The Playground

Lomax wrote:

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Cold fusion turned a corner, sometime around 2004-2005.

You would have a difficult time justifying this based on publication rates in mainstream refereed journals.

I've taken quick look at the Britz database for the decade before 2004 (1994 - 2003) and the decade after (2005 - 2014). Now, in the decade before, I did not examine the entries individually because there are so many, so I don't know if there is an equivalent of the LENR Sourcebook in those years or not, but I don't think there is. In the decade after, I have excluded Sourcebook entries, because that is not a mainstream journal.

Also, in the prior decade, I used Britz's keyword res- to identify negative papers, and I think he was quite careful in this assignment up to then. In the later decade, his assignment of res- and res+ has largely lapsed, with many of the years having zero of each, when both highly critical and positive papers were present. So, of the later decade, I assigned the 9 negative papers based on the abstracts. I've cited them all here recently, so it's easy to check if you really think they are negative. If I'm motivated, I may try to examine the individual entires from the earlier decade as well at some stage.

With these qualifications, I found:

The average number of papers per year in the decade before 2004 is 40, and about 10% are negative.

The average number of papers per year in the decade after 2004 is 6.7, and about 13% are negative.

Every single year in the prior decade has more papers than the highest number in the later decade.

So, the rate dropped by a factor of 6 or so, and the fraction of negative papers is about the same, if not a little higher.

Now, as before, this goes through 2014, and so the 35 papers in 2015 are not considered. That's because the purpose is to show that nothing in particular happened (no corner was turned) in 2004, based on refereed literature.

Something *did* happen in 2015, based on the literature, and that something is that Current Science ran a special issue of invited papers in the field. The significance of that can be debated, but it doesn't bear on the question of whether 2004 or 2005 was a turning point. And keep in mind that in the 15 months since, only one rather peripheral paper has been published.

Now, including one more year before and after, changes the averages to 45 and 9, so even in that case, the average rate is still down a factor of 5.

@JedRothwell, about user ID's you are right to some extent. It's an interesting point how and what we choose to reveal about our selves that I guess we all think about when choosing our IDs. My one is still my name by the way but just rather truncated. I started just using Stephen because I wanted to be a generic background contributer who could be anyone. Later in some forums I felt guilty using the name for all the other Stephens out there so as not to get confused with them or them with me I used StephenC as here. Later I felt I should take responsibility for my views so in some other forums so I used my full name too. I guess there are all kinds of other reasons for choosing the ID's we do.

But I think whether or not we use our real names they do become our own ID to some extent and I for sure feel regret when I say something wrong or upset someone else by saying something stupid for example which ever ID I use.

When I mention living with the consequences I'm not really talking about legal consequences just personal ones and mostly personal regrets or loss of reputation.

For sure I respect people a lot like yourself who do use their full names though and who accept the risks that that exposure gives them to both good reputation and unfortunate and unfair insults or attacks in some cases. There is an element of bravery in that.

Current melodrama is entertaining however the main losers are not Rossi nor IH but all of us who would like to see LENR become a reality. Good for the sales of pop-corn, bad for a true energy revolution.

Nevertheless, I still see a ray of hope in all this mess. The fundamental question remains whether the E-cat is capable to deliver a COP high enough to further develop the technology. Not necessarily the extravagant performance claimed by Rossi. Let's forget about claims of COP>50 and outputs >1MW, there is enough indirect evidence to infer that such values do only exist in Planet Rossi. To design a test on a phase change was a terrible idea and I don't see why we should not trust someone like Jed Rothwell about this. Also, I have reservations (to say the least) that a consumer requiring 1MW to manufacture real products has ever existed. Some may see extenuating circumstances in the reluctance of IH to perform the 1MW test, as shown by the delay in finding a real customer, however my feeling is that Rossi is living in a lie and is clinging to it.

This does not say however that the E-Cat technology is worthless. We may see light at the end of the tunnel. Simply because the guaranteed performance test required the IN and OUT temperature to be measured and the values of 60 and 100°C have been mentioned. I can't imagine that the ERV screwed up something as easy as the measurement of a temperature of 60°C. And since we don't have any evidence that Penon is a fraud, this means a COP higher than 3. A COP of 3 without any phase change. Just plain water heating. A COP of 3 in the KW range is already enough for a true energy revolution. At least on planet Earth.

As foolish as it may sound, my personal opinion is that Rossi may be a fraud and at the same time have the goods. I don't see them as mutually exclusive. A genius and a mountebank. An inventor and a megalomaniac. Some may say they go hand in hand. Kudos to Rossi for having pioneered nanopowder and LiAlH4. But shame on him to continuously avoid an elementary application of the scientific method.

Does he truly believe that 1MW were delivered? Was he greedy enough to exaggerate the claims? Probably we will never know. I'm nevertheless confident that we will know if the COP was or was not higher than 3. Therefore yes still a ray of hope in all this mess.

Quote from LENR Calender

I guess when you doxx others you can't be surprised to get doxxed but two wrongs don't make one right.

It is not doxxing when you refer to a book that someone published describing his own condition.

