Self-Interest and LENR (Edmund Storms)

    Quote

    But physicists turned their back on Fleischmann and Pons way too early. F&P where right in their excess heat measurements, energies far beyond possible chemical artifacts. But physicists are just like people in general: don't like changes, especially from "outsiders".The problem in 1989 and which possibly still exists, is that physicists thinks there are no possibilities of "mysterious" nuclear reactions that would not produce expected gamma rays. The complete herecy of 1989 was that two chemists dared to claim some new unthinkable discovery within the area of physics. Like some outsiders trying to learn the dear physicists something completely new. Well, It took only 40 days for the physicists to shoot them down. Would not help If they had a new theory to explain it. Actually, It would make it only worse, since it would be inconcievable that some non physicists where to both discover a new phenomenon and have the theory to explain it. All physicists knew and still know that with nuclear reactions and fusion follows gamma radiation, and none where measured. So it had to be a pure chemical effect or measurement errors. But nature is full of surprises , and we have not reached the end of science..yet..After this event Cold Fusion was put in same category as Ufology, so only the boldest scientists would touch the subject, on the risk of their career.


    This polemic sounds good but I do not see evidence for it and when considered objectively it seems unlikely for all the obvious reasons expounded better by others (Joshua) than by me.


    Quote

    Anyhow: there are dusins of LENR theories, but lack of funding and interest in the Scientific community holds back the progress of the field. And no theory will initially be able to explain all phenomena, enough with one testable that can predict some outcome as a start.


    I think you have not been paying attention to Popper, as summarised by me above.To be a hypothesis (a candidate theory) we must get testable new predictions - not fitting to old known data which is all too easy to do by adding cherry-picked parameters or assumptions.I know only a few such, and none such that have been successful - e.g. their predictions, when tested, have panned out.


    Therefore I await you putting forward such an LENR hypothesis, with the new predictions it made, and the subsequent tests that gave it credibility as a plausible new theory.If you do not find this, then I think your statement above is incorrect.

    Forgive me, bur your next post sounds like you have been reading Mats Lewan. Not, given his irrationality over the Lugano results, a good comparison.


    Quote

    "Thus: a bulletproof observation at odds with accepted theory...... is accepted as a phenomena when it is repeatable and clearly well beyond experimental error, even if no theory exists to predict it. "


    Well, again you are wrong. F&P had "bursts of heat" in some one of eight electrolytic cells back in 1989. Bursts with power and energy densities far beyond possible chemical artifacts. But the Scientific community had no patience to wait for papers or more info from F&P. Within 40 days (and 40 nights) it was all over, and F&P was left om Their own.


    What evidence do you have that these "bursts of heat" are bulletproof and have energy and power density far beyond possible artifacts? Give me a well-written scholarly paper (no peer review required, but I will point out if it has lacks) and I will see whether I agree with this. It seems unlikely, simply because such evidence would be of great interest to many. But spare me the sociological explanation of why it was ignored - show me the write-up.


    Quote

    One of eight probability to observe a mystery is far far better than the frequency of Terrestrial gamma ray flashes in lightning, which still is considered bulletproof with no theory, while F&P was not.


    Sorry, you are confusing well-attested stochastic data with a reproducible distribution and many independent observers agreeing on its reality (TGFs) with sporadic data based on lone researchers interpretation of experiments that are in any case not bulletproof.


    Quote

    And F&P did even better later in France, but by then they where forgotten. And no mainstream scientists one would go near this kind of "Ufology"


    And when the deciding institutes concluded "nothing here, move on" in 1989, the remaining Scientific community followed like obedient dogs. No more debate, even when some labs showed excess heat results.Or as Dr. Peter Hagelstein at MIT said of excess heat if F&P type experiments:"we have experiments confirming the basic effect, we have experiments showing that energy is produced, that the energetic reaction products aren’t there, and the question is what to do about it. Actually, we should be very interested in these experiments. We should be interested, because we have experimental results which by now have been confirmed a great number of times. We learned about nature from doing experiments. So, here are experimental results. Can we, should we pay attention to them? Follow them up, see, where they lead? Today, sadly, the experiments in the cold fusion business are not considered to be part of science. And that’s the resolution that we have come to as the scientific community.


