FP's experiments discussion

Shane wrote:

Quote

[the stigma cold fusion acquired] is justified to protect the public's image of science. Ends justifies the means.

Cold fusion was judged to be bad science, and just like any other field judged to be bad science, it acquired a stigma. It is perfectly reasonable to advocate and support good science in preference to bad science. It's not more complicated than that.

Quote

But the public must be getting a bit confused as to what, exactly, you are protecting them from, as there are these institutions popping up around the world to study LENR. Governments starting to offer some funding. What to think for John Q public?...On one hand you have Josh and friends telling you there is nothing, CF died a long time ago -we know because we killed it , and on the other hand the pace of research, and preparations for commercialization, move forward anyways.

It's funny. Here you're arguing that the current level of activity legitimizes the field, and shows that it is alive and well, and on the verge of breakthrough. And yet, in the early 90s, the level of activity was at least 10 times higher, and the publication rate 100 times higher, and yet you just finished arguing that it was dead back then, having just been killed. You just don't make any sense.

Of course, it is the nature of true believers to delude themselves into thinking interest is growing and about to burst forth, even while the field slides slowly, asymptotically, inexorably toward oblivion.

Cold fusion has nowhere near the level of interest it had at almost any time during the 90s, when even toward the end, close to 50 papers were published per year. Or in 2004, when the interest was high enough to convince the DOE to convene another panel to examine the evidence. Or in 2009, when 60 minutes did a piece on cold fusion, and when both the APS and ACS were running LENR symposia at their annual meetings, and SPAWAR had an active LENR program, and activity at NASA seemed to be on the increase.

Just since Rossi, in 2011, Ruby Carat wrote a column titled "Mass Use of Cold Fusion in One Year or Less" on coldfusionnow.com. On Jan 4, 2012, the web site ecatreport.com (now defunct) wrote a column titled "2012 The Year of Andrea Rossi" and gave a list of 10 reasons for ecat momentum. Most of the things on the list are as defunct as the web site.

But since 2009, nothing comparable has appeared in the mainstream media, SPAWAR shut down the LENR research, NASA has gone quiet, and both APS and ACS stopped their LENR sessions, and both rejected publication of the final volume of papers representing one such session.

For the last decade, the publication rate for new experimental results has been maybe 1 per year, and of those maybe two (in the decade) are excess heat claims. And except for a special LENR issue in a 3rd rate journal, containing (by design) mainly retrospectives and reviews, the total publication rate is only about 5 per year, excluding peripheral papers (helium in volcanoes) and negative papers.

One could also look at the diminishing quality of the people involved. In the beginning there was Fleischmann, Pons, Bockris, Schwinger, Yeager, and some interest from Rubbia, Gerischer, Pauling and Teller. Of this list, those still living (Pons, Rubbia) have abandoned the field (although they haven't denounced it), and some others (Yeager, Teller) abandoned it before they died. Other reasonably careful investigators like Will and Gozzi have also abandoned the field. None of the new recruits have anything like the chops of these people. Apart from Duncan, none are distinguished in any way, and many (like the MFMP crew) are not even PhDs or physicists, and have little or no experience in research.

There may be some sort of surge in lay-interest, expressed in on-line forums, and in interest from companies trying to attract funding, but I don't see it from credentialed academics, nor do I see any scientific progress.

Quote

Admit it Josh, you guys are sweating this one.

If I thought there was a reasonable chance cold fusion were real, I'd be making every effort to get involved and looking forward to a clean and abundant source of energy.

But no, as time passes with no improvement in the evidence for the phenomenon, certainty that it is bogus only increases to the extent that's possible. I'm not swayed by meta-data in the way you and other true believers clearly are.

padam73 wrote:

Quote

me:

"The black hats, such as they were, came from the hot fusion community. There was certainly an organized campaign to discredit cold fusion based on the possibility of losing funding".

James Brophy, Vice-president of research, Utah University, 1989

James Brophy is not an impartial judge of this. The administration at Utah was largely to blame for the way the fiasco was sprung on the public, and they were understandably eager to share the blame. It wouldn't do to have the field discredited by academics based on science, so the tried to pin it on corruption.

But it doesn't wash. The turning point associated with the 40 days is invariably credited to Nathan Lewis and Steven Koonin at Caltech, neither of whom were part of the hot fusion community.

