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

    Quote from THHuxley


    Perhaps my explanation for zeuss46 will help?


    Actually, it doesn't. Basically, you entirely missed Jed's point. Yeah, his expression kinda sucks. You are literally correct. But his substance was, in fact, that this was irrelevant to actual cold fusion work, because nobody is claiming significant results at COP 1.01.


    Quote

    suppose a 1% cal error results in measured COP=1.01 with 100W in, or 1W excess power. Run expt for 1 year and you get 10MJ excess heat which is maybe well above chemical. A contrived example but you can see the point? Both excess heat above chemical and fractional excess power are relevant to evaluating LENR experiments: you need both to claim heat evidence for some nuclear effect.


    To see why I said this you need to go back to your remark about excess heat and the context in which you made it!


    Indeed a contrived example, and that is Jed's real point. This is just mishegas, irrelevant. I am not going back to the original context here. It becomes tedious. In the end, how much does it matter of some post back then was completely correct?

    Quote from JedRothwell

    Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:


    Miles, Storms and other have said that leaks are nearly always large. You don't get a leak so small and so slow that it would take years to reach atmospheric concentration. Except with helium leaking through glass.


    Then say that. The leakage argument basically sucks, but ... realize that it is very common. It is not going to be addressed by citing authorities, especially Miles and Storms. The fact is that a slow leak, even if rare, seems possible, so then what?


    Leakage is inadequate to explain the experimental data. It's an explanation that can look plausible, as it obviously did to some on the 2004 US DOE panel, but that was based on a misreading of evidence, had they read the evidence carefully, and especially if the Case data had been a bit better reported, they would not have thought that.


    This, then points up the problem with the 2004 review. No interaction, no back-and-forth, so that misconceptions could be cleared up. As you mentioned, a one day meeting. It was ridiculous, but Peter thought that beggars can't be choosers. Yes they can. They can refuse what is not likely to work. Waste of time and foreclosed a better review, probably, for more than a decade and counting. Ah, where was Jones Day when we needed them? Or APCO?


    Seriously, my point is that we did not obtain and engage those with serious communication skills. There could have been a far better review that would have been cheaper.

    So I find the comments from Kirk and Abd about the "RAE" (Recombination active Environment) hypothesis fascinating.


    In advancing this hypothesis, Kirk has become the trail-blazing innovator suggesting some new phenomenon, making leaps of the imagination which are unproven and have sketchy evidence if any. Abd has become the skeptic - picking holes in the hypothesis - rubbishing it without being able to prove it false.


    Is Abd here a genuine skeptic - critiquing Kirk's hypothesis but willing to give it fair consideration? Or is he a pathoskeptic, with plausible intellectual arguments but in fact an inbuilt bias.


    I'm saying this only partly in jest. The point is that role reversal is helpful - each side can see how the other side argues by examining their own arguments.


    That aside, there is the matter of weighing Abd's and Kirk's comments here. Which I fully intend to do. But not tonight! Doubtless when I can return here things will have moved on - but unless all is done by others I will say my bit (not sure what it is yet)!

    Quote from Abd

    Yeah, his expression kinda sucks. You are literally correct. But his substance was, in fact, that this was irrelevant to actual cold fusion work, because nobody is claiming significant results at COP 1.01.


    I think you are correct. It is my sin that I assume that others will catch my explanations when they are only partial. Of course 1.01 was chosen for dramatic effect, to illustrate the point. But that remains valid. Jed was saying calibration errors could not generate 10-100X excess energy - with the implication that this can only come from a large error - because it is a large excess. My point being then that a relatively small fractional error (that might come from some anomaly) can lead to a large excess energy.


    This is not just of theoretical interest, there were some papers discussed here a while ago showing high COP over short periods, and high excess energy over long periods. But the two together did not convince, because the short period bursts could be chemical, and the long period excess energy could come from calibration errors. I realise that Jed would not himself want to make such an error - but what he said, logically, did this.

