FP's experiments discussion

"It appears to me even the most vociferous sceptic's acknowledge the presence of anomalies regarding LENR or LANR, particularly when they are presented with high quality evidence,"

Yes, something is going on. But it seems to be explained without resorting to nuclear reactions.

" but almost always retreat now with a cry of observation or interpretation error."

That's not a retreat...that's a challenge to the CFers. Specifically to broaden their minds and just possibly consider they might be wrong. So far, none of them has accepted the challenge.

Kirkshanahn

Quote from kirkshanahan

Yes, something is going on. But it seems to be explained without resorting to nuclear reactions.

I am not a scientist, quite frankly I don't care where the 10 fold COP comes from or how it is generated. If its not nuclear then all the better as It is likely to be accepted as being safer.

Best regards
Frank

Shanahan is trying to imply that the SERS discovery of Fleischmann Was some kind of Fleischmann fiasco.

When the truth is the contrary. Fleischmann et. al made a huge discovery. Rarely the discoverer also have the final correct explanation.

"One evening in August 1973 the extraordinary data from pyridine adsorbed to an electrochemically roughened silver electrode was obtained. The signals were much more intense than expected and this aroused great excitement tempered with scepticism.’ This was, of course, the discovery of the surface-enhanced Raman effect that, along with Fleischmann’s development of microelectrodes, is recognised as among the most significant recent developments in electrochemistry. The SERS phenomenon is now understood as an outstanding example of a localised surface plasmon resonance effect and its discovery led to the field of plasmonics. Fleischmann was rightly honoured for these discoveries, by the award of the Palladium Medal of the Electrochemical Society, and by election to the Fellowship of the Royal Society of London."

Ref.
http://www.rsc.org/chemistrywo…mann-cold-fusion-obituary

Shanahan : "Typical junk response by a committed CF groupie, who can't read anything unless it says "It must be nuclear". "

Shanahan is repeating himself, and is again using the "CF grupie" name calling.

But he has been repeating himself for 15 years or more. And still no sign of the CCS ghost?

And why is not Shanahan getting his hands dirty and prove his own hypothesis?
Probably he has tried, but not managed to get the LENR CCS "going"

All of his critisism has been answerred and Checked by the LENR scientists many times. Therefore it's time to move on.

And Let's Rename CCSH to CCSG ( and guess what the G means )

I was a young student at University in 1989 when "all H.. broke loose" with the anouncement of F&P 23.March. It could have been devastating for an oil based economy and possibly my own employment future. But I was happy when it was found to be just junk science. And let's not forget the "precise" statement from our fine and honest scientists at the 1989 May APS meeting in Baltimore:

"Dr. Steven E. Koonin of Caltech called the Utah report a result of "the incompetence and delusion of Pons and Fleischmann." The audience of scientists sat in stunned silence for a moment before bursting into applause."

After that I forgot all about it, until 1999, when I rediscovered the CF research going on in Japan. And after that I have been convinced that the competent and fine research done at ENEA in Italy, in Japan, in the CF period of BARC in India, in France etc. All proves that mother nature have more mysteries up her sleeves, just waiting for someone to decifer the LENR code.

Thomas

Quote from Thomas Clarke

So what is to fear?

Oh! there is a great deal to fear. But I can only hope that those who have most to loose will not let selfish interest frustrate a proper discovery process.

Best regards
Frank

"And why is not Shanahan getting his hands dirty and prove his own hypothesis? "

personal and corporate safety,no money, no time, not my job, no desire, confidence in mathematics, understanding chemistry, better things to do...

"But he has been repeating himself for 15 years or more. And still no sign of the CCS ghost?"

Yes, unfortunately I have, because the expected response from the CF community, i.e. that from 'good' scientists, has never appeared. Instead a bunch of illegitimate slams of my work have, which I have had to try to counteract.

""CF grupie" name calling."

I call you that because you have shown here multiple times that you will not even attempt to read and understand what I write. Instead you recite the 'party' line regarding my work incessantly, even after I show you directly the points where the party line is wrong. That, I have found over my 15 years of repeating myself, is a common reaction among the groupies who hang around the cold fusion field.

