[SPLIT]Older LENR Experiments were bad, good... in general

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It would be technically possible a room equipped for calorimetric measurements managed by independent third part, available to LENR researchers?

The problem is that no LENR researcher wants to sit down repeating an experiment and getting rid of all the artifacts. That is exactly what MFMP did initially. I notice now that although they do repeat experiments they do not summarise the results - positive and negative, comparing with original. Instead, they highlight any anomaly (e.g. the Signal) and remain quiet about its lack of reproduction. I'd like a balanced summary say every 6 months of what they have discovered for a given setup. Which anomalies are non-reproducible and not understood, which anomalies are understood as artifacts, which anomalies are (reasonably) reproducible and remain.

From MFMP, my understanding is that they continue to see marginal levels of differential temperature in their cells which if this represented real heat difference might be above chemical? But it clearly could be an artifact because the calorimetry they use is prone to such at low levels. And my understanding is that the "Signal" was a one-off event - co-incidental with a power glitch - and they have no more information about it? But maybe the answers here are lost in pages of posts on their site...

Anyway - what you ask for could be done by MFMP. They just need to stick on a single experiment, with repeat cycles every 3 months, say, and report fully all results and the status of any anomalies.

The problem for MFMP that I see is that they have currently no experiment that survives that experience looking like real LENR. I'd be very happy if somone here could correct me?

Also, there is something unfortunate about highlighting every anomaly and not equally highlighting its lack of reproducibility or the artifacts that might cause it. people think that anomaly => LENR. In reality anomaly => LENR or artifact. Distinguishing the two is what good science does, but blog mostly opinion does not care about. And most people remember the strongly highlighted anomaly (for example the signal) but not the quiet conclusion 9 months later that it was probably an artifact.

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Naughty sweeping generalisation.

Perhaps I should say that it has never happened? Perhaps a few researchers wanted to do this but ran out of money, or died, etc? Or perhaps whenever it happened the results were negative?

OTOH I have a number of examples of repeated experiments under different conditions etc which do not help in eliminating possible artifacts.

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Nobody wins the Nobel Prize by replication nor to they get rich from replicating a discovery. It's boring, not exciting.

That is I think not true in this specific case. A sequence of high integrity experiments, replicating a clearly unusual because not explicable via chemistry anomaly, with the various possible loopholes instrumented and controlled, would move LENR from fringe science to "exciting anomaly everyone wants to look at". Whomever published that could well get a Nobel Prize.

The strongest argument for skeptics is that the claimed effects are marginal and/or not reproducible. So such a reproducible and not marginal (because of the extra instrumentation, calibration, and controls) result would be quite different.

Of course, for that type of experiment to be possible there needs to be some real non-chemical effect at work: without that results will always be marginal.

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According to Hank Mills, enough evidence has been provided to substantiate that something happen beyond a reasonable doubt, but evidently not enough to break mass media disinterest and mainstream science's ostracism.

Yes, but according to skeptics outside the LENR field there is not enough evidence to substantiate anything worth a lot of interest, like LENR. Chemical-level anomalies in deuterated metal systems will not set the world abuzz.

So the solution to what Hank calls "ostracism" and I'd call "reasoned skepticism in absence of good evidence" is to provide better evidence.

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK II: "There are 100+ talkers for every doer in this field."

very true. And if the doers paid more attention to talkers who actually thought about this stuff (there are many - e.g. Brian Aherne here) and less to a fuzzy crowd consensus typified by your posts of polemic without scientific content -

Why then the results they got might be more interesting...

I'm not saying anyone should do any particular thing: everyone has every right, subject to safety laws etc, to do whatever they like - and I wish them all good luck.

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Pseudoskepticism goes further and assumes knowledge of bogosity, commonly making ad-hominem arguments (worse than "I don't trust you," which is ordinary, though rude to say). A pseudoskeptic will devote much time to arguing against "pseudoscience," well beyond ordinary saying-it-like-it-is, which we all will do. (Pseudoskepticism forgets to be skeptical of self, it is thus actually a form of pseudoscience, belief in past understandings, if it thinks it is based on science.)

That is very true, but don't forget the converse effect, where any questioner without the (perhaps rational, but not held by many) beliefs of those in the LENR field does not accept the things they accept and is therefore labelled a pseudo-skeptic.

