The Playground

    Rossi now reports that the Quark produces light so bright that it hurts the eyes. Since the Quark is a variation of the Lugano reactor, it is logical to assume the the Lugano reactor would also produce some level of light as a output of the LENR reaction. In the Lugano test, a comparison between a fueled and an unfueled reactor is important to see if there is a change is the black body emissions profile produced by the two reactors. The LENR reactor may not be a black body translucent radiator as assumed in the calibration of the temperature sensor.

    Quote from Paradigmnoia

    @axil,
    Agreed that the Lugano device may have done many things that were not measured.
    This means of course that these unknown things cannot be counted, calculated, or relied upon as evidence of anything.


    It is important to characterize what when wrong during the Lugano test and develop a consensus that these mistakes shall not be repeated.

    Quote from Nigel Appleton

    Granted, intuition is often where the seed of the hypothesis comes from.


    The rest of your post is Just. Plain. Wrong; and the Popperian concept of falsifiability is extremely useful.


    Do explain how did science make progress before the falsifiability meme. It seems it did throughout the ages even before Popper, but I might be wrong.


    Problem with this tacit protocol is that the unknown unknowns that have an effect on a particular experiment about something strange/new, might be affected by known factors. When you spend your time trying everything to prove an effect by making it fail (because you don't want the Thomas Clarkes, Lomaxes and even serious real scientists burying you under piles of text and accusations of pathological science), you will mess with factors until it fails, and it will fail, because everything affects everything, and unknown interactions will disappear if you change stuff that might seem irrelevant, while it is really not.


    "Falsifiability" is a gimmick. It has always naturally put into motion by any researcher with common sense (check and question everything), but building a cult around it is, once again, painting the current paradigm into a corner.


    That it's the workhorse or the pathoskeptics should give you a hint it's a problematic concept, or perhaps just an incomplete one. Ex: "ESP doesn't exist because it's unfalsifiable", really means: we don't know how the unknown unknowns work in ESP cases, thus, since they cannot be falsified, ESP is not real.



    Stefan has the right approach: critical thinking. A falsifiability-driven mind is biased (aims at failing, and mind reigns supreme)

    Perhaps Mr. Weaver would know the answer to this question:
    Are there good records of the input power measurements for the Levi et al. 2013 report tests somewhere?
    The COP of 5.6 test, which I have already downgraded to a COP of 5, cannot be a result of emissivity issues, in my opinion, so the power quality is the natural place to look next.


    I will assume for the time being, that the extensive Lugano experiment records will not be made public, at least until the Professors are done reviewing the measurements and conclusions.

    Lomax wrote:

    Quote

    I am very aware of the weakness of the situation with heat/helium confirmation; however ... scientifically, it was confirmed, that's fact.


    What is a "fact" to a full-on believer is not necessarily a fact to those not similarly afflicted.


    Most of the scientific mainstream would not agree that this is a fact, and the assertion of a college dropout is not going to change that, especially when 17 of 18 members of an expert panel enlisted to examine the evidence judged the evidence not to be conclusive. I hope you understand if the views of trained scientists are taken more seriously than yours. It's neither here nor there, but it also happens to coincide with my own analysis of the evidence, and that is also consistent with the inability of most of the evidence to meet the modest standard of peer review.


    Most scientists prefer to keep an open mind about scientific phenomena. I don't know if you've heard of Richard P Feynman. Well, anyway, he was this famous scientist who won the Nobel prize for his work on QED, and he loved to debunk free energy claims and all. And he even hedged when he talked about the conservation of energy. In his famous published "Lectures", in one paragraph where he explains the conservation of energy, there are 3 qualifications like "as far as we know" and so on. I've quoted it a few times before. That guy. I think he was at Caltech. Have you heard of it? I know sometimes you mention the place you dropped out of, but you haven't today, so I can't remember who your professor was.


    Anyway, this is what he has to say about certainty in science: "scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty — some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain".


    You might do well to consider the possibility that you could be wrong. Keep an open mind, like us skeptics do.

    Quote

    Lomax: Joshua knows perfectly well the difficulties cold fusion work encountered as to publication, and this has all been convered in detail by the sociologists of science. The heat/helium work was all ten years old or more. No way to get that published directly.