What is it about the statement "multiplying the variable by the wrong number gives the wrong answer" that you can't understand?

"If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it must be a ..."

Shanahan : " What if, instead of appearing in 2002, my paper had shown up in 1992...I tend to think the whole 'cold fusion fiasco' would never have occurred. Interesting thought experiment..."

Haha, I will give Shanahan this: Modesty is not a word in his vocabulary.

In one Shanahan paper he states:
"The overarching one is that cold fusion researchers refuse to consider conventional explanations of their experimental results "

Talk about insulting remarks. And this in a real "paper". It could not be further for the truth. As Fleischmann once said "We are extremely conventional scientists", implying that they looked for all possible conventional explanations.

But Shanahan prefers insultIng remarks and arguments in his hypo-critical approach to CF.

Actually, several LENR researchers did evaluate a CCS hypothesis during 1989-1991, ten years before the Shanahan propsal:

Here is one story:

Comment from Mike Staker ( a material scientist and employee of Army Research Laboratory at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland in 1989 (retired around 1990):

" I am sure the above poster (Shanahan) has considered that other scientists have thought of the CCS (calibration constant shift), but rejected it as not relevent to their
work for a number of reasons. Since they did not publish comments about
a CCS certainly does not mean that they did not consider it. I, for one, considered it in 1991. I had extensive discussion with a number of CF workers at the time about CCS, and other sources of potential heat artifacts. We

pondered these at great length in the years of 1989-1992 and beyond to this very day.

His question should not have been, "how could it have been dealt with and rejected (beacuse they did not wait for me to publish MY paper)?" But rather why did they reject it and what evidence do they have for rejecting it?

The CCS has a big problem: in closed systems, for long periods (longer than the experimental run by an order of magnitude), if CCS occurs there will be some data above the average calibration curve and some below
it, but on the average the calibration curve will catch these events and the final calibration curve will be in the middle. A CCS event, cannot by definition, raise the heat level and violate the 1st Law of Thermo. Therefore, it becomes a matter of being sure to run proper calibration curves. The above proposer of the CCS "theory" would have mother nature control the CCS event to provide a shift only during the "run"

and not during the calibration.

For example in my experiments, my calibration data ran for 11 months before the 6 week Excess Heat (nuclear heat) and has continued to run for 1.5 years since. NO CSS during the calibration. or I should say it has been averaged in .... ?

Kirk, there is something causing excess heat beyond what you have proposed....

Good hunting...

"

Ref.
http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ShanahanKacritiqueo.pdf

Let me try to summarize the skeptical arguments made previously:
1. The claimed excess energy results from a calibration error or from a normal chemical reaction.
2. The detected helium results from an air leaking into the system,
3. The detected tritium results from contamination by tritium in the local environment,
4. The transmutation products result from contamination by normal impurities,
5. The detected radiation results from poor measurements,
6. Observations that cannot be explained using these conclusions must result from fraud or incompetence.

Therefore, the LENR claim is not correct. Continued efforts to support the LENR claim demonstrate an unwillingness to address what is real. This is an example of an unwillingness to apply good science.

These conclusions also imply the following:
1. Hundreds of otherwise competent scientists become incompetent when they study LENR, even after 27 years,
2. Calorimetry is not correctly understood after 200 years of application in the field of chemistry,
3. Only skeptics correctly understand nature.

Is this an accurate summary of the various viewpoints?

[snip]

Sorry you don't like my thought experiment. But if a conventional explanation for the effect
had appeared early on, it is much more likely some one would have tried it. And if it was true,
they would find out, and the whole 'excess heat' idea would have gone the way of N-rays and
polywater. Timing is often everything, and mine didn't turn out to be right. Oh well...

"Actually, several LENR researchers did evaluate a CCS hypothesis during 1989-1991, ten years
before the Shanahan propsal:"

News to me. You should realize this without my saying, but since you are a CF groupie you
won't, so I'll say "I can't be held responsible for incorporating ideas, etc., into hypotheses
and theories if those ideas are never published."

