperature, it is not going to fuse, period. However, as muon-catalyzed fusion shows, that doesn't mean that low-temperature deuterium fusion is impossible, only that it doesn't happen spontaneously. If it did, there wouldn't be any deuterium around! This is not equivalent, to be clear, to the statement that "there is no chance that two deuterons will fuse at room temperature," which muon-catalyzed fusion makes quite clear, give the two reluctant partners a matchmaker to bring them together, they may well fuse. We know that muons can do this. There are enough muons around that there is, in fact, some rate of fusion of deuterium naturally at low temperatures, still very low, but much higher than the spontaneous figure. I think there might be some reference about this from S. Jones. What about electrons? (The muon can do it because it has the same negative charge as an electron.) One of the theories floating about, that more than one author seems to have accepted as reasonable, is that in the metallic lattice, where electrons are largely free, behaving very differently than with isolated nuclei, they may be able to catalyze fusion by allowing the nuclei to approach, in a similar way to how we know muons can accomplish the trick. So I'm a bit concerned about the presentation of this as an argument against cold fusion; there is utterly and absolutely no doubt that the spontaneous fusion rate for deuterium at low temperatures is so low that it just doesn't happen, and we would not even be considering the topic unless there weren't reason to think that some conditions might catalyze or cause it. Why did Fleischmann run palladium electrolysis experiments for so long? He had theoretical reasons to suspect it might occur, see http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanbackground.pdf Thus the argument, though it is indeed made, shouldn't really be an argument against cold fusion, it is misleading presented that way, but only background as to why cold fusion is remarkable at all.

I'd like to interject the fact that on Earth deuterium is about one atom per 6500 of protium-hydrogen. That means that most of the time, even if one deuterium got itself hooked up with a cosmic-ray muon, it would not likely encounter another deuterium before the 2-microsecond lifspan of the muon ended. I'd also like to note that elsewhere on this page an additional factor was listed: "The current density of the electrolysis is larger than 280 mA per cm" --that means electrons are moving under the influence of an external force, causing them to not move in normal pathways that might keep them from closely approaching loose deuterons in the metal lattice. Indeed, we might expect the deuterons themselves to be moving toward one end of the metal lattice under that same external force, opposite the direction of the electron flow, and possibly accumulating to an even higher "local loading ratio" than such oft-mentioned figures as 80%-90%. V (talk) 14:13, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

There is a simple analogy. Put hydrogen gas and oxygen gas together at room temperature. What happens? Nothing. The spontaneous reaction rate is zero. With a spark, bang, the hydrogen and oxygen bind to each other, releasing heat, the heat causes more combustion, etc. However, there are also catalysts which will bring the suitors together, getting around their reluctance, so combustion below the ignition temperature does, in fact, happen. Fuel cells. Indeed, biological metabolism.

It is also very clear that the conditions under which catalyzed fusion might occur are necessarily very unusual, or else we would have far less deuterium around. From what we now know about palladium-catalyzed fusion (yes, we know something about it, collectively), it might simply not occur at all in nature, the natural occurrence would be far lower than with muon-catalyzed fusion. A rare metal, unoxidized, apparently persnickity about impurities, plus deuterium gas, and possibly flow parameters? --Abd (talk) 14:25, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

If I'm undertanding the quotes correctly, he's talking about the probability that the two atoms of a duetrium molecule, under normal conditions, just all the sudden decide to fuse. While that's an interesting piece of trivia, it's about as relevant to this article as it is to any article on conventional thermodynamic fusion. It's useful, perhaps, as a baseline. ('xcept that we really should be talking about atoms in separate molecules) Or a control in a scientific experiment: "This is how fast plants grow w/out light." But used in any other context, it would just confuse the reader and quite possible even mislead them. Because really, it doesn't have any relevancy outside of that. Kevin Baas 14:48, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

A New Reference

http://www.infinite-energy.com/iemagazine/issue82/releaseoflowenergy.html
"This book is historic because it is the first peer-reviewed book from an established scientific society (published by the American Chemical Society, but available from Oxford University Press)."
The title is: "Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions Sourcebook"
The price is, In My Opinion, ridiculous: $175 V (talk) 18:25, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

And back in Left Field, the place for Sources of Disputed Reliability, here's an article that purports to be a FAQ: http://www.infinite-energy.com/images/pdfs/nagel.pdf

I like the diagram at the bottom of the second page. V (talk) 18:39, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

According to OUP's blurb, that's published in the ACS Symposium Series, a rapid-release system subject only to these publication guidelines. Note that peer review is in essence left up to the editor, in this case Jan Marwan of Marwan Chemie. According to this search, it is the only thing he has done (written or edited) for OUP. This hardly fills one with confidence.LeadSongDog (talk) 19:24, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

LeadSongDog has presented a distorted view of the review process. The editor does "conduct the process," but it is checked by ACS. LeadSongDog may not be "filled with confidence," but the confidence gauge on LSD's dash isn't any kind of standard at all. The book is RS, very clearly. The wall is crumbling, the dike is leaking, and the tide is rising. How far it will rise, I don't know. Don't have a CRYSTALBALL.--Abd (talk) 03:32, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm trying very hard to find a way to WP:AGF consistent with the above statement. I'm not succeeding. I think I'll go make a cup of tea.LeadSongDog (talk) 06:17, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Not a bad idea. I struck part of my comment, I'd thought about it and came to consider it gratuitous incivility, for, after all, you were merely expressing your feelings, which we should be allowed to do in Talk. The "wall" exists on Misplaced Pages, and it exists outside. In spite of the suggestions in the DOE reviews, that major journals apparently refuse to consider papers on the topic is a "wall," an a priori judgment that makes it impossible to resolve the issues, no matter how clear an experiment might be, no matter how balanced a review might be. I was just reading a paper about neutron emissions from deuterated foils, presented at, I think, ICCF10. Tungsten was the metal involved. This was serious research, but because it shows, if not fraudulent, a probable low level of fusion or other LENR process, because of neutron emission, it would quite likely be unpublishable in major journals covering nuclear physics. (The experiment run with deuterium gas showed neutron emission; controls with hydrogen, no emission. The levels were low, but this was done underground and with shielding against cosmic rays, the emissions were sufficiently above background to represent a clear anomaly. The Italians also found neutrons, in exceedingly careful work, as reported by Goodstein (1994), and the Chinese author of the FPC paper, early in the nineties, I think, found other evidence of anomalous reactions.) I'm beginning to get a clearer understanding of how to approach these issues, it will require creating Talk subpages where we review sources in a comprehensive, systematic way, rather than piecemeal with no clear conclusions. --Abd (talk) 13:44, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I like the fact that we're considering material from the American Chemical Society to provide support for what purports to be cutting-edge nuclear physics. Perhaps we should also scan publications of the Royal Agricultural Society for information on advances in aeronautics. 72.70.9.75 (talk) 01:56, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

If someone has figured out how to grow aircraft from seeds, we might indeed. The field of cold fusion, known to those working in it as "chemically assisted nuclear reactions," among other names, is one where chemistry and physics cross; the original work was done by electrochemists. Low-energy nuclear reactions are, precisely, those which might be chemically influenced, so if they happen (aside from muon-catalyzed fusion, then the expertise of chemists is relevant. Consider: chemist runs experiment that by all rights should be dissipating no more than so much energy. The measurement of generated heat is a technique used in chemistry, the field is called calorimetry, and it's not so common among physicists, if I'm correct; further, the determination of how much energy dissipation is chemically possible from the reactants is in the field of chemistry. The experiment generates, allegedly, much more than that. Whose expertise is needed to assess this claim? What has been happening is that chemists are saying, "This isn't chemistry, it must be nuclear in nature." And nuclear physicists, by and large, have been saying, "This couldn't be nuclear physics, nuclear reactions don't happen in chemistry labs, it must be chemistry, you must be making some mistake." So to speak. (Obviously, they can, be careful how much U-235 you allow to accumulate in a particular reaction vessel, I heard Feynman himself tell this story, but that's not what I mean.) --Abd (talk) 03:22, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

If plutonium was in the chemical mix, even less would need to be present to notice excess heat (due to shorter half-life). And such mixes do exist; here's a jug that was recently found: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/science/03plut.html

Anyway, back to CF-related stuff; I concur with Abd, since chemists spent decades in the late 1800s and all through the 1900s measuring the heat produced from (or absorbed by!) all sorts of chemical reactions. Chemical engineers need to know how much heat to handle, when reacting industrial quantities of chemicals. Not to mention that when the military wanted good rocket fuels, the chemists were the ones to ask, not the physicists. It is simply ludicrous, for physicists to assume professional chemists don't know how to measure heat-production accurately. V (talk) 08:31, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

The concern with the accumulation of U-235 isn't about heat from normal decay, it's about reaching critical mass for sustained fission, which would have wrecked the processing equipment at Oak Ridge. In any case, we have a situation where experts in calorimetry, many of them, are reporting anomalous heat they consider impossible to be from normal chemical process, and we have physicists, most or many of them, refusing to consider any other explanation than chemical process or experimental error, and clinging to hypotheses about such errors that aren't supported by the literature, which is, in my opinion, odd. Some physicists are looking for independent evidence of anomalous nuclear reactions, and they have been finding it since the early 1990s or before, but this is only being published, for the most part, in non-mainstream journals. However, one of the remarkable things about the FPC paper discussed above, in the "Holy Grail" section, is that He Jing-tang is a nuclear physicist with the Institute of High Energy Physics, Academia Sinica, and was one of the 8 co-authors of the 1993 paper from that institution, published in China Physics Letters, "Study on Anomalous Nuclear Fusion Reaction using HV pulse discharge." This paper was cited above, but for convenience, it's at . --Abd (talk) 14:04, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I'm aware that with U235 and a half-life of something like 700 million years, one would likely have to invoke fissions to see significant heat. For plutonium, however, most of which is likely to be Pu239 derived from U238 absorbing a neutron ( http://en.wikipedia.org/Neptunium#History ), the half-life is only about 24,000 years, and that decay rate would be associated with considerably more heat (therefore I mentioned it above). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Objectivist (talk • contribs) 16:12, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

More papers mentioning cold fusion.

Section "Incompatibilities with conventional nuclear physics" must be greatly expanded

This section is currently very short. But the reason why there is so much skepticism is very important to explain in this article and that can only be done by giving the detailed theoretical reasons why cold fusion cannot work.

So, I suggest that we explain that according to quantum mechanics, the validity of which is almost unversally accepted, one can write down formally exact expressions for transistion rates. In practice one cannot analytically evaluate such expressions (different approximation scemes are possible) but one can still theoretically study the mathematical formalism and set bounds on any enhancement of nuclear reaction rates.

E.g., one can approach the cold fusion problem in a possitive way and ask what is necessary for the transition rates to be enhanced and then make estimates, which will then turn out to be negligible. See e.g. a different investigation here Count Iblis (talk) 00:23, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

This is the problem with such a theoretical approach: it assumes that the mechanism for cold fusion is known. It isn't. There are lots of hypotheses, but none of them have general acceptance even among those working in the field. Are you aware, Count Iblis, that Fleischmann has written that quantum electrodynamics theory is what led him to suspect that cold fusion might happen? What you have done is what many others have done: assume that "cold fusion" is just a matter of two deuterium nuclei deciding to get married. If we look at them in isolation, there is a large Coulomb barrier, and if the two nuclei are all that are present, the only way to put them together is with high energy that overcomes the barrier, like temperatures of millions of degrees. Are you also aware that cold fusion is an accepted reality, it is actually not controversial? I.e., muon-catalyzed fusion, in which a muon catalyzes the approach, brings the two lovers together at low energies?

It's pretty simple, actually. Normal deuterium fusion taking place in a plasma, which is where it was primarily studied, results in one of three reaction pathways, it's described in the article.

D + D → He + 24 MeV

In high energy experiments, this intermediary has been observed to quickly decay through three pathways:

n + He + 3.3 MeV (50%)

p + H + 4.0 MeV (50%)

He + γ + 24 MeV (10)

Conservation of momentum, if this is happening in isolation, requires that the energy result in at least two products, so in the first reaction, we get a neutron and a helium-3 nucleus flying off in opposite directions; in the second reaction, it's a proton and tritium, and in the third, normally rare, it's helium and a gamma ray. Now, all the products have been reported in low-energy experiments, but the levels of neutrons or Helium-3 or tritium that have been found are far, far below those that would be expected to explain the reported excess heat. Whatever is happening isn't standard fusion as was previously studied.

Perhaps the best way to introduce you to the subject of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science would be to suggest that you look at Iwamura. The paper is published in reliable source, and its been cited a bit, I discuss it below. http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/IwamuraYelementalaa.pdf is a hosted copy of the paper; can't create the link because one of our friends arranged to have the whole library of papers at lenr-canr.org globally blacklisted, another story for another day. Iwamura does have an operating hypothesis that has guided his experiments, and it led him to try something nobody had tried before. Long story short, he takes bulk palladium and sputters thin layers of calcium oxide and palladium onto it, followed by a somewhat thicker layer of palladium. The process creates very pure layers of these materials. Then a very thin layer of cesium or strontium is deposited onto the surface. The experimental apparatus includes equipment for X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, allowing determination of the chemical composition of the surface of the test material without removing it from the apparatus. The experimental chamber is then filled with deuterium gas at atmospheric pressure; the other side of the palladium is maintained at low pressure. The deuterium gas dissociates at the surface of the thin palladium layer and diffuses through the bulk palladium, recombining on the other side to reform deuterium gas. At intervals (2 days to 1 week), the deuterium is evacuated from the chamber and the surface of the test piece is analyzed by XPS. "New elements that did not exist on the test piece at the beginning of the experiment can be detected. Usually this process is repeated a few times to observe the time dependence of the given or newly generated elements." Then the chamber is filled with nitrogen. "The test piece is removed from the chamber and its surface is analyzed by secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS). SIMS is a surface analysis technique in which energetic primary ions impact the surface and generate secondary ions, which are subsequently mass-separated and detected. SIMS is capable of analyzing all the elements with isotopic discrimination."

I advise reading the paper carefully. This paper was reviewed by one of the reviewers for the 2004 DOE report, who obviously didn't pay much attention, completely missing important experimental details and observations, and mistaking an observation for a theory that, of course, the reviewer rejected as impossible. What Iwamura found is that as the element originally on the surface disappears, a new element takes its place. Strontium disappears, Molybdenum appears, but not just any isotope of molybdenum, the mass spectroscopy reveals that it is almost entirely Molybdenum-96, very different from natural Mo, which is distributed between isotopes weighing from 92 to 100 daltons. Strontium was mostly Sr-88. This fits with a reaction where fusion of four deuterons with a Strontium nucleus has taken place. The four protons bump Strontium to Molybdenum in atomic number, 38 to 42, and the four neutrons plus the four protons bump the weight from 88 to 96. Likewise Cesium (No. 55, mass 133) becomes Praseodymium (No. 59, mass 141). When the experiment is run with hydrogen instead of deuterium, no transmutations are seen.

A big complaint about the excess heat experiments is that they were -- originally -- short on evidence of nuclear ash, i.e, the reaction products. Here, there is nothing but reaction product. No radiation, and the heat generated from this level of fusion would be below detectable levels (I think, and they didn't try).

The DOE reviewer wrote (also quoted below):

The analytical results, from a variety of techniques, such as mass spectroscopy and electron spectroscopy, are very nice. It seems difficult at first glance to dispute the results. However, the Japanese workers conclude, not that the elements in question are constituents from the interior of the Pd that migrated to the surface, but that they are the products of sequential nuclear reactions, in which changes of atomic number and atomic mass of 4 and 8 are preferred.

From a nuclear physics perspective, such conclusions are not to be believed ...

This is precisely what many observers have claimed about the whole cold fusion affair. Experimental results are discarded in favor of theoretical rejection. This reviewer comes up with a hypothesis, a simple one, but it was, indeed, so simple that Iwamura explicitly considered it in the paper, did the reviewer notice this? My guess is not. When someone has their mind made up, it is really, really easy to overlook contradictory details. The values of 4 and 8 are observations, not theory, based on quite precise measurements. There are numerous reasons why the migration hypothesis is preposterous, described below, isotopic composition being one. Another would be the mystery, then, of why a thin layer of Strontium becomes Molybdenum, so we'd have palladium contaminated with Molybdenum. Fine, that sounds possible. But wait, when we layer on Cesium, we get Praseodymium. What happened to the Molybdenum, it was scared of the Cesium?. No, there are only two reasonable explanations that I can think of: there was nuclear transformation under circumstances where classical theory would predict none, or there was fraud. Given that other, independent researchers have reported evidence for nuclear transformations, just not so precisely and simply and clearly, fraud is not likely. There are now many different experimental situations which have shown evidence of nuclear transformation (which includes fusion), and it's continued since the 2004 DOE review, where many reviewers were already convinced that there was something worthy of investigation, they just didn't think the time was ripe for a federally-funded program. Remember who was in office then? -- not that this would have influenced the reviewers, necessarily, but it might have shaped the conclusions of the report.