You are right that people take sides and switch off brains. Don't think the LENR community are free from this common human trait!

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however characterizing pseudoskepticism is a held belief that creates an idea that a claim is extraordinary -- which is subjective, even though it may be shared -- and therefore ordinary evidence is to be disregarded.

Right. Taking that definition, with which I can agree, we have the corollary that attribution of pseudoskepticism is necessarily subjective.

From the outside, no-one can simply distinguish between rational (not-fixed) strong belief in a particular proposition based on prior evidence, induction, and proper application of the rule that simpler solutions are preferable to more complex ones (skeptic's response to unlikely proposition) and fixed belief which distorts judgement.

For me, I'd make the distinction based on an interest in detail. When, for example, skeptics like me are told that looking at possibilities of artifacts is pseudo-skepticism because done "too much", or that it is not interesting to reproduce results better instrumented because they are known correct by those who have looked at the corpus of data, we are correct in viewing that strand of opinion as "pseudo-science".

There can never be too much investigation of artifacts.

Quote from John Doe quoted by Storms quoted by Abd

Occasionally, with decreasing regularity, one hears statements to the effect that ‘Cold fusion has been proven to not exist or to have been based on errors’. Almost always the words ‘long ago’ are appended.

No scientist who is careful with words could say such a thing. Cold Fusion as currently defined can never be proven not to exist, because the null hypothesis cannot, in principle, be proved. The hypothesis of cold fusion is so weak that the null hypothesis does not in any testable form exist.

Scientists are not always careful with words, and somone could use "Cold Fusion does not exist" as a shorthand for "Cold Fusion is not as currently posed a scientific hypothesis (for the reason above) and there is insufficient evidence of anomalies in the literature to make looking for highly uexpected solutions such as atypical nuclear reactions."

I would not. Perhaps somone saying that might be showing a lack of proper understanding of the Philosophy of Science. Or, it could just be that they were careless and saving words. You'd have to check the details.

I don't understand the "log ago" tag. It is normally those arguing against cold fusion who view continued reference to experimental data more than 5 years old (and in some cases 20 years old) by proponents as a sign that this is a pseudo-science.

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Knowledge after carefully investigated doubt is actually called "science."

I had a friend who was at one time a Skeptic - a group I'm suspicious of because while what they do is rationally OK, their strong motivation to do this always seems to me to be like religious belief. You will note the pseudonym under which I post as the person who coined the word "agnostic" to mean somone who struggled against any such inward bias, acknowledging that we all suffer this.

Anyway I was right, he became converted to fundamentalist Christianity. Not as much difference as you might think.

The point is that his process of conversion was exactly described by your quote: "Knowledge after carefully investigated doubt".

I'd say what makes for science is a continual struggle against "knowledge", and staying in a benign state of questioning uncertainty.

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I agree except for one thing. There is such a thing as knowledge. The knowledge I referred to is not certainty, but it may be considered settled as a practical matter. Scientific knowledge is always open to the possibility of revision, but as time accumulates with the success of knowledge in prediction, it may be considered established.It is not necessary that everyone investigate every new claim. It's is enough if a few do.

We agree about this, and yes some theory is sufficiently well supported that it can be seen as "knowledge".

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A rejection cascade, however, damages the normal healthy process of challenge.Some level of rejection of new ideas is inevitable. The rejection of cold fusion was vehement and outside of normal scientific courtesy.The 1989 ERAB Panel (like the later 2004 US DoE review) recommended further research, but that recommendation was buried in rhetoric and vituperation, and the pseuodoskeptics took over.

The nature of science is that 90% of new ideas are wrong and therefore should be rejected. With LENR we have something that most scientists think is wrong, but a few continue to support. That is fine, and the way it should be, because unless there is room for unlikely things to be supported and investigated science loses robustness.

You go back to what happened 25 years ago. Just as you think the sign of a pseudo-skeptic is going back 20 years to make historical points maybe no longer valid, so i think it is a potential sign of a pseudo-scientist. The validity of new science ideas can be considered from recent experiments. that is because in any science (as opposed to pseudo-science) past experience is always incorporated into newer experiments so that they are better - wait 25 years and your best evidence will be much newer.

As for rejection-cascade - I think this is a socio-historical analysis rather than a scientific one - so I'll not comment.