    Quote from THHuxley

    In advancing this hypothesis, Kirk has become the trail-blazing innovator suggesting some new phenomenon, making leaps of the imagination which are unproven and have sketchy evidence if any. Abd has become the skeptic - picking holes in the hypothesis - rubbishing it without being able to prove it false.


    I have a hypothesis about the cosmic redshift:

    • It is true that there is a redshift in the cosmic microwave background, which makes it look as though the universe around us is expanding.
    • But, please keep in mind, it is entirely plausible — highly likely, even — that there are wombas interspersed throughout the cosmic medium that are gladling the light passing through the cosmos. They happen to do this exactly in proportion to the amount we suppose the Doppler effect to be occurring, negating it more or less altogether. Looks like the Doppler effect, but it really isn't. Sorry guys.
    • Although this effect hasn't been seen in other contexts experimentally, we can readily appreciate that it is entirely plausible. Indeed, we might presume that the cosmic redshift is exactly and the only context in which it arises, and that it provides us the very experimental evidence that we seek. Astrophysicists working in this particular field need to prove that there are no wombas and there is no gladling. What they will find, once they take my arguments seriously, is that they are quite unable to counter them.

    Am I doing this right? :)

    Responding to part 1 of Abd's wall of text response:


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    What is unusual about this? Well, recombination catalysts like platihum and palladium don't work when wet.


    So tell me Abd, what is the state of the surface under a growing hydrogen bubble? Wet or dry? (How do you know?) To get a burning of any kind you need to satisfy the 'fire triangle'. That means you have to have a fuel (hydrogen, an oxidizer (oxygen), and an initiator (a clean metal suface is one). A free floating bubble of H2 + O2 is metastable. It requires an initiator to ignite. That's why every F&P type experiment doesn't blow up.


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    Only if the bubble is an explosive mixture (or at least a serious mixture) might it ignite. Such ignitions would be readily visible. They would give off light.


    You might want to look at: Szpak, S., et al. Polarized D+/Pd-D2O System: Hot Spots and “Mini-Explosions” PowerPoint slides. in Tenth International Conference on Cold Fusion. 2003.


    (Notice the E-word in the title?) There are other places where this claim is made and the evidence presented by the SPAWAR group.


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    I would expect very little recombination. How much is actually observed?


    Then your expectation is likely wrong. Miles reports up to 10% recombination is some of his experiments. I commented once on a plot of excess power vs. input current (or current density) that there appeared to be ~20% 'flyers' in the plot, which I suggested came from recombination. Storms disagreed, so I conclude that usually <20% recombination events are ignored. I doubt we would ever see 100%, but I've no idea how close we could come to that.


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    Do we think that elecrrochemists would overlook substantial missing gas?


    Yes. Based on the evidence.


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    Is there evidence for "micro-explosions"? Shanahan makes some up, by taking facts utterly out of context.


    Ummm...You might want to look at: Szpak, S., et al. Polarized D+/Pd-D2O System: Hot Spots and “Mini-Explosions” PowerPoint slides. in Tenth International Conference on Cold Fusion. 2003.


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    the bubbles must meet and merge before rising to the surface


    In fact I believe this must occur on the electrode surface so that an initiator is supplied.


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    Anyone doing this work could check for missing water.


    They could, yes, but do they? I believe I mentioned before that in the one case I responsed to (S. Szpak, P.A. Mosier-Boss, M.H. Miles, M. Fleischmann,“Thermal behavior of polarized Pd/D electrodes prepared by co-deposition”,Thermochim. Acta 410 (2004) 101), I noted that: "[they] report that their D2O consumption was 7.7 cm3 instead of a computed 7.2 cm3 [based on current passed], a 6.5% deviation, and claim this is within experimental error." A 6.5% deviation is really quite large for modern experimentalists. And I reiterate, does CF create water out of nothing? I think not. Entrainment though explains it easily.


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    A palladium cathode would also catatlyze recombination, but Shanahan can wave that away.


