FP's experiments discussion

Abd wrote:

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Helium is not only correlated, it is "commensurate" with the heat, which is what knocked Huizenga over.

In your dreams.

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Helium would be a nuclear reaction product, all right, but it is not "marginal.

The claims so far are marginal. Both Miles and McKubre admit that.

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This is crucial to understand. Helium has been reported in connection with anomalous heat, by multiple independent groups, at levels consistent with this hypothesis:

This is not accurate. Miles is one, but he had to change his detection limit by an order of magnitude to make it fit. McKubre is another (including the Case work), but he started out saying the "it has not been possible to address directly the issue of heat-commensurable nuclear product generation", and McKubre's claims never rose to the standard of peer review.

Who else? Two is not multiple, even if you accept those two.

Of the other (mainly unpublished) groups Storms, two groups (Chien and Botta) did not measure heat, and so could not have observed a correlation; two groups (Aoki and Takahashi) report results that suggest an anti-correlation; another group (Luch) has continued experiments until recently, but stopped reporting helium; two groups (Arata and DeNinno) do not claim a quantitative correlation, but in one case (Arata) the helium levels seem orders of magnitude too low to account for the heat, although extracting information from his papers is difficult, and in the other (DeNinno) the helium level is an order of magnitude too high.

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That is quite easy to say, and not true. Close. Basically, Miles finds heat below that predicted by fusion, by 40%, because of retained helium. Leakage would not have confined itself to the very low levels involved in his work. No, Miles considered leakage very carefully, and looked for it. Leakage flat out could not explain the consistency of the correlation.

Miles' correlation is extremely weak, but all I meant was the ambient levels are high enough to produce the artifacts which correspond to commensurate levels of helium. This is true for no other product, and no other product is claimed at commensurate levels.

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That depends on many factors: the duration of that heat, the head space

I was thinking of helium in the Pd.

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very little is negative on this.

1) One of the few refereed papers on helium after Miles (Gozzi) admits the helium levels are not definitive.

2) Aoki and Takahashi report results that suggest an anti-correlation of heat and helium

3) Luch has continued experiments until recently, but stopped reporting helium

4) Arata's helium levels seem orders of magnitude too low

5) DeNinno's helium levels are 10 times too high

6) And even McKubre admits at first that "it has not been possible to address directly the issue of heat-commensurable nuclear product generation" The only quantitative confirmation of Miles did not rise to the standard of peer review.

It all looks pretty negative to me.

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"Refereed publications" are a red herring here.

So, you dismiss skepticism (like Shanahan's white paper) because it is not in peer reviewed journals, but claims of the most important experiment confirming cold fusion is ok as an internal report. Sounds like a double standard. And considering the burden of proof should be on those claiming cold fusion, it is far more important that they at least rise to this modest standard. Hundreds of cold fusion papers are published in refereed journals. It's not a high hurdle.

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This work is not likely to win a Nobel Prize.

The first experiment to confirm cold fusion to the satisfaction of the mainstream will result in a Nobel prize. Who would get it is another question -- one that I doubt will ever need answering.

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More likely, there is a Nobel waiting for whoever develops a theory that is proven.

That would be the second Nobel prize in the field.

Superconductivity got the prize without a theory, and then BCS got the prize for the theory. And then HTSC got another Nobel prize, again without a comprehensive theory.

Thomas Clarke wrote:

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(Though Josh used shill once, this has definition not just "paid" but "accomplice of confidence trickster" and therefore I think is verbotem). He should apologise for this.

Nope. I did not use that term, although I quoted Abd's use of it. I said he had admitted his advocacy was paid for, which I think is not a stretch from what he boasted on ECN:

"And my interest in a few odd topics got me published in a mainstream journal earlier this year, and funded with a grant that bugged my eyes out, more zeros than I’d seen on a check to me in many years." And also: "And, by the way, I’ve been funded, because I do what I do, write."

Abd accused me of calling him a shill, but I did not use the term.

I guess my fault for assuming what Abd says is vaguely accurate. Apologies Josh.

Abd: that is another issue - you accuse Josh of using the term "shill" about you when (it seems) he did not. You really should apologise for this misrepresentation, or else find some evidence to back up your claim.