    From my perspective, having been in labs, having seen the results, having talked to experimentalists, having looked at the data, having spent great time on it, it looks like pretty much these experiments are real. They need to be taken seriously."[/quote]
    If the experiments are real they can be written up and critiqued by others. That is the only way to make progress. I have not seen such credible write-ups. Please post.

    "But that is the point. "LENR" is not a scientific theory because it makes no predictions and therefore can never be disproved."


    Who has ever stated that cold fusion, LENR, LANR, LENT or whatever you would Like to call it is a THEORY?


    It has never been a THEORY, but an experimental anomaly!


    A Theory is what is needed to explain, predict, to be used to build a test protocol


    "What (negative) evidence would cause you to conclude that LENR did not exist?"


    - Proof that F&P where swindlers, proof of foul play by the Japanese scientists, proof of Foul play by Mckubre, proof of foul play by Mitchell Swartz etc. Etc. ..


    " I remember the headlines and the (cautious in most cases) excitement in the scientific community. "


    Yes, the press conference was in late March 1989. And the deciding moment was 2. And 3rd May 1989 of the APS meeting in Baltimore where the deciding institutes like CALTECH and MIT sealedd the coffin of F&P. Read the newspaper articles of the time. It's proof enough.


    After 3.rd of May cold fusion was just Cold dead.


    "After a long period of attempted reproduction..."


    The main period of "try to replicate" lasted some 40 days. After Baltimore in May 1989 there where positive results internationally, but no one to listen.


    "F&Ps ideas were not accepted because neither he nor anyone else could reproduce them in a clearer experiment."


    Wrong. They got better reproducability in France (IMRA)


    About why IMRA abandoned cold fusion research, despite they clearly established a scientific phenomenon (yet not useable results): The money ran out, it is as simple as that. No threats, no conspiracy, no nothing. Only no money. When their sponsor Minoru Toyoda died the funds dried up.


    IMRA in France was financed by Technova a subsidiary of Toyota corp. Fleischmann and Pons were there to scale up their system’s energy production and to make it reliable, make it a commercial product. They did produce results, but it was not enough to make a real commercial product out of it.


    Without real money, they couldn’t get a step further. They already had produced compelling evidence that the anomalous heat effect was real. Had they had $120million funding back then, the world would have looked different today.


    Minuro Toyoda was clearly very interested in cold fusion, as shown by the ISCMNS memorial Contribution Award, “Minoru Toyoda Gold Medal”. (Medal is made of 18 carat gold )


    Even at the morning of his death, the story goes that he was briefed on the latest info on CF development.


    Anyhow: it's not over. I think the new "F&P Anomalous heat" Institute at Texas tech University will shed some light on what's going on. Or the ongoing research at University of Missouri.

    You Ask for some scholarly writings?


    This one may be a nice start from professor Hagelstein, which sums up some F&P experiments with clear excess heat.


    http://newenergytimes.com/v2/l…sReport-3696_48_PR152.pdf


    This paper I found interesting:


    http://brillouinenergy.com/wp-…eposition-experiments.pdf


    And this one explains why the institutes in 1989 where not able to replicate F&P, critical conditions where found later in the nineties, but then the mai stream science community showed no interest to go back and investigate,


    http://brillouinenergy.com/wp-…e-of-scientific-proof.pdf


    And here, a paper on anomalous heat evidence on the Nanor of Dr. Mitchell Swartz
    http://brillouinenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Dry-preloaded-NANOR®-type-CFLANR-components.pdf


    Do you want more? May be some from Japan or Italy or others?

    Quote

    I was only poking fun at people who base their opinions of Mat's book on things they read on Amazon.


    LOL.


    Go read the thread in which I mentioned an Amazon review.


    Unlike, perhaps, some, I am open when small parts of what I say have dubious provenance, and then I make those views explicitly conditional. And that is funny? Remember, I've had many e-mail interchanges with Mats about Lugano - so I know his views.