How much of this could go in the article is still quite unclear to me, but there is plenty of RS on various aspects of this whole affair, enough to keep us busy for a while. --Abd (talk) 03:29, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The only thing that bothers me about all this transmutation stuff is that it is a variation of the original theme. To the extent that, say, Strontium sequentially fuses with four deuteriums and becomes Molybdenum, ordinary physicists should (1) state that this is more difficult to occur (thanks to Coulomb repulsion) than deuteriums fusing with each other, and (2) state that if Sr does undergo fusions with deuterons to become Mo, then it would be completely logical to accept the idea that deuterium-only cold fusion can happen (regardless of not knowing how). Other than mentioning in this article that sort of support for the original form of cold fusion, all the transmutation stuff might best belong in its own article--or perhaps added to the existing nuclear transmutation article. V (talk) 05:40, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't follow. "The only thing that bothers me about all this transmutation stuff is that it is a variation of the original theme." - why does that bother you? "...then it would be completely logical to accept the idea that " no it wouldn't. reasonable to consider, maybe, but not "completely logical" - though it may recondition one's ontological priors to make it seem more plausible, it doesn't make follow logically. and this is supposed to be why it isn't relevant?!? It seems to me like that would make it more relevant. "Other than mentioning in this article that sort of support for the original form of cold fusion, all the transmutation stuff might best belong in its own article..." why? you assert this, but you never make a case for it. Kevin Baas 13:53, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Elsewhere on this discussion page is at least one remark to the effect that the main topic of the article is the idea of D+D fusion occuring inside solid metal at ordinary temperatures. The transmutation stuff seems to have been discovered as a side-effect. So, logically, in the article, it could be mentioned, but it need not be given a lot of space in this article; it's different enough from D+D fusion to deserve a separate article (because other atoms, such as the Strontium mentioned, have quite a few layers of electron shells to inhibit fusion-type transmutations). V (talk) 14:09, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Besides the significance of the material due to its corroborating nature, many people take the approach that a theory which explains D+D fusion phenomena should also explain the transmutation phenomena (this is consistent with "theory"). While I don't have any problem with there being a separate page for these transmutation results - or one on the broader topic of C.M.N.S. (after all, wikipedia is not paper), I think there should always be a summary of the transmutation results in this article in due proportion to its relevance both as corroborating material and as (potentially) theoretically bound. And in the absence of any article on CMNS or C.M.N.-transmutation, the phenomena should be described here in sufficient detail to elucidate its full scope and significance - at least insofar as the critics and supporters are concerned. Kevin Baas 15:13, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, it should be easy enough to create a "stub" page for CMNS, and likely the very first thing on it should be a note to the effect that many physicists regard the notion as preposterous as perpetual motion. That should at least prevent immediate deletion of the page. I see that when I typed the phrase into the Misplaced Pages search box, it redirected to the CF article. I'm not sure how to intercept that and put a stub-article in its place. Be my guest? Later, of course, plenty more information can be added to it, as we decide what should belong there and what should belong here.

I see I neglected to explain the "completely logical" thing that you questioned. It's quite simple: the Coulomb repulsion between two deuterons is far less than the repulsion between a deuteron and any heavy nucleus like strontium's, so any mechanism that can overcome the latter, enabling fusion, can also overcome the former. V (talk) 16:49, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) Ahem! Condensed matter nuclear science. Here is the basic issue: it was concluded long ago that mere chemistry, including the condensed state, could not affect nuclear reactions; there are quite a few reasons why this idea is reasonable. However, it's not at all clear that there was a dedicated effort to look for such reactions. When the P-F work became known, others started to look for evidence of LENR. My guess is that there are actually quite a number of different pathways to low energy nuclear reactions, it is not just one mechanism, which would explain why there are such inconsistent results as to radiation and nuclear ash. Yes. If elemental transformation is possible, as Iwamura reports, D-D fusion might be easier. So it's related. But we really should have at least two articles: Condensed matter nuclear science (go to the link then, from the redirected from link at the top, you can quickly get to the redirected article and look at the history to get the most recent version before the redirect. You can also look at Talk:Condensed matter nuclear science directly. The other article would be on the history. --Abd (talk) 17:56, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Iwamura

http://jjap.ipap.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle?magazine=JJAP&volume=41&number=7R&page=4642-4650 Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. Vol. 41 (2002) pp. 4642–4650

convenience copy: http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/IwamuraYelementalaa.pdf (cannot be linked due to blacklist)

This is, of course, a stunning piece of work. Does anyone know what critical or other response it has received outside of the cold fusion community (where he has been widely cited)? Iwamura is reporting nothing less than total transformation of elements in a very thin film in an experimental setup where he could monitor the elemental composition of the film, taking place under highly controlled conditions, during the experiments, using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.

We noticed that a certain rule exists between given and produced elements. The increase in mass number is 8, and the increase in atomic number is 4. At present, we do not have a complete theory that can explain the obtained experimental results without a few assumptions. However, if several assumptions are accepted, they are basically explained by the EINR model,(5) which is one of the working hypotheses in the investigation of the nature of this phenomenon.

5) Y. Iwamura, T. Itoh, N. Gotoh and I. Toyoda: Fusion Technol. 33 (1998) 476.

Now, this paper is mentioned in the 2004 DOE reviewer submissions. Lenr-canr.org claims to have obtained a copy of the 18 individual review papers, ( http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/DOEusdepartme.pdf ) and this is in Review 7:

The paper by Iwamura et al. presented at ICCF10 (Ref. 47 in DOE31) does an exhaustive job of using a variety of modern analytical chemistry methods to identify elements produced on the surface of coated Pd cold-fusion foils. . . .

The analytical results, from a variety of techniques, such as mass spectroscopy and electron spectroscopy, are very nice. It seems difficult at first glance to dispute the results. However, the Japanese workers conclude, not that the elements in question are constituents from the interior of the Pd that migrated to the surface, but that they are the products of sequential nuclear reactions, in which changes of atomic number and atomic mass of 4 and 8 are preferred.

From a nuclear physics perspective, such conclusions are not to be believed ...

Storms and Rothwell -- http://www.lenr-canr.org/Collections/DoeReview.htm#Report -- respond:

... The anomalous element could not migrate from the interior of the palladium because:

1. Deuterium atoms, flowing from the surface to the interior, would cause diffusion of the anomalous element away from the surface, not toward the surface.

2. Mass spectroscopy done at various depths shows that the anomalous element was not present in the palladium.

3. The element that was originally on the surface disappears at the same rate as the anomalous element appears.

4. The isotopes of the anomalous element are unnatural, and the isotope shifts are exactly what are expected should the missing element transmute into the new element

It's extremely clear that the reviewer dismissed Iwamura by making up another explanation that anyone understanding the Iwamura report could see could not be possible. Iwamura actually considers the possibility that the entire substrate contained the element that appears (it's a rare element, so I think he uses an upper limit for its possible abundance in the base material); if all the atoms in the substrate migrated to the surface, they could indeed account for the observed effect, but this, then, would violate the laws of thermodynamics. And, of course, there is the detail that the effect doesn't occur with hydrogen diffusion in place of deuterium, and the objections above. The numbers 4 and 8 are significant, of course, because they would represent the absorption of 4 deuterons by each atom of the element being transmuted.

In any case, the real point would be not the unbelievability of Iwamura's "conclusions," but his experimental data. Iwamura simply noted that the element disappearing and the element appearing differed in atomic number by 4 and mass number by 8. That's an experimental observation, not actually a conclusion. The reviewer seems quite confused.

Absolutely, it's a stunning result. But is it so stunning that it should be hidden under a rock? (Note that we aren't hiding this one, it's cited in the article.)

No matter how clear this becomes to me, or to anything short of a consensus of editors, I don't see anything yet to use in the article about the 2004 DOE review, except to note that the Iwamura paper is in a peer-reviewed journal and is reliable source, and it's possible that more of it could be used.

The individual reviews cast some severe doubt on the comments made earlier in debate over the reporting of the DOE review that the mention of continued research was mere boilerplate. There is very substantial support for research with some reviewers. As I've said, this isn't actually a fringe science, fringe science doesn't get that kind of support from a body of scientists chosen to advise the DOE.

Here is what I'd personally say about Iwamura. He is either a gross fraud or he has proven beyond reasonable doubt low-energy nuclear reactions. It's not an easy experiment to reproduce, but it could be done, and there is other work that supports that something like this is happening. There is reason why scientific frauds are essentially run out of town on a rail, they can cause tremendous damage, wasted effort, and all that. It's understandable that the scientific community was upset with Fleischmann, but it was also largely their own fault: they rushed to try to duplicate the work, not realizing the complications and difficulties, not waiting for full information, etc. There are DOE reviewers who strongly confirmed that more research is needed, but note that Iwamura's technique and many of the other techiques, including Pons-Fleischmann's original work, are not necessarily scalable to energy-generating applications, it's entirely possible that they would remain scientific curiosities that only take place under very unusual circumstances, and not scalable. Iwamura's work is done in a near-vacuum, the element to be transmuted is sputtered on, making a very thin film, and the level of reaction was very low, the released heat predictable from the conversion of mass to energy would still have been undetectable. But the scientific implications are spectacular. Iwamura essentially watched the transmutation taking place, very precisely. Occam's razor.

But one point could make it quickly into the article. The full nature of Iwamura's report is still not revealed in the article, and the article cited as if it were a refutation of Iwamura was written prior to the Iwamura publication, it mentions earlier reports of transmutation, much less specific and much less well-measured. Remember, Iwamura is reporting 100% conversion, under conditions of high purity. No batch problems, no "sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't." --Abd (talk) 00:52, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Iwamura's XPS work has been discussed before, by a published scientist in the field whose opinion of the work was much less favorable than yours. Perhaps you should consider the science before making the sweeping claim that either Iwamura's a fraud or those who doubt this work are being unreasonable. You do not appear to have considered that the reviewer might have dismissed Iwamura for good reason- that he made claims his experimental data did not support. There are a number of ways this data can be misinterpreted (mistaking S₃ for Mo is one way that appears to have happened.)

Thanks for the support Noren. You might find this amusing:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090304/sc_livescience/modernproblemeveryonesanexpert Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:51, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Noren, the possible S/Mo confusion is interesting, for sure, but Iwamura did not just report Sr/Mo transmutation, he also reported Cs/Pr transmutation. And two different spectrographic techniques must conspire to form the same error. I have not reviewed or seen the work Shanahan refers to, and it wasn't cited, as far as I noticed, in the prior discussion. Perhaps Shanahan can fix that. My comments were mostly based on the DOE reviewer's comment, which was ... terrible. The reviewer's job was to consider new evidence, and instead the reviewer's position apparently was, this would contradict theory, so however good the evidence looks, it must be wrong. A claim that Iwamura made a specific error, such as S/Mo, while it seems unlikely to me given how many ducks have to line up, is on another level. A claim that Iwamura's work is discredited because someone made up a possible but not demonstrated error, though, would be inappropriate. A doubt would have been raised, and, yes, if a series of such can be found, it then becomes possible to consider Iwamura wrong without being fraudulent. When I give my feelings about this work, it's not been approved by my lawyer, and every possible implication or meaning may not have been considered. I'll say it again, now that you know this. Iwamura's work is fraud or conclusive. But, of course, I haven't seen that paper Shanahan refers to.

In the Talk page discussion, V made the comment that transmutation isn't necessarily fusion. That's correct. It can be fission. What Iwamura reported would be fusion. Sr disappears, Mo appears. Cs disappears, Pr appears. The product is heavier than the raw material, Mo is Sr plus 4 D, Pr is Cs plus 4 D. Absolutely, I don't blame anyone for being skeptical. This just is not supposed to happen. --Abd (talk) 03:22, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, posting links and information here does not always lead to others choosing to read them. Had you read the previous discussion of the topic I referred to you would know this, but I'll excerpt it here: "The problem comes in insuring they are not simple contaminants arising from simple chemical effects or in misidentifying anomalous peaks with the wrong element. The Iwamura XPS results fall in this latter category. The 'Pr' could also be identified as Cu, which is much more common, and the Mo (in XPS) was actually S, as per Mizuno's ICCF14 abstract." The alleged Cs/Pr transmutation was also addressed, as was the other experimental technique. I'll say this again, now that you know this. Iwamura's work was sloppy and optimistic. Occam's razor was ignored by Iwamura, he jumped to an exotic interpretation of his data without first considering the more mundane possibilities. --Noren (talk) 13:54, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Now he did not make claims that his experimental data did not support. I believe what you meant to say is that he put forth a hypothesis that his experimental data did not conclusively confirm. Because, for instance, there are ways that "the data could be misinterpreted" - things that could trick the equipment or person reading it. but this does not mean that you should jump to the conclusion that the proper precautions were not taken AND that tricks did in fact occur (even thou you have no evidence of this) - (which many critics - even "scientific" ones! - seem to do). rather, the thing to do then is to figure out how one could avoid being thus tricked, and find out if the experimenter had taken such precautions. and if not, to do the experiment again with said precautions. one clearly can't do this in a criticism published before the experimenters' results - because the experimenters have not yet told you what they did. but this piece of logic (and others like it) doesn't seem to stop - or even slow - pseudo-skeptics. Kevin Baas 15:10, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The 2002 Iwamura paper we are discussing was not convincing to the scientists who peer reviewed it in the (reliable secondary source) 2004 DoE review- published 2 years later.

I do not know of anyone who self-identifies as a pseudo-skeptic. The term is used here as a pejorative, and is inappropriate for this discussion. --Noren (talk) 13:54, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

The term is innately pejorative. (and aptly so - a person who employs unreason in the guise of reason is a burden on any society.) But that does not make the term inappropriate in every circumstance. Hell, we have (or section, rather) on it. A person who takes the above descripted approach in spite of logic undoubtedly meets the definition of "pseudo-skeptic". In that sense, it is relevant to what I was saying. And it is not directed at anyone in particular. Also, said fallacy is surprisingly common and it is important to distinguish it from real skepticism. (Pseudo-skepticism is just bad for the brain.) So what I said was relevant and important. And though I concede that the "...doesn't seem to stop..." aspect was an opinion, it is consistent w/the nature of pseudo-skepticism: it is persistent (stubbornly) in the face of contrary logic - unable to absorb any information that contradicts it. In fact, that is one of the ways to recognize pseudoskepticism - one of the ways to distinguish it from real skepticism.

Now above I just enumerated the difference between a real skeptic and a pseudoskeptic - and what they would do (or at least believe the proper course to be) in the example situation (i acknowledge the existence of a third position - that of saying "it's not important or promising enough to continue experimenting" ). I give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are, like me, a real (scientific) skeptic. I communicated this when I said "I believe what you meant to say is..." The rest of the paragraph was just meant to elucidate that difference, and why it is important. Kevin Baas 14:01, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

There was an RfC on the question Is this topic fringe?- the result was yes. You may want to consider the fact that your opinion on this matter is counter to consensus. --Noren (talk) 07:20, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

You may want to read WP:Fringe and the comments on Is this topic fringe? referring to it. I say this because you seem to be misinterpreting the consensus and/or policy. Kevin Baas 15:10, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Please indicate where in the two short sentences above that you perceive that I misinterpreted either of those things. --Noren (talk) 13:54, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I should have probably been more clear. I was refering to the fact that many of the people who voted "yes" commented that they did so on account of the broadness of the definition under WP:Fringe. For example, you can take a look at my comment on the vote. Interperting "Fringe" (as it pertains to WP) too narrowly can result in actions contrary to policy and consensus. Also, the broadness of the definition in WP:Fringe has implications to how the such topics should be treated, which if I'm not mistaken are spelled out on the page. Let me end by saying that I'm responding more to a feeling/sense I get of your response than any specific thing you said. If I am mistaken, then just interpret this as a general word of caution. Kevin Baas 14:08, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Kevin. Noren, "opinion" "counter to consensus"? Consensus does not apply to opinions, it applies to edits and text, and to tendentious argument, sometimes. And consensus can change. If there were a problem with having an opinion counter to "consensus," meaning some determination of consensus in the past, then it would be impossible for it to change. I have given strong evidence that the topic is not fringe, I'd even say conclusive evidence. It is, however, commonly regarded as fringe, and, then, we face a true and difficult issue, the role of an encyclopedia when it comes to knowledge. Should an encyclopedia reflect "common knowledge," which boils down to opinion, or should it reflect "informed opinion" which requires basis in fact. It is typically possible to find sources for both, and the classical answer is "both." However, thanks for the pointer to the RfC. I'll examine it carefully and come back. --Abd (talk) 15:24, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Consensus can change, but I would nevertheless suggest that you carefully consider the existing consensus. Repeated, verbose, and/or emphatic exclamations of support for a claim do not make it true, nor can or should they trump a reliable source that disagrees with that claim. We do have a reliable source, the 2004 DoE review, that explicitly considered the 2002 Iwamura paper among others and found neither it nor the other submitted papers conclusive in demonstrating Cold Fusion.

I perceive that we do face a difficult problem, an area where common knowledge and informed opinion coincide, but where there is a determined minority who disagree with both. In this case the predominant view of the article should reflect what is both informed opinion and common knowledge, but the determined minority will never accept this, leading to prolonged and difficult conflict. --Noren (talk) 13:54, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

As long as CF-related phenomena are not completely understood, there will be political issues associated with this article. Even if the pendulum swings toward a pro-CF view, there will be a minority of opponents. Is there not still a "Flat Earth Society"? At the moment, part of the problem is the definition of "reliable source". For some info on how so-called "reliable sources" can be mistaken, read the Arhennius article. Or consider the various remarks about scientific progress on this page: http://atmoz.org/blog/2008/07/29/planck-and-science/ --possibly the first of Clarke's three laws is relevant, too. Now I recognize that the body of self-consistent scientific knowlegde has grown to such a size that most things that don't fit (like perpetual motion) simply can't fit, and generally the old fogeys of Science are right most of the time. But their knowledge does not make them omniscient, and they are still human enough to be able to occasionally jump to an incorrect conclusion. In the case of the excess heat of most CF experiments, we have the Chemists' Club offering some support for their own (knowing their required calorimetry skills), and the Physicists' Club denying the evidence, mostly because of how it was interpreted. I object! That is not the way Science works. And so there is no rationale for this article to be biased toward that denial-of-evidence, by excluding information that could be relevant to a pro-CF explanation. Even if a non-CF explanation comes along that correctly explains the heat, that is better than denying the evidence and exluding data (it could be historically useful). V (talk) 18:18, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

As to your claim that "they rushed to try to duplicate the work, not realizing the complications and difficulties, not waiting for full information, etc." How do you reconcile this with the 1992 through 1997, $20 million Japanese research program on Cold Fusion that ended with the conclusion that, "We couldn't achieve what was first claimed in terms of cold fusion"? Is it your contention that this 5 year effort was a rush job that didn't wait for full information? --Noren (talk) 07:29, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

That was a different experimental; a different apparatus; a different setup; a different design. that's like saying the wright brothers were wrong about the possibility of human flight because of the many failed experiments before them. As Thomas Edison discovered himself, there are over a hundred ways not to make a light bulb. Kevin Baas 15:10, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Interjection in the name of accuracy: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/747226.html V (talk) 22:45, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

The "rush" refers to the early work, not to the later work. Noren, they rushed. We have reliable source for that. Are you questioning that? That other researchers, later, were more careful, doesn't contradict that at all. As to the NY Times report, I'm not satisfied that they are reporting their sources in a balanced way, the impression of "failure to confirm" was so strong at that point, in spite of plenty of publication to the contrary, that what was really a funding decision and not a scientific one (it was more of an engineering decision, where do you allocate resources likely to produce profitable results?), is being reported as if it were a scientific decision, a search for replication, when, I'm pretty sure, that kind of money was being spent on efforts that would scale. And until you have the basic experiment solid, scaling is way premature. Reliable replication didn't start to appear until the next decade, if I'm correct. In any case, what peer-reviewed publication came out of the Japanese effort?

