Cambridge University Professor Huw Price on the ‘Reputation Trap’ of Cold Fusion (Update: Response in Popular Mechanics)

I think the critics are spending way too much time on discussing Rossi, and his potential "dark" motovations. Move on with your lives

All truth will to light sooner or later.

To repeat: This interview Below with professor Focardi years back, indicates that Rossi started with a sincere interest, as an inventor and entrepeneur. Rossi saw a possible commercial opportunity, based on the interesting discovery and results by Piantelli, Focardi, Celani etc. on Ni-H cells.

radiocittadelcapo.it/wp-conten…cardi-english-version.pdf

Is Rossi still convinced there is a commercial opportunity here without Fraud? Only Rossi knows and I don't care.

But I do care about the science side of LENR and that Ni-H excess heat was discovered by professor Piantelli et. al, and may be improved by Rossi...we will see soon enough.

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Ni-H excess heat was discovered by professor Piantelli et. al

were I convinced LENR existed then I would want to understand clearly whether it was Ni-H, Pd-D, or both. There is no a priori reason to jump on both and the experimental evidence comes from critical (and skeptical) evaluation of the experimental results.

The way I look at it: LENR is highly unlikely, but if Ni-H LENR is even more unlikely than Pd-D LENR advocates should know that.

Rossi has focussed attention on Ni-H - based on a set of eye-catching but scientifically void demos. That has influenced investment and therefore will influence research. A shame if you think LENR has a chance.

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This in itself legitimises the research into the 'phenomena' along with the exponential increase in world wide investment.

I'm not sure there is such a thing as illegitimate research. Personally, I can think of many things more worthwhile to spend money on than LENR - since LENR is almost certainly fool's gold. But it has always been relatively easy for LENR hopes to attract money (along with diverse free energy scams) and I'd never criticise people for doing good research. It is just unfortunate there is so much poor research (both theoretical and experimental) that passes as LENR. But then, given it is almost certainly not real, that is sort of expected.

I disagree with some here that Rossi, and other adventurers like him, are an asset. While he attracts attention and money this is for the wrong reasons and his own research is 100% full of errors - it is a distraction.

History is littered with good ideas whose time has been curtailed by critics who claim this cannot be true or useful. The reasons are diverse but often influenced by interest in maintaining a status quo. The extremes I see are those who are advocates regardless of the research and legitimate critisissms and those who question and critisise without balance. The search and establishment of the truth requires very special people.

Thomas,

wrt Nickel vs Palladium

I don't think you read my earlier statement on this, so I will repeat. There is reasons to believe same phenomenon will appear in Nickel, if it occurs in Palladium.

"
Actually F&P included Deuterated Nickel in their "CF" patent from1989.

So they had an idea that CF would work in other materials than Pd. Materials that have the ability for high Hydrogen loading. May be F&P Focused on the wrong material, and got hung up in Palladium, when Nickel was a better choice?

Anyway. Excess heat in Dry Ni-H was not discovered by Rossi, but inside University research in the early 90's.

I've found some very interesting papers, with dry Ni-H cells and more powerfull than F&P cells (it seems).

That's probably where Rossi got his idea from.

I'll come back with more info when I've read the papers."

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Quote from Thomas Clarke

With the original ToF experiments he apparently had quantitative evidence filled neatly by weird impossible ultra-dense deuterium. Since then none of his other stuff adds to that extraordinary hint - and the lack of such confirmation is damning.

A shame, it would have been fun. Though the theoretical justification (Winterburg) always looked shaky. Still, by LENR standards it was pretty good.

Holmlid is an interesting case. I find his chain of logic baffling. He is not doing proper measurements to get the range of masses for the charged particles he thinks he's seeing. He has constructed his own ToF instrument using an oscilloscope, and there's no obvious way to calibrate it against charged particles of known energies. He does not seem inclined to draw upon outside expertise in order to do a proper measurement. I suspect this is because they would not assume ultra-dense deuterium and Rydberg matter, and he is very attached to these things. His theoretical musings are creative and off-the-wall. Theory permeates his experimental writeups.

None of this is to say that he's not seeing fast charged particles. I wish he'd get someone to do proper measurements.

McKubre, Miles, Kidwell, Szpak and Mosier-Boss -- these are people doing straightforward, solid, quality work. Holmlid's work is fanciful, imbued with theory and very possibly mistaken in important ways.

Quote from oystla

Thomas,

wrt Nickel vs Palladium

Paintelli's rejected patent listed just about any solid element in the periodic table as LENR capable.

The issue is matching the material with the LENR application. Nickel reflects infrared light best so it is used to produce heat. Palladium reflects UV light best so it is best in UV applications like Holmlid where iridium is used instead. Palladium does not work well in producing heat. R. Mills uses copper to produce visible light. Copper reflects visible light and it is cheaper than gold or silver. Why is the reflection of light important to LENR? To form, Surface Plasmon Polariton need a optical cavity to provide a reflective surface to entangle photons at that frequency.