The thing about strong advocacy is that unless you can manage it keeping strictly to the high and narrow path of truth your message will be less effective. I'd recommend that you use rhetoric with more care.

Also I note that Josh has given me my list:

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This is not accurate. Miles is one, but he had to change his detection limit by an order of magnitude to make it fit. McKubre is another (including the Case work), but he started out saying the "it has not been possible to address directly the issue of heat-commensurable nuclear product generation", and McKubre's claims never rose to the standard of peer review. Who else? Two is not multiple, even if you accept those two.Of the other (mainly unpublished) groups Storms, two groups (Chien and Botta) did not measure heat, and so could not have observed a correlation; two groups (Aoki and Takahashi) report results that suggest an anti-correlation; another group (Luch) has continued experiments until recently, but stopped reporting helium; two groups (Arata and DeNinno) do not claim a quantitative correlation, but in one case (Arata) the helium levels seem orders of magnitude too low to account for the heat, although extracting information from his papers is difficult, and in the other (DeNinno) the helium level is an order of magnitude too high.

and

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1) One of the few refereed papers on helium after Miles (Gozzi) admits the helium levels are not definitive.
2) Aoki and Takahashi report results that suggest an anti-correlation of heat and helium
3) Luch has continued experiments until recently, but stopped reporting helium
4) Arata's helium levels seem orders of magnitude too low
5) DeNinno's helium levels are 10 times too high
6) And even McKubre admits at first that "it has not been possible to address directly the issue of heat-commensurable nuclear product generation" The only quantitative confirmation of Miles did not rise to the standard of peer review.

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Abd will no doubt be able to say which of these sets of results he considers most convincing, and correct Josh's summary.

Best wishes, Tom

On 2/18, Eric wrote: “
kirkshanahan wrote:Not in the real world. One can mentally impose a separation, but the CCS won't
occur unless the FPHE turns on. Thus they are intimately tied together.

I don't want to misconstrue the CCS conjecture, so I am seeking clarification on a detail. The statement above leads me to conclude that the CCS is specific to the Fleischmann and Pons heat effect. But elsewhere you have said that it is a general possibility that applies to all of calorimetry. Presumably these two positions can be reconciled -- would you be able to clarify the matter?”

One more time!.... When the steady state in an analytical device changes, the potential exists for the calibration determined under the old steady state conditions to become invalid. A new calibration equation then applies. I wrap that up in the term “calibration constant shift (CCS)”. It is a systematic error, an error in methodology. It can happen anytime a calibration equation is used anywhere in the world in any experiment.

In the specific case of Fleischmann-Pons type electrochemical cells, where light or heavy water is electrolyzed without separating the gases at point of origin, a CCS can occur when the heat distribution, for example, between the liquid and gas phase of the cell, changes. My study of 2000-2002, published in Thermochimica Acta (TA), shows that data analyzed by the originator and claimed by him to demonstrate excess heat formation in a Pt anode-Pt cathode F&P-type cell, showed that calibration constant shifts of +/- 3% could reduce 780 mW excess heat signals to zero in that case (meaning that particular experimental setup).

Further, in my 2002 TA paper, I proposed a chemical mechanism that not only explained how the CCS could be made to happen, it also served as a basis for understanding the Szpak, et al ir video results, the CR39 results, and potentially some of the 4He results. We haven’t discussed it yet, but it can also help explain why Szpak, Mosier-Boss, Miles, and Fleischmann reported an excess of water in the recombined offgas in their 2004 publication which I commented upon in 2005.

Each time a CCS occurs in any experiment anywhere, there must be a cause. The cause (mechanism) will be different from experiment to experiment, thus the mechanism proposed for the F&P type cell is not necessarily translatable to other formats. It does however teach that the impact of the experimentally determined calibration constants needs to be evaluated in reference to other sources of error in a given experiment. This is usually done via a Propagation of Error calculation, which happens to employ assumption of random errors.

Shanahan: : ".... I wrap that up in the term “calibration constant shift (CCS)”. It is a systematic error, an error in methodology. It can happen anytime a calibration equation is used anywhere in the world in any experiment."

Haha, and during 100+ years of electrochemistry science his hypothetical ghostly theoretical systematic error has never been seen anytime, anywhere in the world in any experiment.

