The Playground

Lomax wrote:

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* 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.

I was referring more to an Italian group that 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). This was quite recent, in 2014. If you read my replies, you would have seen that. These authors certainly appear to be extreme skeptics.

As for Kowalsaki, the abstract states: "A recent claim [Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. 40, 293 (2007)] demonstrating a nuclear process triggered by electrolysis is challenged. An analysis, based on relative diameters, is used to demonstrate that predominant pits could not possibly be attributed to alpha particles, or to less massive nuclear projectiles." That excludes neutrons as well.

But the main point is it is a negative paper, arguing that certain LENR claims are not supported by the evidence. And yes, Kowalski does seem to be sympathetic to cold fusion, but he is more cautious than to claim he *knows* it's real. And in spite of his sympathy, another of his papers (in JCMNS) is negative, where he reports failure to reproduce Oriani's "highly reproducible emissions":

"Unexplained emission of charged nuclear projectiles due to electrolysis has been reported by Richard Oriani. Experimental results were said to be highly reproducible. Working independently, we were not able to observe emission of charged nuclear particles (in a chemical process similar to Oriani’s) and therefore are unable to provide supporting evidence that the effect is reproducible."

He also admits "We are still waiting for at least one reproducible-on-demand demonstration of a nuclear effect resulting from a chemical (atomic) process." It's difficult to understand how one can be sympathetic to a field in the absence of such a demonstration, particularly when the claimed phenomenon represents an energy density a million times higher than gasoline under easily accessible conditions, after 17 years of trying and $500M spent.

And yes, the kindest thing that can be said of the SPAWAR work is that it not confirmed, which is presumably why SPAWAR shut the project down. And yet, it accounts for an appreciable fraction of the positive experimental claims of cold fusion since 2005. Take them out, and take out the challenged Arata-type claims, and pretty much all that's left in mainstream refereed literature is theory and reviews.

Thanks (not That’s) to Abd for posting the direct link to the paper.

Abd wrote the following regarding the whitepaper I wrote:“The paper is embarassing. “

Not to me. However your comment “I have not read the meat of it,” should be exceedingly embarrassing to you.

“because Kirk spends pages sputtering about "straw man arguments," instead of dealing with the substance.”

I find the fact that 10 prominent CF authors had to resort to a strawman argument to ‘refute’ me very substantial. I think most neutral observers would too.

In fact, Wikipedia says this about that:

“A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not advanced by that opponent”
and
“This technique has been used throughout history in polemical debate, particularly in arguments about highly charged emotional issues where a fiery, entertaining "battle" and the defeat of an "enemy" may be more valued than critical thinking or understanding both sides of the issue.”
and
“The straw man fallacy occurs in the following pattern of argument: [snip]This reasoning is a fallacy of relevance: it fails to address the proposition in question by misrepresenting the opposing position.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Abd wrote: “This would never get past a journal editor.”
It should, it points out the big flaws of their supposed rebuttal.

“It's not about cold fusion, it's about people and their unfair rejection of Kirk Shanahan. Kirk, if you rewrote that paper to be about cold fusion experiments and prosaic explanations, it could receive some serious attention. Otherwise you are relying on four-year-old regurgitation about transient fluff.”

You certainly have a problem understanding the written word….I’m not going to waste more time on this. I will note however that you represent the CF community well in your denial of what I am saying.

Joshua wrote: "It refers to just about the only two excess power claims in refereed literature in the past decade (excluding retrospective references in the 3rd rate journal that published a special issue of invited papers): Arata's 2008 paper (J High Temp Soc 1) on D2 gas loading of Pd/ZrO2, and Kitamura's claimed replication in 2009 (Phys Lett A373, 3109)."

Ah, so not the F&P stuff, the other stuff. One of the appendices of my whitepaper is a manuscript of the rebuttal I wanted to publish to Kitamura, et al's paper. PLA wouldn't publish it...another long story.