    ---------


    So I'd really like the F&P writeup so I could consider whether Oystla is correct in his statements about their work.


    What I've got is:


    A Hagelstein summary of F&P. You must forgive me. I don't accept summaries. That is someone else's view of the work. It can't be critiqued. Imagine if I'd accepted one of the many internet summaries of the Lugano results. You don't think mainstream scientists interested in LENR would base their views on such vague evidence? (Not that I'm a scientist, but I've had some training, and like reading stuff).


    Presumably H has based his summary on F&P writeups. I'd like one - the best that shows bulletproof evidence. Quantity does not make up for quality here.


    A Brillouin summary of other people work. That gives me B's view of other work, equally unhelpful. Anyone who bases opinions (positive or negative) about such a contentious issue on other's opinions is not thinking for themselves, and of course you can always select the summariser to have the views you like.


    I'd also point out that H is not a good experimentalist (he's basically a theory guy). Nor are Brillouin, because I've noticed:
    (1) They use high power RF stimulation of their reactions
    (2) They have noted that the reaction response, as measured by TC temperature, to the stimulus is fast
    (3) I've not seen any analysis of them of the possible EMC issues, so common whenever high power RF is mixed with low-level instrumentation. It looks like a very plausible explanation for their results which any good experimenter would take great care to rule out, and cross-check that it is ruled out. (This is something I know about).


    So even if I did accept other people's opinion, I would not choose them on the matter of experimental methodology.


    If you do accept other people's opinion there must then be the question of why you choose these outliers rather than the much more frequent view?



    A set of about 20 really really interesting papers from Schwartz. I'm always up for trying to decrpt the NANOR methodology. The results seem to indicate experimental error (I paraphrase):


    "The high COPs only happen at low output powers"


    I also note a prevalence of very very flakey wire in glass bulb calorimetry in which any surface or gas change that alters thermal resistance to ambient will cause a temperature change and be interpreted as excess heat.


    But, I'm happy to look at these. Which one is most interesting? (20 is too many for me).


    Anyway that is OT. Where is F&P's writeup of their experiment that has never been replicated but proves LENR? (Why, BTW, has it not been replicated?).

    PS - by scholarly I just mean an experimental writeup without obvious omissions that can therefore be critiqued.


    Given LENR is "not a theory but an anomaly" it rests on this.


    BTW if its an anomaly why call it [lexicon]Low Energy Nuclear Reactions[/lexicon]. That sounds to me like a theory, certaiblt there is no direct experimental evidence, and supposing such to happen in absence of high energy particles would be a hypothesised interpretation of an anomsly - not an anomaly.


    I accept all the claimed anomalies, just not the claimed interpretations.

    Tom Clarke:

    Quote

    Defkalion were, as you say, liars and their convincing (to you and many) results turned out to be fake. I'm not saying that therefore every LENR company is similarly overtly dishonest, but it shows the dangers in accepting that type of interest as validation.


    Dr. Kim was the experimentalist doing the R&D for DGT. His word and scientific ethics are gospel as far as I am concerned. I would take Kim's word over one million Tom Clarke's. The dishonesty at DGT is to be found in the business management and not in the technology.

    "A Hagelstein summary of F&P. You must forgive me. I don't accept summaries. That is someone else's view of the work. It can't be critiqued. Imagine if I'd accepted one of the many internet summaries of the Lugano results."


    Haha, you are funny. Comparing professor Hagelstein with "internet summaries"
    Of course it can be critiqued. Anyhow it's more than a summary, but you have already made up your mind so don't bother ;)


    But also you are way too lazy and have a lack of curiosity. If you really are curious of what F&P did you may find all their papers here:


    http://www.iscmns.org/library.htm


    But i understand you have already made up your mind on Cold Fusion and then it is impossible to change. Fleischmann called this the sign of "pathological skepticism


    "A Brillouin summary of other people work"


    Haha, Again, you did not bother to click the link to read the papers. Again lack of curiosity. The papers had nothing to do with Brillouin. It was just Peer reviewed papers brillouin had listed on their website, not Brillouins work. But very interesting papers from competent scientists.