Abd wrote:

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Jed Rothwell wrote a study in 2009 that presents the Britz data as it existed then.

Page 11 has a chart of papers as classified by Britz as "postive, negative, undecided." Rothwell doesn't agree with all those assessments, but, again, I look at Britz as a relatively unbias judge. Not perfect. The pattern shown is remarkable

Publication rates did decline, to a nadir.

If by nadir, you mean the rate was on the increase at the end, there is no evidence of that in the chart. The number in the last year (2009) is the second lowest, and the fluctuation between 2003 and 2009 is entirely consistent with statistical fluctuation, and each of those years is below each of the previous 6 years (1996 t0 2002).

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But look at the balance between positive and negative papers. In 1989, when hardly anyone knew how to set up the effect, negative papers outnumbered positive ones by 2:1.

Right, and then as the consensus quickly spread that the phenomenon was probably illusory, there was little point to continue publishing negative results. On the other hand, those convinced it was real continued to work on it, and to publish, so it's not surprising that the positives would quickly exceed the negative. But the quality of the evidence in the positive papers did not improve, and the impact level of the journals publishing them, as well as the rate has been on a decline ever since. To the end of the 90s, there were still dozens of papers per year, but it's been more like half a dozen for the last decade, and most of those are reviews, theory, and dubious papers reporting trace levels of neutrons. Even including the neutron papers, the average number of positive *experimental* claims is only about 1 per year, and the average excess heat claims is only about 0.2 per year. There are *zero* paper on the helium correlation in at least 15 years.

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This is all subjective analysis, finding ways to analyze the data to make it look bad.

Identifying negative papers and peripheral papers and theory papers and reviews and experimental papers and excess heat papers can be done objectively, and can give additional insight into the progress of the field. Britz's selections no less subjective, and he has no special authority.

oystia wrote:
"Haha, and during 100+ years of electrochemistry science his hypothetical ghostly theoretical systematic error has never been seen anytime, anywhere in the world in any experiment."

The CCS mechanism requires H2 to react with O2. That only happens if they are co-located. Most electrochemists over the last 100 years have been reasonably rational. And what rational person will run a chemical reaction to separate H2 from the O in H2O, and then immediately put them back together? Furthermore, those re-mixed gases are at the perfect stoichiometric ratio for an explosion. Again, unless you're studying the explosiveness itself, you're not going to deliberately mix them. As I've noted before (multiple times now...), you have to have that mixing of gases to get the necessary recombination.

I read this continuing long-winded discussion with dismay and wonder what is the point. Skepticism and challenging arguments are useful when they help guide a discussion to the truth or to a useful answer of a question. These discussions fail to achieve either goal. Facts are ignored or distorted, the arguments are arbitrary, and the logic frequently makes no sense. This is like listening to several guys in a bar arguing about which football team is better.

I would like to remind everyone; LENR is a science that has been studied by dozens of competent scientists in over 12 countries for 27 years and has resulted in over 1000 published papers of importance. The information has been reviewed by competent scientists in books and review papers. The subject has met all the requirements science normally applies and has answered many questions with greater certainty than is normally applied to conventional science. Questions remain, but not the ones that are endlessly raised in this discussion. If people do not care to apply the standards of modern science, I suggest they go to their local bar to continue the discussion.

Please excuse my impatience. If anyone wants to discuss real science, I would be very pleased to add my comments.

No Ed, cold fusion has been claimed by a variety of scientists who share a dream to the exclusion of reality. These scientists submitted their flawed work to the 'mainstream' and received backs comments about those flaws, and then proceeded to ignore them and form their own societies and conferences and journals and communication channels, ignoring the 'mainstream' , who likewise can be characterized as competent scientist in their own right. The field of cold fusion fits every definition of pathological science.

A few recognized that there was something going on, but that the claims were far beyond anything supported by data. But the middle ground was lost because of the polarization of the field, caused primarily by cold fusion supporters rejection of the standard scientific process, and fueled by over-reaction of a few 'mainstreamers' who resorted to the same tactics used by cold fusion supporters to denigrate their critics.

Sadly, in science your 'worst' critic is you best friend, but the cold fusion community reviles their critics.