Bottom line is that the data they publish is consistent with known chemistry. They make unsubstantiated claims as to the fact that they precluded this, but I find it unlikely. For details see the paper that Abd posted the link to.

Lomax wrote:

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* 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.)

I did not cite Hagelstein, but thanks for pointing that out. What it means is that most of the celebrated cold fusion works in the refereed literature in the last decade (Arata, SPAWAR, WL) have been challenged by cold fusion advocates. It leaves hardly anything for skeptics to do. But in spite of that, all three have been challenged by skeptics as well.

I cited two papers by skeptics that challenged the WLT: Tennfors (Eur Phys J Plus 128 (2013) 1 ) and Ciuchi et al. (Euro Phys J C 72 (2012)1). Yes, the theory is easy to criticize, but that's hardly the point. Skeptical papers on cold fusion are being written and accepted for publication in the refereed literature.

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• 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.

There is also one from 2009 (Bettencourt et al, Journal of Informetrics 3 (2009) 210–221). Your criticism was specifically about the publication pattern, so scholarly research on the publication pattern is entirely relevant. They show the similarity of the pattern to other pathological sciences, and the profound difference in the pattern from legitimate accepted fields. The analysis of the patterns show that your claim that cold fusion is accepted in the journals is unsupported.

And of course, they are papers skeptical of cold fusion, and they are being accepted for publication, which was the point.

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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.

Cold fusion is also a far more significant claim than either N-rays or polywater, and was greeted in 1989 with far greater enthusiasm and excitement, and that led to far greater activity, and far more and different configurations involving calorimetry and other types of measurement. In this sense it is more like homeopathy or perpetual motion (the Papp engine, Steorn etc), for which artifacts have not been identified to explain away all the claims, and yet these fields are rejected by the mainstream. And cold fusion's immense potential importance also explains the more persistent publication rate, but it nevertheless is on an asymptote to zero.

Lomax wrote:

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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.

First, there is also a 2009 paper on the publication pattern (Bettencourt), and second, 2005/2006 was not a nadir. As your own wiki page shows, there was only one paper in 2011, and only 4 or 5 in 2010, not counting negative, peripheral (helium in volcanos), and Sourcebook papers.

According to the Britz bibliography, the number of papers in 2004 was 8 (and 7 and 8 in 2005 and 2006). The numbers per year (excluding papers in the LENR Sourcebook, which is not a mainstream journal, and excluding presumably inadvertent duplicates) for the 10 years after 2004 are:

7,8,9,8,8,3,1,5,10,4

for an average of 6.3 per year, *lower* than in 2004 or 2005 or 2006.

Even if you include 2015, with the 34 papers in a special issue, where review papers were invited, and could not have been rejected, the average is still only 8.8 per year. And then of course, the increase started in 2015, not 2005.

But if you examine the content of the papers, the situation for cold fusion looks even worse. If negative papers and peripheral papers are excluded, where by peripheral I mean papers about helium in volcanoes and Mills' hydrino type papers, then 2004 had 7 papers, and the following ten years had"

4,5,5,5,6,2,1,5,10,4

for an average of 4.7 per year.

Finally, if you only consider experimental positive claims, 2004 had 2 papers, and the following 10 years had

2,0,2,1,3,0,1,2,1,0

for an average of 1.2 per year, and many of those are the dubious CR-39 papers from Boss et al.

In the past decade, there have been only 2 or 3 new claims of excess heat in the refereed literature, no claims of excess heat in electrolysis experiments, and you have to go back 2 decades for the last claim of a quantitative heat-helium correlation in the refereed literature.

Pretty hard to deny an asymptotic approach to zero there, and the 34 reviews and status reports invited for a special issue in a journal with an impact factor less than 1 is not going to change that image for anyone.