    For Brillouin, I have no partial opinion. And If they use RF stimulation - so what? The real question is : is there excess energy and what is the source of energy? To be of commercial interest output would in any case have to be many times input energy, so it would be easy to rule out "poor measurements".


    "So even if I did accept other people's opinion, I would not choose them on the matter of experimental methodology."


    I don't Ask you to accept second hand opinions. Try reading the Peer reviewed papers I linked, that is If they are not too advanced for you.


    "If you do accept other people's opinion there must then be the question of why you choose these outliers rather than the much more frequent view?"


    No, I read with interest the first hand testimony of ISCMNS Peer review papers with interest and are fully convinced that nature still have some surprises left to show us.


    A set of about 20 really really interesting papers from Schwartz......


    "But, I'm happy to look at these. Which one is most interesting? (20 is too many for me)."


    What I find interesting, may differ from your interest....but using CR39 to detect anomalous amount of energetic particles I find fascinating, and is enough alone to convinced me that nuclear processes are happening (that shouldn't occur)


    Scroll to page 88:
    http://www.iscmns.org/CMNS/JCMNS-Vol15.pdf#page=88


    "Where is F&P's writeup of their experiment that has never been replicated but proves LENR? (Why, BTW, has it not been replicated?)."


    Wrong. F&P where replicated by Mckubre at SRI.

    "....and supposing such to happen in absence of high energy particles would be a hypothesised interpretation of an anomsly - not an anomaly."


    as indicated in my last post. A number of experiments using CR39 have shown anomalous amounts of energetic particles, which leads to the conclusion of nuclear reactions.


    therefore calling it LENR is fully justified.


    But again, the term LENR is just naming the mechanism, it's not a theory. Theory is much more, the explanation of how it can occur within the standard model of physics, giving us a basis for a protocol, something we can use to make predictions. Etc .

    Quote

    Haha, you are funny. Comparing professor Hagelstein with "internet summaries"Of course it can be critiqued. Anyhow it's more than a summary, but you have already made up your mind so don't bother


    You are arguing from authority - this one guy is so wonderful that we must all believe him.


    (1) I don't do that.
    (2) You can surely see that over any science issue there will always be outliers.
    (3) You have not addressed my point about H. Personally I like his theoretical work - he is one of the few scientists who have directly addressed the most difficult theory issues (mechanism for lack of high energy products). However I equally view his experimental involvement as being distinctly shaky for the reasons I outlined above, and therefore would not seem him as a good judge of other people's experiments.

    "You are arguing from authority - this one guy is so wonderful that we must all believe him."No idea what You're trying say. What I'm saying is that somewhere in life you have to start trusting first hand experiences from competent scientists.


    Like when not one but many phyisicists say - yes they has visited labs, yes they have studied the setups, the results and yes there is a mystery to be explained.


    Like professor Robert Duncan, who prior to 2009 did not believe in possibilities of LENR reactions. But after taking a jurney through the various labs he saw something that requires explanation. And he is still at it.


    "You can surely see that over any science issue there will always be outliers."
    Of course, so what?
    And is Brillouin an outlier? They use "hydrogen, nickel and electricity" as input and gets an anomalous amount of heat generated. Hmmmmmm, I've heard about this before somewhere?


    But where did This Nickel- hydrogen LENR start? With Rossi? No


    And If you have any curiosity at all, you should read this interview with Professor Focardi linked Below:


    It was however Professor Piantelli that Originally discovered nickel/hydrogen anomalous excess heat ( that is after he heard of Fleischmann and Pons Discovery he rechecked his own strange results on Ni/H research). Indicates how rich this field really is. So Rossi did not really invent anything from scratch, but build on the work from real scientists.


    http://www.radiocittadelcapo.i…cardi-english-version.pdf


    "You have not addressed my point about H."
    Yes I'm fully aware Hagelstein is a theoretical scientist. And a good one. So what? He has also written Peer reviewed papers together with experimental physcists, like Swartz, , and experimental electrochemists on CF, like Mckubre. And I choose to trust his judgement of the CF field.