Perhaps I am wrong, but I understand this person published a book describing a health problem he suffers from. Since he himself said it, there can be nothing wrong with others citing it.

JulianBianchi

COP >6 OFFICIAL

Quote from JulianBianchi

Does he truly believe that 1MW were delivered? Was he greedy enough to exaggerate the claims? Probably we will never know. I'm nevertheless confident that we will know if the COP was or was not higher than 3. Therefore yes still a ray of hope in all this mess.

The COP was higher than 6 (>6). How do I know this, a significant portion of Rossi's claim is for 'breach of contract' in particular that if the ERV reported a COP >6 then IH must pay $89 million. Why should he make a complaint of breach of contract if the ERV reports <6. So that is the legal position COP >6 until that is challenged. That is down to IH to do and they have not done so yet, and may never do so. If they don't the COP is >6 end of storey.

Best regards
Frank

Quote from JedRothwell

It is not doxxing when you refer to a book that someone published describing his own condition.

Perhaps I am wrong, but I understand this person published a book describing a health problem he suffers from. Since he himself said it, there can be nothing wrong with others citing it.

“Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine.” ― Alan Turing

Turing was an outsider to our society, he had a hard time living in this world coping with his lessors, yet he won World War II for the allies and made it possible for Jed Rothwell and millions of others to make their living through the application of Turing's tortured genius. Oftentimes mental deviation can be a rare and precious gift and of unsurpassed value to the rest of us.

Quote from JedRothwell

Quote from LENR Calender: “I guess when you doxx others you can't be surprised to get doxxed but two wrongs don't make one right.”
It is not doxxing when you refer to a book that someone published describing his own condition.

Perhaps I am wrong,…

Thomas Clarke published his CV online - Sifferkoll did some sleuthing and put the info he found on this forum. Doxxing.

Sifferkoll published a book. Dewey Weaver found his last name on a cycling photo, googled it, and found the summary of a book that gives away personal info about Sifferkoll. Then posted about it here. Doxxing

Or maybe not doxxing. But both are equivalent in my eyes.

Quote from LENR Calender

Or maybe not doxxing. But both are equivalent in my eyes.

But why, is that what we have come to on this forum?

Best regards
Frank

Lomax wrote:

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... but the neutron claims are quite different from the general charged particle radiation claims, and they have been published rather widely, and there is no confirmation and not critique in print.

That's not true. I have cited Faccini et al, Eur Phys J C 74 (2014) 2894 here several times already. The title is

"Search for neutron flux generation in a plasma discharge electrolytic cell".

Here's part of the introduction:

"Here we report on a measurement performed at much smaller voltages than Ref. [1] in plasma discharges of an electrolytic cell that are claimed in the experiment [8] and in patents [9] to produce neutrons. "

Ref 8 is Cirillo, Widom, Srivastava et al. in Ket Eng Mater., and reference 8 is the patent of Pam Boss et al.

The paper continues:

"With respect to the existing claims, we perform here a rigorous scrutiny of the detectors and the possible backgrounds to the measurement using a similar experimental setup. As neutron detectors we used the CR-39 detectors, also used in the experiment on atmospheric discharges [1], and indium activation, commonly used in neutron flux measurements. A dedicated effort was made to gain understanding of the behavior of the CR-39 detectors."

The conclusions of the paper include:

"In particular, we verified that the boron layer on the CR- 39 detectors needs to be ≈50 μm thick to avoid loss of sensitivity to thermal neutrons, and that CR-39 detectors, regardless of the presence of boron, integrate dD/dt = 3.8 tracks cm−2 day−1, likely due to cosmic radiation and radon contamination. It is therefore critical to pay attention to the treatment of the background, since a delay in analyzing the irradiated detectors with respect to the background ones could lead to false positives. Furthermore, we confirmed that non-irradiated CR-39 detectors show long tails in the track density distribution [11], and we noted a small spurious signal in detectors wrapped in aluminum. Therefore, especially when very low neutron fluxes are expected, the use of CR-39 detectors should be accompanied by careful consideration of disturbing effects.

"After taking all these effects in account, from the absence of signals in the indium disks, which are the most sensitive device, we conclude that the produced neutron flux is smaller than 1.5 (64) neutrons cm−2 s−1 at 95% C.L. assuming a thermal (PM) neutron spectrum. From the measurements with CR-39 detectors in Run2 and Run3, when the back- ground was treated properly, we can exclude fluxes larger than 105 neutrons cm−2 s−1 at 95% C.L. Such limits are at least two orders of magnitude smaller than the measured fluxes in Ref. [8] [the Boss patent] where the detector sensitivity is smaller and the background fluctuations are ignored."

Lomax wrote (addressing Shanahan):

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You do address the neutron claims. (Confirming that you are the only published fully-skeptical recent critic of cold fusion claims).

Shanahan is a prominent critic, for sure, but he's not the only one.

An Italian group published a rebuttal to neutron emission claims, and offered some plausible CR-39 artifacts that may have caused spurious effects (Faccini et al., Eur Phys J. C 74 (2014) 1).