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The subject has met all the requirements science normally applies

I disagree. If by subject you mean "experimental investigation of certain anomalies in D/Pd systems" then yes, it meets those requirements although the work showing anomalies is weak and could do with a lot of tightening (if that is the anomalies are real).

If by subject you mean anything to do with "nuclear" then there is no such science, because there is no (scientific) nuclear hypothesis that makes predictions which have been subsequently found correct. That means no potential new scientific theory is on the cards.

A long time ago - when we believed Gods controlled nature - the noting of an anomaly made good science. Now, there are many anomalies - it is when we find the mechanisms for them - assuming this is something new, that we get new science.

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Sadly, in science your 'worst' critic is you best friend, but the cold fusion community reviles their critics.

Why I liked Kirk's post above.

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Skepticism and challenging arguments are useful when they help guide a discussion to the truth or to a useful answer of a question.

That is a restriction that perhaps explains your position.

Skepticism is also useful when it helps to disprove erroneous solutions to questions, even though there is not any obvious "truth" to find because no pattern in the data. those looking for "truth" might see that is wholly negative, but in reality it is positive. If there is some real pattern to the data then it won't be seen until inflated and erroneous preconceptions are abandoned. If there is really no pattern then of course that is it.

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LENR is a science that has been studied by dozens of competent scientists in over 12 countries for 27 years and has resulted in over 1000 published papers of importance. The information has been reviewed by competent scientists in books and review papers. The subject has met all the requirements science normally applies and has answered many questions with greater certainty than is normally applied to conventional science.

Were I disposed to believe assertions made without evidence, then that would do me nicely. But then, were that the case, I would take the opinion of nearly all scientists as correct and not even ask questions about LENR.

However, when I ask for evidence I get a whole succession of flawed experiments. I get Abd and Alain, who are convinced by a "preponderance of evidence" not processing the fact that experimental error is like a hydra's head. You don't know how many you will get, or what they are, for a given experiment till it has been really carefully critiqued. Then, each different experiment has a new hydra, with maybe different heads.

From my own limited experience I note published papers making claims for anomalies which I know to be weak. I have not yet seen a single such claim that is strong.

Josh's argument:

We can potentially detect nuclear reactions through excess heat, radiation, transmutation.

How strange is it that in LENR experiments all three are claimed, but in each case the (reproducible) results are such that they fall within the error margins - like goldilocks not too big, not too small - for all of these three observations? And yet the sensitivity of the three separate symptoms vary by a factor of 1000000.

It is just not reasonable that this should be so, if the effect is real and nuclear.

Storms wrote:

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I would like to remind everyone; LENR is a science that has been studied by dozens of competent scientists in over 12 countries for 27 years and has resulted in over 1000 published papers of importance.

If they were regarded as important by those outside the field, they would not be confined to low impact journals.

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The information has been reviewed by competent scientists in books and review papers. The subject has met all the requirements science normally applies and has answered many questions with greater certainty than is normally applied to conventional science.

That does not appear to be the view of Hagelstein, one of the more prominent theorists in the field, who said recently "aside from the existence of an excess heat effect, there is very little that our community agrees on".

And it is certainly not the view of the mainstream. In 27 years, there has been essentially no quantifiable progress at all, and no questions have definitive answers. The level of excess heat reported in refereed journals has become far more scarce, and far more modest. Tritium claims started out rather high, then ended "subtle and weak", and were finally abandoned without any answers. Claimed neutron levels have likewise decreased to some ridiculously low value in the SPAWAR experiments. And helium has not been investigated for more than 15 years. The publication rate is on a steady asymptotic decline toward zero. And for all the various effects claimed, not a single reaction mechanism has been agreed upon within the field.

I can't think of another subject (accepted as legitimate) so poorly understood and characterized (even just empirically) after nearly 3 decades of investigation by dozens of scientists. Particularly one that was given such an enthusiastic welcome when the basic phenomenon was first claimed.

Quote from kirkshanahan

One more time!....

Thank you for being patient with me. I can be slow to catch on sometimes.

