How to Avoid a 1989 Cold Fusion Repeat in 2016

Quote from Hank Mills

Replication is the only solution.

Not enough. Consider the file-drawer effect. It's real. It can cause a great deal of damage. If anyone here doesn't know what that is, if many people attempt replication, and if only positive results are published, artifacts will create an appearance of replication. Much more care is required. If Open Science is to be followed, it's important that it all be open. The MFMP is publishing negative results. That is to be commended, and it makes positive results published by them more credible. What is needed is systematic exploration. Yes, replication, but then exploration with controlled experiment to discover possible artifacts, and to develop the parameter space.

Instead, in this field, there is a constant urge to "improve" results, rather than simply confirming what has already been found and then varying a single condition at a time.

Let's back up, This is about 1989 and what happened. http://www.e-catworld.com/2016…ld-fusion-repeat-in-2016/

I don't find a clear understanding of 1989-1990 to be common. To move forward, the story of the Totally Unfair Rejection of Cold Fusion has to be dropped, because it's a distortion and will confuse us, leading us to fail to avoid similar hazards.

The problem was not simply what Frank Acland states:

Quote

There was great hope and excitement when the news was first broadcast around the world by the at-first enthusiastic media — but within months the excitement turned to dismay and then largely to disgust as influential figures repeatedly trashed Pons and Fleischmann’s work and the two formerly respected scientists were effectively excommunicated from the scientific community.

The response of the scientific community was disgusting, in many ways, but what caused that? Why did "influential figures" trash Pons and Fleischmann? How did this happen?

First of all, the press conference. Why was this announced by press conference? Was that legally necessary? (No.)

What Pons and Fleischmann had actually found was a heat anomaly in palladium deuteride. Martin later said it was a mistake to use the F word, Fusion. In the rush to publish, they included radiation data that had not been vetted by experts. It looked horribly incompetent to any physicist.

Robert Park was very interested, following the story closely. He found that Pons and Fleischmann had sent one of their experimental rods to England for helium analysis. He asked for the results. He was told that they would be released. They were never released. Park dates his conclusion that this was "voodoo science" from his discovery that the results were being withheld.

Why were the results withheld? Why did the collaboration with Morrey et al turn into such a disaster, with Pons violating the agreement and threatening to sue the others if they published what they found?

Many who read this history without knowing the positive evidence for LENR conclude that Pons and Fleischmann were frauds or seriously deluded.

And we discount this history, as if it didn't happen. Miles reported the heat/helium correlation in 1991. This was noticed by Huizenga, whom we might call King of the Skeptics. Huizenga realized how important it was. So why didn't the world jump on replicating that result? It was replicated, but it took many years. What stood in the way?

I have not figured out much, but this much is fairly clear: Pons and Fleischmann believed that they had found a bulk effect, that the reaction was taking place in the bulk palladium. Pons originally announced the finding of helium shortly after the press conference, based on a gas analysis before the conference. Then came some analysis of rods. No helium in the bulk. Helium is trapped in bulk palladium, it cannot escape. I suspect that they considered the helium results as evidence that the reaction was not real (or that it must be producing some other product, but no other product was found that was a candidate).

Fleischmann explained their dropping of a claim of helium production because "they did not want to fight on two fronts at once." This statement shows where his thinking had gone. This was a war. Not a search for experimental fact, regardless of theory. The helium evidence was fatal to their understanding of "cold fusion." In fact, it was the most solid evidence for cold fusion to date. Just not their idea of cold fusion! It's a surface effect, and the only helium found in CF cathodes is very near the surface, often removed in analysis to avoid contamination from atmospheric helium.

There was careful, plodding work that was done, especially at SRI by Michael McKubre. However, this wasn't journal-published, which inhibited knowledge of it. There was much work in the field that was scattershot, isolated reports.

Bottom line, because I identify with the research community, I say, "We created the rejection cascade, through ineffective response."

So now what? Some time back, I started writing about Plan A and Plan B. Plan A was that a commercial effort creates a "reliable experiment," i.e., a reliable device that anyone can test. At this point, I'd say, the majority opinion in the field was that Rossi had something. It was obvious, very quickly, that Rossi was flamboyant, made promises he couldn't keep. Plans without solidity were presented as facts, already in motion. But still we hoped.