Here is the point about "rush." Many groups rushed to confirm. Because of the rush, shortcuts were taken, and so failure to confirm could have been because there was nothing to confirm, or it could have been because shortcuts were taken. However, a rush of failure-to-confirm reports, then, came to be seen as proof that there was nothing there, and this was a perversion of normal scientific process, which is the big story here. Both sides screwed up, leaving us with a situation where ongoing work doesn't receive sufficient respect to enjoy either confirmation or rejection. There is now a paucity of anti-cold fusion publication in peer-reviewed publications. Yet there are truly remarkable claims being made in RS. Iwamura is an example. The only review of Iwamura that I've seen, from outside the CF field, is that comment by the DOE reviewer, which was preposterous. It boils down to, "impressive work, too bad your experimental results are impossible." In other words, cold fusion can be rejected out-of-hand because it is impossible, and it is impossible because ... why? CF not only does not violate any basic laws of physics, we know CF happens, with muons. We also know that momentum transfer to a lattice is possible, under some conditions, which would explain the low radiation. Fleischmann points out that cold fusion apparently violates certain laws of Quantum mechanics, but that these laws are known to be inadequate to deal with condensed matter, which is better addressed with Quantum electrodynamics. --Abd (talk) 15:56, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

A Chinese View on Summary of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2301330/A-Chinese-View-on-Summary-of-Condensed-Matter-Nuclear-Science

Li, X.Z., et al., "A Chinese View on Summary of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science," Journal of Fusion Energy, Vol. 23(3), p. 217-221, (2004) Cites Iwamura. --Abd (talk) 01:04, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

The journal is an engineering journal, most articles are related to hot fusion. --Abd (talk) 01:39, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

(At least this one does have an impact factor, no need to reply to thos comment, please) --Enric Naval (talk) 02:25, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Very cool web site. I'm annoyed that Science and Nature are listed under Cell & Molecular Biology but I can deal with it. Based on this analysis the Journal of Fusion Energy is completely isolated from the scientific community. What warrants including this citation in this article?--OMCV (talk) 02:29, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

It's not the most reliable or well regarded journal, but I think the journal easily passes reasonable reliability standards, unlike the rather laughable Frontiers. It just needs to be understood that this isn't a particularly well regarded journal, and weighted appropriately. Phil153 (talk) 02:43, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Laughter is healthy, contempt is not. What, by the way, is wrong with the Frontiers series as reliable sources? Specifics? --Abd (talk) 02:49, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Whether a particular document is a "reliable" source depends on how that document is used in the article. The Chinese paper could be used as a reliable source that a particular person reported a certain result, but it shouldn't if it reports something dramatic like that the whole field changed because of that result. This is why I keep asking people to focus on EDITS first rather than sources. Olorinish (talk) 03:57, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

That's right, Olorinish, usage does depend on context. However, that is not the only approach, and when a topic is highly controversial, some background discussion first can make the later process much more efficient. If you want to focus on edits, please, be my guest. Participating in background discussion and consideration of sources in general is totally optional. Don't read it if you don't find it useful. Please. When I edit the article and I write, See Talk, then, yes, you should look for a Talk page comment specifically about that edit, especially before reverting it! --Abd (talk) 04:10, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Contemptable sources deserve contempt. The Frontiers article is an embarassment to the writer, the review board, and the publisher, and not because of conclusions. Similar conclusions are reached in the above paper, and in Storms, and I'm advocating for inclusion of those sources with appropriate weight.

About journal reliablility generally, I think the RS pages make the point well, although they are not clear enough and sometimes you have to go to example subpages. I'll have to tackle this on the RS pages to make them clearer.

The trouble is that there are tens of thousands of journals, and many of them are willing to publish all kinds of things for the right fee, or because a big name person is writing it or has influence, or because they're new and eager for articles. Often a key person on the editorial board is biased in a particular way or has peculiar opinions, and this reflects in what goes into the journal, regardless of peer review. The reputation of a particular journal matters a great deal in how reliable an academic, peer reviewed source is considered. This is even true among reliable publishers; some journals deliberately have more open policies allowing for speculative dialogue, which are not considered as anything but speculative dialogue by their peers.

This is why the ISI listings and eigenfactor rankings are so important, and why our RS pages states the vast majority of well regarded jouranls are indexed by the ISI web". A journal that is not cited by its peers cannot be considered reliable, because it indicates that the articles in it or the journal's reputation generally are worth much to those peers. This especially raises a WP:REDFLAG when the claims are extraordinary ones, and there is other evidence of poor scholarship or care.

RS is not a yes/no thing; the only thing binary is automatic exclusion of the worst sources such as self published works. A journal can have serious issues as to reliability and respectability in the field, in which case the things it references are close to worthless, especially in topics where it contradicts general mainstream views. Phil153 (talk) 04:22, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Which is one more reason why major journals, having taken the stand that CF is nonsense, must continue to keep that stand. After all, should they be proved wrong, with CF becoming mainstream science, they will be the ones contradicting the mainstream, and thus unrespectable! V (talk) 13:15, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but Nature and Science and Physical Review A don't stop being industry leading journals because they publish a paper supportive of cold fusion. On the flip side, if they're the first to break credible research or reviews vindicating a major new field or theory, the upside is massive. Your suggestion is just conspiracy theory with lipstick on it.

The point is that many of the tens of thousands of journals with low citation indexes and little regard in the field lack many good reasons to exercise care, and have plenty of causes to publish less than careful work. Just like The Baupville Daily News or North Korean Herald have far fewer reasons to be accurate than the New York Times. Phil153 (talk) 13:55, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Please identify the uncivil comments that I made, as I did with those that V made in the last paragraph of the section that you hid from view. Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:35, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Kirk, Noren came to my Talk page and requested I respond to you. As you know, I'm trying to encourage your participation here, and that of other editors as well. This page isn't the place to deal with allegations of incivility except as they are affecting our community process; my judgment was of the exchange, not so much of each editor; an exchange like that takes two people, and while it may be easy to point out what one is "doing wrong," the fact is that the other is a part of it, and might be more subtly provoking the responses. My goal here is for discussions like that to cease, and certainly not to pin guilt on any specific person. If you want me to respond to this, which would require that I review your contributions personally and critically, please ask my on my Talk page, and I will respond, in this case, on yours. I certainly should not do it here, absent some special reason why all the editors of this article should see it. --Abd (talk) 17:11, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) However, all this only applies to balance when there are questions of conflict in sources. While there may be journals which are financially motivated (payment for publication), even these kill their own golden goose if they fail to be selective; but a journal like Frontiers of Physics in China has strong motivation to have good standards. The whole purpose of the Frontiers of "X" in China series is to raise respect for Chinese science, and the Chinese government is behind it as well as serious money. Cold fusion appears to be considered a respectable field in China, and the article that led to the title of this section simply reflects that. I'll remind editors that the publisher of FPC is Higher Education Press, and I wonder if there is any larger publisher in the world that doesn't have an article here yet. They are roughly number 45; and they are in active cooperation with Thomson Reuters, which is number one in the world, and which considers FPC to have very high standards (citations for this have been provided elsewhere, above. Some editors here may think the journal "laughable," but that does little more than expose their POV and bias. It's clear that, since they publish in English, they need a better copy editor! Absolutely, I don't deny that there are problems with FPC, but "laughable," they are not. This will all be tested if edits are asserting using information from FPC, which I expect is likely. --Abd (talk) 16:05, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Again with the accusations of POV and bias. Reliable does not just apply to source conflicts, it's a sliding scale, and it also applies to general conflicts with mainstream understanding. Please read very carefully and absorb WP:REDFLAG. It's part our core content policies. Phil153 (talk) 16:24, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Sometimes it feels like swimming through molasses here. How do we know what "mainstream understanding" is? Does it appear, lotus-born? Or is it based on what we find in reliable sources? I'll stand with it. While WP:RS isn't a rigid standard, we should not pick and choose among reliable sources, unless there is *conflict* between them, and there is no conflict with a "mainsream understanding" unless there is a reliable source regarding that understanding. So the conflict is between two sources, (or sources on one side and sources on the other); further, the determination that there is conflict is itself a complex task, sometimes. If it requires synthesis, it can get dicey. If there is reliable source on the conflict itself, much better (perhaps a third source that covers the first two).

Suppose that we have source A which makes a statement, and it's in the article. Then I come up with source B, which says something different. It seems contradictory to me. Can I put in the article, "however, contradicting this, B asserts that ..."? I'd say that, generally, absent clear consensus or reliable source on the contradiction, not just A and B (let's assume they don't mention each other), we shouldn't assert contradiction. If it is acceptable to the editors, just saying, "however, B asserts that," may be okay, but even putting the statements together like that implies contradiction, so caution is in order.

There is no way to find NPOV without respect for consensus and consensus process. Which often takes a lot of discussion. --Abd (talk) 20:42, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Whitelisting lenr-canr.org and newenergytimes.com?

By the way, if anyone else is irritated by the fact that we have to pussyfoot around the blacklist, and that we have papers referenced in the article for which we can't provide a link where the papers can be freely read, we can request whitelisting of some specific pages, or of the whole sites. (lenr-canr.org is globally blacklisted, newenergytimes.com is locally blacklisted, so whole-site with NET would just be delisting.) I've been somewhat successful at this (with other blacklisted sites, and, with Enric Naval, one lenr-canr.org page). The politics at meta, right now, make it unlikely that we could succeed in globally delisting the whole site globally, but there was, in fact, no sound reason for the blacklisting in the first place; the blacklist is designed to control linkspam, and there wasn't linkspamming, the links alleged as linkspam for lenr-canr.org were like many here in Talk: not links, so blacklisting didn't prevent them. No linkspamming at all was alleged for newenergytimes.com. There is also alleged copyright violation at lenr-canr.org, but consensus at Martin Fleischmann seems to be that this is a non-issue, and no specific violation has reasonably been alleged. That lenr-canr.org is allegedly fringe should be moot; linking to a specific page that is a permitted copy of a paper, as a convenience link, does not dump the reader into a polemic for cold fusion. In any case, there is about zero chance of getting lenr-canr.org delisted globally if we don't have specific pages whitelisted here on en.wikipedia, or a whitelisting of the whole site here, the argument will be made, and it will be effective, that it isn't needed, don't bother them. --Abd (talk) 15:15, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

See Misplaced Pages:Copyrights#Linking_to_copyrighted_works Misplaced Pages:Citing_sources#Convenience links. Note the term "reasonably certain".LeadSongDog (talk) 15:58, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Wow! That whole debate at Talk:Martin_Fleischmann#removal_of_link_to_Fleischmann_account_of_history went by without anybody notifying this page that it was going on until now. In a strange way, that's impressive.LeadSongDog (talk) 16:29, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

(dedent) Since that discussion isn't formally closed as to conclusion, and since it can be reopened even as to subquestions that have been closed, anyone is welcome to join, but I would ask, please, read the preceding discussion first and consider the specific points made, and try to delink the issues, linking of issues is often what keeps us from finding consensus. Further, if there is agreement already expressed there, and you differ, how important is it, because reopening a decided question will take up more time. Decisions in a local RfC-type discussion like that aren't binding, they don't create any kind of precedent that will prevent better decisions from being made in the future. Or at least they shouldn't! However, and this was indeed the intention, they may establish that whatever is agreed there is at least a reasonable decision, to start, not just the unsupported opinion of a deranged tl;dr editor like me.

"We must not X because A and B and C and D and E." "B isn't true." "Maybe, but there are still A and C and D and E." "But D isn't true either!" "It's true!" "(diff showing D is preposterous)". "Maybe, but there are still A and B and C and E. Would you please stop beating a dead horse?"

... and this can go on for a long time. Instead, we can look at A. Is A true? If not, why not? If so, what's the evidence? Why do you believe this? And we can continue doing this, getting more and more specific. In such a process, it becomes really obvious if someone is reasoning from conclusions, and most people, realizing that this just isn't right and that the world will not end if they agree on a narrow point with someone "on the other side," will back down, and agree on the specific point or suggest some acceptable compromise (or shut up and go away). It can become a habit, and points of agreement build. And I've seen this kind of process result in total agreement when previously the sides were digging their heels in.

"But A and B are connected!" Fine. We still should try to find agreement on them separately, then, once we understand and agree on each subissue, we can consider possible connections before addressing a higher-level question.

Just in case someone thinks otherwise, this process often will not lead to X. It will lead to something else that enjoys higher consensus. I.e., perhaps argument A came to be considered valid, and action Y satisfied the concern, as well as the concerns of those proposing X. But when we have a big pile of issues, fringe linkspam copyvio uncivil alters documents kook SPA nonsense conflict of interest block evasion banned unnecessary anyway, WTF do we begin?

We find consensus by pursuing, at least initially, one little teeny-tiny question at a time.

As to the page and section on linking, I don't see the term "reasonably certain" there, and we are not obligated by policy or copyright law to be "reasonably certain" that there is no violation; indeed, read the guideline, it's the opposite: we should not link if we "know that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of the creator's copyright," and the relevant case law cited has to do with "Knowingly and intentionally directing others to a site that violates copyright." When I noticed the blacklisting (I'm here because of that, not the reverse, I did not arrive at this article with an agenda), I asked a knowledgeable administrator, DGG, about the copyright issue. I think his opinions are cited there, and he showed up to confirm it (as he did previously on the blacklist pages). And that is fully consistent with policy and guidelines, and I haven't the foggiest what LeadSongDog was trying to point to. --Abd (talk) 18:20, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

My apologies, I forgot that I had clicked through from Misplaced Pages:Citing_sources#Convenience links, which is where the actual words were. Now refactored.LeadSongDog (talk) 20:27, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. This is what the referenced guideline says:

A "convenience link" is a link to a copy of your source on a webpage provided by someone other than the original publisher or author. For example, a copy of a newspaper article no longer available on the newspaper's website may be hosted elsewhere. When offering convenience links, it is important to be reasonably certain that the convenience copy is a true copy of the original, without any changes or inappropriate commentary, and that it does not infringe the original publisher's copyright. Accuracy can be assumed when the hosting website appears reliable, but editors should always exercise caution, and ideally find and verify multiple copies of the material for contentious items.

Where several sites host a copy of the material, the site selected as the convenience link should be the one whose general content appears most in line with Misplaced Pages:Neutral point of view and Misplaced Pages:Verifiability.

The matter of lenr-canr.org and copyright violation has been considered in a number of venues, and the best opinion expressed is that lenr-canr.org is, indeed, quite unlikely to be hosting copyvio. There are a number of basic reasons: The site does claim permission from authors and original publishers for all the content, and the bibliography that they have is far larger than the set of papers they host, I think it's roughly one out of three that is hosted; Rothwell claims that he has thousands of papers that he'd love to put up, but he can't get the permissions. The site is highly visible. If you search for a paper that is hosted, using Google, lenr-canr.org is usually top ranked. The site hosts papers from publishers known to vigorously pursue copyright violation, so we may presume from the long-continued existence of the site, with these papers, that serious copyvio is lacking. The controlling policy is WP:COPYVIO, and the guideline you cited isn't clear on the definition of "reasonably certain," and links are routinely added to the project, without objection, where there is less reason to be "certain" about copyvio. The policy is in line with the law, with actual violation of copyright and contributory infringement.

Lenr-canr.org copies are only proposed for two purposes: convenience copies of papers cited in articles, where the paper is not otherwise available except through cumbersome or expensive procedures to get a copy, and for discussion in Talk. It's pretty hard to intelligently discuss a source if the interested editors can't all read it.

We show the URL anyway, the blacklisting only prevents the convenience of a direct link. --Abd (talk) 02:45, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Is it "cumbersome or expensive" to visit a library, or would you advocate that we should rely on the quality of journals too obscure for major libraries and journal databases to justify subscriptions? LeadSongDog (talk) 04:55, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, we may rely on any source that meets WP:RS standards. It could be an obscure book very difficult to obtain, and it might not be in English, and the only exception I've seen is where an editor came to be considered untrustworthy, this editor was required to use sources in English. And, yes, it can be very "cumbersome or expensive" to visit the necessary library. Given that we could easily avoid the need for this, why are we making it more difficult for readers to find a copy of a paper cited as a source, or mentioned for further reading? LeadSongDog seems to be conflating two issues here. One is reliability and usability, the other, the issue for this section, is the usage of links for papers that are already considered reliable source for the application, they already are cited in the article, and the citation is stable. I don't see that LeadSongDog addresses the issue, but merely confuses it. The guideline that has been cited obviously does encourage the use of "convenience links," and only raises the two obvious issues for consideration: possible copyvio and reliability of that specific copy.

In the case of the link that is already whitelisted, both objections having been considered by knowledgeable editors, in a cautious environment, there is no reason not to use it. I think there are more such that could be whitelisted. They used to be in the article. When editors started removing them, one of the arguments was that there wasn't a problem with a removal because there were three or four other links to lenr-canr.org in the article. They were picked off and finally JzG removed them all and blacklisted the site without discussion.

(There was discussion later, but in a place where a small handful of spam blacklist administrators make decisions, and the tendency there seems to be guilty until proven innocent, it's an odd process, I've been able to rescue one major web site and get a couple of minor fixes. With tremendous effort. They say, "No problem with blacklisting, if you need a link you can always request it be whitelisted." It can be a mountain to climb. With one simple and quite obviously useful link, it sat for over a week with some discussion, JzG raised the copyright issue there as well, but nobody confirmed that, consensus was the opposite. I went to AN with it, where the usual suspects weighed in with the usual contempt. One of the blacklist regulars then closed the whitelist discussion, with the copyright argument, clearly neglecting the whitelisting discussion, but I ended up being confirmed at AN, essentially, and an admin reversed the close and the English interface to the site, lyrikline.org, was totally whitelisted, opening the door to what will probably be hundreds of links in the end, as many as 600, depends on what the community does with the actual edits, so far, none I've put in have been taken out, I think. I've been very noisy about it, too.)