According to Huizenga's account, "Lewis' lecture [at the Baltimore APS meeting] made a major impact on the audience and served as a lightning rod to shift the general public's opinion on cold fusion from positive to negative." Lewis is a chemist.

Not to say that the hot fusion community did not voice their own skepticism, and publish results to support their skepticism. But if they were the only ones, no one would have paid attention.

Over the subsequent decade, the most prolific and effective critic of the field was Douglas Morrison, a physicist at CERN, and also not part of the hot fusion community.

Quote

me:

AFAIK nobody in 1989 criticized the measurement of excess heat done by P&F. What was criticized is precisely the lack of radiation products assuming D-D fusion. Physicists were not convinced by the extra heat; they wanted by-products of fusion.

Simply saying they were not convinced by the extra heat is saying that the evidence was weak. But in fact the calorimetry was explicitly criticized in those first 40 days. In particular, Lewis presented his analysis of the *calorimetric data* of P&F at the same Baltimore meeting, and later published the critique in Nature. Only one temperature was measured in the cell, and it was not stirred, and moreover, the excess power actually measured was much lower than had been claimed in public, particularly at the press conference, and at 27% in open cell calorimetry, the evaluations of the assumptions was grossly inadequate.

As for the radiation products, yes, the levels claimed by P&F were 8 orders of magnitude too low to account for the heat, but even worse was the completely erroneous interpretation of the data, which exposed them as incompetent boobs. This error was later admitted.

Quote from joshua cude

And now it's not 40 days or 6 months, but 27 years later, and still the evidence has not improved.

Mr. Cude seems immune to positive LENR papers. I guess he doesn't read any of them. I recommend him all the jccf papers of the last 25 years. There he will find the answers he is fighting against. But may be Japan is too far away for persons like him.

In contrast to proven LENR & other alternative fusion models, he admires useless attempts like the hot DD/TR hot fusion.

1) The feasibility of hot DD/TR fusion has been refuted already more than 20 years ago. The ongoing research is mainly a military/basic research toy ground.
The roots of Cude & other persons sick dreams seem to be religious believe in a theory that soon will disappear.
Hot (DD/TR-) Fusion is the most unsuitable process to be implemented from the view of waste products. Each single DD-TR reaction leaves a neutron which is not easy containable and a source of lost energy. Even worse: A hot fusion reactor produces a high soft gamma load which must be shielded by a special wall.
And now comes the “no go” story: This gamma-wall must sit relatively close to the plasma. Though it gets activated by the neutrons... The work around presented would have been a mono-isotopic material which should be inert to neutron bombardments.
The costs of such a e.g. mono-isotopic materials are exorbitant, if we assume that it must be highly pure such as 99.9999%.
But as said: This is a sick dream, then there exists no feasible mono isotopic material, which will not undergo transmutation. First guessed live time of such a wall was 8 years.

2) Pro hot Fusion fans/believers momentarily pass through a heavy stress inducing field, because they very well know that all the DD/TR projects will be stopped soon. (Even Livermoore will move its targets to more adequate fuel). DD/TR Fusion is far away of reaching a COP even close to one. Comparing hot Fusion with the LENR (& other alternatives, e.g. HB-Fusion) experiments these guys are light years behind in producing an impact on industry!

So for me Cude endeless words represent the after glow of a white dwarf that just is vanishing. Its soon over!

And this is how "Scientific" the "Replicators" where in 1989, that decided the fate of cold fusion during the 40 days after the anouncement:

"One published photograph of the Utah cell showed Pons's hand, and that gave us the scale," he said. Dr. Lewis said his group had also used the photograph showing Dr. Pons's hand as a measure of the cell's size. "

Really Scientific, right? The hand that sealed the fate of Cold Fusion. Shame on CALTECH and MIT.

When Fleischmann later explained to the dear physisists that the Cell that Pons held in his hand, was just a glas Jar that showed the principles but had nothing to do with the actual cell or its size, it was too Late. The damage where done And CF was dead and buried by CALTECH and MIT.

This was just one of the errors done by the deciding institutes. A major historic and Shameful event performed by of our mainstream Science community.

http://partners.nytimes.com/li…50399sci-cold-fusion.html

Quote from Wyttenbach

Mr. Cude seems immune to positive LENR papers. I guess he doesn't read any of them. I recommend him all the jccf papers of the last 25 years. There he will find the answers he is fighting against. But may be Japan is too far away for persons like him.