Tennfors (Eur Phys J Plus 128 (2013) 1 ) and Ciuchi et al. (Euro Phys J C 72 (2012)1) published rebuttals to the WL theory.

And Dmitriyeva et al. (Thermochim. Acta 543 (2012) 260) debunked the Arata gas-loading claims, which are just about the only excess heat claims in the last decade in refereed literature.

You might argue Dmitriyeva is not fully-skeptical, and that may be the case. But she has only published negative papers, and I have not seen her claim to be a full believer either. Anyway, sometimes the criticism is more effective coming from a team-mate. The other authors mentioned are definitely fully skeptical.

LC - I was forwarded some information about SIfferkoll, his book and details about him from a concerned Swede. Sifferkoll had a reason for telling his story and publishing a book in his native language - I don't know what that was but I respect him greatly for having the guts to tell his story. He has gone from a wildly out of control slander publishing machine back into a calm and managed state lately and I'm simply declaring a truce after learning more about his story. High functioning folks with his syndrome are capable of making hugely positive contributions to society thru their genius. Their wiring is different and that is a very powerful and useful gift if they can find their place in the sun. I hope that no one finds this post offensive.

Most sincerely,
Dewey

Quote from Dewey Weaver

I was forwarded some information about SIfferkoll, his book and details about him from a concerned Swede. Sifferkoll had a reason for telling his story and publishing a book in his native language - I don't know what that was but I respect him greatly for having the guts to tell his story.

If I understand correctly, you have still not revealed his real name. So you have not "doxxed" him. Dox definition:

"search for and publish private or identifying information about (a particular individual) on the Internet, typically with malicious intent."

1. What is written here is not identifying information. We still don't know who he is.

2. The intent does not seem malicious to me. People who suffer from mental illness and who are willing to describe the problems to society should be commended. In this case Dewey has commended him without revealing who he is, which seems like a good response.

Quote from Alan Smith

It was wrong to drag up whatever health problem Sifferkol has as a way of diverting attention from his comments, unpalatable though they were.

It may well be that his comments were unpalatable because he is mentally ill. I got that impression of him weeks ago. I withdrew contact, and stopped responding. Depending on the illness, it can cause harm when people confront, rile up, or argue with people suffering from mental illness. If you have good reason to think the person you are talking to may be mentally ill, you need to cut him a lot of slack. You have to be extra careful.

(I am not a psychiatrist, but my aunt was and I spent time as a volunteer working with people in hospitals, so I know the rules.)

This person apparently told the world about his problem. That is a brave, commendable, and socially useful thing to do. Dewey was right to inform us that we need be careful not to respond harshly even though this person published outrageous accusations against me and others. You would do the same thing if you learned that the person you are talking to is somewhat senile, for example, or dying from cancer. Health can affect people's judgement. We can perhaps address the technical issues he raised, but his accusations about conspiracy theories and the like should be off the table. Especially his accusations against me should be ignored, please.

Stop

Quote from JedRothwell

Especially his accusations against me should be ignored, please.

No comment.

Quote from Keieueue

You too are a downright POS

You pretend being "nice guys" by ceasing to troll your adversary, who you portray as "mentally unstable", all this to convey a thinly veiled threat, "take a break".
Guess you think it's a clever tactic to stop answering to him, isn't it? this hints at Sifferkoll being right :^)

Sincerely hope ill luck befalls IRL. But hey, this is already the case, look at your life: online astroturfers, spreading FUD because your paycheck or groupthink depends on it.

I knew we would have at least one piece of garbage troll who decided he wanted to take an honest gesture and turn in around to support his own negativity and sad existence and that loser is KEIEUEUE. You truly are a disgusting person by all measure Keieuene, which you continue to show daily. I saw what happened with Thomas and I vowed to knock off the sarcasm and any attacks (which were never really personal to begin with), which I absolutely stuck to until NOW. I then found out something about Sifferkoll which I do not consider would make him as you say "mentally unstable", but something that has merely changed my attitude of how I would interact with him. You are pathetic slime for accusing me of changing my tone as a veiled threat....I NEVER told him to take a break or that I would take a break...just that I will not be directing any negativity towards him, your twisting of my words for your purpose is very sad. I made it very clear more than once that this is just about dropping the negativity towards Sifferkoll...shame on you for trying to turn this around for your motivation. You really do disgust me KEIEUEUE...the only person I will NOT be responding to at this point is you.

Quote from JedRothwell

Sifferkoll apparently wrote a book about his own condition. How can it be a threat to quote what he said about himself?

Jed, I agree, I for one was VERY honest in what I said about Sifferkoll. It makes me sick to my stomach that Keieueue would accuse me of bad intentions in what I said about him....especially that I was implying he is mentally unstable. I absoutely am NOT implying anything of the sort and also I would never make light of or scarcasm toward anything like that. I don't think having any condition is an embarrassment at all, in fact I applaud him for writing a book about what he is dealing with. Sifferkoll, if you are reading this, I apologize for continuing this narrative if it is making you uncomfortable, I just wanted to make sure it is known I am serious that I just don't want to direct negativity at this point. There is NOTHING else implied...I am being 100% honest.