"Here is one story:

Comment from Mike Staker ( a material scientist and employee of Army Research Laboratory at
the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland in 1989 (retired around 1990):"

I had occassion to joust with Mike back in the past. He continually said I was
wrong, and I continually asked him for the data to support his position, and he never gave
any of it out. Again, I can't do anything with undisclosed information...because I don't have
it!

[Now quoting Mike Staker]
" I am sure the above poster (Shanahan) has considered that other scientists have thought of
the CCS (calibration constant shift), but rejected it as not relevent to their work for a
number of reasons. "

Their rejection seems to have been unwarranted.

"Since they did not publish comments about a CCS certainly does not mean that they did not consider it. "

Nor does it mean they did. Tough to derive any relevant conclusions from no information.

"I, for one, considered it in 1991. I had extensive discussion
with a number of CF workers at the time about CCS, and other sources of potential heat
artifacts. We pondered these at great length in the years of 1989-1992 and beyond to this
very day."

Interesting, you talked to other CFers in 1991 about the 'CCS'?. I didn't even get interested until 1995, well after you say you had thought it all through. The CCS idea of *mine* didn't come out until Oct. 2000. I don't
think you actually talked about *my* CCS. Are you sure you considered an equivalent of *my* idea? Or did you consider that 'recombination is limited to 2% and thus isn't important', thereby 'dealing' with any consequence of anything called 'recombination'? Also, why didn't you mention this when we were debating on spf several years ago?

Given that I actually did the evaluation on real data and found it plausible, you and your
buddies should have looked more closely. More explicitly, I found that changes *within* the
3% band that Miles considered just 'normal error' explained the whole effect away. T hat fact
should have rung some alarm bells, but apparently didn't. You probably had the same problem
as Ed regarding 'contrarians'.

"His question should not have been, "how could it have been dealt with and rejected (beacuse
they did not wait for me to publish MY paper)?" But rather why did they reject it and what
evidence do they have for rejecting it?"

Ignoring your ad hom...Of course, that's what I did when I responded to Storms' 2006 comments and Szpak, Mosier-Boss, Miles, and Fleischmann's comments of 2004. I found their 'evidence' for rejecting it to be
irrelevant and inaccurate.

"The CCS has a big problem: in closed systems, for long periods (longer than the experimental
run by an order of magnitude), if CCS occurs there will be some data above the average
calibration curve and some below it, but on the average the calibration curve will catch
these events and the final calibration curve will be in the middle. A CCS event, cannot by
definition, raise the heat level and violate the 1st Law of Thermo. Therefore, it becomes a
matter of being sure to run proper calibration curves. The above proposer of the CCS "theory"
would have mother nature control the CCS event to provide a shift only during the "run"
and not during the calibration."

By quoting this, oystia again proves he hasn't listened to anything I have said.

What Mike Staker says is wrong and it proves _he_ doesn't grasp the CCS either (so I doubt he ever really discussed it at all).

The CCS does not have to be randomly distributed about some mean, because the calibration process always
is done with resistors, not electrodes, or inert electrodes, where no FPHE is occurring. That means no at-the-electrode recombination is occurring. The only way to go from that state is 'up' in %recombination, which will always give an apparent heat excess, no deficits will be noted.

"For example in my experiments, my calibration data ran for 11 months before the 6 week
Excess Heat (nuclear heat) and has continued to run for 1.5 years since. NO CSS during the
calibration. or I should say it has been averaged in .... ?"

So, you have greater than 0% recombination for a very short time. Good for you, some people
never get it. That just supports what I just said above.

"Kirk, there is something causing excess heat beyond what you have proposed...."

Always possible. You can't prove CF does not exist. Not logically possible. You can only
establish reproducible patterns of behavior that demostrate something does exist. So, to
repeat my call from our prior discussions, "Where's the data, Mike?"

"Good hunting... "

No...I quit expecting data from you a long time ago.

"Ref. lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ShanahanKacritiqueo.pdf"

Doesn't seem worth it to read it now does it, knowing that they got it all wrong...again!

"Is this an accurate summary of the various viewpoints?"