    This makes no sense. Most of the work cited in Storms' review on heat-helium was 15 or more years ago. Are you saying papers on cold fusion could not get published back then? Because Britz has a database, and so does Rothwell. Have you heard of them. Far more papers were being published in the field in the late 90s than now. And Miles was published. It makes no sense that if he was bettered or confirmed that those papers could not get published.


    Quote

    Definitely, there is a problem with journal publication, but ... papers are being published on cold fusion in journals, and have been all along,


    Exactly, so you can't explain away the absence of heat-helium papers by "sociology".


    Quote

    but the extreme skeptical position almost entirely disappeared,


    I've cited 8 skeptical papers in the last decade. They are scarce, yes, but not in proportion to the positive papers on a field that is considered without merit for more than 20 years. The main claim to fame for cold fusion is the excess power, and yet there are only 2 or 3 papers claiming new experimental results on excess power in the last decade.


    Quote

    He presents his own idea (i.e., that cold fusion work is like belief in phlogiston)


    There is actually a paper (cited above) that compares cold fusion to phlogiston.


    Quote

    when there never was a definitive showing that the primary cold fusion reports were artifact.


    The problem for the field is the absence of a definitive showing that cold fusion is real. If there were, there would have been no need for the MFMP to form, making their first goal to identify a definitive cold fusion experiment.

    Lomax wrote:


    Quote

    The reality debate is over in the journals, unless, say, Nature or Science decide to break their embargo.


    The reality debate was essentially over 25 years ago. Things have not changed appreciably since.


    What embargo are you talking about? If someone actually produced unequivocal evidence for cold fusion, you would not be able to keep it out of Science or Nature.


    I've read the David Lindley commentary that is often held up as evidence for suppression, but it certainly doesn't promise not to publish on cold fusion, nor could it. No associate editor, or editorial board for than matter, could make such a promise that is binding to future editors.


    And anyway, there's a lot of space between Nature and Science (with impact factors north of 20) and the journals that have published positive cold fusion results (lower than 3). If cold fusion were accepted as real "in the journals", you'd see some papers in PRL, Physical Review, JACS, and a long list of other prestigious journals with impact factors above 3.


    Quote

    Then we might see some back-and-forth. I am hoping to see the Texas Tech work in Nature.


    As they say, hope springs eternal...


    Quote

    Now, what does Cude think about that research proposal? Any suggestions for possible artifact to be checked? Does Cude care about science or about winning arguments? I'm not holding my breath. I asked him this question before an he didn't answer, I think, but ... hope springs eternal.


    You're funny, Lomax, you know that? You claim you're hoping for my replies, and then you boast about not reading them. I did reply to this question. Here's what I said verbatim:


    "Personally, I would recommend against funding such work if asked, because in my judgement the chance of success is close to nil, based on the work that's been done, and the failure of any followups to even reach the modest standard of peer review. At some point one has to say enough is enough. But if the investigators want to waste their time, and can find sponsors, more power to them. But I'm betting that in 10 years you and I will be on our 5th or 6th version of this identical debate about lame results from Miles and McKubre and maybe Violante and Duncan by then."


    In another exchange I also suggested looking for the helium in the palladium instead of the gas, and only when you've got enough excess power to make the measurement of helium unequivocal. I still think that's good advice.


    But it's too bad McKubre is involved. I don't trust his judgement at all. What kind of scientist says he's tired of trying to science something? And then sells his credibility to the Papp people, speaks positively about Rossi's results, and then sits on the board of the only slightly less obvious Brillouin scam? And then there's that alleged data fudging question...


    My guess is you'll (or they'll) get some marginal results (with low excess power and helium levels plausibly explainable from the atmosphere) which they will claim are definitive, and they'll get published somewhere. But with that group of believers, it won't be taken seriously until another group, preferably of skeptics, replicates the results. And I'm all but certain that will never happen.

    This is reasonably straightforward.

    Quote from joshua cude

    In spite of that, there are negative papers being published, as I have cited here several times. In particular, the Arata-type excess power claims, the SPAWAR neutron claims, and the WL theory papers, have been challenged in refereed literature, which pretty well sews up new claims in the field. And there are two analyses of the publication pattern that show the similarity to those of pathological fields and the profound difference from those of accepted fields. Even a field like carbon nanotubes, which has far less potential relevance to science or practical life, generates thousands of refereed publications per year.