So... coming soon, a link to lenr-canr.org in the article. Probably today. Some editors have been demanding that I actually edit the article. Happy to oblige. --Abd (talk) 17:19, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

The issue of whether a convenience-linked paper is the same as the cited work comes down to trusting or verifying the online library. Given the level of controversy we have had over trusting this particular library, why not simply agree that before adding a link that an editor in good standing will carefully vett the actual cited paper against the one at the convenience link to ensure they are the same? The doubts over copyright permissions are also easily resolved: simply notify the copyright holder that we intend to add the link. If they've granted permission, there won't be a problem. If they haven't, they'll deal with sending a takedown notice. Either way, we haven't contributed to a copyvio.LeadSongDog (talk) 13:36, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Here is why not "agree about before adding the link." There isn't any reason to doubt the accuracy of the copy, it was certainly provided by the author. I'm going to make the edit. It's not copyvio and I don't think there is any reason to doubt the authenticity. If we have to stand on our heads for every reference in the article, the whole process becomes impossibly cumbersome. But if you have some specific reason to doubt this reference, by all means, raise it. --Abd (talk) 02:09, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

As to notifying the copyright holder, I gather that you are volunteering for this task, LSD? If you doubt the link, it would be a service to the project if you did. I presume that the copyright holder(s) would be Tsinghua University Press and/or Martin Fleischmann, and I think that Jed Rothwell, librarian for lenr-canr.org, is tight with both of them. But maybe I'm wrong, and wouldn't egg all over my face look beautiful? --Abd (talk) 02:35, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I've raised the question of whether the meta:OTRS system can be used to enable this process. We'll see what arises.LeadSongDog (talk) 14:36, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) Eh? What would be standard is that an editor does it, and reports the result. Testimony is presumed true unless controverted. What do you need OTRS for? If the Foundation wants to get involved in copyright verification, then such confirmation would be done by the foundation and by trusted volunteers, so, perhaps, OTRS could do it, but consider the volume of such requests that might be needed, if the tight standards being proposed were followed more generally. I'd advise against it. There is no legal risk to the project at the "absence of intention to link to copyvio" level, error in this doesn't establish legal risk, unless error persists after notice. I.e., a copyright holder says, "stop linking to that site!" Much more likely, with links that would be likely to be used here, the page goes dead, as the site pulls it from a copyright infringement notice, or the site goes dead when it ignores that. We really don't need to worry about it with sites like lenr-canr.org or newenergytimes.com; these are sites with known and responsible owners with much to lose if they infringe copyright, and all signs are that they are careful about this. --Abd (talk) 20:02, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Is this the appropriate venue for this discussion? Shouldn't it be taking place on a noticeboard? At the very least, could it be moved to a subpage in order to reduce the clutter on this talk page? Thanks, Verbal chat 20:09, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, this is the appropriate place.

For now, the question was asked, Do we want to use links to these sites, here in discussion if nowhere else? If we don't, why bother the good folks at the noticeboards? If enough of us would want to use them, then I do know how to proceed, but I'm not going to do it without some support. (Note that we do use the sites for reference, frequently, here in Talk, but we have to delink, i.e., not allow a link to show, I usually do it by leaving out the http://, the blacklist then doesn't detect it and block the edit.) --Abd (talk) 00:59, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Bibliography, no present link, hosted on lenr-canr.org

see http://lenr-canr.org/LibFrame1.html

• Beaudette, Charles G. (2002), Excess Heat & Why Cold Fusion Research Prevailed, New York: Oak Grove Press, ISBN 9-9678548-2-2
• Bockris, John (2000), "Accountability and academic freedom: The battle concerning research on cold fusion at Texas A&M University", Accountability Res. 8: 103, doi:10.1080/08989620008573968
• Bush, Ben F.; Lagowski, J. J.; Miles, M. H.; Ostrom, Greg S. (1991), "Helium Production During the Electrolysis of D2O in Cold Fusion", Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry 304: 271–278, doi:10.1016/0022-0728(91)85510-V
• Fleischmann, Martin; Pons, Stanley (1989), "Electrochemically induced nuclear fusion of deuterium", Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry 261 (2A): 301–308, doi:10.1016/0022-0728(89)80006-3
• Fleischmann, Martin; Pons, Stanley; Anderson, Mark W.; Li, Lian Jun; Hawkins, Marvin (1990), "Calorimetry of the palladium-deuterium-heavy water system", Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry 287: 293–348, doi:10.1016/0022-0728(90)80009-U
• Fleischmann, Martin (2003), "Background to cold fusion: the genesis of a concept", Tenth International Conference on Cold Fusion, Cambridge, MA: World Scientific Publishing, ISBN 978-9812565648
• Gozzi, D.; Cellucci, F.; Cignini, P.L.; Gigli, G.; Tomellini, M. (30 September 1997), "X-ray, heat excess and 4He in the D:Pd system", Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry (Elsevier) 435 (1-2): 113–136, doi:10.1016/S0022-0728(97)00297-0

Up to G, more tomorrow, I assume. --Abd (talk) 03:00, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Major lead problems

As currently written, the lead pretty much directly states that muon-catalysed fusion has severe theoretical problems and has been rejected by science

This is because someone keeps making the lead paragraph talk about the broad definition of cold fusion, but has not bothered to transition to the Fleishmann and Pons claims after that point, meaning that the paragraphs discussing problems with Fleishmann and Pons' claims now read as if they applied to a wide array of mainstream physics as well.

Seriously, can't we just through all the mainstream physics stuff into disambiguation and keep the focus of this on the Fleishmann and Pons stuff (and related fringe theories and crankery) that everyone means when they talk about cold fusion nowadays anyway, and just let the broader definition stand as part of a disambiguation link, e.g.

Might have to skip using the template and just write the text in italics (for instance, adding "and related articles" at the end of that would be more accurate, but we could easily disambiguate it, and avoid all these problems. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 04:25, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

It used to have a much better definition in the lead, but it was "simplified" a few days ago here. I'd certainly support restoring the old version of the lead. Not sure about moving this into the disambig section. Phil153 (talk) 04:29, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

We only discuss the one definition in this article, it just confuses matters to act as if we're going to discuss other things too. There are accepted physical processes that were rarely referred to as cold fusion before the events we do discuss, we should make this clear. We should also make it clear they are not what we are discussing. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 21:14, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

I offered a reasonable first paragraph some time ago. Nobody claimed it had a POV problem; they just thought it wasn't "formal" enough for an encyclopedia. Even though you might be aware that most readers would rather not wade through technical jargon. So here, I'll copy it so you can complain about it all over again:

The phrase "Cold Fusion" is a description. Whether or not it is a correct description has been disputed ever since 1989, when it was coined. In that year the electrochemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons described some experiments involving the electrolysis of heavy water, and claimed they had observed quantities of heat energy being released that could not be explained in terms of ordinary chemical interactions. They therefore proposed that the energy could be explained if nuclear fusion reactions were occurring between deuterium nuclei under relatively ordinary physical conditions, far colder than the conditions inside stars, where fusion typically occurs in Nature. It is known that special events such as muon-catalyzed fusion can occur even at liquid-hydrogen temperatures, but it is also known that muons are not available to explain Fleischmann's and Pons' results. Therefore the label "Cold Fusion" exists to describe whatever other mechanism might be able to do that, and that label has persisted in spite of all the conflicting research carried out afterward, some of which directly contradicts the original claims that something unexplainable in terms of chemistry had happened.

This article will describe the original experiment, attempts to duplicate it, variant experiments on the general theme, theoretical objections, ...

(take it from there, folks!) V (talk) 15:16, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I can create a complaint, myself. I think I saw something in the article that indicate the phrase was actually coined before 1989, which if true would require the above to need a revision. V (talk) 13:28, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

From a science standpoint, "cold fusion" is a hypothesis to explain what is commonly called the Fleischmann effect (that page redirects here) and other phenomena. There is much more consensus that the effect exists than for the hypothesis that it is caused by fusion. Note, of course, that the F effect might be caused by some systematic experimental error, in which case the "cause" is that error, not fusion. There is quite possibly less consensus on any specific hypothesis regarding the existence and specific cause of such an error than there is over cold fusion. Shanahan, here and in published work, claims just such an error, a calibration problem, but this would not, of course, explain evidence of radiation and detection of nuclear ash. Another hypothesis would be that CF is a result of experimental bias, i.e., researchers are looking for a thing; failures are not reported, only successes are. This possibility is particularly of concern when individual experiments sometimes "fail," when an effect is difficult to reproduce. There is, however, a remarkable paper presented at ICCF14 (2008) which reports Bayesian analysis of a large number of CF experiments, including many replication failures, and showing that if a simple set of criteria are applied to the experimental reports, experiments meeting all of these criteria (I think there are four) showed excess heat, and those that failed one or more of the criteria were much less likely to show heat. They conclude excess heat under these more-precise conditions is confirmed with high reliability.

One of the most important and unfortunate aspects of the situation was that the hypothesis that cold fusion was the cause became confused with the experimental report of excess heat. The implication that this was cold fusion caused massive premature independent attempts to replicate, based on inadequate information and understanding of the necessary experimental conditions, and, quite simply, it's not surprising that this early failure to replicate existed. To jump from that to a conclusion that the experimental science was bad was, from a scientific point of view, a non-sequitur. It must be said that the conclusion, from the early work, that fusion was taking place was also quite premature. It remained quite controversial even up to 2004, where a majority consulted for the DOE report considered the evidence "not conclusive." But I think a majority also considered that the F effect was real, i.e., that there was more heat than expected, and that further research was warranted.

When I first started looking at this article, I pointed out that the DOE report recommended further research. It was claimed at that time, quite confidently, that this was mere boilerplate, that "they always recommend that." However, if you read the individual reports from the reviewers, it is quite clear that it was a strong opinion, not just bureaucratic hedging. --Abd (talk) 13:33, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

You also made the claim that the majority of the 2004 DoE panel thought that there was excess heat back in January. At the time I pointed out that this characterization was incorrect, that the panel was "evenly split". Was that in any way unclear? --Noren (talk) 07:58, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

On "calibration constant shift"

I'm asking Shanahan to explain for us his work with Calibration Constant Shift, a Guide for the Compleat Idiot on CCS, and I request that comments from others here be directed toward helping Shanahan to effectively and clearly explain it, not to refute it, argue against it. Perhaps, Dr. Shanahan, you could provide us with some text on this that, if we had space, we could put in the article, or you could refer to the old Calorimetry in cold fusion experiments article, which I've rescued from the junkbin at User:Abd/Calorimetry in cold fusion experiments.

Try this: http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Cold_fusion&oldid=239093535 Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:39, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Far too much detail for the article here, possibly even for the calorimetry article if it comes back, we don't need to know the equations, for example (my opinion). My impression is that this criticism of the calorimetry can be argued to apply to some CF experiments showing excess heat, but not to, for example, the Arata work, which shows steady generation of heat without calorimetry at all, merely measurements of heat flow, of interest without controls, but definitive with controls. --Abd (talk) 14:57, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

And this especially, but read the whole page: http://en.wikipedia.org/User_talk:Kirk_shanahan#The_Major_Fallacies_of_Cold_Fusion Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:45, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

tl;dr. Well, I did scan over it. One point I'll make. Shanahan's calorimetry considerations are published in RS, they are a notable criticism of cold fusion calorimetry that applies to some of the experiments. It looks to me like he over-generalizes them, as if they applied to all of these. Quite clearly they don't apply to Arata's work with loading powdered palladium alloys with deuterium, where the conclusion of heat generation is based on maintained temperature differential compared with controls, not involving calorimetry at all. At some point, I may summarize "the major fallacies," they are buried in verbage, but I'll do that on Shanahan talk. I'm particularly interested in the claims made about Iwamura's work, especially the claims that triplet S-32 was mistaken for Mo-96.

A distinction between absolute experiments and controlled experiments must be made. An absolute experiment will produce a result: so much heat was generated when we did this. Much preferred are controlled experiments: When we did this, we got so much heat, when we did exactly the same, except with this small variation, we got no heat. This is basic science, if the change should not, by existing theory, affect the heat, something new has been discovered, something unknown. In particular, controls in cold fusion experiments often involve running the experiment with hydrogen instead of deuterium. The only difference between hydrogen and deuterium is nuclear, beyond some shift in quantitative values because the extra neutron in deuterium has some extra-nuclear effect, like heavy water (D2O) is a little heavier than water (H2O), but it's small. Shanahan's criticism applies to absolute experiments, but far, far less to controlled experiments. This is the difference between "precision" and "accuracy," mentioned in some papers and discussions. In well-controlled experiments, the absolute accuracy of the calorimetry is not relevant, all that is needed is that the results be significantly above noise levels, and changes in the "calibration constant" during the experiments should be irrelevant, as long as the compared experiments show what is expected, under the hypothesis of no excess heat, to be no difference, but, in fact, there is a difference that is consistent across multiple sets of experiments.

Let us suppose that Shanahan is correct, and that excess heat in the calorimetry experiments was an artifact of CCS. I'll back up a little. Pons and Fleischmann had expected, from quantum electrodynamic considerations, that cold fusion might occur under some conditions. Suppose that they didn't get the conditions right, and that the excess heat they found was an illusion. That would not prove that cold fusion was impossible, only that they hadn't found it. But because of this error, many other people started looking for it. Some may have found it. I would, therefore, caution Shanahan against overgeneralization from his own work. His work could be perfectly correct, in terms of what was published, and that would only allow discounting of some of the excess heat measurements, those where CCS effects were not addressed, but not others where CCS is moot or was addressed. CCS applies not at all to claims of transmutation, including measurement of helium or other nuclear reaction product, including radiation. --Abd (talk) 15:28, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Could I suggest this occurs at either Abd or Shanahan's (probably best) talk page, with a link placed here, and then interested editors could debate there. Occasional status updates relevant to the article, or any concrete proposals or conclusions, can then be pasted or linked to here for fuller discussion. Perhaps this should be done in a new section and this section be archived rather than just collapsed? Thanks, Verbal chat 20:45, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

One point: I'm not interested in "debate," as such. This is a discussion page, and the problem with "debate" is that it tends to focus on sides and winning. Discussion seeking consensus is almost the opposite of debate, though it can resemble it in some ways. Both discussion and debate may involve presentation of various evidences and considerations, but in a discussion, as distinct from a debate, the parties involved, ideally, do not hold fixed positions which they seek to promote. Rather, they are exploring a topic together, and, naturally, they each have their own opinions and current POV, which they may share, but they will, ideally, all be satisfied with any outcome decided. Sometimes people are so stuck on their own POV that such consensus is impossible, but that is actually the exception rather than the rule, when there is adequate discussion in a civil environment. --Abd (talk) 15:33, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Tell you what. Let's edit the Calorimetry article in my user space to bring it into good shape. Then we can decide if the material belongs in this article, or in a separate article. That article was actually started to stop edit warring here and allow exploration of the topic. It went to AfD, Misplaced Pages:Articles_for_deletion/Calorimetry_in_cold_fusion_experiments, nominated by JzG, and there are arguments there we might attend to. The claim was that this was a POV fork. However, if we ensure that the article is NPOV, and if the article is summarized at Cold fusion, but still has more detail, those arguments should go away. Only if there is not enough material for an independent article, after it's cleaned up, should it stay deleted. (I argued for Merge, which preserves editorial flexibility, but I didn't take the second deletion to DRV because I prefer, usually, to try to satisfy the arguments made on the other side, which means waiting until an article is ready.) My feeling is that there is enough detail on Calorimetry in CF that it deserves an article, that is, there is enough in reliable source of sufficient notability and interest to justify more space than Cold fusion would properly bear. We don't have to decide now, I suggest the goal there is to create a clear, sourced, and interesting article on the topic. Because it's in user space, we are more free, we can put in unsourced stuff if someone thinks that sources can be found, our goal should be consensus, at first, not necessarily AfD survival or full satisfaction of WP:RS. If it's going to come back, we can clean it up. Open for business, anyone who wishes to participate. Shanahan, restrictions on WP:COI do not apply there. User:Abd/Calorimetry in cold fusion experiments. My user space. Be nice. folks. --Abd (talk) 22:36, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Yoshiaki Arata's experiment

The latest experiments were done in May 2007 by Yoshiaka Arata and Yue-Chang Zang. It is noted that the conducted the experiment somewhat else (they used palladiumpowder in the electrode that was made by injecting the powder with deuteriumgas under high pressure). It was reported that 70% more heat was generated than the electricty put into the experiment.

According to anata, pycnodeuterium is formed in the experiment and they believe the scientific formula that would explain the reaction would be possible if a fonon was included (which they believe was present)

the experiment was documented in Journal of the high temperature society —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.246.135.164 (talk) 14:55, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

I find this article in that journal from Arata:

The Establishment of Solid Nuclear Fusion Reactor, Yoshiaki ARATA and Yuechang ZHANG, Journal of High Temperature Society, Vol. 34 (2008), No. 2, pp.85-93

Abstract: An ultrahigh vacuum stainless-vessel including only solid samples is used as a “Solid Fusion” vessel. When extremely high purity D2 gas is injected into this stainless-vessel, D2 gas is penetrated into the solid sample as “ D+-jet stream” and “ Solid Fusion” is generated instantly with and thermal energy as the reaction products. Consequently, the stainless vessel can act as both a “ generator” and a “Thermal Reactor”. As a result, and excellent actual “Solid Fusion” reactor is established for the first time in the world.