Of course not. But it does illustrate in flying colors the bias that makes it impossible for you to understand the actual arguments.

Well Kirk, I have to conclude you do not understand what you write because I quoted you exactly.

The basic argument you make seems clear, but I want to be certain. The reasons behind the conclusions you give are less clear. I'm simply trying to get you to state your conclusion clearly. Do you claim that the claimed excess heat energy results only from a calibration error or not? The details are not the issue here, only your basic claim is being questioned. A yes or no answer is required. You have not discussed the helium, tritium, transmutation, and radiation evidence so you would have nothing to say abut this aspect of the discussion - so I do not expect you to comment on these issues.

When a crack forms, the electrons associated with the atoms are temporarily separated. If more end up on one wall of the crack compared to the other wall, a voltage difference is created, which lasts for only a brief time. If D are present in the material, this voltage is sufficient to cause fusion, which is detected as a brief burst of neutrons. A brief voltage difference of perhaps 10000 V would be sufficient to produce detectable neutrons. The effect has been studied extensively.

The discovery and basics of nanoplamonics
Nanoplasmonics is a very new science. This science sprang into existence from a technique of chemical analysis created by our Founding Father, Martin Fleischmann in 1974- see please what says Greg Goble here:
http://coldfusionnow.org/scien…ed-by-martin-fleischmann/
This science took a turn into optics some 19 years ago when Mark I. Stockman discovered that hot spots developed in a pile of nanoparticles. Fast growing, diversification, discoveries, applications have followed; now Nanoplasmonics is in a stage of accelerated development. See this relevant paper for the basics:
http://www.phy-astr.gsu.edu/st…s_behind_Applications.pdf
or perform a fast search on Google Scholar.
Nanoplasmonics is a branch of optical condensed matter science, devoted to optical phenomena on the nanoscale in nanostructured metal systems. A remarkable property of such systems is their ability to store the optical energy concentrated on the nanoscale due to modes called surface plasmons (SPs).
This explanation and its understanding are not easy. It requires us to grasp how heat, radiation and electrons affect each other in the lattice and in the surrounding gas envelope. This comprehension is vital to the control and mastery of the LENR Nickel-Hydrogen (Ni/H) reactor.

Ed,l et me see if I can help explain why your caricature of skeptic arguments is false.

Quote

Let me try to summarize the skeptical arguments made previously:
1. The claimed excess energy results from a calibration error or from a normal chemical reaction.
2. The detected helium results from an air leaking into the system,
3. The detected tritium results from contamination by tritium in the local environment,
4. The transmutation products result from contamination by normal impurities,
5. The detected radiation results from poor measurements,

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You seem to think hydra have single heads, and that you know what, in each case, these are. The Excess heat experiments undoubtedly have multiple artifacts (different for different experiments). CCS for example may often be caused by recombination, but Wilson et al noted a number of other issues making F&P's calibration run different from their active runs.
By reducing each hydra to one head you make it appear unlikely that it always stays alive, but in reality all that is needed is one head to stay alive for each experiment.

Quote

6. Observations that cannot be explained using these conclusions must result from fraud or incompetence.

Why be so insulting to those LENR scientists? Artifacts are common and for data that is marginal, as the LENR effects all are, ruling out all possible atifacts is very difficult. Perhaps you could fairly criticise some people, as Shanahan does, for not welcoming criticism and changiing methodology to test it.

Quote

Therefore, the LENR claim is not correct.

This is a meta-hypothesis. Not a real hypothesis, because there is no predictive theory, but an idea that anomalies not explainable by non-nuclear mechanisms are proven.

Such a meta-hypothesis can never be disproved, because there is no evidence that would disprove it. (If there is such evidence, please state it). Therefore it is inexact to say it is incorrect. Merely, it is highly unlikely.

Quote

Continued efforts to support the LENR claim demonstrate an unwillingness to address what is real.

Advocacy of LENR through ignoring (or at least not testing) criticism does not support LENR, though some obviously think it does.