Again, those numbers do not include the 35 papers in 2015 because the purpose is to show that 2004 (or 2005/2006) was not a nadir, as you have so often claimed. The trend continued for a decade. If you include 2015, then the increase happenened *then*, not a decade earlier. The Current Science special issue consists of invited papers -- mostly review or status reports or polemics. So, while they are peer reviewed, the question of rejection was never really on the table. No journal would invite a paper and then turn around and reject it. Therefore, it is the result of probably one or two sympathetic editors of a 3rd rate journal with an impact factor less than 1. That issue came out in February of 2015, and only one other paper in 2015 is listed in the Britz bibliography (also in February), and it is a theory paper with rather peripheral connection to cold fusion. In the 15 months since, only one paper is listed, and that is a claim of piezonuclear reactions.

The only experimental paper in 2014 is negative, and the only experimental paper in 2013 is an evaluation of a technique (no positive claims are made). You have to go back to 2012 for a positive CR-39 claim of neutrons, and to 2009 for a claim of excess heat. That reviews so outnumber actual experimental claims in the literature is not the sign of healthy field.

Sifferkoll - I've just discovered the book you co-wrote and had published in Sweden in 2014. I have a good friend, who is an absolute genius, who suffers from the same syndrome and is very high functioning as long as things stay balanced.

I have sympathy for your struggle and, in all seriousness, do not think that the intensity your participation as one of Rossi's PR warriors is very good for your health or the well-being of your family. I was pursuing legal action for criminal libel against you in Sweden because of all the lies and fabrications that you have posted about me but have ordered that stopped after translating and reading some of your book.

You need to take a break and let the Rossi situation settle to its natural level.

Many who read this will view it as an attack but they will be wrong. You need to ensure that you take care of yourself. I'm backing off of you completely and wish you good health from this day forward.

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Eric Walker: I've taken a look at Krivit's expose of the alleged falsification of data by McKubre relating to the M4 run. I thought the story told by Krivit's exhibits was very interesting. The conclusion that McKubre was doing something inappropriate or shady was absurd. It seemed like a harmless combination of reinterpreting the data over the years along with a repackaging of it. Do you disagree?

Well, Krivit has the true believer mentality, so when he latches on to something, he can be selective and very persistent with his arguments. And I didn't have the patience to read through that expose in detail. But it did seem to me (as I remember it, without re-acquainting myself with the case) that there was very clear migration of some data points, and when confronted, McKubre did little more than wave his hands and say he re-analyzed.

I don't know if there's a smoking gun, and that's why I was careful to call the falsification "alleged".

But what seems suspicious to me is that in the most detailed account of those experiments, McKubre is negative, saying heat-commensurable reaction products were *not* found. The correlation claims came later, but after a direct confrontation from Krivit, McKubre has (to my knowledge) stopped making claims of correlations. Even in his 2015 Current Science paper on "Cold fusion: comments on the state of scientific proof", he does not mention the heat-helium correlation work at all. If it were valid, it would surely represent the best evidence for the phenomenon, so excluding it from a paper on the state of proof suggests he's not prepared to endorse the validity.

@Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax thanks for your thoughtful posts and for helping me think through some new things and other points of view.

@joshua cude I was initially overwhelmed by your comments I apologise for that as on reflection see they are deep in information which is just hard for me to fuIly digest I wish they weren't so long though so that I could understand them more, but I guess that's it's difficult with so much archive material at hand?

StephenC wrote:

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I was initially overwhelmed by your comments ... I wish they weren't so long though so that I could understand them more, but I guess that's it's difficult with so much archive material at hand?

I also wish they weren't so long. If I had more time, I'd make them shorter.

My posts are all direct responses to other posts, and mainly with the purpose of correcting misleading errors.

For the most part, all the necessary context is provided in the post, and I don't think they ever rely on previous exchanges, even if previous exchanges are sometimes mentioned.

This last set of responses to Lomax, though, are all responses to one post, and for several of them (more to come) the context is established by this paragraph of mine, which was quoted by Lomax:

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Me: 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.