The paper is in Japanese. Tantalizing, but confirmation? They are using palladium nano-particles in the vessel. This is a radically different approach than the electrolysis methods, and, I'm sure, the excitement is about the possibility of a continuous process. Arata's theory is of less interest than the experimental results, in my opinion. Arata has published a mountain of research into various aspects of our topic. lenr-canr.org's bibliography gives this 2008 paper, but they have no copy hosted. In 2005, at ICCF12 in Yokohama, Japan, Arata presented a description of a "reactor" which did not involve electrolysis, the 2008 paper appears to be a continuation of that work. --Abd (talk) 13:12, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

This paper contains no new Figures over and above what was publicized and discussed previously. As such, it is still not conclusive, too many possibilities of alternate conventional explanations. And did you notice the references? all of them are to their own work! Wow... Kirk shanahan (talk) 15:07, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, this was noticed. Kirk, did you read the original paper, in Japanese? Or did you read a translation? From where? --Abd (talk) 18:06, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

No, I compared the Figures in the paper to those in the Krivit article here: www.newenergytimes.com/news/2008/NET29-8dd54geg.htm#hood - No new data was added, so none of the questions that came to mind then have been answered, and others besides me pointed out that the demonstration really didn't prove anything. Specifically one thing missing is control experiments showing the residual delta T is real and not an artifact. Kirk shanahan (talk) 18:30, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Kirk. There are controls reported in the Krivit article, a typical kind for CF research. They ran it with hydrogen, which is chemically almost identical to deuterium, plus, with deuterium, in the paper Krivit is working from, they use two different alloys. Besides, the smoking gun there is helium. Actually there are three smoking guns.

Krivit points out, in the popular version of the article that precedes what's linked above, that the motor demonstration was, not meaningless, but certainly not conclusive, in itself: On May 22, professor emeritus Yoshiaki Arata (Osaka University) and professor Yue Chang Zhang (Shianghai Jiotong University) did it. With the flick of a finger to start the Stirling engine, they saw the heat from their LENR experiment—with no applied electrical energy—turn a small rotor for many minutes. The presumption is that the motor was turning during the nuclear energy production phase rather than the chemical energy production phase. The turning motor is symbolic, a bit of showmanship. But what's significant is the temperature behavior.

"Alternate conventional explanations." Okay, Kirt, it's not your obligation, an unexplained experimental result is not a proof, in itself. However, when we start to have to pile unlikely assumptions on unlikely assumptions to explain repeatable results, when there are controls, Occam's razor kicks in.

For the benefit of others, I should describe the experiment briefly. A reaction cell is within a thermal isolation chamber. The temperature inside the reaction cell is Tin, the surrounding chamber is at Ts. The cell contains "nanopowder" palladium alloy, in the first experiment documented, it's ZrO2-Pd, and there is 7 grams of it, as I read the article; in blank runs, there is no powder in the cell. First the chambers are baked and allowed to cool, then D2 gas is introduced. The gas is rapidly absorbed by the powder, the pressure in the cell remains low, but temperature rises rapidly. This is a chemical or mechanical effect, it happens with hydrogen. However, it is what happens next that is of interest. The pressure in the cell begins to rise, as the temperature falls. With deuterium, long after one would expect the cell to have come down to room temperature, Tin remains hotter than the outer chamber, which shows steady heat production in the cell, and Ts remains above room temperature. Chemical? Doesn't happen with hydrogen, happens with deuterium. Then come the tests for helium. Arata claims no helium is detected with hydrogen gas, no helium with an empty cell with deuterium, helium is detected, however, with the palladium alloy and deuterium gas. Generally, critics of these experiments assert that the helium must be coming from ambient abundance or contamination of the equipment. If so, why not with one of the controls? Arata filters the deuterium with a palladium filter which he claims will filter out helium. (I presume he does the same with hyrdrogen gas). He does not detect any helium when he uses hydrogen gas, indicating that the helium is not a contaminant in the powder. The chemical/mechanical heating in the initial phase happens with hydrogen as well as helium, but when the cell is saturated and pressure rises, Tin returns rapidly to Ts. The charts in the NET article go out to 3000 minutes; the temperature difference with deuterium is maintained that far out.

The experimental design is simple but clear. Heat is being generated in the cell, anomalously. As we see with hydrogen, there is heat evolved from the deuterium getting tight with the palladium. But with hydrogen, same initial evolution of heat, but that heat stops, there isn't a trace of heat generation, that I can see, by 50 minutes. It's sustained with deuterium. "At 300 minutes, the deuterium experiments are 4 degrees [and 7 degrees higher than room temperature, and the hydrogen experiment is 1 degree higher than room temperature. He has adjusted the time scale to begin with the onset of the "Skirt-Fusion Zone."" (those figures refer to Tin; Ts is at a lower temperature, between room temperature and Ts; with hydrogen, Tin and Ts are the same long before 300 minutes). In the experiments where heat is generated, helium is found.

Let's see, heat generation with deuterium, not with hydrogen, helium found with deuterium/palladium alloy, and not with hydrogen or deuterium with no palladium alloy, okay, what's the "alternate conventional explanation"? I'm not saying there isn't one, but only because there are more things under heaven and on earth than I have ever dreamed of. This is a far simpler experiment than the complex calorimetry involved with the original Pons and Fleischmann work. Because energy input is limited to the provision of gas, which flow stops early on, there aren't all the complications of looking for what is usually a needle in a haystack: the anomalous heat compared to all the energy that was dumped in to load the palladium rods with deuterium, sometimes over months.

By the way, there are no allegations flying about of fraud with any of this work; sometimes editors coming upon this, knowing that cold fusion is considered a fringe science, might think, well, that's what they say, but how do we know they are telling the truth, you know, those cold fusion fanatics will do anything to get attention. No, cold fusion research is being carried out by serious research groups around the world. Though Arata's work isn't yet accepted as conclusive, it has been published in a peer-reviewed journal in Japan. As Shanahan says, there may be some conventional explanation, but, just as with Iwamura's transmutation work, nobody suspects fraud; the holy grail for all these scientists is reproducibility, and it's awfully hard to get that with fraud.

I intend to look for references to Arata's work. Our article mentions the work, I think, in the phrase "deuterium gas loading onto Pd powders under pressure."

Comments - Protium is NOT a control for deuterium and vice versa. A) The heat of formation for the relevant metal hydride is different for H and D. B) The equilibrium P-c-T conditions are different. C) The thermal conductivities are different. As well, thermal conductivity between sample particles will be different for different materials and possibly even for the same material at different stages of the experimentation due to accumulated effects related to activation processes and differential swelling coupled with initial packing density.

All the results shown could be attributed to these factors. The T difference between the Tin and Ts are explainable in terms of standard concepts such as these, thus the paper needs to explain this, but I saw no indication in the Japanese paper of this via equations, figures, etc. Perhaps they did so in words only, but if so, I suspect it would be just a hand-waving comment, and not a real investigation of the potential problems.

Note that this does allow for an actual delta T to be present which could be used to drive a Stirling engine I suppose, but the source of the delta T is likely conventional, not nuclear. We can’t tell from this work.

Demonstrations (also known as ‘dog and pony shows’) rarely prove scientific points. And no one would accept it in this case anyway (unless they were predisposed to do so because of their personal beliefs) because this is no different than a standard perpetual motion machine demonstration. The only way that or the Ararta demonstration would be considered real is if it could be shown no ‘tricks’ (like I describe above) were involved. No such studies are yet available.

By the way, was it you that said the only options were that it was true or there was fraud present? Whomever, they missed the other option - incompetence. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:01, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Clarity of article, etc.

Abd posted this comment at 19:52, 16 March 2009 which strongly enjoined editors to be civil. Abd also said "our task is not to decide if cold fusion is real or not" and described our task in terms of presenting material from sources with neutrality and balance, including material about current research presented with caution and balance. The following comment from V (19:59, 16 March 2009) was posted in response to Abd's original comment. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 20:23, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

The article needs to be clear and understandable to the readers. I don't object to Shanahan's work being described in the article, provided it is done in a clear and understandable way (including lacking self-contradictions). So far, to the best of my knowledge, this is impossible. V (talk) 19:59, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I made a further comment, but ran into edit conflict with Verbal's removal. Rather than contest this -- what a waste of time! -- I responded with what I'd written, then reverted myself, and I've done what I said I intended to do above, which is intended to proceed as V has said he does not object to. Let's start cooperating, let that start here. --Abd (talk) 20:41, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Review of sources

http://coldfusionpolicy.org/Cold%20Fusion%20Ann%20Biblio%20032106.pdf

This is a paper presented in a course on public policy analysis. It seems to be a relatively neutral analysis of sources on the topic of cold fusion, presenting sources to be used in public policy analysis on the topic. It's unfortunate that it doesn't seem to have been published.... but we may be able to begin some discussions with what is there.

http://coldfusionpolicy.org/ provides an overview, and addresses issues that are of major concern to us. It's worth looking at.

http://coldfusionpolicy.org/Grimshaw%20Resume%200108.pdf asserts the credentials of the author, who does not appear to have any observable bias from the history given. However, of course, Grimshaw isn't a chemist or physicist, i.e., an expert in science. However, "public policy" process is related to our editorial process here; it is properly advised by experts in the field, but actual determination is made by others, generally, who are not experts. (Experts attempting to control articles here frequently end up blocked.) So this paper may well serve as a support to our work, as if Grimshaw were an editor here, an editor who has clearly done a lot of the footwork. --Abd (talk) 14:00, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

There is a response to Grimshaw at http://physicsworld.com/blog/2008/03/cold_fusion_as_policy_posterbo.html. This blog is an example of what, I'm sure, drives cold fusion researchers crazy, and it's an example of what Grimshaw talks about. The writer says, at the end, "writing as someone who did a cold fusion experiment in 1990, my personal opinion is that whatever they are seeing — it’s not fusion."

Everyone acknowledges that P-F type cold fusion was very difficult to reproduce, i.e., most attempts, early on, failed to find it. I think a lot of people tried to reproduce the experiment, far more than published. Most of these attempts failed, but it does not follow that "other researchers were unable to confim cold fusion." I've seen this statement again and again, and it is blatantly false in implication, that there was no confirmation. Not only was there confirmation, recent analysis of the publications that did appear has shown that experiments which followed closely P-F's methods and approaches succeeded. But this writer is extrapolating from personal experience, an experience which has almost nothing to do with whether or not cold fusion is real, and simply reflects a matter of consensus: most early attempts to reproduce failed. A number of writers, and we have reliable source on this, have regretted the way in which the appearance of consensus developed on cold fusion. Grimshaw points out the errors on both sides. He also points out that the nuclear physicists dominated the response to cold fusion; had it been dominated by chemists, the result might have been quite different. Chemists were saying "this isn't chemistry," and that is where their expertise is. Nuclear physicists were saying, "this isn't fusion," and that is where their expertise is. So what is it, then? It's obvious: it is either chemistry of an unrecognized form or it is nuclear physics of an unrecognized form. In other words, no matter how you slice it, there is new science here. Hence the continued recognition by both DOE review panels that further research is appropriate. Grimshaw goes further, using more formal policy analysis to recommend serious public support, given the level of certainty that he estimates from the research. Grimshaw is not limited by "peer-reviewed journals," but was able to consider all sources, weighing apparent bias, etc. Grimshaw did apparently speak at the cold fusion session of the American Physical Society in March, 2008. --Abd (talk) 14:22, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

A little more on Grimshaw, he is apparently adjunct professor at the University of Texas, LBJ School of Public Affairs. --Abd (talk) 17:55, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

If it's not published in a reliable source, it isn't a reliable source. As far as its neutrality, I note that it doesn't discuss Brian Clarke's or my work, so it clearly has problems on the mainstream side. Don't include it. Kirk shanahan (talk) 20:24, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Re: Section "Incompatibilities with conventional nuclear physics" must be greatly expanded

I disagree that no theoretical framework exist to describe the situation. To the contrary, we have a theory that is in principle almost exact (the deviations are due to unknown physics beyond the Standard Model at very high energies, e.g. supersymmetry, GUT etc.).

The fact that you can have muon catalized fusion and that the fact that deuterium in a solid is more complicated that just two deutron nuclei, in no way means that "anything goes".

One can disagree with a negative attitude toward the possibility of cold fusion based on theoretical arguments. But if we don't explain what the basis of these arguments are, then the article will fail to explain the basis of the dispute. Count Iblis (talk) 14:28, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

I strongly agree with your last sentence Count. If we don't explain the basis of the dispute the reader loses. That has been my driver for trying to get the mainstream criticisms into the article on the experimental side. Good luck to you on getting it in on the theoretical. There are too many people, skilled at Wikilawyering, who oppose this. Just compare the Sept. 17, 2008 version with today and you will see the loss of such explanation in favor of pro-CF propaganda. To the rest of you, I could sit here and write many more paragraphs in response to your comments, but in the end, I will not have accomplished anything. The apparent goal of the current article is not in line with informing the reader of the basis of the controversy, which is why I would read the article if I came looking to find out about CF. The only reason I came here was to do that. So, my contributions are not needed, and in fact have already been offered and rejecteed (multiple times). What amazes me is that the current crop of editors think progress has been made. Once again, good luck with that Count. Kirk shanahan (talk) 15:54, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

While I agree with Krik on the necessity of good explanation, the problem may be one of reliable sourcing. Kirk, however, seems to have a strong POV; that's not unusual with experts (of whatever variety). His criticism of certain aspects of cold fusion calorimetry appears cogent, but what was in the article was clearly inappropriate, and it's not gone because of "wikilawyering," though all sides on this have tended to push their POV using whatever "rules" they can think of as possibly applying. Rather, there is a problem with sourcing criticism of cold fusion. The reliable sources that exist are mostly old and based on arguments that often no longer apply. The biggest one, "lack of confirmation," may not have applied even in 1989; there are allegations of what may have been systematic exclusion even then. Huizenga wasn't exactly neutral. Regardless, it's an argument that has been repeated over and over, I see it constantly in critical comment on cold fusion, even up to material published in the last couple of years (but not in peer-reviewed journals). Yet there is publication of general confirmation over and over in peer-reviewed publications and far more if we were to allow conference papers. There is still plenty of room for debate on the quality of confirmation, but not as to its existence. It's enlightening to read the reviewer reports from the 2004 DOE review. It is quite clear that there are real scientific issues, unresolved, and that Cold fusion isn't your typical pseudoscience or clear example of scientific error, as it is sometimes treated. It's an active field of research, apparently excluded from some of the most significant publications on the basis of an alleged consensus that it's bogus, but published in some journals meeting our RS requirements. I agree that we should present the whole affair more clearly, and probably should fork the article into one on the social phenomenon (i.e., history of science) (where "peer-reviewed publication" may be an excessive standard), and one, probably on Condensed matter nuclear science, which seems to be the accepted name of the field as a science, and which is broader than the term Cold fusion popularly indicates. The articles will, of course, reference each other, with summaries following WP:Summary style. CMNS is, as a field, still quite controversial, with many standard physicists claiming, essentially, that the condensed state is irrelevant to nuclear phenomena, thus nuclei don't have a clue what's going on with those far-out electron shells and other neighbors, and chemistry is irrelevant to nuclear physics. Besides, chemistry is messy, far more complicated than nuclear physics, because the systems are far more complex. --Abd (talk) 16:48, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

What I think we can agree on is that prior theoretical considerations led to an expectation that nuclear fusion at low energies was impossible. However, in general, firm impossibility conclusions are, well, impossible. The Coulomb barrier seems like an unsurmoutable obstacle to cold fusion. But muon-catalyzed fusion is a clear counterexample. Of course this doesn't mean that "anything goes," but rather that special conditions may overcome the general expectation. "Conventional nuclear physics" represents what is generally accepted, but there is no theoretical reason, under accepted laws of physics, for cold fusion to be impossible.

"Fusion" is a misleading term; when "cold fusion" was claimed, the assumption was made that this was just like hot fusion. Only cold. That is an obvious error, in hindsight. It lead to, then, the other "theoretical objections." If this is fusion, where are the neutrons or gamma rays? With the accepted forms of fusion, they should be there, in abundance, given the levels of heat reported. How is it that the alleged unexpected energy is transferred to the material as heat, directly, if that is what is happening? Such a transfer is known to occur with the Mossbauer effect, but this would be of a different order of magnitude. However, these objections depend on a model for what is occurring in the experiment, and there is no accepted model.

We are faced with this: chemists say, "This is not chemistry." Nuclear physicists say, "This can't be nuclear physics, or, if it is, it's revolutionary and extraordinary proof is required." It's actually a symmetrical situation, for the chemists are saying, really, "If this is chemistry, it isn't a chemistry that we recognize."

We need to find reliable sources on the nature of the dispute, including this issue of theoretical considerations. I think they exist, some have been recently mentioned, and some are cited in the article. To dismiss excess heat and reports of helium and elemental transformation and radiation on the basis of theory is a gross scientific error, just as is to claim that such reports, in themselves, prove that fusion is taking place. Each experiment could have some kind of error, but it gets tricker when there are many experiments, with many different approaches, leading to similar conclusions. In 1989 that didn't exist. Once there are many such reports, it becomes pretty necessary to allege something like publication bias, as an example. Positive results are reported, negative ones aren't. However, as the experiments become better and better controlled and focused, this interpretation becomes less and less reasonable. Several months ago, if you'd asked me, I'd have said, like many others said, "That was really interesting back in 1989. Too bad it couldn't be confirmed." However, I've now read a lot of the recent work, and I can't any longer make a statement like that. There is definitely confirmation, at, I'd say, a level that should have justified, back in 1989, much more funding and continued work, had it existed then. Basically, in 1989, nobody knew, with clarity, how to run a cold fusion experiment, but Pons and Fleischmann had taken particular care in certain areas, whereas the initial attempts to confirm, done without adequate information from P and F, was rushed and inadequate, plus P and F probably did not know, themselves, enough of how to run these experiments and get consistent results. Based on recent analysis, electrolytical C-F is one sensitive little effect, very dependent on initial conditions and exact experimental details, in unexpected ways. The Arata work may not be; the approach, I believe, has had positive results from others; it is far less messy than electrolysis and calorimetry, likewise the analysis for helium is far simpler, with lots of ways to run controls. Folks, I'm still learning about all this; those who have claimed I have some POV to push are mistaken. If I seem to have a point of view, it's because I have formed an opinion, based on what I've seen, investigated starting with mild skepticism, but if there is anything I hate, it's getting nailed to a mere opinion. (And that's why the "skepticism" was mild, it almost always is with me unless the evidence is very, very strong. In which case it isn't really skepticism....) --Abd (talk) 16:25, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Some comments: I am a chemist and I say it's all chemistry. I have never used theory (physics of fusion) to critique cold fusion results. You are not reading the current reports with a trained and critical mind. You are a victim of your lack of understanding about what being declared a pariah field has done to the field. Kirk shanahan (talk) 16:36, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes. I had no intention of claiming that all chemists rejected chemical explanations, but it's clear that Pons and Fleischmann, recognized specifically in the field of electrochemistry, and involved in long-term investigations of possible quantum electrodynamical effects blurring the barrier between chemistry and nuclear physics, did so, and so did many others. However, Kirk, you don't know my mind. At all. I'm not "trained," and good thing. It often allows me to see things that are missed by those who are; but don't think, from this, that I don't respect training, I do. But training, by definition, steeps us in the status quo. We need both kinds of analysis, but give the trained the reins, you create social ossification and an impossibility of change. Go too far in the other direction, you have chaos. If everyone were like me, the subways would not run, lots of things would not work. I'm not a victim. The field is indeed a pariah field. One editor here wrote that his anonymity here was crucial to him, because if it were known, there would go his career in science. This is simply a local anecdotal confirmation of what has often been reported. It does not seem to be true in China, nor, maybe, in Japan. Being a "pariah" field has definitely damaged it. My comments about the use of theory to contradict cold fusion were not aimed at Shanahan, but at the specific issue in the "theory" section, which isn't about you, Kirk, so don't take it that way.