But I agree that such advocacy demonstrates an unwillingness to address reality. What would support LENR, and make the rest of the scientific community think LENR research was respectable, would be a sustained effort to address the criticisms of specific experiments, repeating them with tighter conditions or better instrumentation, publishing results carefully written up. Two things would then happen: either the results would continue to show a real anomaly resisting all critiques (because criticism had been incorporated) or results would show no anomaly. Both would be a scientific advance on the current situation.

Quote

This is an example of an unwillingness to apply good science.

Yes

Quote from Ed

These conclusions also imply the following:
1. Hundreds of otherwise competent scientists become incompetent when they study LENR, even after 27 years,

No. LENR is one of the very few claimed phenomena that has indications easily confusable with subtle artifacts. Let me rephrase your statement.

Quote from Tom

Of the tens of thousands of otherwise competent scientists who have looked at LENR, 1% are outliers in the sense that they pursue the goal of major riches and a Nobel Prize in a way that all the others judge to be very highly unlikely to pan out.

Does that make them incompetent? Maybe. These scientists, when pressed, do not assert any one experiment to be proof of extraordinary physics. Rather they point to "preponderance of evidence". In this they are statistically naive, because they do not consider the hydra issue. But this does not make them incompetent except in LENR, since no other scientific field relies on "preponderance of evidence" to support extraordinary new physics.

Quote

2. Calorimetry is not correctly understood after 200 years of application in the field of chemistry,

Error mechanisms in certain highly unusual electrolysis experiments have not been around for 200 years, because no-one was doing those experiments, and it is those that were not understood. All it requires is the imagination to believe that new things can exist in science, even when the old theories have been used for a long time. F&P it seems did not have this.

Quote

3. Only skeptics correctly understand nature.

This is 100% incorrect. Skeptics admit to not fully understanding nature. They imaginatively allow error mechanisms which have not yet been detected as a possibility. They also allow extraordinary new physics as a possibility, but reckon this to be highly unlikely when all the evidence presented has possible error mechanisms that it seems cannot be ruled out. For example, tighter calorimetry leads to lower observed excess heat etc.

In fact it is LENR researchers claiming they are sure their experiments have no artifacts - if there are such - who don't understand nature. Or, if they are "preponderance of evidence convincees" then they don't understand how to apply probability theory in complex cases where systematic errors and experiment and result selection occur.

Quote

Is this an accurate summary of the various viewpoints?

I've corrected your statements to be an accurate summary of my viewpoint. Others here may have different and less charitable views.

Quote

When a crack forms, the electrons associated with the atoms are temporarily separated. If more end up on one wall of the crack compared to the other wall, a voltage difference is created, which lasts for only a brief time. If D are present in the material, this voltage is sufficient to cause fusion, which is detected as a brief burst of neutrons. A brief voltage difference of perhaps 10000 V would be sufficient to produce detectable neutrons. The effect has been studied extensively.

Have you done a basic sanity check on this? Crack opening speed? Surface charge density? Crack separation at which 10kV is present? I'm not saying it can't happen, just that it is a bit unlikely because electrons can move quickly and the field at the surfaces of the crack is limited? References with quantitative analysis would be welcome.

Quote from Thomas Clarke

Have you done a basic sanity check on this? Crack opening speed? Surface charge density? Crack separation at which 10kV is present? I'm not saying it can't happen, just that it is a bit unlikely because electrons can move quickly and the field at the surfaces of the crack is limited? References with quantitative analysis would be welcome.