    * Arata-type excess power claims. I'm not sure what that refers to. What I was writing about is the extreme skeptical position, not the existence of critique of some particular experiment or conclusion or theory. If there is a peer-reviewed critique of Arata's work, I'd love to see it.
    * SPAWAR neutron claims. Kowalski questioned a particular interpretation of the CR-39 results, but not the neutron claims. They stand as neither confirmed nor dismissed, AFAIK. Kowalski knows that cold fusion is real.
    * WL theory was criticized by Hagelstein. This would be far from an extreme skeptical position on cold fusion, given that Hagelstein is a major cold fusion theorist. (I just saw another critique. W-L theory is easy to deprecate, it's full of holes.)
    * There were old papers on the publication pattern, from 2005 and 2006. Cold fusion was often compared to other examples of alleged "pathological science," specifically N-rays and polywater. Those who wrote those papers assumed pathological science, they were not critiquing the actual research. N-rays and polywater suffered deprecation through controlled research, puliing the rug out from under the original claims, but some publication persisted. This was allegedly so for cold fusion, though there were two crucial differences: there never was that controlled experimental finding of artifact on the central claim, and cold fusion publication was far more persistent. At the time of the 2005 and 2006 papers (which are listed on the sources page I cited), publication rates had fallen to a nadir, perhaps six papers per year. So it could be asserted to fit the pattern. Which is actually irrelevant to the science, since, I'll repeat, the anomalous heat effect found by Pons and Fleischmann was never shown to be rooted in artifact. This has been pointed out many, many times. It's ignored by Cude and many others.
    * Carbon nanotube publication rates are irrelevant to this issue. This is an example of the "how come" argument favored by many believers of various kinds. If cold fusion were real, "how come" there are not thousands of papers per year? There is a variation on this, I encountered on moletrap. If cold fusion is real, how come I haven't read about it in Nature? Well, if you want to know the answer to that, study the field! This is all very well, known, studied by sociologists of science and published in mainstream sources.


    Quote

    As for those reviews, I have addressed them elsewhere, but it is simply dishonest to claim 20 reviews in peer-reviewed literature. Books and encyclopedia articles are not peer reviewed, and when the bulk of the the citations are from conference proceedings, little attention is paid to them.


    I'm not looking back to see what I wrote, did I say "peer reviewed literature"? Encyclopedia articles certainly are reviewed; what I had in mind was mainstream peer-reviewed and academic literature, the kind that Wikipedia considers specifically useful reliable source for articles in the sciences. So I studied the material in the Britz database. And I studied that on Wikiversity, years ago, and that page has been cited before. As Cude states, he has responded before. In this case, I also cited that page, this was not a claim in a vacuum, "trust me." Anyone can check. If there are errors there, anyone could fix them. To then claim that what is shown there. reproted here, is "dishonest," instead of merely "wrong," shows what Cude is about. He lies, like he claims about others.


    Here it is again: https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Cold_fusion/Recent_sources


    And then there are, at present, 20 bolded reviews, which does not include 2013-present. This page has been standing, open to public editing, since 2010.


    Now, the only value here is that people can, if they like, look at a neutral list of sources. Britz is a skeptical electrochemist, besides being a generally nice guy. I finally made it into the Britz database..... That took dealing with a live and very skeptical peer reviewer, something that Cude apparently knows nothing about.


    Excluding academic books and encyclopedia articles, as Cude wants to do, on he bogus argument that are not reviewed, there are nine bolded reviews. I.e., this excludes some reviews from the peer-reviewed LENR Sourcebook, published by the American Chemical Society with Oxford University Press, both volumes,, a book by Hideo Kozima published by Elsevier, and a book by Edmund Storms published by World Scientific, and two articles by Steve Krivit in an Elsevier encyclopedia. Britz included all those, or I would not have listed them. Core is "mainstream publisher." I.e., nothing is listed by Britz from the Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science, even though that is, in fact, a peer-reviewed journal, and not a vanity journal.


    And then a cursory glance at 2013, two more journal reviews and another that is a chapter in a book. 2014, one possible review. 2015, excluding self-reviews, I count 16 reviews.


    So even if we only look at peer-reviewed publications, there are about 27 reviews.