    And why would I? That's essentially the chemistry I am proposing...you're drifting Abd.


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    This would have no effect on a Seebeck.


    Of course it would. All the calorimeter types you mention could be affected by this. It's patently clear for isoperibolic calorimeters and was one of the original criticisms of F&P calorimetry. Being based on a single point temperature measurement, it is suceptible to being 'fooled' by hot or cold spots. The solution is to build a calorimeter that measures more of the heat, and Seebeck, mass flow, and power consumption calorimeters do just that. But do they do it perfectly? No. And the effect I outline is the outfall of the residual imperfection of the technique. Essentially these calorimeters are working in the noise for this experimental configuration.


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    t should have no effect on flow calorimetry, which is, at least theoretically, independent of where in the cell heat is generated.


    I deal in reality, not in theory. In reality, minor variations in cal. constants can cause artifactual 'excess heat' signals. Minor variations are observed and reported. I can algebraically compute how the redistribution of heat produces the artifactual signal, but only if I incorporate the real world observation that the cell/calorimeter setup is non-homgeneous.


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    (I would hope it would be calibrated with multiple heat locations.) It could affect some kinds of calorimetry depending on where temperature is measured.


    Nope. Never done. It can affect all types of calorimetry, but the higher the overall heat capture efficeincy, the smaller the effect. Well, maybe in one case, the case that got me staryed in the field, the Storms' data. He reported different linear calibration constants for calibrations done via a Joule heater and with electrolysis only.


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    Yet Shanahan has these as being violent.


    Where did I say that specifically? I said there are explosions. So did the SPAWAR group. Explosions produce heat, light, noise, and shock waves. I assume a small explosion can do a small amount of damage, but that's all a CR39 plate needs to make a pit, or a piezoelectric tranducer needs to register a 'tiny' peak..


    I do NOT claim these explosions cause holes in the palladium. I explained steam embrittlement and super abundant vacancies previously. These are my likely candidates for 'volcano' formation, but I wonder if the sharp edges of a volcano would serve as a good bubble nucleation and/or capture point, and then I wonder what a mini-explosion there might do. Maybe melt a little Pd, if the energy deposition rate exceeeds the removal rate for a short period of time?


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    The gas evolution will militate against mixing, but, yes, some might still occur.


    One of the other criticisms of F&P's work was that the cells were not well-mixed, which supposedly led to hot spots, which in turn is the cause of the 'spurious' excess heat signals. F&P conducted dye experiments to check this and concluded they were mixing horizontally 7X faster than vertically, i.e their cells were well-mixed. If they aren;t, then you're back to the hot spot problem. I assume good mixing in all cases. If you don't have that, you don't have good calorimetry.


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    Miles, as just one example, measured the gas evolution, it was a critical part of his experiment. Was it short of expectation or did it match that expected from the large bulk of bubbles rising to the surface and leaving the cell through his bubbler?


    In the case I mentioned above, he made *more* water than he should have...


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    We are talking about an extremely small amount of gas burning, but generally not an explosive mixture.


    Neither you nor I know the H2/O2 ratio in each bubble. Therefore we can't exclude 'explosive' mixtures.


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    Entrainment in open cells would produce a very observable effect, a build-up of cell salts on surfaces near the exit.


    Perhaps. Perhaps that's what led to the observed cell explosions. It would also produce the effect of excess water in the collected liquid, which has been observed and reported.


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    I don't see any "special active state."


    Oh..wait...think of this..."Special active *nuclear* state", OK? Now remember I don't think it is nuclear, so drop that word back out.


    Also, you might want to look at: Szpak, S., et al. Polarized D+/Pd-D2O System: Hot Spots and “Mini-Explosions” PowerPoint slides. in Tenth International Conference on Cold Fusion. 2003. There you can see the active region on the electrode, which had to take some time to develop. State = region + chemistry needed to take advantage of the region.