See

Quote from frankwtu

History is littered with good ideas whose time has been curtailed by critics who claim this cannot be true or useful. The reasons are diverse but often influenced by interest in maintaining a status quo. The extremes I see are those who are advocates…

That may be true but in science good ideas triumph in the end, because they explain experiment. And lots of research is done for interest with no obvious application. LENR is an idea liked for other reasons (it is emotionally attractive). That does not matter, if it explains phenomena it will win. At the moment the challenge for LENR advocates is to find any phenomena that need explaining, and that therefore would make the research interesting.

Quote from Eric Walker

Holmlid's work is fanciful, imbued with theory and very possibly mistaken in important ways.

Holmlid is mistaken when he says that the small dimensions of Rydberg matter are producing fusion of hydrogen. It really is the repetitive graphite plate like topology of the Rydberg matter that makes it LENR active. This is related to my post "LENR and Spin".

Quote from Thomas Clarke

That may be true but in science good ideas triumph in the end, because they explain experiment. And lots of research is done for interest with no obvious application. LENR is an idea liked for other reasons (it is emotionally attractive). That does not matter, if it explains phenomena it will win. At the moment the challenge for LENR advocates is to find any phenomena that need explaining, and that therefore would make the research interesting.

One phenomena that need explaining is the superconductivity of Rydberg matter including the meissner effect.

Quote from Thomas Clarke

At the moment the challenge for LENR advocates is to find any phenomena that need explaining, and that therefore would make the research interesting.

This is a tendentious way to put it, although it is no doubt the mainstream view. My own take is that the mundane explanations for F&P and for Miles, McKubre, etc., explain away evidence rather than trying to understand it. This is analogous to the early attempts at understanding the perihelion precession of Mercury; Wikipedia says in this connection that "A number of ad hoc and ultimately unsuccessful solutions were proposed, but they tended to introduce more problems."

In addition, there is Paneth and Peters, and Wendt and Irion, back in the 1920s, whose results are potentially explained by LENR. It is true that those results were retracted, but the researchers probably felt a lot of pressure to do so, for there was no known way to induce alpha decay, and the explanations they proposed were not very persuasive.

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My own take is that the mundane explanations for F&P and for Miles, McKubre, etc., explain away evidence rather than trying to understand it. This is analogous to the early attempts at understanding the perihelion precession of Mercury;

Right, so the judgement is whether a miscellaneous collection of claimed marginal (close to error bounds) phenomena have a coherent explanation, or do they rather have incoherent explanations as a set of diverse experimental artifacts.

The best way to resolve this, over time, is to look at what happens generally when experimental methodology is tightened up, reducing error bounds and artifacts. Either:

(1) The phenomena stay broadly the same in amplitude, and become unmistakable
or
(2) The phenomena would broadly reduce in amplitude, as would be expected of artifacts.

Note that this does not touch, directly, on reproducibility. Artifacts can be reproducible, and real phenomena can be stochastic and therefore require careful collection before reproducibility can be claimed.

We could perhaps contrast the work of McKubre with that of F&P to see how this goes with electrolytic cells. Perhaps there are similar sequences with other experiment classes.

Quote from Thomas Clarke

Right, so the judgement is whether a miscellaneous collection of claimed marginal (close to error bounds) phenomena have a coherent explanation, or do they rather have incoherent explanations as a set of diverse experimental artifacts.

Some of the results are not even close to error. Many, many sigma above error. This is the kind of generalization one would offer if one has only listened to critiques of cold fusion and not done sufficient reading of some of the better experiments.

Quote from Thomas Clarke

The best way to resolve this, over time, is to look at what happens generally when experimental methodology is tightened up, reducing error bounds and artifacts. Either:

Respectfully, I suggest this is a teaching of the pseudoscience hunters (the Amazing Randy, etc.). It is an easy generalization from the sociology of science that does not have a rigorous basis. Even allowing that there's some truth to it, it would not apply to the serious workers looking at LENR.

There can be no doubt that much of the LENR work is substandard, and that LENR is fringe. But those are different propositions than that all LENR work is substandard and that LENR is not a real phenomenon.

Quote from Thomas Clarke

The best way to resolve this, over time, is to look at what happens generally when experimental methodology is tightened up, reducing error bounds and artifacts. Either:

(1) The phenomena stay broadly the same in amplitude, and become unmistakable
or
(2) The phenomena would broadly reduce in amplitude, as would be expected of artifacts.

A better way is to apply a probative and sensitive experimental process that exposes the behavior more precisely. Excess heat a the worst way to look for LENR. Particle detection is far better. But wait, that method has already been done and ignored. Where has the real science gone?

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A better way is to apply a probative and sensitive experimental process that exposes the behavior more precisely. Excess heat a the worst way to look for LENR. Particle detection is far better. But wait, that method has already been done and ignored. Where has the real science gone?

The thing about LENR is that it adjusts with the evidence. Originally, especially with Pd-D fusion, it was expected particle would be found. They ere not. Since then, over a vast range of different experiments, particles have not been found.

I agree - high energy particles (given stable reactants) are the sure fingerprint of nuclear reactions. If they are not seen in LENR phenomena there are two explanations:
(1) these phenomena are not nuclear
(2) these phenomena not only do cold nuclear reactions - difficult for obvious reasons - but also magically never generate unstable products that would decay via energetic particle release.