Question is, is it a "pariah" field today, and, if so, is this about science or is it about sociology and politics?

This is the irony: the 2004 DOE review (like the 1989 review), suggested the focused funding of research, and publication of it in peer-reviewed journals. That's being done, though surely with some difficulty due to the "pariah" problem. The DOE does not, however, suggest research into fields that it or the reviewers consider junk science. By all means, Kirk, your POV is very welcome here, and your knowledge as well, but be careful, please conduct yourself as a professional consultant, which is the best of what you can be here.--Abd (talk) 17:03, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

"We need to find reliable sources on the nature of the dispute" - no such thing on the mainstream side (with the exception of my publications and those of W. B. Clarke), barely any on the proCF side - this is the effect of being declared a pariah field. It certainly is still a pariah field. In 2007 I presented a poster entitled "What's New in Cold Fusion" at the Gordon Research Conference on Hydrogen-Metal Systems. It was one of the most attended posters I have ever presented (maybe 10-20 people stopped to talk, normally my subjects are highly specialized and not of much interest to the general conference). The biggest job I had was convincing them that the FPHE was real. I had Szpak's IR video playing to show that. After that, most just wanted to know that I was presenting a conventional explanation, and that usually ended the discussion. They were not interested in knowing more. I was also told later that several behind the scenes inquiries were made to my co-workers as to whether or not I was "OK", i.e. was I a good or bad scientist. The field is definitely a pariah field. The only people who work and publish in it are 'odd' (and yes, I know that applies to me, but I have explained before that as a worker in the field I personally wanted to know if I should be worried about my experiments blowing up or irradiating me). That is the mainstream view. Many hold these views for the wrong reasons, but I can supply the right reasons to them, if they were interested, which they aren't. It is definitely about science, and the unwillingness of the CFers to conform to standard scientific practices and requirements. Their failure to do so, which can be detected without any detailed study of their work, clearly put them in the psuedoscientific arena. The DOE review statement about funding good proposals is stock, and means next to nothing. You will note the DOE did NOT suggest research into the area. They said good proposals might get funded, not that people should rush off and research CF.

With regards to my POV being welcome, actions speak louder than words. None of my suggestions for the article have been incorporated, with the exception that my work is referenced once, with no explanation of its impact. We need to get back to what the Wiki reader is looking for, presumably an explanation of what cold fusion is, and then, why there is a big controversy surrounding it. The current article barely addresses the _current_ issues, being mired in the view of the early 1990's, another side effect of having no RS for the mainstream view because none is published as the field is a pariah field. The only way to have a balanced article is to present the historical facts and both sides of the controversy fairly. But Wiki policy is Wikilawyered into preventing that. We need to go back to Sept. 17 and start over. Kirk shanahan (talk) 14:33, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) "We need to find reliable sources on the nature of the dispute" - no such thing on the mainstream side (with the exception of my publications and those of W. B. Clarke), barely any on the proCF side - this is the effect of being declared a pariah field. Yes. However, note that "pariah" and "pseudoscience" are not the same. Pariah fields are considered pseudoscience, typically, by a majority, but pseudoscientific fields don't have the level of support that cold fusion does among, say, DOE reviewers. The field includes, of course, work like yours, and this is precisely what you are reporting. Who is interested in clear criticism of a pariah field, don't we already know that it's all nonsense? Except that, of course, without criticism like yours, the judgment that it's nonsense is pretty shaky. I'll claim that my non-expert opinion is that it's shaky anyway, but, remember, my goal is always to find maximum agreement. I think, from the above, we can agree that the "pariah" designation harms research in the field, and understanding of it. You have outlined, above, the problem. Let me restate it.

The 2004 DOE review indicated that further research was appropriate, with publication in peer-reviewed journals. Now, there is publication in peer-reviewed journals, though allegedly it isn't in the most reputable. (I find it a bit puzzling that Naturwissenschaften isn't considered reputable, but let's drop that for the moment.)

There is ongoing publication in reliable source regarding research in this pariah field. While there is, in fact, continued publication of criticism of this research, none of it is overview, rather, there are specific criticisms, such as Kowalski's attempt to impeach the radiation evidence asserted by Spzak et al.

We have no recent reliable sources, on the level of peer-reviewed journals, which expresses the alleged scientific consensus that cold fusion is not taking place. We do have reviews and books, recently published, which suggest the opposite. I am not asserting that we should therefor put in the article that this alleged consensus has disappeared. I don't think it has. However, this requires that we present a more balanced view, as we would with any unresolved controversy. One side, so to speak, claims that there is no controversy, it's done and over with, cold fusion is dead, forget about it. The other, however, says, no, we now have evidence that is strong enough to assert with 99% confidence that cold fusion is taking place. (If I remember correctly, that's a claim in the Bayesian analysis reported at the 2008 ICCF.)

However, we also have, from over the years, a fair amount of reliable source review of the controversy, of the history of science aspect of this, and we have presented little of this in this article. This is why I suggest that we need two (at least) articles.

With regard to your POV being welcome, I was speaking for myself. It's very clear that there are editors who don't welcome it, just as it is clear that there are editors who are hostile to material that seems to support cold fusion. In my view, these are both dangers to the project. As to evidence of my intention, you complained about the removal of reference to your work. I restored it, promptly. Until then, I was unaware of it. I rescued the Calorimetry article, on which you had worked extensively, from the junkpile.

But please understand: Misplaced Pages process grinds very slowly, once serious controversy has appeared over an article. Waves of POV editors can see-saw back and forth, and this will continue until and unless a core of editors appears who are truly dedicated to NPOV, and who don't have a warped vision of what that means. (Some editors imagine that their personal opinion is, of course, "fair and balanced," when, as I continually assert, the only way we can be certain of NPOV is when we find complete consensus; the degree of our certainty is measured by the degree of consensus found. In organizations where unity is considered important, extraordinary care will sometimes be exercised to make sure that all points of view are considered and included to the maximum extent possible. Misplaced Pages probably will not go to that extent, but if it did, it would become so solidly NPOV that POV-motivated vandalism and edit warring would practically disappear. But when we are content with a mere majority of editors on one side or another, or even two to one, it can be very difficult to maintain stability with sound content.)

My view at the moment is that the article is defective in a number of ways, but it will take time to fix. See m:Eventualism. Fixing it by barging in with something "better," if it involves more than a very few changes at a time, is just about guaranteed to be useless and disruptive at this point. Right now, I'm working on building the community, and trying to be maximally welcoming to you is part of that. We should try to attract other experts, in fact, and one of the problems is that one of the experts has been banned. Instead of containing and confining and channeling his contributions into what is useful for us, they were rejected as "fringe" (is there something wrong with being "fringe" with a "fringe science"?), he was dismissed as a "kook." (If I did that, I'd be blocked in a flash, which says something about the situation.) His web site was disparaged as full of copyright violation, which allegation had no basis, etc. I'm dealing with all this, one little step at a time. Trying to push hard and fast, well, I'd be out of here quickly. As it is, I'm being quite successful, as long as I don't bite off more than I can chew or than the community can easily handle. One step at a time. Want a list of accomplishments? Well, I'll provide it by email to editors I trust to keep it confidential. I'm not stupid.

I disagree with your characterization of the 2004 DOE review, which is even clearer when the individual reviews are read. Definitely, research is recommended, suggesting targeted proposals with regard to certain open questions being specifically mentioned. That they did not recommend a general research program has been translated into some kind of dismissal of the field; that isn't what happened. The conclusion was precisely worded: the evidence is not conclusive. Many editors here seem to take that as an equivalent of "bunk." It's not. It means exactly what it says. That is, they meant that as to the situation when the review was performed. I'd say that the evidence now is more conclusive, but whether or not it reaches to the level of simple conclusive evidence isn't clear, and that would require far more careful and knowledgeable assessment than I'm capable of. Or that you are personally capable of, in my assessment. You can handle part of this, perhaps. We would need to, and I assume we will, look at details. Your criticisms seem to apply to some kinds of calorimetry or methods of assessing heat generation, and not to others. I don't see the application, at all, of your ideas to Arata's recent work, for example, and with regard to the Iwamura transmutation work, my guess is that you are an outsider, not an expert on the problems there, specifically. Welcome to the crowd. --Abd (talk) 20:18, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Thermochimica Acta

I noticed a day ago that the reference to my 3rd paper had been deleted. I've tracked that down to an action by JzG on 30 Jan, http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Cold_fusion&diff=267300501&oldid=267278001 . No Talk page entry was made. The header on the revision notice was "POV and unreliable source". He also deleted Ed Storms ref as well, so I guess he thinks TA is an 'unreliable' journal. If so, then you all need to remove the otehr refs from that journal as well. Kirk shanahan (talk) 17:48, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

No, that removal seems POV. I'll fix it, if those references are still relevant. JzG deleted a whole series of references with that edit, and discussion? Discussion is for wimps. Why bother discussing if you know you are right? I'll do one at at time, so if anyone objects, they can object specifically. Looks like Enric Naval already got one back. --Abd (talk) 18:02, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Done. I think one reference was supporting text that has since been removed, about theoretical work. Maybe it should come back, but, hey, I can't do everything.... Thanks, Kirk, for noticing that. --Abd (talk) 18:30, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Example of the hysteria in 1989

We have text in the article: One of the more prominent reports of success came from a group at the Georgia Institute of Technology, which observed neutron production. The Georgia Tech group later retracted their announcement.. The first reference is to: New York Times, April 14, 1989, and the second is to New York Times, April 24, 1989, with more detail, but the first link covers the retraction. The Georgia Tech announcement of neutron detection was on Monday, April 10, and the retraction was on Thursday, April 13. a scientific instrument that was used to measure neutrons, a key byproduct of nuclear fusion, apparently gave inflated readings because the liquid it was measuring became as hot as 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

This report actually was irrelevant. It was a "report of success," perhaps, but so transient that it shouldn't have affected anything. Normally, such an experiment would have been reported, if at all, as "failure to detect neutrons," because, before publication, the kinks would almost certainly have been worked out. It wasn't said how they figured it out. The second article cited states that the Georgia Tech announcement of neutrons was one of two "first confirmations." However, the original announcement by Pons and Fleischmann was on March 23. From what we now know, any attempt to replicate the work in less than three weeks would likely have failed; techniques to find rapid excess heat and radiation with alleged reasonable reliability were not developed until much later. It would not he surprising, then, that the other announcement, from Texas A&M, then, was also defective.

The second article reports that Texas A&M announcement was in the morning, Monday, April 10. Then, At a news conference the next day, Charles Martin, the Texas A&M chemist who led the research team, was very careful to say that their work had not established cold fusion. All the team was claiming was that it had found the heat being produced by the electrochemical process. Dr. Martin said the researchers had stayed up the previous night writing a journal report, which was sent off before the news conference.

Rush to publication, a foundation of bad science. This matter led me to Communicating science which examines this history in some depth and which may be a usable source for us. This is the kind of source that would be important for an article on the history of the affair. --Abd (talk) 19:11, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Would not "bad science" -- bad anything -- be precisely that which lacks foundation? Kevin Baas 13:10, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Not exactly. There can be foundation for bad science. Problem is, it is not the Scientific method, but something else. Desire to be first to publish. Attachment to previously held opinions. Unwillingness to consider new ideas, or, alternatively, to provide a way for new ideas to be considered. (I'll come back to this.) Desire for funding. Competition, turf. Media oversimplification. Fuzzy concepts of consensus. Jumping to conclusions. Lack of communication. Etc.

A "way for new ideas to be considered" does not -- and cannot -- mean that everyone must constantly be open to considering new ideas on subjects generally considered closed. "Closed-mindedness" survives because it is usually efficient. It can be very frustrating, but it's also necessary, so those standing on the outside of a rigid "consensus" must learn to be patient, they are dealing with information filters that exist for very good reasons. Rather, it means that there are channels and ways for revisions of consensus to take place efficiently. It can be done. I won't detail how here, but I will point out that if scientists in general were more aware of the actual content of the 1989 and 2004 reviews (in spite of their alleged shortcomings), they would not be quite as generally dismissive of cold fusion as they are. There is real science to be done here. Elsewhere on this page, there is a discussion with Shanahan, I think it is worth following. --Abd (talk) 17:32, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Pehaps "motive", "source", or something like that - in any case, if one chooses to use the word "foundation", they must concede that it is a shallow one. Anyways, I get what you're saying, just playing w/words here. :) Kevin Baas 21:03, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Fleischmann 2002 reference

Just noting that this reference was removed from the article, in case editors may find it useful either in developing this page or related pages:

• Fleischmann, Martin (2002), "Searching for the consequences of many-body effects in condensed phase systems", The 9th International Conference on Cold Fusion, Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (PDF), Tsinghua University, Beijing: Tsinghua University Press☺Coppertwig (talk) 17:26, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

The edit was by JzG, the summary was: (This is not the context for which this whitelist request was granted. The site is known to be relibale. There is no evidence this is significant in this context.)

The whitelist request was for Martin Fleischmann. Now, is a granted whitelist request an approval of the specific usage? While it may be evidence of some legitimacy, it doesn't substitute for editorial consensus at the article itself. However, once it is whitelisted, it may be used elsewhere, the whitelisting still stands as some kind of general acceptance of legitimacy of the link, but obviously not of the usage in any particular article. Links to lenr-canr.org that existed prior to December 18 were removed by JzG without discussion, on that date, and then the site was blacklisted so that nobody could revert them back in. From his history, JzG will come up with reason after reason why his actions are justified, when they are challenged. "No evidence that this is significant in this context" is a new one. But the default here would be that there is significance, because of standing history. The paper has been listed here as part of the Bibliography for a long time. If it's necessary, I'll detail the exact history.

Nevertheless, the argument deserves response; however, because of the history, I'm reverting pending consensus. Editors should not remove long-standing accepted parts of this article, in the presence of objection, without discussion first. Again, from history, JzG is reacting to the use of a lenr-canr.org link, done here for convenience only. However, if he can't prevent the use of the link, his arguments on that not surviving careful examination, he will then go after the original paper, but the goal is clearly to prevent links to that web site. I wouldn't be saying this if not for long and deep study of JzG's involvement with this and related articles. He's quite welcome to discuss changes, but asserting them through reverts and removals without discussion, no. It's been tolerated too long.

Removal December 18, (Unlinking a polemical site inappropriate for references (and in some cases hosting copyright material in violation of copyright))

• "polemical" was found irrelevant in discussion (unless there is a more neutral site available for use).
• "inappropriate for references" was a red herring. The reference is the Tsinghua University publication, the site is merely used for a convenience copy.
• "hosting copyright material" has been a constant refrain from JzG, but no actual violation has ever been shown. Other experienced editors have reviewed this and it's been pointed out that lenr-canr.org is highly visible in the field. Search for a paper hosted there and it is often the first hit from Google. The reason behind the allegation is an assumption by JzG that Elsevier, for example, never grants permission. However, Elsevier are known to be vigorous in copyright enforcement, and the fact that lenr-canr.org is still functioning, having hosted these documents for years, is strong prima facie evidence that they do, as they claim, have permission from authors and publishers. They have a bibliography of perhaps three times as many sources as they host, and many of them are from publishers far less likely to be able to enforce copyright or even to notice a violation, yet they do not host these papers because, they have stated, they have not been able to get permission.