Strange is it not? Maybe Josh is a paid agent of the CIA anti-LENR conspiracy? Maybe he is just incapable of evaluating these papers? Or maybe...

If you look, historically, at the LENR "positives" you do not find stronger evidence as times goes on. I agree, JCCF is full of papers that claim evidence, all of which is fragmentary, unreplicable or inconclusive. It is extraordinary. If there were a real scientific phenomena you would expect that over 25 years the conditions under which it can be observed clearly would be found and recent evidence would be much more substantial than the original evidence. Instead "best evidence" papers come from 10, 20 or more years ago.

The fuss over Rossi is because if his claims were not false he would have genuine easily provable evidence of LENR. A fuss because that evidence does not otherwise exist.

Quote

Holmlid, in today's Aftenposten article, claims 400 scientists are now believers in LENR. All this in spite of academia, and your, attempts to kill LENR.

That is an oxymoron. You can be a scientist, or believer, but not both. Perhaps what you meant was that H claims 400 scientists think LENR worth looking at?

Quote from Thomas Clarke

If you look, historically, at the LENR "positives" you do not find stronger evidence as times goes on. I agree, JCCF is full of papers that claim evidence, all of which is fragmentary, unreplicable or inconclusive. It is extraordinary. If there were a real scientific phenomena you would expect that over 25 years the conditions under which it can be observed clearly would be found and recent evidence would be much more substantial than the original evidence. Instead "best evidence" papers come from 10, 20 or more years ago.

Did You read the jccf15 proceedings? As an example, the Kitamure paper:

Comparison of some Ni-based nano-composite samples with
respect to excess heat evolution under exposure to hydrogen
isotope gases?

In Your advanced rhetoric terminology: How do You define a hot fusion researcher? Believer, hard core research saint, or money waste expert?

At least try to be funny!

T. Clarke: "You can be a scientist, or believer, but not both"

That was a good one, hehe
Thomas think scientists don't "believe". they presumably "know" or "don't know"
Haha, sure!

Like string theorists don't "believe" in string theory, They "know" it's the truth?
Sure, haha.

Wyttenbach wrote:

Quote

me:

Mr. Cude seems immune to positive LENR papers. I guess he doesn't read any of them. I recommend him all the jccf papers of the last 25 years.

It's true, I have not read all the cold fusion literature. But I have read a lot of it, and I have read what advocates single out as the best papers in the field.

And from the refereed literature, the evidence has not improved, and new results have become far more scarce and more modest.

The DOE enlisted a panel of experts in 2004 to examine the best evidence up to that time, and, in their judgement, evidence for excess heat produced by nuclear reactions in cold fusion experiments was not conclusive, and that the field did not merit an allocation of funding. This is consistent with my evaluation of the evidence, and I don't know why I should consider your evaluation above that of expert panels, and the consensus of most qualified experts.

So, what has happened since 2004? Maybe instead of citing 25 years worth of unrefereed conference proceedings, you could point out the best peer-reviewed paper since 2004 that claims experimental evidence for excess heat from cold fusion experiments.

Quote

In contrast to proven LENR & other alternative fusion models, he admires useless attempts like the hot DD/TR hot fusion.

Another hot fusion skeptopath. You should try to keep an open mind, and not rule things out based on dogma.

Quote

1) The feasibility of hot DD/TR fusion has been refuted already more than 20 years ago.

People also claimed heavier than air flight was impossible, even while birds flew overhead. People like Kelvin thought they could refute its feasibility, but fortunately, there were brave scientists who ignored such naysayers, and forged ahead anyway. And now we should all be thankful for the brave hot fusion scientists who reject dogmatic statements of impossibility, even as the sun shines overhead, and forge ahead with their research. One thing the naysayers of flight didn't take into account was human ingenuity and perserverence.

Quote

The roots of Cude & other persons sick dreams seem to be religious believe in a theory that soon will disappear.

There is nothing religious about hot fusion. The reaction has been observed, and even skeptics of eventual feasibility do not deny it. In stark contrast, most scientists do not believe nuclear reactions have produced any measurable heat in cold fusion experiments. Those who do believe it resemble a cult like that of scientology.