    Responses to part 2 of Abd's abortive "rebuttal":


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    He is proposing a design where heat in the cell proper is communicated to the calorimetry more efficiently than heat in the recombination catalyst. Sounds like a lousy design to me. Who used that?


    All of the people who have done F&P-type experiments... All of them have all of their cell penetrations going out one localized area of the cell, farthest away from the highest efficiency zone (where the liquid water is...). And all continue that separation as those penetrations that extend beyond the cell (electrode supports typically do not) also remain grouped together and exit the calorimeter grouped together. A very heterogeneous heat profile inside the cell and inside the calorimeter. Assuming it is homogeneous is not a realistic picture of the situation.


    Some people may be making the mistake of assuming that since these calorimeters are often very efficient (Storms' was about 98% efficient overall), what I describe just can't be. I reiterate for you then, that Storms reported seemingly 'trivial' differences between Joule heater and electrolysis power calibrations, but assumed they were insignificant. All I did was explore the impact of cal constant variation of the magnitude that Ed reported, and I found they were extremely significant to the results.


    As a simple example, if we have 20W input and a 700mW signal (close to what Ed reported) using a cal constant of 1.035 (i.e., Pout = 1.035*Pin, and Pex = Pout-Pin) and we change the cal constant by 1% to 1.01*1.035 = 1.04535, Pout is now 20.907, and Pex = 0.9, an almost 30% increase in 'excess power'. Tiny, almost 'trivial' changes have big effects in the small difference beteen 'large' numbers.


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    If the experiment is inside a Seebeck calorimeter, any heat generation in the entire cell is measured the same.


    Not in the real world.


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    How would this be systematic across many methods?


    See above descriptions...


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    And those explosions simply do not occur, not as he describes them.


    Your proof of that...?


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    If they can damage the cathode


    I never said they did. I did say they might have the power to damage a few bonds in the plastic, which is exactly what a neutron does too.


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    Shanahan also has them blowing plastic off the back side of CR-39 chips


    No. I wondered if the shock wave travelling through the plastic might not damage material at any point along the wavefront, including the back face of the plastic. The removal of plastic material, front and back, only occurs in the etching process long after the putative exposure to radiation.


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    What we know is that ordinarily recombination is not a major phenomenon in electroytic cells,


    Yup. That's why the FPHE is hard to get unless you maximize surface to volume ratio early. That seems to help significantly.


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    I don't get it. It's actually more complicated than Shanahan presents.


    Of course it is. I am giving a barebones description of the major effects and I have always said it would be appropriate to use finite element modeling to study this. But to explain the basics all one needs is a two zone cell/calorimeter model, and a change in the heat dstribution between the zones. I believe at-the-electrode recombination gives that in the typical F&P-type cell.


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    He waves away


    Only Abd would consider a semi-detailed chemical mechanism 'waving away'. Primarily because he has become a true believer and won't brook any challenge to the 'nuclear' thesis.


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    the confirmation of excess heat through helium measurement. Heat/helium has been confirmed with various methods of calorimetry.


    It is only 'confirmation' if the heat is real. Obviously I don't think it is. I also distrust the He measurements because a) they generally are not well-reproduced, b) they are below nonimal He in air concentrations, c) lab air sample analyses while being mentioned as being done are not reported or described in detail, d) at least one example of major disagreements between labs on samples is reported, and e) in the one case where a calibration curve was reported, the standards used were ~10X the samples analyzed, a big problem in any trace analysis method. Taken together, the CF community has failed to substantiate their methods repeatedly. So, I don't believe the He results are anything but leaks.


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    This is the bottom line, and it's obvious: Shanahan hasn't inspired anyone with his theory, enough for them to take the time to directly test for it and publish. He is basically a laughing-stock in the field. I take no joy in that, even though Shanahan has often been a jerk, refusing to respect attempts to understand him, attacking critics as biased. Being rejected for many years can do that to one.


    The bottom line is that I inspired a group of 10 prominent CF researchers to sign off on a paper that uses deliberately fallacious logic to try to 'defeat' my proposals. That speaks to their state of mind over this. We all know that resorting to bad logic is the hallmark of people who have nothing better to say.