    Dishonest? Who is dishonest here? An anonymous troll, with no reputation at stake, who has just lied in the presence of clear contradictory evidence, which he could already see and has presumably looked at, or a published author in the field, with a reputation that matters, that affects his funding, etc?


    Cold fusion turned a corner, sometime around 2004-2005. There is now, for a dedicated critic of cold fusion, a possible hazard to career, coming from a different situation than existed before. When I was working on Wikipedia, I communicated with a skeptical editor who was very concerned that his career could be harmed if it were known that he had criticized cold fusion, since cold fusion was so obviously bogus that one would have to be crazy to even talk about it. The danger now is that, within a decade, being visible as one who went beyond limits in skepticism could damage career. Skepticism of cold fusion is completely normal. The phenomeon is very much unexpected, so extraordinary evidence is required. It is also a mystery, so theory is a poor guide. However, that does not create a carte blanche to attack the evidence and those who report it!

    Quote from axil

    Rossi now reports that the Quark produces light so bright that it hurts the eyes. Since the Quark is a variation of the Lugano reactor, it is logical to assume the the Lugano reactor would also produce some level of light as a output of the LENR reaction. In the Lugano test, a comparison between a fueled and an unfueled reactor is important to see if there is a change is the black body emissions profile produced by the two reactors. The LENR reactor may not be a black body translucent radiator as assumed in the calibration of the temperature sensor.


    One of the first observations that started to unravel the Lugano report was when it was pointed out that the reactor, if it were actually at the external temperature calculated, should have painfully bright. Yet that was not mentioned, and the photographs showed it glowing a dull red in places, in others, not glowing at all. Through the translucent alumina, a bright line could be seen that was probably a heating element. Basically, the Lugano "independent professors" trusted their instrumentation and calculation and paid no attention to the obvious evidence of their senses. And they have never responded to criticism.


    This was not science, it was naivete on parade, by people who would have been expected to know better. Yes, anyone can make mistakes. A scientist will admit it, promptly, or at least admit the question, and then move on.

    That image is of one of the MFMP Glowsticks.
    Edit: roughly 950°C in that image (1.2 kW power in). The Type B thermocouple failed at about this time.
    I think the right hand side has high emissivity paint on it. See photo below, after it cooled.


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    Abd wrote: [...]I'll repeat, the anomalous heat effect found by Pons and Fleischmann was never shown to be rooted in artifact."


    In 2012, I wrote a whitepaper (SRNL-STI-2012-00678) entitled "A Realistic Examination of Cold Fusion Claims 24 Years Later" in which I outline the problems with the F&P calorimetric method. I believe it was Mark Gibbs that posted it to a google drive somewhere, but I may be wrong on that.


    [found it... http://www.networkworld.com/ar…-fusion-a-year-later.html]


    I summed it up thusly:


    "Regarding Fleischmann and Pons Lumped Parameter Model Calorimetry
    (1) The basic equation used to represent the gas stream enthalpy has multiple flaws
    (2) The model cannot be used for charging periods, or during or near boiling
    (3) The model does not include entrainment
    (4) The model cannot simulate the two-zone model that the CCS uses (at minimum)"


    The upshot is that concluding there is an unknown source of heat in their cells was invalid.


    I also offered more discussion of the CCS model, and included a response to Krivit's April 20, 2010 'critique' of my JEM paper and an unpublished manuscript of a comment on Kitamura, et al's, Physics Letters A paper of 2009, both in appendices. The Kitamura comment was not published because of anti-cold fusion bias in the PLA editorial staff and was released via OSTI (Comments on "Anomalous effects
    in charging of Pd powders with high density hydrogen isotopes", Kirk L. Shanahan, SRNL-STI-2009-00616).

    Quote from Dewey Weaver

    Where'd Sifferkoll go? I see him bopping thru the different strings on occasion but why the uncharacteristic silence all of a sudden? I have two possible theories - one is that he has seen the light and / or he may have gotten dumped for thenewflame. For that matter, Mats has been painfully silent of late as well. At least he got the title of his book correct. Just wondering.......



    Looks like he went on a liking spree, but has not replied to anyone since Saturday...DEFINITELY out of character for Siffer. Mats spews some rhetoric and lies occasionally on E-Scat world, but he has also been abnormally quiet. I don't believe a word of Mats mouth anymore than I do that of Sifferkoll though. Mats lost all credibility with me personally.

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