Lomax then made several bulleted responses to the different items in this paragraph. I responded to each of the bullets in separate posts (to keep them shorter) but only reproduced the above paragraph in the first post (though I considered reproducing it in each post). Those posts may look orphaned without this context, so sorry about that.

Lomax wrote:

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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.

How do you know, Lomax? You said you don't read all my posts. In fact, I have responded to that statement several times. Many plausible artifacts have been suggested to explain observations in cold fusion, but it is true that there is no proof of artifacts, just as there is no proof that homeopathy doesn't work. But then no nuclear effect has been identified either. So, it is a competition between the plausibility of utterly common calorimetry artifacts and unprecedented and inconceivable nuclear reactions. The scientific community voted with their interest 25 years ago, and nothing has changed in the mean time.

And as McKubre says, it would be all but impossible to prove cold fusion is impossible: "To proceed case-by-case and demonstrate that every instance where anomalous nuclear-products or nuclear-level excess heat were observed resulted from an identified experimental error or misunderstanding would be exceedingly arduous undertaking and nothing like this has been attempted or ever will be. The effort of finding a mistake in all of the thousands of published reports would be far too great an undertaking even to begin, thus proving a negative is difficult if not impossible."

But it's not enough for an extraordinary claim like cold fusion that artifacts cannot be definitively identified. The onus is on the advocates to exclude the possibility of artifacts, and that has never been done. That's why there still is no experiment identified that someone skilled in the art can perform with expected positive results, even on a statistical basis.

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* Carbon nanotube publication rates are irrelevant to this issue.

I disagree. You are using the publication rate to establish legitimacy in the journals. If a field of far less (potential) importance publishes at a rate hundreds of times higher, then the argument fails.

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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.

In this case, the argument is "If the reality debate were over in the journals, how come there are not more papers in the journals -- particularly new experimental claims of positive evidence for the phenomenon?"

That's very different from the argument you address above. You've tried to change the argument into something you think you have an answer for, but you can't argue that it's being suppressed unfairly in the journals (for sociological reasons) if you're trying to argue that it is now accepted in the journals. That makes no sense.

@joshua cude thanks for your reply. I understand, just a lot for me to take in at first sight but it's also good for me to take my time to consider.

@joshua @Abd

The research community did the wrong thing, in stead of suggesting a good methodology for proof or rejection that could be accepted they just said it
was impossible and due to an unproven artifact combined with a strong belief that it was theoretically impossible rejected the whole thing. That is unfair.
there should be possible do do an combined effort to show the effect or not and this holds also today. Make sure to make a blind test and randomize
then artifact will be filtered out and any effect would be quite heavily proved or disproved. Abd do you have any reference of such a test and what was
the conclusion?

Keiu -thank you for continuing to affirm my observations about you. You are one very consistent soul. You're "The Man in the Mirror" everytime you think, speak and post. Don't forget that. Please give my best to overlord. He's not looking very well these days:

Quote from joshua cude

and when confronted, McKubre did little more than wave his hands and say he re-analyzed.

There's a ready explanation for this part -- Krivit was the one asking him. There are many people who would be circumspect in any replies to him.

Quote from joshua cude

But what seems suspicious to me is that in the most detailed account of those experiments, McKubre is negative, saying heat-commensurable reaction products were *not* found. The correlation claims came later, but after a direct confrontation from Krivit, McKubre has (to my knowledge) stopped making claims of correlations. Even in his 2015 Current Science paper on "Cold fusion: comments on the state of scientific proof", he does not mention the heat-helium correlation work at all. If it were valid, it would surely represent the best evidence for the phenomenon, so excluding it from a paper on the state of proof suggests he's not prepared to endorse the validity.

Indeed. I would not be surprised if McKubre would want to distance himself from strong claims about the import of the M4 run for heat-helium correlation. He made big qualifications even in the original report.

Alan is correct but he is staying involved part time helping the field. He is a good man with a lot of knowledge of what does and doesn't work at the experimental level.