One of the key concepts to appreciate is resonance in all its many forms. It is a cornerstone of LENR. In LENR, one instance of resonance builds on the next in a ladder of powerful exponentially increasing interdependent processes of self-reinforcing amplification. Surprisingly, these resonant processes affect just a few critical parameters that drive the LENR reaction.
To get this description started, the explanation of the LENR reaction begins with how the boundary between a metal and an insulator forms a perfect mirror which confines light and electrons within a few nanometers of the surface of the metal. When this mirror is at its very best, very little light and electrons can escape to the far field. The surface of the metal becomes a black hole for EMF where light and electrons can enter but cannot escape.
Collective charge oscillations at the boundaries between an insulating dielectric medium (such as air or glass or in our example hydrogen) and a metal (such as gold, silver, and copper or in our example nickel) are able to sustain the propagation of visible-frequency electromagnetic waves (EMF) or in our case infrared EMF known as surface-plasmon-polaritons (SPP).
SPPs are guided along metal-dielectric interfaces much in the same way that light can be guided by an optical fiber, with the unique characteristic of sub wavelength-scale confinement perpendicular to the interface. In other words, the SPPs sticks like glue to the metal surface.
An SPP is a strange and wonderful form of EMF. An infrared light photon becomes part of the electron when the energy of the two becomes equal. Being trapped together, because the photon and the electron bounce around on the surface of the metal for so long, the waveforms of both changes constantly under the influence of destructive interference. This is called Fano resonance. Fano resonance is like a Cuisinart for EMF. It chops and blends electrons and photons together until the EMF mix contains only SPPs. In this blending process, SPPs acquire the most desirable characteristics of both photons and electrons.
An SPP is now converted from an electron: a fermion to a boson: a force carrier. Most of the mass and the charge of the electron are lost in SPP formation but a very small amount of mass remains. But the spin of the SPP is increased to 1, which is the spin of the photon. The SPP now becomes a powerful carrier of spin, the source of the atomic level magnetic field and it has lost the charge that prevents concentration of electrons from occurring.
Now, the SPPs allow for an unlimited concentration of spin carrying particles to accumulate at the surface of the metal.
The spin of all those SPPs must be given a coherent and productive form to be more effective. This is accomplished by chopping the metal lattice into nano-sized pieces called nana-particles. These particles are sized from 50nm to as small as 1 or 2 nm. Because they are so small, they possess a huge curvature. In other words, they are very sharp. This extreme curvature forces the SPPs to form a tight vortex current on the surface of one of the sides of the nano-particle just like a big rock forms a vortex hole in a river rapid.
Another type of resonant wave is forms called a whispering gallery wave. This circular wave continues the standardization of the wavelengths of the SPPs through more Fano resonance. The end result is the formation of a lone spin wave with a single huge amplitude at a single frequency in the extreme ultraviolet. Such a solitary wave is called a soliton.
In the vortex flow of all the SPPs, they will combine their individual wave forms into a single waveform that projects the sum of their combined spin into a narrow beam axially located and projecting normal to the direction of the vortex flow. That narrow beam of spin is called an anapole magnetic field. The SPP soliton is also known as a magnetic monopole.
Gold is the metal of choice in nanoplasmonic experimentation. In Nanoplasmonics experimentation, a concentration of EMF power is routinely observed in the gap between gold nanoparticles demonstrating an EMF amplification factor of 10^^9.
The record of such observed EMF application is a factor of 10^^15 or 100 trillion watts per cm2. That is existing science mind you.

Storms wrote:

Quote

Let me try to summarize the skeptical arguments made previously:

1. The claimed excess energy results from a calibration error or from a normal chemical reaction.

2. The detected helium results from an air leaking into the system,

3. The detected tritium results from contamination by tritium in the local environment,

4. The transmutation products result from contamination by normal impurities,

5. The detected radiation results from poor measurements,

6. Observations that cannot be explained using these conclusions must result from fraud or incompetence.

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This wide variety of observations is intended to make artifacts and errors seem implausible as explanations, but in fact it makes nuclear explanations far more implausible. The observations can't be explained by a single nuclear reaction, but requires dozens of unprecedented and inconceivable nuclear reactions, and unprecedented mechanisms to convert nuclear energy to heat. The different experiments have sensitivities and specificities that range by factors of millions or even billions, and it's completely implausible that the corresponding intensities of nuclear manifestations would similarly vary, keeping all the observations near the detection or noise limit. On the other hand, that is exactly what one would expect if the observations are the result of artifacts and confirmation bias.

Storms wrote:

Quote

Let me try to summarize the skeptical arguments made previously:

I'll try to phrase them in less biased language.