    And now it is your turn to read the CR39 paper I linked.


    Several more Peer reviewed papers on CR39 has been published proving there is an anomalous amount of energetic particles generated in CF.

    So the CR39 paper.


    I actually enjoy reading Hagelstein/Schwartz's papers. They deliberately lack context, but nevertheless provide detailed insight into what LENR results are and what they are not.


    Hagelstein points out that the CR39 results are over a long integration time. He'd like to measure change in radiation with time under different conditions. He can't do this because his data is near the noise floor - so only becomes significant over long integration times.Further, he points out that contamination is very possible. Humans will alter the background count. What he does not say (though hints at) is that almost anything can alter the background count, so the tiny variations he notes can have almost any cause.


    His results for total track count show no significant correlation with the NANOR. His results for large tracks show four counts around the NANOR in excess of the background.


    He has chosen spatial bins so that these 4 extra counts lie in the same bin, and therefore look significant at about 2 sigma. That is his only positive result. I have three issues with this:


    (1) He has no way ruled out the NANOR carrier material having slightly higher background radiation than is the case for a shielded detector. Many materials would be such.


    (2) He has deliberately cherry picked his data to make a not significant effect look large by choosing the location and threshold of his "large bins". That is two, or possibly three, arbitrary parameters. So it is very unclear that these results are statistically significant, given the cherry-picking he has done choosing a large track threshold and a spatial bin frequency. For example, the "away from NANOR" count is 2 for nearly all the bins. That is much smoother than expected for a random distribution, and I expect it has been cherry picked. Whether so or just chance, it will mean the standard deviation for the large tracks is artificially low. At these very low counts artifacts abound.


    (3) He has not ruled out the possibility that the heat from the NANOR, on the film, alters its characteristics slightly to make large tracks more probable.I'm only listing all three issues because any one would be enough to explain this result - I don't suppose all three are relevant! To make this result really interesting you would therefore need a lot more work which he has not done.My impression: he has got these flakey results. He has done everything he can to make his setup as sensitive as possible. He has looked at the results lots of different ways trying to find interesting correlations. He has not seriously investigated what are the mechanisms for these results but, because he is expecting some nuclear activity, supposed they are because of that.


    These results are classic LENR, because they are so insignificant, no-one without preconceptions would think they are anything other than noise. Is it not peculiar that all LENR results (when properly collected) are so near to noise. I mean, for an effect very variable and capable of large energies you'd expect at least some times that the results are clearly higher than background?


    I've only seen such claims from Rossi or similar, where they are, I'm afraid, not worth the paper they are written on.

    Ok, Nice of you to read the paper, and here is my critique of your comments:


    "I actually enjoy reading Hagelstein/Schwartz's papers. They deliberately lack context, ..."
    Lack context??


    Here they have a claimed LENR (LANR) device, NANOR, and the question is as stated in the paper;
    - does it produce tracks in CR-39 similar as reported on other LENR systems performed by other researchers ( explained in the papers introduction chapter) ?


    And please note, it is not a "hagelstein/Swartz paper", but Swartz, Verner, Tolleson, Wright, Goldbaum, Mosier-Boss and Peter L. Hagelstein paper.


    At least Mosier-Boss have long experience with the use of CR-39 as particle detector.


    "Hagelstein points out..."
    Hagelstein? There where 7 people writing this paper, so You probably mean "the papersstates..."


    "....like to measure change in radiation with time under different conditions."


    I assume you refer to input power as stated in the paper:
    "Therefore, a pretested NANOR⃝R -type system was used at a number of input powers [8], run autonomously over days examined by Geiger Muller tube and CR-39, a polyallydiglycol carbonate polymer used as a time-integrating, solid state, nuclear track detector. "

    But the "therefore" as I understand it is to ensures the NANOR exhibit excess energy during the period, which is ensures by varying the input power.


    "......data is near the noise floor - so only becomes significant over long integration times"


    Since CR39 is time-integrating the radiation, the difference to background should be less and less Significant over time, so better with days than hours.