Quote

Hot (DD/TR-) Fusion is the most unsuitable process to be implemented from the view of waste products. Each single DD-TR reaction leaves a neutron which is not easy containable and a source of lost energy. Even worse: A hot fusion reactor produces a high soft gamma load which must be shielded by a special wall.

But in comparison to fission power, it's clean as a whistle, and fission power is cleaner than coal by orders of magnitude. So, in spite of the neutrons and gammas, fusion, it is still the holy grail of energy sources, from the point of view of fuel abundance, and cleanliness. Economics is the bigger question.

Quote

2) Pro hot Fusion fans/believers momentarily pass through a heavy stress inducing field, because they very well know that all the DD/TR projects will be stopped soon.

Most fusion efforts are based on DT fusion, and ITER is still pushing ahead, as is the stellarator, and NIF. Maybe you skeptopaths will win out and have the research shut down, but us free-thinking, open-minded, optimists are leaving the decision as to whether it's worth the risk to those who have the relevant expertise.

Quote

DD/TR Fusion is far away of reaching a COP even close to one.

The COP as defined in cold fusion is not a useful figure of merit in hot fusion, because it gives no indication of the proximity of ignition.

It is defined as the total output thermal power (conventional plus nuclear] divided by the conventional input power. Therefore, if one assumes that all the conventional input appears as heat somewhere, and could in principle, be contained, then *any* energy produced by nuclear reactions represents a COP greater than unity.

Unlike cold fusion, energy from nuclear reactions has been unequivocally produced, and therefore, the COP is greater than 1.

Of course, the has no bearing on ignition.

Ignition happens when the energy produced by fusion captured as heat within the fuel exceeds the amount of external energy absorbed to produce that fusion. It's the same with chemical combustion. When the absorbed heat required to initiate combustion is produced by the combustion itself, it ignites and sustained itself.

So, they define Q, as the ratio of the energy produced by fusion to the energy absorbed by the fuel to produce that fusion.

Now, because some of the fusion power escapes as neutrons, it does not contribute to ignition, and therefore, in DT fusion, a Q of more than 5 (usually 10 is the goal) is needed for ignition.

Once ignition is achieved, all the accessible DT fuel is consumed, and at that point, the output increases by many orders of magnitude, and it becomes a matter of design to generate more total output power than input for practical use.

It's true that ignition has not been achieved yet in hot fusion, in spite of NIF's goal to demonstrate it in 2012. However, any look at a chart of the triple product vs time suggests that reaching the Lawson criterion for ignition is inevitable, and will almost certainly be reached by ITER, if it is completed.

There was some hoopla about break-even when the NIF claimed they exceeded Q=1. But this was an entirely psychological milestone, because Q=1, which is called break-even, does not actually represent either break-even or ignition. Still, quantifiable progress is being made -- something that cannot be said for cold fusion.

ETA: Of course, reaching ignition does not represent feasibility as a power source. That is where the risk is. I expect ignition will be reached in the next decade or two, but feasible power generation probably not in the lifetime of anyone currently living. Still, the benefits are so enormous for our species, that it's worth plugging along, just for the benefit of our descendants. I'm just that nice a guy.

The problem with cold fusion is that the COPs often claimed are far above what should be necessary for ignition (self-sustaining), but no one ever demonstrates a self-sustaining reactor for a long enough duration to exclude chemical energy. If they could, it would be represent extremely persuasive evidence. That's why, as long as salesmen are citing a COP for a new energy source, you can be sure it is either a heat pump or snake-oil.

oystla wrote:

Quote

T. Clarke: "You can be a scientist, or believer, but not both"

That was a good one, hehe

Thomas think scientists don't "believe". they presumably "know" or "don't know"

Richard Feynman: "scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty — some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain".

To believe is to be absolutely certain...

Quote from joshua cude

oystla wrote:

Richard Feynman: "scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty — some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain".

To believe is to be absolutely certain...

Display More

To disbelieve is to be absolutely certain...

Quote

Thomas think scientists don't "believe". they presumably "know" or "don't know"Haha, sure!

This argument shows a type of cognitive disonanvce I call ECWitis.

In this mode things are evaluated as either true, false, or "don't know". There are then special axioms like "everything Rossi says is true, even if it is not always comprehensible". Note the similarity there with the way religions treat sacred texts?