I warned LENR scientists against appearing to endorse Rossi, because, bottom line, we didn't know, and the risk of harm to the reputation of LENR was real. However, we could say that LENR was not impossible, and we knew that. "Possible" does not translate automatically into "This device actually works!" It merely means that impossibility arguments cannot be used to rule it out. Beyond that, though, I advised the scientists not to appear to be endorsing specific claims unless they were clearly and independently confirmed.

And then I proposed Plan B. Essentially, Plan A was easy. We didn't have to do anything. Rossi would save our ass, he would fix everything. But this is LENR< and the lost opportunity cost of delay I estimate at $1 trillion per year. We can't put all our eggs in the Rossi basket. Fortunately, Rossi wasn't asking for our eggs! So, Plan B: continue with basic scientific research, starting with whatever was needed to complete the scientific verification of LENR. We already knew about the heat/helium correlation, this was already confirmed and basically accepted by almost all in the field. I was told by some that more work on this wasn't necessary.

But we need to listen to our critics. They are not convinced. On what could we find agreement? There is a principle of pathological science, often trotted out when referring to cold fusion: if measurements are made more precise, the effect disappears. Okay, how about measuring the heat/helium ratio more precisely? There is better equipment now, and we know much more about aspects of this than was known when the work was originally done 25 years ago. Further, going over that work, I discovered something: when there was reverse electrolysis, the helium measure moved to right on the deuterium fusion value. And that makes complete sense, even though Steve Krivit had great difficulty understanding it (and roundly attacked both experiments where this was done). The reverse electrolysis will remove a thin layer of palladium, and if helium is being generated at the surface (which the evidence strongly shows), then this will release the remaining helium. Plan B started, then, with a project to measure the heat/helium ratio with increased precision, using and testing this.

I'm happy to say that the idea has been taken up and a project is being run at Texas Tech as a collaboration with ENEA, under the general support of Robert Duncan. If I have anything to say about it, this work will done with high caution and will be presented in a thoroughly cautious and careful paper, submitted to a major journal. This is direct evidence that cold fusion is both real and a nuclear reaction. This is not merely circumstantial.

Plan B is going ahead. I don't think that funding will be a problem.

And with this confirmation -- I assume confirmation because this is not speculative work, it is truly only increased precision work -- I expect the barriers to fall. It will take time for the message to propagate, for sure. But ... I know the skeptics and the skeptical position. The real skeptics have long demanded something like this. From weaker evidence, defense agencies have funded LENR work. From weaker evidence, the 2004 U.S. DoE panel almost concluded the effect was not only real but nuclear.

One of the reasons we failed and continued to fail was that we did not respect the skeptics. If you don't respect people, you cannot communicate with them.

If you watch this forum, you will see skeptics and pseudoskeptics, and some mixture. And then there are "believers" who attack skeptics. They can cause more harm than any skeptic! Someone coming who is curious and normally skeptical, seeing that, may very well conclude that this is typical of the field.

(continued)

(continued)

Frank closed with:

Quote

There will always be interest among some of us in LENR. I believe that there are thousands of people already around the world who are convinced it is a superior energy technology. However, at the moment we are a tiny minority of thinkers, seen by the mainstream as fringe players who are probably out of touch with reality, and therefore easy to be dismissed. In order for LENR to emerge from the fringes something will have to change.

If you are "convinced that LENR is a superior energy technology," you are out of touch with reality. LENR is not yet an "energy technology," except in, mostly, fantasy and hope. We do not know how to use it.

Rather, there are claims that, so far, cannot be verified. To believe as fact what cannot be verified, in matters of science, is pseudoscience.

What will have to change is for us to get in touch with reality! What do we actually know? What can be verified? What has been independently confirmed and is fully subject to independent confirmation?We may hope for the success of commercial ventures, but whatever must be kept secret cannot be verified. We can individually decide to rely on some authority, but science relies, not on isolated authorities but on multiple authorities who report verifiable conclusions (not merely their opinions.)

When Levi responded to questions from Clarke, presented by Mats Lewan, with "my colleagues approved my work," we knew that he'd lost all understanding of what science is. Among other things, it is an intense interest in discovering one's own errors, not a smug satisfaction in being right because someone said so.This is how this field must change. As it moves into the mainstream -- as it will -- criticism must become deep and vigorous, and must be fully welcome.