Above you have written:

Quote from kirkshanahan

When the steady state in an analytical device changes, the potential exists for the calibration determined under the old steady state conditions to become invalid. A new calibration equation then applies. I wrap that up in the term “calibration constant shift (CCS)”. It is a systematic error, an error in methodology. It can happen anytime a calibration equation is used anywhere in the world in any experiment.

as well as:

Quote from kirkshanahan

The CCS mechanism requires H2 to react with O2.

I want to infer from the first statement that this second statement should be considered in light of the CCS-as-FPHE case. It is easy to see from its wording how the second statement could be taken to be general and across the board, applying to all cases of CCS. Or is this a misunderstanding, and it's actually the case that the CCS mechanism requires H2 to react with O2, all of the time?

Your helping me out here will make it easier for me to defend the CCS from suspicions that it is merely a collection of ad hoc conjectures with mutually incompatible implications, with attention being shifted from one to another as the context of the discussion changes.

To be a critic in science, a person must have knowledge. A person must understand the relevant laws and rules known by modern science. Science is not as is politics were the opinion of any idiot is accepted as being important. Science tries to describe what is real in the world, not what is imagined. The goal is to reach agreement about what is real using real facts. Too often, the discussion about LENR does not use facts. We are regaled by a never-ending collection of opinions based on ignorance and then the ignorant complain when they are called ignorant.

I know the difference between ignorance and fact because I have read all the papers about LENR. My library contains over 5000 papers. I have assembled this information into two books in which the important information is evaluated and the sources are cited. I have made thousands of measurements using the tools available to modern science. I know how a calorimeter works and its errors because I have build and used the method for 25 years. I know how a mass spectrometer works and how it is used to measure helium because I built and used a mass spectrometer for 20 years. In addition, I have published over 200 papers on a variety of subjects in peer-reviewed journals and reviewed many more. I know how science works and I know how LENR works because I have produced the LENR effect numerous times and have seen it behave as it is described. To make my point clear using a silly analogy, if a person insists the moon is made of cheese, I’m not going to waste my time describing what is known about the moon.

If you want to learn, I’m willing to teach. I’m not willing to waste my time in pointless arguments with people who refuse to do their homework. Many important questions remain about LENR, but not the ones being discussed here. Based on past discussions, many of the people who are discussing LENR here have no interest in learning what is real because they have a firm opinion that cannot be changed. At some point, any hope for agreement has to be acknowledged as hopeless.

LENR is rejected by conventional science for political reasons. It conflicts with the self-interest of the energy industry, with the hot fusion program, and with conventional teaching in physics. The rejection is no different from that experienced by all new discoveries of mankind. The ignorant always reject as their first reaction. Only when the claim becomes obvious to an idiot do they change their minds. Many books and essays have been written describing this characteristic of the average mind, so I will not waste your time describing the examples. LENR is now the most recent example history will use to show that nothing has changed, even in the 21th century.

Abd wrote:

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(me:)

Well, "headspace" in some cases, and off-gas in some others (i.e., Miles)

Potentially, yes. However, most of the helium does come off in the outgas.

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The most common claim, which is also plausible for a surface effect is that about half stays in the Pd. So, that's the best place to look for it.

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From his results, Miles appears to avoid avoided the contamination problem.

It's clear you think so, but claiming levels of a few ppb when the ambient levels are ppm is never going to be persuasive. And Miles himself admitted that when he said "The production of helium-4 in these experiments is a very difficult concept to prove since there is always the possibility of atmospheric helium contamination. More studies reporting helium-4 production will likely be required before our helium results become convincing to most scientists."

And the fact that the results were challenged in the literature, and did not convince the DOE panel, show that he did not avoid the problem in the view of many.

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To understand that requires looking at correlation between heat and helium, ...

Jones' challenge considered the correlation. The quantitative correlation was very weak in the glass round and absent in the metal flask round, and the binary correlation was subject to systematic errors, since the controls were all run in a separate experiment. But low levels are low levels, and eye-balling peaks is not going to win much confidence, just as Miles predicted.

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Miles originally used glass sample bottles, he switched to stainless steel. However, helium leaks through glass at known and quantifiable rates...

The point is that every additional data correction involves errors and potential biases. The immense simplification in examining the Pd would give the results far more credibility -- if they were still positive.