Scientists of course must be smarter than this if they are to hope to understand the real world. Especially if they are trying to gain new understanding. They will have ideas about how things work, and test them to become more or less confident. This process is not belief in the binary sense of "believer" - which I was replying to. Scientists must have some numerical idea of probability which changes as evidence comes in.

Quote

Who is irrational?

Who is coherent?

In Swartz's experiment, with tupperware containers, with no proper calorimetry, heat measurements at the level well below a watt are not credible. And measurements of microwaves would be laughable. This is not to say microwatts can't be measured... just not like that.

Quote

To disbelieve is to be absolutely certain...

Skeptics are not disbelievers. I am only *nearly sure* cold fusion is bogus.

Quote from joshua cude

But in comparison to fission power, it's clean as a whistle, and fission power is cleaner than coal by orders of magnitude. So, in spite of the neutrons and gammas, fusion, it is still the holy grail of energy sources, from the point of view of fuel abundance, and cleanliness. Economics is the bigger question.

Cude cited Fusion without the prefix hot!!

Lets guess whether it's a missed spelling or a matter of thought.

I would prefer the two (add Thomas) page-fillers would realy read & discuss the suggested paper...

May be the next LENR story is a little bit more dirty - e.g. few neutrons, healthy gammas - then they possibly can live with it.

Shane wrote:

Quote

I see no contradiction between my assertion that the effective stigmatization campaign following FPs, did suppress LENRs subsequent growth, cut the inflow of fresh new talent, and stigmatized the field to this day...and the recent resurgence of interest leading to new institutes of LENR study.

The contradiction, or inconsistency, is in claiming cold fusion was *killed* in 1989, and is alive an well now, when the level of activity and support was at least 10 times higher then than now.

Quote

Back in 1989, many of those who saw the effect continued their CF research, and support, even at the risk of being marginalized by their peers. Most were well enough established in their disciplines to weather the social, and career consequences of their pursuit.

Ah, so it wasn't killed then, as you've so often whined. So, in spite of the criticism, there was a lot of activity -- ten times more than what you now consider a reason for optimism and an indication of an imminent breakthrough.

Quote

However, with new replacements of fresh young talent being warned away, or risk career suicide, the volume of research slowed, and with it less papers, giving the false appearance of a dying field, which you try and capitalize on to paint the field of study in a negative light.

In March of 1989, there was no stigma against cold fusion. After the announcement, tens of thousands of scientists went to their labs anxious to be a part of this new revolution. Storms documents the excitement well.

The interests, greed, and corruption of scientists did not change over the next several weeks, but they did get a chance to see the evidence for cold fusion. And that's when it got a negative stigma. So the quality of the evidence -- nature really -- is clearly responsible for the stigma that became associated with the field.

There can be little doubt that if the sort of unequivocal evidence that was generated for HTSC at about the same time, or for powered flight a century earlier, had been generated for cold fusion, that P&F would have remained in science's good graces, and the field would have been embraced with the same enthusiasm it was initially welcomed with. But it didn't generate good evidence. Even though, as you now admit, many people continued to work on it, with solid funding, the evidence simply never got out of the marginal erratic state it started out in. And that's why 27 years later, an organization like MFMP formed to finally generate some unequivocal evidence. So far, they have not succeeded.

Quote

Now, after a temporary lull, scientific interest is back on the upswing, the stigma is easing a bit, and with it the floodgates of new talent will open. With new institutes in Russia, India, Japan, and the US, there will be an increase in the papers.

As I argued last time, with the rejection of cold fusion sessions by both APS and ACS, the shutting down of the SPAWAR cold fusion research (easily the single-most prolific group when it came to generating peer-reviewed papers claiming new positive results in the field), the silence from NASA and NI, and the shuttering of Energetics, it does not look like a net upswing to me.

But whether it is or not, it's still metadata. When you can finally point to new results instead of new institutes, maybe you'll attract some attention.

Quote

Holmlid, in today's Aftenposten article, claims 400 scientists are now believers in LENR. All this in spite of academia, and your, attempts to kill LENR.

Right, so all that whining about the stigma is just BS, because it did not succeed in suppressing activity. There were thousands of authors in the field in the 90s. Just how many and how much money do you think it should take to prove a phenomenon claimed to have been proved 27 years ago by 3 people and $100k? And with more people involved, and more money, the evidence not only does not improve, it gets weaker.