(2) has now been accepted by the LENR community. (1) by everyone else.

Quote from Thomas Clarke

They ere not. Since then, over a vast range of different experiments, particles have not been found.

The CR-39 experiments show that there are charged particles with energies in the ~ 1-15 MeV well above background. If one excludes chemical attack, which can be easily excluded from the control runs, that implies a nuclear source.

Quote from Thomas Clarke

The thing about LENR is that it adjusts with the evidence. Originally, especially with Pd-D fusion, it was expected particle would be found. They ere not. Since then, over a vast range of different experiments, particles have not been found.

I agree - high energy particles (given stable reactants) are the sure fingerprint of nuclear reactions. If they are not seen in LENR phenomena there are two explanations:
(1) these phenomena are not nuclear
(2) these phenomena not only do cold nuclear reactions - difficult for obvious reasons - but also magically never generate unstable products that would decay via energetic particle release.

(2) has now been accepted by the LENR community. (1) by everyone else.

All unfounded assumptions and unscientific illusion on your part.

Eric:

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Some of the results are not even close to error. Many, many sigma above error. This is the kind of generalization one would offer if one has only listened to critiques of cold fusion and not done sufficient reading of some of the better experiments.

Give me an example? I think what you mean is they are many sigma above the explicitly recognised and quantised errors. These can easily leave out error mechanisms and artifats that are just not considered. How do you prove every error has been considered? Give your write-up to criticism and when people say "well, we don't know what the artifact is, but it is complex and there is room for artifacts in this, this and this areas" you go away, perform the identical experiments tightening those areas, and come back with either stronger evidence, or admit it could be an artifact. Given extraordinary results "could be an artifact" is no good.

Now, I've been asking for this stronger evidence. What I've found so far is experiments with possible artifacts, and when these are tightened up the effect vanishes. If the effect is real it will not vanish, and there will be clear evidence.

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Respectfully, I suggest this is a teaching of the pseudoscience hunters (the Amazing Randy, etc.). It is an easy generalization from the sociology of science that does not have a rigorous basis.

I tend to ignore the sociology of science. If it is used by pseudoscience hunters perhaps that is because it is a good discriminant?

I posed it simply because as an engineer, faced with this question, that is what I'd do in any one experiment. I then adapted it to the fact that LENR researchers say the phenomena are not well understood and therefore even with apparently similar conditions they are unreliable. That is OK. We can look at a lot of experiments, and see whether the artifacts broadly track the error+artifact bounds or something else.

I say "broadly" because for individual experiments it is impossible to rule out unrecognised artifacts without careful iteration based on critique. Also, it is not enough to accept the assumptions of the experimenter. Independent examination of each and every one of these is needed. Look at Lugano - where an egregious assumption was made that precisely caused both large apparent excess heat (30X the admitted errors, around 10X the real errors) and change in COP with temperature that the experimenters thought excluded calibration error as a mechanism and confirmed the result.

These things happen, and what you need for their detection is determined and skeptical critiques. I respect those very few in the LENR community who reckon the only way to prove LENR is to subject the best evidence to such critiques, and drill down to get hard evidence or show artifact.

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There can be no doubt that much of the LENR work is substandard, and that LENR is fringe. But those are different propositions than that all LENR work is substandard and that LENR is not a real phenomenon.

I think the word "standard" introduces judgement that inflames feelings and is unhelpful. The question is this - how can we know whether the examples of apparent clear LENR evidence represent novel physics, rather than artifact? That I addressed, and you seem not to like my solution.

I'm trying to understand why you don't.

If these examples are real, then they can be elaborated. Whether the phenomena is stochastic (due to unknown variables) or not, repeating the best experiments with tighter methodology will lead to stronger signals. With strong enough signals you can show me a single bulletproof write-up. Even without that, a trend towards tighter methodology with more accurate calorimetry showing more distinctive signal would be expected, and could be determined in a meta-analysis.

I don't mean to be argumentative here, but I'm in problem solving mode. We have a question that needs to be answered and are considering what procedures could best answer it. I think you are saying that for you it is not a question, because you are convinced. But many including me are not, and if you are right that these effects are real, logically they should become more obviously real with tighter methodology. If they are stochastic this can be managed by contrasting the complete set of experiments, plotting "tightness" of methodology with claimed effect. It is surely unexpected if sometimes there are real large effects, but never in those experiments with tight error bounds and inherently strong methodology?

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Even allowing that there's some truth to it, it would not apply to the serious workers looking at LENR.

Perhaps this statement epitomises our difference of opinion. It is not at all obvious to me why you think this, so perhaps you could give further amplification?

@axil,

A picture is no doubt worth a thousand words, but in this case you would need a lot of words (like a whole paper's worth) to make that picture convincing. CR-39 is a really bad way to prove phenomena are real exactly because it is so sensitive and many different artifacts and contaminations are known. Proving any specific apparent evidence is not one such, or perhaps some real but unrecognised artifact, is going to be a tall order.

Also, if LENR experiments generate high energy particles it is likely that quite often they will generate lots of these, and the signature will be easier to disambiguate from noise.