    Also note the statement "Many of the problems which exist in CR-39 analysis are partially surmounted here. These include relative insensitivity (which requires irradiation over long times), difficulty in resolving precise moieties,..."


    "What he does not say (though hints at) is that almost anything can alter the background count, so the tiny variations he notes can have almost any cause."


    "He"? You probably mean the "paper states"...


    "Anything" ? No not anything. To produce tracks in CR39 you need something that actually produce energetic particles. And not any ionizing radiation. Not x-rays, not Gamma's, not beta. You should have been curious enough to check this before you make claims. And read an article about it in a "real Journal"
    http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MosierBosscharacteri.pdf


    "results for total track count show no significant correlation with the NANOR"


    Yes they do. And note They only counted certain types of tracks. The picture in fig 4 shows very clearly that NANOR has impacted the CR39.


    "results for large tracks show four counts around the NANOR in excess of the background. "


    It is four Count PER PIXEL. Over 24 PIXELS this is definetly Significant inexcess of background"


    "......no way ruled out the NANOR carrier material having slightly higher background radiation than is the case for a shielded detector. Many materials would be such."


    You mean "the paper does not state If the background radiation of the carrier and core material has been tested." The paper does not say, but this is easy enough to check. I will send a question to the authors and ask. Core material in question her is Zirconium, Palladium, oxygen, deuterium.


    " .....has deliberately cherry picked his data to make a not significant effect look large by choosing the location and threshold of his "large bins"...."


    "Cherry picked"?
    They deliberately counted "Large circular characteristic deep tracks, and paired large tracks,.."
    Which means only the most energetic particle tracks where used. If they had counted smaller tracks, the difference to background would be even lagrer.


    ".... not ruled out the possibility that the heat from the NANOR, on the film, alters its characteristics slightly to make large tracks more probable"


    CR 39 has been widely used for many years as particle detector material. Temperature effects have also been evaluated by many papers. And the general answer is.....
    "Bulk etching remains constant for all irradiation temperatures...", ref.


    http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1990ICRC....4..385B


    " To make this result really interesting you would therefore need a lot more work which he has not done"


    He? You mean the LENR science community.


    Actually many papers have been produced on the matter, but this I believe was the first on NANOR. And the general picture is that LENR produce particle counts above background.


    Also the paper after this one in the same PDF file details results from the geiger counter mentioned Inge paper. also interesting.


    "He has done everything he can to make his setup as sensitive as possible"


    NANOR is a very low power device, I don't see any problem with placing detector close to the device to check is particles is produced. Which actually is positive thing. The close the better.


    "...has looked at the results lots of different ways trying to find interesting correlations."
    "Different ways"? In my opinion the right ways.


    ".....not seriously investigated what are the mechanisms for these results but, because he is expecting some nuclear activity, supposed they are because of that."


    Wrong. They clearly state in the conclusion:


    "What is precisely the source of the tracks in the CR-39? Although it is relatively insensitive to gamma rays there could be additional contributions ..........." And they state other possible


    My conclusion:


    This paper builds further evidence together with all the many other CR39 papers to indicate that tracks are formed above expected background in LENR experiments, and that further investigations should be performed.


    The only issue I have with this one is the low power of the NANOR. A 10* higher power NANOR should be tested to check the resulting difference, since more tracks should then be expected.

    Quote from Thomas Clarke

    I'd also point out that H is not a good experimentalist (he's basically a theory guy). Nor are Brillouin, because I've noticed:
    (1) They use high power RF stimulation of their reactions
    (2) They have noted that the reaction response, as measured by TC temperature, to the stimulus is fast
    (3) I've not seen any analysis of them of the possible EMC issues, so common whenever high power RF is mixed with low-level instrumentation. It looks like a very plausible explanation for their results which any good experimenter would take great care to rule out, and cross-check that it is ruled out. (This is something I know about).


    Quote

    ...arguing from authority - I don't do that.


    :rolleyes:


    Quote from oystla

    The paper does not say, but this is easy enough to check. I will send a question to the authors and ask.


    Oystla, you should also ask them whether they have heard of shielded cable..? Or a twisted a pair... Or an LC filter...

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