Quote

1. The claimed excess energy results from a calibration error or from a normal chemical reaction.

The claimed observations of excess heat are much more plausibly attributed to errors or artifacts (chemical effects) than to completely unprecedented radiationless (or nearly so) inconceivable nuclear reactions .

This is particularly the case because the claimed excess power levels in the refereed literature have become more modest and far more scarce over time, as the experiments improve. While claims of multi-watt excesses exist, they are not reproducible. There is no experiment adequately described so that anyone skilled in the art can produce a multi-watt excess even on statistical basis.

Quote

2. The detected helium results from an air leaking into the system,

The claimed observations of helium are much more plausibly attributed to the trace levels of helium in the atmosphere by diffusion, leaks or outgassing from materials involved in the experiment, than to unprecedented radiationless inconceivable nuclear reactions.

This is particularly the case given that the measurements are typically near the detection limit or the noise level or the ambient level. And while experiments have been reported at power levels that would produce unmistakeable levels of helium, no such reports of unmistakeable helium have been reported. In the Arata experiment, where 5 W was claimed for 80 days, the observed helium was orders of magnitude too low, and *still* near the detection limit.

Quote

3. The detected tritium results from contamination by tritium in the local environment,

The claimed observations of tritium are much more plausibly attributed to contamination or experimental error than to completely unprecedented inconceivable nuclear reactions.

This is particularly the case given that the sensitivity for tritium is a million times better than for excess power, and yet the levels are still equivocal, and that the the levels, which started out seemingly substantial in preliminary experiments, all decreased to near detection limits as better experimental methods were used, until 1998, when Claytor wrote "due to the subtle and weak nature of the signals observed, we have taken many precautions and checks to prevent contamination and to confirm the tritium is not due to an artifact". So, a measure of nuclear reactions some million times more sensitive than heat, is *still* "subtle and weak".

And given that McKubre wrote in 1998 "we may nevertheless state with some confidence that tritium is not a routinely produced product of the electrochemical loading of deuterium into palladium".

And given that no specific questions about tritium in cold fusion experiments have been resolved, that LANL did not get any prestigious publications out the considerable work on the subject, and that they essentially scrubbed their web site of any of the claims.

Even though the tritium questions remain unresolved, little, if any, new work on it has been reported for 15 years or so.

Quote

4. The transmutation products result from contamination by normal impurities,

The claimed transmutation products are much more plausibly attributed to contamination or experimental errors than by a dozen different unprecedented radiationless inconceivable nuclear reactions.

This is particularly the case given that the starting and ending points for all claimed transmutations are common stable isotopes, and necessary radioactive intermediates are never observed. Even though the people claiming the results suggest the application of ameliorating nuclear waste, they never actually observe a change in the level of radioactivity, whether to increase or decrease it.

And given that the levels of the transmutation products are always marginal, and while the claims date back decades, no increase in the level has been observed, nor progress in waste amelioration, nor progress of any kind.

Quote

5. The detected radiation results from poor measurements,

The claimed observations of radiation are much more plausibly attributed to poor measurements or contamination from laboratory calibrants and the like, than unprecedented inconceivable nuclear reactions.

This is particularly the case for gamma radiation for which sensitivity and specificity is at ridiculous levels, so that for a couple of thousand investment, anyone can identify the signature for potassium-40 from salt substitute (KCl) that you can buy at your grocery store. Anyone who claims to see gamma rays and can't tell you more than that should immediately hand back their PhD and start driving a truck for a living. The gamma ray reported by Piantelli near 660 keV was almost certainly from Cs-137, a standard calibrant in all physics labs with a single peak at 661.7 keV.

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6. Observations that cannot be explained using these conclusions must result from fraud or incompetence.

Pretty well all academic claims are plausibly attributable to artifacts, errors, and confirmation bias. Observations made by people or companies looking for investment are another story, and are much more plausibly attributable to deception than to unprecedented and inconceivable nuclear reactions.

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Therefore, the LENR claim is not correct.

Therefore, the claim of unspecified nuclear reactions in cold fusion experiments are not supported by the evidence, and given the extremely low likelihood that they could happen, based on a century of rock solid nuclear science, are almost certainly *not* happening.