I will return to discuss the question of substance, after doing some research. --Abd (talk) 18:37, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

There was, in the article, back in December, when the link in question was removed, a reference to quantum electrodynamics vs quantum mechanics. This is actually a very important issue: the simpler quantum mechanics is an approximation that is useful in dealing with nuclear physics, but complex systems as exist in the condensed matter state are not accurately represented by it. The paper involved here is one where Fleischmann outlines the history of his investigation. It's worth reading. They were not just sitting around thinking, "Gee, I wonder what would happen if we electrolyze heavy water with a palladium electrode." They were not ignorant of the theoretical problems involved in the idea of cold fusion. They were looking for it based on a possibly more sophisticated analysis. They knew it was a long shot, that the more complex system would not necessarily show fusion, but they did consider it enough of a possibility to put years of work into it, funding it themselves. In any case, I have added this text back in, and have referenced it to the paper in question, which is an appropriate source since this is Fleischmann himself talking about what they were looking for and why. --Abd (talk) 19:00, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Abd! The reason for the whitelisting is irrelevant to our collective editorial decision as to whether to include the link on this page. Even if there were a valid reason not to include the link, that would be irrelevant to the question of whether to include the citation. Your edit is a reasonable one based on that source in my opinion and is relevant to this article, which addresses JzG's reason for deleting the citation. Information about their reasoning as to why they conducted the experiment in the first place seems to me to be of pretty basic importance to coverage of this topic. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 19:34, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Conference proceedings are not reliable sources. It should not be included. Kirk shanahan (talk) 19:48, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Conference proceedings may not be reliable sources for scientific facts, but here this is not used to establish scientific facts, but to establish the motivations i.e. the state of mind of Fleischmann at the time of the original experiment. For that purpose, a published statement by the person themselves is quite adequate; there is no need for peer review for that purpose. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 20:25, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) This assertion has been considered in detail elsewhere. The paper was written by Fleischmann and is being used as a source for what he and Pons thought. It is generally confirmed by other sources, but they are derivative from him. We can use additional sources if needed. Kirk, conference proceedings can be reliable sources under some conditions. This appears to be one of them. Conference proceedings are similar to self-published material; such material can be used when the author is notable, writing on a topic covered by his or her expertise. --Abd (talk) 20:29, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

One more point. Elsewhere, Kirk, don't you decry "wikilawyering"? Could you see that your objection could look like wikilawyering? Is there a problem with the absolute reliability of the text asserted on the basis of this source? Is this information valuable to the reader? Is it misleading? If so, how? Is there some misstatement about the relationship between quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics? That would be on point, in fact, but "wikilawyering" is taking a general rule and implying that it controls the situation, instead of dealing with the substance, the very purpose of the project. --Abd (talk) 20:34, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

See also Talk:Martin_Fleischmann#Status_of_link_in_article_after_this_discussion. That page is where there was very detailed examination of the reference and the link; nothing new, really, has been raised here. The only two edits JzG made in the last two days were removals of the whitelisted lenr-canr.org link from this article and the biography, using reverts without discussion or attempt to reach consensus, just the repetition of old arguments. --Abd (talk) 21:57, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

I disagree that the edit was appropriate, the correct way to make changes is WP:BRD. Had this model been followed, discussion should occur prior to remaking the same edit over an objection- there's no such page as WP:BRRD.

Secondly, in both of the above cases User:Abd seems to be arguing about the editor rather than the page. Allegations of bad faith for JzG, immediate accusation that Kirk was wikilawyering- neither of these things are appropriate for this venue.

Finally, a claim made in 2002 does not belong at the location that you placed it chronologically. As evidence that he held these opinions back in 1989, it is inadequate. why didn't he publish or mention this in 1989? Or the 1990s? A 13 year backdated rationale is not convincing. --Noren (talk) 07:27, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Noren and Abd got my point, although they don't seem to realize why I was making it. When I attempted to discuss the likelihood of 'heavy metal transmutation' being due to contamination concentration and attempted to support the position by referencing a Web page by Scott Little, I was lambasted by Pcarbon on the point that Little was not an 'expert'. When I pointed out that he had a publication in the field (enough to qualify him as an expert, given his other work), I was told that since the publication was in a Proceedings, it didn't count. There's an old saying, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. I find Wiki to be extremely inconsistent in its application of policy, and I find the Wiki policies inadequate in this controversy. Bottom line is no proceedings I believe.

With regards to Noren's last point about the timing, I agree and I think I've said that once before. Kirk shanahan (talk) 11:36, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Noren, I gave the history for a reason. The link was in the article, it wasn't a subject of debate. It was removed without discussion. I have reason to believe that editors tried to revert it then, but it was impossible, because it was immediately blacklisted by the editor who made the edit. I'm not going to go into the implications of that right now, because this is, indeed, not about JzG, but about the text and our immediate process. Properly, the default state here is that the reference is in the article, with the link. However, I didn't assert this link without discussion or warning. I did make the edit about quantum electrodynamics, to be sure. That brings us to the issue about 2002 vs 1989. I'm going to address this with an edit that attributes the claim about the thinking. This would address the substance of your objection, I believe.

Kirk, you don't understand the issue. Conference proceedings are similar to self-published papers. They can be used under some circumstances. This paper is Fleischmann describing his thinking in the period leading up to 1989. He's notable. He's an expert on the topic. It's reliable that he wrote this. I'm sorry that you felt you were "lambasted," but I'm puzzled. You were lambasted? Pcarbonn had no special authority, his argument would stand or not, it was up to the community. There isn't any "policy" on conference proceedings, to my knowledge, but there are notability guidelines and a preference for peer-reviewed publications and against self-published material. Read WP:SPS and WP:SELFPUB, they apply. A conference proceeding may be a notch up from self-published. I don't think they publish whatever crank paper is submitted (though some might think they do!), but papers are accepted or not, without extensive review. --Abd (talk) 17:34, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) Something should be clear. The mention of quantum electrodynamical considerations as the basis for the research was in the article when the link was removed without discussion. What I've done is only to restore, roughly, what was there, and a link that was used. I have now addressed the issue of anachronism, but, please consider this: any reference about what they were doing when they discovered the effect is going to be retrospective. It wasn't published, at all, prior to 1989, it was, after all, secret, and this is describing what they had been doing for years at that time. This is an important piece of information about the history. It's now attributed, with a date. The removal of the paper from the bibliography has not been justified by Noren, he simply did it. That's reversion without discussion, based only on a technical claim that somehow I was wrong to put it back in, without giving any reason but process, I.e., supposedly I should have discussed it. But I did discuss it. Too much, some would say! I restored what was there before Noren's edits, addressing the objection about "anachronism." If it can be improved, please improve it. I think there may be other earlier sources on this, if people are offended by the delay, Fleischmann has written about this in more than one paper, but this was the most complete discussion of it I've seen. --Abd (talk) 17:50, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

13 years after the fact? C'mon Abd. There are RS for their thinking at the time, they don't get to come back 13 years later, after all sorts of speculative rationales have been offered by others (not to mention their own rationales from 1989 which did NOT mention this later one (correct me if I'm wrong)), and claim that this was their thinking. It's putting Fleischmann's later spin into what should be a strictly factual article, not to mention giving lots of weight in the wrong place. 3 editors have now removed it, so I'm pretty sure there isn't consensus for inclusion. Phil153 (talk) 18:09, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

There also is not consensus for exclusion, Phil. What it will take, perhaps, is detailed discussion and examination of each point, and possibly involving neutral editors. I don't see the description of their thinking as anything like what you are asserting, it's not spin, it is a simple and reasonable explanation of what they had in mind, and it isn't contradicted by the earlier sources. This should be a "purely factual article?" So what someone was looking for when they found something isn't in the realm of fact? Sure, we need testimony to establish it, but motivation is a fact established all the time in the legal system. What starts it is a legal principle: testimony is presumed true unless controverted. It is a fact that Fleischmann, in 2002, explained why they thought fusion might be possible. It's not speculation. Sure, maybe he made it up. But why? I don't see any motivation.

Phil, you assert, in your revert, that "there is already RS for what they thought." There is RS for some of what they thought, and what was in the article is far less informative, it makes it look like they were merely asserting some kind of pressure effect, which is highly unlikely to be the whole story. The 2002 explanation makes sense of it. It does not contradict it. And Fleischmann speaks to this point, exactly. You removed a verifiable fact from the article, Phil. Not good. The fact is "As reported by Fleischmann in 2002, ...." Do you deny this? How is it undue weight? It's not anachronistic, it's an attributed assertion about what preceded the research. So ... we get to examine this one in detail, apparently. Meanwhile, *what does this have to do with the removal of the paper from the bibliography?* It was there. Phil, you did not just remove the part about the prior thinking, you did a revert of the whole edit. --Abd (talk) 18:29, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

The source (a conference proceeding), was there to support the text you added, and you put it in during the same edit, so I was indeed only removing the part about the prior thinking. You other points have been covered by myself and others. From your text below and this edit that established a long standing version, Paul V. Keller seems to agree that this doesn't belong either. That's 4 that don't think it or the source belongs in the article Phil153 (talk) 18:42, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) More of the history. This is the edit that removed the mention of quantum electrodynamics. There had been a discussion in Talk. Shanahan suggested language which is fairly close to what I've put in. Keller wrote, Dr. Shanahan is right that Fleischmann and Pons statement as to motivation made in 1989 is more reliable that the one Fleischmann gave 14 years later, particularly as their original hypothesis was proven wrong in the intervening period. I have made changes accordingly and attempted to improve the experimental description while I was at it. ~Paul V. Keller 02:59, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

What the article now has may be a combination of both reports. I haven't seen Legget. I'm a bit puzzled by "their original hypothesis was proven wrong in the intervening period." What hypothesis? The hypothesis mentioned in the present text hasn't been proven wrong. It's still controversial, to my knowledge. The only measure we have of any reliability as to current scientific consensus is the 2004 DOE report, which asserts no such "proof," it merely reports that low-energy nuclear reaction of the kind under consideration had not been "conclusively demonstrated." One reviewer thought it had. The general hypothesis reported here is of the nature of a hunch, that something might be different in the lattice than in a plasma. That, actually, isn't controversial, what remains controversial is the hypothesis that it is different enough to allow fusion. --Abd (talk) 18:17, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

You're missing the subtlety of Keller's point, which may be because you haven't read their statements in 1989. It's worth having a look at them and comparing to the later postdated rationales offered. Phil153 (talk) 18:28, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

The paper is at http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanelectroche.pdf

It says very little about the theoretical background to their work. The paper from 2002 gives far more detail, detail which does not contradict what was said in 1989. For reference, the 2002 paper is at . The considerations about quantum electrodynamics provided a general background, against which they then considered the specific case of deuterium in palladium, which is what they mention in the 1989 paper. The specific does not contradict the general. --Abd (talk) 18:42, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Phil, the "Early Work" section clearly indicates that claims involving unusual events in deuterium-saturated palladium long-precede the P&F experiments. It is perfectly reasonable for people knowledgeable in their field, with better measuring equipment at their disposal, to seek to investigate such claims. Sure, "fusion" had been mentioned before, and chemists who perhaps were not well-informed about nuclear physics might mistakenly think about interesting possibilities --but the measurements were what needed to be done before any such old claims could be taken seriously. And they did indeed have better equipment available. Do you have a problem with this description of P&F's rationale? V (talk) 21:08, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm looking for other references on this topic of Fleischmann and what he was looking for when he found what he believed was cold fusion. http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanbackground.pdf

In this paper presented at ICCF12, 2003, Fleischmann is even more specific. In the 1960s we started a series of research projects aimed at answering the Question, "Can we find illustrations in Chemistry (especially in Electrochemistry) of the need to invoke the Q.E.D. paradigm to explain the results obtained?" His continued discussion shows that the work he was doing was fundamental research, it was not aimed at finding cold fusion. It was aimed at discovering if Q.E.D., or field dynamics was needed to explain results in chemistry. Now, from my non-expert position, it would be surprising if it were not necessary to explain, at least, some minor effects, shifts in predicted values, etc. The question, really, is how significant the effects of the condensed matter state are, not whether there are any effects. (As an example, the Mossbauer effect exemplifies a change in nuclear behavior due to the nucleus being embedded in a crystal. To be sure, this involves lower energies and not nuclear transformations other than excitation/de-excitation). That this is the work Fleischmann was doing is plausible, and in the absence of evidence to the contrary, should be accepted as his description without being impeached by claims of "spin" or distortion. Because of the lapse of time, certainly, attribution is appropriate; but this statement, if made in the 1989 article, would simply have added to the controversy without improving the basic experimental science. In the 1989 paper, his overall research project wasn't relevant and he deliberately avoided publicising it. There may be earlier work consistent with this claim. My the way, Shanahan might be gratified to notice that in this paper Fleischmann notes the problems involved in calibration of calorimeters when there is unequal distribution of heat generation, thus Fleischmann refers to the need for controls as distinct from simply measuring alleged anomalous heat. --Abd (talk) 22:15, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Abd, I think you posted something somewhere around here about P&F detecting a small amount of excess heat when ordinary hydrogen was used, proportionate to the natural occurrance of deuterium. If so, this would be about 1/6500 the amount of heat in a pure-heavy-water experiment. If accurate, this is bad news for Shanahan, two ways. First, A control experiment with ordinary water would be generating hydrogen and oxygen at the same rate as the heavy-water experiment. If CCS occurs for heavy water, with the two elements recombining, why doesn't the same amount of recombination and "error" show up in the plain-water experiment, after the same number of hours of run-time? Second, if the calorimeter is accurate such that 1/6500 amount of heat could still be detected in the control experiment, what is the basis for assuming it is not accurate when 6500 times as much deuterium is present? Suppose heavy water was mixed with ordinary water so that, in different control experiments the proportion was 1/2000, 1/600/ 1/200, 1/60, 1/20, 1/6 and 1/2? The calorimeter should detect proportionate increases (approximate triplings) in excess heat in each control, right? Such a sequence of experiments/measurements would totally demolish the CCS hypothesis. V (talk) 15:16, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Process note: I am holding firmly to an assumption that Shanahan, as an expert and a professional, will be totally pleased if research shows that his hypothesis was incorrect, just as a doctor would be pleased to find that his diagnosis of a particular disorder was wrong and the patient was healthy or at least not as seriously ill as thought because a hypothesis about the disorder turned out to be wrong. Shanahan's criticism appears to be cogent, when applied simply to calorimetry alone, and Fleischmann, as I note elsewhere, has alluded to the problem if not to Shanahan's work directly. It's my view that inadequate attention has been paid to controlled experiments, and in particular to control with hydrogen vs. deuterium. It's relatively easy to dismiss a conclusion based on a very complex procedure, calorimetry, alone. However, correlation with He4 production makes such evidence stronger; the use of controls adds, again, far more weight. It's still possible to assert that the subtle differences that exist between water and heavy water are responsible; but when Arata analyzes the gas in his gas-pressurized nanoparticle palladium, finds heat only with deuterium, not with hydrogen, variation in heat with differing alloys, no heat with an empty cell, and then, again, finds excess helium only in the cells with deuterium and heat generation.... this starts to become very, very serious replication and evidence. The "replication," here, isn't of electrolytical results, which are complex and difficult to reproduce, and exactly composition of the palladium electrodes turns out to be critical, but of loading palladium with deuterium and getting heat. And nuclear ash. I need to read the reports again, but my impression is that the negative reviewers in the 2004 DOE review did not pay sufficient attention to the range of verifications, and, indeed, seem to have considered that a negative: there were so many different kinds of demonstrations of experiments where the signature of nuclear reactions was claimed to be strong that the reviewers felt that no single one of them was "convincing."

I'd say that what is out there now, and with the ongoing work taking place around the world, we will know much more clearly how the scientific world is reacting to the more recent work and analysis, within a few years. Meanwhile, we have article decisions to make, here, let's make them carefully and with full respect to Misplaced Pages policies and guidelines, and not according to some POV, pro or con. My objection here has been to a contingent of editors who clearly assume that cold fusion is dead, rejected, only being pursued by fanatics and con artists and "kooks," and who have been willing to edit war to make sure that the article presents cold fusion in that way. And on the other side are those who would take the article too far in the other direction. Definitely the field has attracted some con artists, but ... that doesn't make it dead, only a little more confusing. --Abd (talk) 15:56, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

1998. Fleischmann paper on a similar theme: the breakdown of quantum mechanics in describing a condensed matter system. --Abd (talk) 22:29, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

book slightly earlier than the 2002 paper which describes the goal of their research. It describes the "hidden agenda" very explicitly. The research was thus into fundamental physics, actually. They were not looking for "free energy." I'm finding this fascinating. --Abd (talk) 22:41, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

In 2000, a Fleischmann article was published in Accountability in Research. Here is a copy. . This paper explores in detail the theoretical underpinnings of the work, specifically the inadequacy of classical quantum mechanics in describing the condenses matter state. It's quite clear that this is a deep and long-term interest of his. --Abd (talk) 22:41, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Phil153, you said, "There are RS for their thinking at the time"; would you please be more specific about what's available along those lines?

It would be really good if we had secondary sources commenting on the Fleischmann 2002 ref in terms of Fleischmann's thinking.

I prefer presenting together all the POVs about his thinking at the time. We can say something like "Fleischmann stated later that at this time he had been..."; that's a fact: he did in fact state that later, and that's consistent with WP:ASF: state facts about opinions. However, putting his 2002 publication later in the article is not unreasonable as well.

By the way, I'd just like to take this opportunity to talk about why I'm editing this page. I had heard about cold fusion on the news years ago and not thought about it much at all since then. Then I saw that there was contention (e.g. an Arbitration case) so I started to notice this page and have started learning a tiny bit about cold fusion, and find it interesting. I tend to lean towards inclusionism: I myself would like to see more information on Misplaced Pages about cold fusion—I wish those subpages hadn't been deleted so I could read them and learn some things—and I imagine there are probably other readers like me who would also like to see more material. I think readers will be interested to read Fleischmann's paper, and that if it's not included as a reference it would be good to put it as an external link or listed as "further reading". I want to see lots of facts included here: not just selected facts, but many facts, organized e.g. with subpages so that readers aren't overwhelmed. There are all sorts of questions: how are the calorimeters calibrated? What size is the apparatus? What sorts of time periods are involved? How does the excess heat compare to the total energy put in as electricity? etc. that I don't think are answered in this article. I realize there are others who lean towards deletionism and think it's better to have a short, simple article that many readers will want to read all of; using subpages is a way to satisfy both. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 22:48, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Fleischmann-Pons effect

This article focuses on "cold fusion." Low-temperature nuclear reactions, of which fusion is a theoretical example, are a hypothesis proposed to explain the Fleischmann-Pons effect. That's a redirect to this article (I created it). However, what's the "Fleischmann-Pons effect." What is the scientific consensus regarding it?

There are many more scientists who think the effect is real than think that it is caused by fusion.

