About Current Science LENR special section peer-review process

Alain, you presented information on the process for the Current Science issue, as a response to "Sylvie Coyaud," but no link to Ms. Coyaud's critique. Where was it? Ms. Coyaud has a blog, seems like a decent one. We expect many people with interest in science to be skeptical about cold fusion. Shifting this will take wisdom and patience. Gravitas, in a word. More information on the Current Science process is likely to come out. I've written elsewhere about my personal experience, as author of http://www.currentscience.ac.in/Volumes/108/04/0574.pdf . Here is some more:

The reviewer's very first comment: "I am sorry to find that this paper is not written in a cogent manner," and then he gave additional criticisms, largely incorrect, by the way. But that was just a preliminary report, he was travelling. His detailed report, a few days later, had

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... to state that this is a Reliable Cold Fusion Experiment is not justified based on whatever is presented...

and then:

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D + D leading to 4He plus Gamma. Accompanied by excess heat? I think this is the main issue. As stated in the review, no high energy gamma has been observed and no high energy alphas( only 20 keV alphas). This reaction channel is more dominant than tritium production channel which in turn is more dominant than the neutron production channel. However as per our nuclear physics knowledge it should have been as follows: Tritium production and neutron production channels should have been of similar probability. The capture channel should have been atleast one million times smaller than the above. Definitely the cold fusion results are in conflict with the nuclear physics results.

How did I respond? What I concluded was that I had failed to explain the matter adequately. He is presenting the classic argument, but has not taken on the experimental evidence, when much of the point of my paper is that there is no theory, the gammas are missing, the effect is a mystery, but this is what we know, helium is being produced proportionally to the heat, at a remarkable ration, the known fusion ratio, if there is no energy leakage, i.e., radiation.

Since I took responsibility for my failure, instead of blaming him for his ignorance, and instead of arguing with him, I modified the paper. The result, from him, first, as a note to the section editors:

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I am happy that the author has tried to address many of the questions raised by me. Now I understand that while some aspects of this phenomenon are understood, most of the features including the mechanism of 4He production are still not explained. I have given my final comments which may be incorporated by the author.

And then, to be forwarded to me (though the whole email was forwarded):

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I appreciate very much the efforts put in by the author to provide answers
to many of the questions/comments raised by me.

The title could be

Replicable Cold Fusion Experiment: Heat/Helium Ratio

The author could use the following in his concluding part of the
paper.

It is clear from the various data available in the literature that the
phenomenon of heat and helium correlation is replicable. While some attributes
of this phenomenon are consistent with d –d fusion( e.g 4 He production and the
energy associated with the heat), many of the other features expected from d- d
fusion are not observed in these experiments( e.g. detection of high energy
gammas, neutrons and other charged particles). Even the mechanism of
production of 4He and the correlated heat generated is not understood. The fact
remains that it is an interesting phenomenon which needs more detailed
experimentation and requires new theoretical approaches for understanding all
the observed features.

With these changes, I recommend that this paper be accepted for
publication in Current Science.

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I did use his suggestion.

This is something that has been seen again and again. When skeptics, true scientists, are presented with the evidence for cold fusion within a context where they have some obligation to review and consider it (such as Robert Duncan, and there are other examples), and after the experimental evidence had settled, i.e., we knew what was confirmed and what was not, they modify their position from high skepticism to some sort of acceptance or even curiosity. There is a lot of myth out there, commonly accepted, such as the idea that the U.S. Department of Energy reviews were "negative." They have been presented that way, but they were not. Mistakes were made, but by 2004, it was obvious: there was something worth looking at here, just not worth throwing billions of dollars at. Not yet, and I still agree with that. How about $100 million? Or $10 million? Soberly allocated, it could make a huge difference.