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Well, if the deuterium in the lattice is released for analysis, it's going to be D2, immediately. Distinguishing between D2+ and He+ takes precise mass spectrometry, no way around that. One approach is to chemically remove D2 from the gas, and if that approach is used, it's going to be needed either way. Helium cannot be analyzed while loaded into the palladium, and whatever releases helium will also release deuterium, so I don't know what Joshua is talking about here.

Two things. First, deuterium can diffuse out of the Pd, just as it diffuses into it. Helium is more trapped, and requires more aggressive measures to expel it, so some discrimination is possible.

Second, with analysis by dynamic SIMS, desorption takes place directly from the solid into vacuum, in which case, molecular deuterium is greatly suppressed.

Abd wrote:

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This, then, requires that months of experiment are reduced to a single measurement, of the Pd when it is removed. This is radically unsatisfactory.

I disagree. There is no reason a dozen cells can't be run in parallel for different times to produce a correlation. And a single measurement of intense helium is preferable to a series of measurements in the noise. An intense helium signal that exceeds any possible contribution from ambient helium is precisely what both Miles and McKubre said was needed.

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To get clean results of correlation, the Miles approach is excellent, even brilliant.

Except that it was challenged and failed to convince the DOE panel. So, that is not excellent or brilliant.

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All the gas can be captured in these experiments, it's now known how to do that.

But it doesn't have to be. Enough helium is automatically captured in the Pd. That is far easier and less prone to contamination.

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Miles used that.

Yes, I know, but I meant it's much easier to take advantage of off-line facilities if no special measures are needed to contain the helium and to protect it from atmospheric contamination.

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For correlation analysis, the protocol should be determined in advance.

The protocol would be that cells that produced heat would be used for helium analysis. It would not be necessary to collect gas from every cell.

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Closed cell experiments, like M4, can also be used, but this will largely generate a single data point, for months of cell operation.

But it would be a *credible* data point. And there are plenty of examples of running dozens of cells in parallel. Two dozen believable data points after a month would be a huge improvement over what Miles presented.

Abd wrote:

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...[the new TT proposal is] to design the experiment specifically to capture all the helium. I do expect that reverse electrolysis will be used to release all the helium,

If you analyze the gas, and do not exceed ambient levels by a substantial factor (as McKubre said), you will be vulnerable to criticism. It should be much easier to exceed background with the Pd, and far simpler all around.

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So the general conclusion from Morrey, apparently, was the helium was not confirmed. And Pons and Fleischmann probably wanted it that way. It sucks.

Right. That was a fiasco, but it didn't have to be. And the exercise showed it could give definitive results if reasonable heat levels (as have been claimed) are achieved.

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[...] "Confirmation bias" is the favorite refrain of cold fusion pseudoskeptics, it can always be claimed, and there is no way to prove that it hasn't happened,

But finding helium levels in the Pd far above a control exposed to atmosphere would make it far more difficult to claim confirmation bias.

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Again, misleading. It is not "easy" to produce so much excess heat, with most protocols.

It's funny how advocates argue high excess powers (tens of watts) and high reliability to give the field credibility. But to explain the low levels of helium, it is suddenly *not* easy to produce even 1 W reliably.

If levels can't be reached that give helium levels that unequivocally exclude background, the experiment will not be taken seriously, as McKubre has said.

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Most work, where helium was being measured, only produced enough heat to create measurable helium below ambient. Miles work did not involve high heat.

Right. That's the point. It seems to coincidental that whenever helium is investigated, the power levels are low. There are plenty of claims of higher excess heat. So look for helium in the electrodes from those experiments.

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The SRI Case work did raise helium levels above ambient.

Only marginally, and in a physics lab where helium levels from cryogenics are typically higher than usual.

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Apicella et al is probably reproducible and they may try it again as part of the Texas Tech/ENEA collaboration.

Apicella was called preliminary by the authors. The account of it in conference proceedings is 250 words, and does not provide enough information to gain any sense of confidence. That it was more than a decade ago, and no followup was reported justifies skepticism.

"The protocol would be that cells that produced heat would be used for helium analysis. It would not be necessary to collect gas from every cell."

I disagree. I would be interested in knowing if helium is ever observed in a cell for which no significant heat was seen, and how much helium, if only to be complete.