There is a review paper that was presented at ICCF-14 (2008), http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/CravensDtheenablin.pdf

Abstract:

One hundred sixty seven papers from 1989 to 2007 concerning the generation of heat from electrochemical cells were collected, listed, and digitally posted to a CD for reference, review and study. A review showed four criteria that were correlated to reports of successful experiments attempting replication of the Fleischmann-Pons effect. All published negative results can be traced to researchers not fulfilling one or more of these conditions. Statistical and Bayesian studies show that observation of the Fleischmann-Pons effect is correlated with the criteria and that production of “excess heat” is a real physical effect “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

From the paper:

In August 1989 Nathan Lewis’ group from Caltech published a negative paper Searches for

Low-temperature nuclear fusion of deuterium in palladium in the mainstream science journal, Nature. In November 1989, D.E. Williams’ group at Harwell Laboratory published a negative paper Upper bounds on cold fusion in electrolytic cells in Nature. Mainstream science writers and patent agents have referred to these papers for years when seeking to deny scientific legitimacy or patent protection for CMNS researchers. The failed papers have made a lasting impression since Nature refuses to publish more recent experimental results. The editors consider the matter settled: the Fleischmann-Pons Effect is not real.

By the time the Caltech and Harwell experiments were conducted, a few of the required

experimental factors were known from the Kainthla and Fleischmann-Pons papers. The lead investigators chose to follow their own protocol resulting in two failed experiments and a negative image for CMNS.

The 2004 DOE review reports this:

Evaluations by the reviewers ranged from: 1) evidence for excess power is compelling, to 2) there is no

convincing evidence that excess power is produced when integrated over the life of an experiment. The reviewers were split approximately evenly on this topic. Those reviewers who accepted the production of excess power typically suggest that the effect seen often, and under some understood conditions, is compelling. The reviewers who did not find the production of excess power convincing cite a number of issues including: excess power in the short term is not the same as net energy production over the entire of time of an experiment; all possible chemical and solid state causes of excess heat have not been investigated and eliminated as an explanation; and production of power over a period of time is a few percent of the external power applied and hence calibration and systematic effects could account for the purported net effect. 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.

Glass half-empty or half-full. There are editors who have been working on this article for a long time who treat cold fusion as something that was "disproven," an example of "pathological science." However, back away from that. Is the Fleischmann-Pons effect real, never mind what is causing it? I'm thinking that the "effect" refers to the production of heat due to the loading of palladium to high density with deuterium. There are quite a few different approaches to this that have been tried; not only the electrochemical approach of F & P, but the direct gas loading of a powdered palladium alloy with deuterium, no electrolysis involved, hence no large input of power (to electrolyze the deuterium), with sustained heat generation being shown (Arata's work).

Given the extensive bias against cold fusion that developed after 1989, which is well-documented, that half the eighteen reviewers in 2004 considered the F-P effect to be real is quite striking; it indicates to me that if not for the bias, that would probably have been a supermajority. (I haven't looked at the individual reviews, "half" might indeed mean 9 vs. 9.)

In any case, there is continual appearance of publication in reliable sources on this topic. Back to the purpose of this section: I think we need a section of this article, or an article, that focuses on the F-P effect itself, rather than on the hypotheses about it.

Then there is the interesting question of correlation of other experimental results with the F-P effect. Apparently, there are extensive reports of He4 generation correlated with excess heat. I.e., series of experiments is run. Some show excess heat, some do not, for, perhaps, reasons unknown. But helium is detected above background in the experiments where heat is found, not in those where it is not. Arata runs experiment with deuterium. Heat generation clear (Arata doesn't depend on calorimetry, his work is much simpler), helium detected well above background. Runs experiment with hydrogen. no heat and Helium not found.

This field does not resemble any other "fringe science" I'm aware of. The literature is massive. I've seen a bibliography showing publications in peer-reviewed journals, showing positive excess heat results (i.e, this total excludes negative reports such as the Nature publications that closed that door), with 50 different journals, 153 papers, 348 authors and co-authors, from 62 institutions. The document claims that "there are actually many more institutions involved in cold fusion than this. These numbers are more of an indication of how much peer-reviewed journal editors resist publishing than a comprehensive tally." By comparison, and to explain why the compiler of the bibliography considers that "resistance" may be involved, the lenr-canr.org bibliography shows about 3000 technical papers; but most of them are, I think, conference proceedings and other alternate publications, some of which seem high quality, and some not. --Abd (talk) 03:09, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

The publication patterns in the field of Cold Fusion have a great similarity to the publication patterns of Polywater, including key features described elsewhere as characteristic of failed information epidemics, including the publication of seminal papers followed by rapid growth and then decline of both the numbers of authors of papers and of journal publication frequency. For a reliable source on the topic, see "Indicators of failed information epidemics in the scientific journal literature: A publication analysis of Polywater and Cold Nuclear Fusion", E. Ackermann, Scientometrics 66, 451-466 (2006). --Noren (talk) 04:59, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Kevin Baas points out the problem with the Polywater analogy, or, what has been more notably asserted, the N ray one. Fifteen years after the N-ray flap, there weren't fifty percent of expert reviewers considering that there was something real being observed. The experiments weren't getting stronger. However, thanks for the source, that's very interesting and may be useful.

(list of sources moved to subsection below) --Enric Naval (talk) 01:49, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

After long review, we've discovered that the acceleration patterns of a cheetah and a car are quite similiar. We conclue, therefore, that a cheetah actually is a car. Kevin Baas 13:08, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

"The cheetah has spots! No other cat has spots! This is clear evidence of my theory that a cheetah is not really a cat!" "Nope, other cats have spots, for example the leopard. Here's a reliable source to that effect." "He thinks that a leopard is a cheetah!" --Noren (talk) 13:45, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

FWIW, a more proper analogy might have been something like "... since a car has an internal combustion engine, we conclude that so does a cheetah." but i went for simplicity and humor over accuracy. Looks like it did the trick. Kevin Baas 19:18, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Polywater was (quickly) fringe science. Reproductions were difficult but did take place. Sure, the analogy is a good one, to a point. Beyond that point it fails. Later work with cold fusion improved the reproducibility, and more accurate measurements, more precise conditions, all improved reproducibility and clarity of results.

There is an interesting powerpoint presentation on this at Bad Science, which ends up using Polywater and Cold fusion as poster boys. Page 16 of the presentation shows a chart of publications per year on the topic. Polywater did not get serious notice until 1966-68. It hit Science in 1969. Research publication peaked and fell off, and by 1974, there was very little publication. It is hard to interpret the chart. A similarity is mass media involvement. Our article on Polywater is pretty bad, with little technical detail and without the key references. There was a cogent negative paper by Rousseau, published a year and a half later in Science, which explained the experimental results with reasonable power. Because there remained some possibility of error in the negative results, debate did not immediately cease; our article claims, however, that when glassware was more thoroughly cleaned, the polywater results disappeared. Again, the source of the "effect" was identified with reasonable certainty.

The presentation, however, in examining Cold fusion, starts with the assumption that there are only two pathways to fusion. There are three known and accepted for hot fusion, plus muon-catalyzed fusion which takes place at low temperatures. Slide 31 asserts that neutrons and protons are released in cold fusion. There is some question over neutrons, but protons aren't reported, and neutrons are reported at levels so low that clearly, if what is happening is fusion, it isn't a pathway that normally generates fast neutrons. The author of the presentation has not taken the time to review the actual papers and state of the science, but is relying, apparently, on media presentation (the very thing decried) and superficial review, at best.

Slide 32 is "The Signs of Fusion." It shows Excess Heat, Neutrons, Tritium, Helium-3, and Protons. These are, of course, the characteristics of the predominant reaction pathways in hot fusion. However, there is another pathway that is known and accepted, but in hot fusion, it only occurs in small abundance: Deuterium fusion to Helium-4, with an emitted gamma ray. Cold fusion isn't hot fusion, that ought to be obvious. It might involve the third pathway, usually, but then there is the gamma ray, which is a pure release of energy; it's penetrating radiation. However, if the energy could be, as one example, coupled through some Q.E.D. effect to the crystal, that energy release would become, simply, heat. Good thing, too, or else we'd have been seeing the dead graduate student effect....

The presentation reports the media hysteria, and massive attempts at confirmation based on limited information. Then, however, it reports the Confirmations. Listed there is the Georgia Tech finding of neutrons. That information was released by press conference and retracted several days later as being due to limited information. Some later cold fusion work, with much more cautious work and with more sensitive detectors, have found neutrons, but the Georgia Tech work didn't have excess heat, if I'm correct, and therefore neutrons would not have been expected. Now, why is a simple experimental error included in this presentation? It's pretty obvious: the reviewer is convinced that it was bogus science, and including an experimental error, of a kind that would not ordinarily have attracted any attention, helps make that point. The slide gives six confirmations, the sixth is "Bob's Discount House of Knowledge."

The presentation then reviews the Compton peak problem with Fleischmann's original gamma radiation report (that would have indicated neutrons), and that is an aspect of Fleischmann's work that was never confirmed, I'm not sure how Fleischmann responded, and I'm not aware of other reports of that radiation, so I assume this criticism is cogent.

They note some retractions, and then show the Harwell work, referring to it as "the most extensive set of cold fusion tests in the world." Harwell published in November, 1989. They may indeed have been the most extensive individual set of tests at that time. However, as the analysis mentioned above ( http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/CravensDtheenablin.pdf ) shows, and while they may have been "working with advice from Fleischmann," they did not follow the protocol (and to be fair, some aspects of the protocol, necessary conditions for the effect to be seen, may not have been known at that time, the protocol that works only gradually came to be known through many failures and successes). The basic protocol was known, for anyone following work in the field, by the mid-1990s. The Chinese paper mentioned above shows an analysis of something on the order of 10,000 experimental runs, which would be, I'm sure, far more extensive than the Harwell work, and it shows increase in positive results in recent years.

Other negative results are shown, such as failure to detect radiation expected from classical fusion and now known not to be present with the Fleischman-Pons effect, or at least not at levels that would be easily detectable. (There are some cogent and fairly recent claims of neutron detection using methods that are effectively more sensitive, but that's another story.)

Then one of the characteristics of Bad Science is described: researchers working in isolation. That is not the case with cold fusion, witness the regular conferences, plus continued publication, up to the present, in peer-reviewed journals outside the specific "fringe" field, and vast numbers of research reports as conference papers. Some idea of the level of publication is cited above. The reasons for the early negative findings are fairly well established. And then there is the 2004 DOE report, which is, quite simply, inconsistent with this judgment of Bad Science. It shows the existence of a genuine scientific controversy.

The polywater example is, I believe, notable, as is the N ray example, but they should be presented in the History article that I've been proposing, beyond, possibly, a attributed note that Cold fusion has been so compared. The slide show discussed above isn't RS, but it is, for us, a clear example of how misconceptions about this research have been promoted and taught for years. It's not isolated. Cold fusion is Bad Science, end of topic, and, please, don't confuse me with the latest research. --Abd (talk) 17:12, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

polywater comparison, sources, when, how and why

So we have this source comparing polywater to cold fusion: "Critical Issues in Biomedical Science: A Guide for Biochemistry and Molecular & Cell Biology Graduate", 2002, Leland L. Smith

Comparison also made by:

• Henry H. Bauer, 2002, Hyle journal, , which gives another source:
• Rousseau, D.L.: 1992, ‘Cases studies in pathological science’, American Scientist, 80 (January-February), 54-63.
• Deconstruction and research, Journal of Phase Equilibria and Diffusion, 2005, also puts the two on the same article
• A newspaper from Seattle , 1989
• David Goodman, on a mailing list in 1998
• book that cites Taubes and adds some analysis of its own "Commercializing new technologies", 1997, Harvard Bussiness Press,
• NY Times? , April 1989
• The Undergrowth of Science: Deception, Self-Deception and Human Frailty by Walter Gratzer. 2000, Oxford University Press, review
• Resonance journal?, 2008

So, multiple independient reliable and non-reliable sources making the same statement, sorry im in a hurry to finish writing this --Enric Naval (talk) 19:21, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

That's correct, as I mentioned, we have usable sources on this, though they are not generally of the nature of unbiased analyses, so they should be attributed. This is not science, it is notable opinion about science, and should be presented as such. There are also, I believe, apparently neutral sources which report the accusations and analyze them. --Abd (talk) 00:37, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Sure enough, those sources describe the same thing:

So, what the reliable sources say is that cold fusion is discredited, that the controversy is over, that the attempts to compare it to polywater/N-rays/ESP/etc. were sucessfull and killed the reputation of cold fusion (in about six months?), etc.

Mind you, this is not a description of the field itself, it's a description how it was painted by some and how the idea caught, and how it's still considered by scientists the same thing as back then in 1989 after the dust settled (a discredited science). --Enric Naval (talk) 01:49, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

is the controvesy really over? sources

(cut from section above because of topic change --Enric Naval (talk) 09:11, 25 March 2009 (UTC))

It's really going to be necessary to read the complete sources, and not just extracted sentences. For example, the article on rhetoric and humor is about how rhetorical devices were used effectively to discredit Fleischmann and Pons. This article supports the view that the rejection wasn't "scientific," but was political in nature. Consider Note 4 on page 174: Interestingly, Lewis' main empirical claim, that Pons and Fleischmann had not stirred their cells and had mistaken thermal disequilibrium for heat excesses, was soon countered by Pons and Fleischmann, who showed that the deuterium bubbles provided sufficient stirring. Lewis had, it seems, based his conclusions on a series of experiments in which he had built much larger cells than Pons and Fleischmann had actually used. Like Koonin's claims over radon, Lewis' claims over lack of stirring are not definitive.

The author is considering the effect of rhetoric, which is a political device, designed to influence people and not to resolve controversy in a scientific way, through further research or, sometimes, definitive analysis. --Abd (talk) 21:12, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

It explains how Lewis and Koonin used humour on their presentation to sway the audience on their side and accuse P. and F. of breaking scientific rules (see start of page 173, and pages 170-174). This doesn't change the fact that the audience was swayed, that's it, that the controversy is over and that cold fusion now stands as pathological science. See:

I think this is enough material to write up something on the article. --Enric Naval (talk) 08:25, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Sure. By the way, I have the book on order (Undead Science) and a few others, such as Storms (2007). No question but that there is material for the article. But be careful about describing what happened in 1989 as a present scientific consensus; the judgment of "pathological science" is very clearly in contradiction to the 2004 DOE report, which is the most recent source we have as a broad review. "The controversy is over" is so patently false, Enric, that I'm wondering where you are coming from. There are reliable secondary sources, recent, that stand directly in contradiction to this. There is controversy. Get over it. Or did I misread you?

Because a roomful of scientists, influenced by crowd mentality just as can be everyone else, join in ridiculing a thing does not mean that controversy is over. Controversy continued with N-rays for some years, but with rapid decline. There was a conclusive refutation. The F-P effect was never refuted; it was impeached, but we have RS that the impeachment was defective. The 2004 DOE report itself seems a bit confused, the Chinese study shows a steady increasing in replication reliability. In any case, the 2004 DOE report has The nearly unanimous opinion of the reviewers was that funding agencies should entertain individual, well-designed proposals for experiments that address specific scientific issues relevant to the question of whether or not there is anomalous energy production in Pd/D systems, or whether or not D-D fusion reactions occur at energies on the order of a few eV. These proposals should meet accepted scientific standards, and undergo the rigors of peer review.

Honesty, Enric, does this sound like "the controversy is over"? Or like "pathological science."?

WP:PSCI, a section of WP:NPOV, provides four classifications for questionable sciences. Which one applies here, if any?

In an Arbitration Committee case, which may be read in full here, the committee created distinctions among the following:

• Obvious pseudoscience: "Theories which, while purporting to be scientific, are obviously bogus, such as Time Cube, may be so labeled and categorized as such without more ."

• Generally considered pseudoscience: "Theories which have a following, such as astrology, but which are generally considered pseudoscience by the scientific community may properly contain that information and may be categorized as pseudoscience."

The ArbCom ruled that the following should generally not be characterized as pseudoscience:

• Questionable science: "Theories which have a substantial following, such as psychoanalysis, but which some critics allege to be pseudoscience, may contain information to that effect, but generally should not be so characterized."

• Alternative theoretical formulations: "Alternative theoretical formulations which have a following within the scientific community are not pseudoscience, but part of the scientific process."

It could be argued that "cold fusion" is "generally considered pseudoscience," but only if one refers to the general "scientific community," but not to those who have reviewed it in detail. Quite a number of skeptics and critics have shifted their positions. Storms, if I'm correct, first published as a critic. I think the book will tell his story. The best example we have of how the informed scientific community thinks of the field is the 2004 DOE review. That review takes us up to the third or fourth category, which are not pseudoscience. "Pathological science" refers to poor experimental practice and unwarranted conclusions, and "pathological science" as a term has been applied to the skepticism about cold fusion as well as to overenthusiastic and premature acceptance of it. --Abd (talk) 01:58, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

DOE 2004 says nothing about the field being accepted or about any controversys existing or not. Use sources that actually deal with the topic:

• "Seventeen years after the announcement the scientific community does not acknowledge this field as a genuine scientific research theme." Biberian 2007
• "Most chemists would rather forget all about cold fusion. (...), only a small core of researchers has kept the idea from fading away entirely. (...) Acceptance by the scientific community is still the main target for cold fusion advocates (...) But will the flare-up of cold fusion excitement last?" Van Noorden 2007
• "Nonetheless, a network of dedicated cold-fusionists still toils away in a vineyard that looks pretty barren to almost everyone else" Wired March 2009
• "Nobody . The laws of physics left cold fusion dead in the water. Nearly. A hardy band of believers refuses to let the dream die and, two decades on, continues to work on the phenomenon, now renamed as low-energy nuclear reactions." The Guardian, March 2009
• "So far it hasn't been replicated to satisfy either the scientific community or the Department of Energy, leaving this type of fusion's future out in the cold for now." Scientific American, March 2009
• "Attempts to replicate their experiments failed, but a number of researchers insist that cold fusion is possible. (...) The American Chemical Society has organised sessions surrounding the research at its meetings before, suggesting that the field would otherwise have no suitable forum for debate. (...) In a bid to avoid the negative connotations of a largely discredited approach
• "But other scientists could not reproduce their results, and the whole field of research declined. A stalwart cadre of scientists persisted, however (...)'" American Chemical Society, March 2009

See? It's still not accepted, it's discredited, there is a small resurgence of interest on the topic, it's not clear if it's a real revival or just a perceived flare up or a temporal thing, and there is only a die-hard core of scientists still pursuing it.