    As you note, they then do sit around their club patting themselves on the back for their good work and laughing at 'poor little Shanahan'. Unfortunately, doing that is nothing but wishful thinking on their part.


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    It is not simple to test his theory unless one has set up the FP Heat Effect.


    Absoulutely true. As usual, the experimenters making the extraordinary claims are about the only ones in a postion to actually test alternatives. Have any looked into CCS problems since my analysis first ecame known in 2000? Nope.


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    Jed knows the literature better than almost anyone else.


    Which is of little value here, since what is being proposed and discussed is not in the CF literature extensively. In fact, Jed has proven he hasn't read my papers. He depends on the opinions of the CF researchers to guide his studies, and of course they don't want to give up the 'save the world' LENR idea. So, Jed repeats the BS they put out about the "CSSH" strawman as if it mattered, but doesn't unsderstand at all the CCS issue I deal with. Bad advice Abd, to depend on Jed.

    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    Indeed a contrived example, and that is Jed's real point. This is just mishegas, irrelevant. I am not going back to the original context here.



    Of course, the changes in cal constants needed to produce 200-800 mW signals on 20W inputs fall in the 1 to 3% regiem. No no one claims "Hey I saw 1% excess heat", but the real point is that a 1% change in calibration constants can produce an signal that is ~3x baseline noise, which is typically reported as being 'real excess heat'. Then that value is integrated over some long time period, leading to 'massive' heat production claims, which in fact are due to simple 'trivial' changes.

    Quote from JedRothwell

    kirkshanahan wrote:
    You might want to look at: Szpak, S., et al. Polarized D+/Pd-D2O System: Hot Spots and “Mini-Explosions” PowerPoint slides. in Tenth International Conference on Cold Fusion. 2003.


    Those are hot spots detected with an IR camera, not visible wavelength light.



    Did you miss the e-word in the title Jed? (BTW - the e-word was used at least as far back as 1999 in one of their papers in Nouvo Cim., 112A (1999) 577. Might have been used even earlier...not sure right now.)

    So: reading the very interesting point-by-point posts from Abd and Kirk, I'm going to organise my thoughts. This is preliminary, and perhaps there are things I don't yet understand that will change this, since my conclusions here are not strongly held.


    There are three issues here:
    (1) What class (if any) of calorimetry experiments might RAEs (Kirk's suggestion) apply to?
    (2) Is Kirk's suggestion compatible with evidence (can it be contradicted)
    (3) Is Kirk's suggestion likely (the Occam's razor thing).


    Kirk has IMHO made a very good case for this effect explaining all the open electrolytic cell heat anomalies. It fits nicely. There is a less strong case for closed cells. On the other hand in both cases there is a good argument for only positive deviations, and Kirk certainly has a plausible mechanism for all the electrolytic stuff (except He of course). We can all agree that if He is generated in these experiments something nuclear is happening. We can't all agree about whether existing evidence shows that but that should be what a new experiment currently happening provides stronger positive or negative evidence about.


    The explanatory strength of this effect is that it will generate anomalies (and possibly explosion evidence) in a wide range experiments. It might provide an explanation for the SPAWAR pits, though this is relatively weak.


    Some experiments remain untouched by this hypothesis. The experiments with a reducing atmosphere and a catalyst wire will surely not suffer recombination, and results there would need to be considered separately. Of course having noted one way in which unexpected local chemical reactions can screw up calorimetry, one might look for other reactions that could do the same.


    How likely is this effect? Ab initio you would not expect it, but that is not where we are. we have a whole load of anomalous heat evidence strong enough to convince many that nuclear reactions of a type not seen elsewhere are happening. The NAE theory sounds uncannily similar to Kirk's RAE theory. Neither seem ab initio likely, but if we have real heat anomalies then there must be an explanation however unlikely.


    I'd say if you just consider the experiments to which it might apply, and ignore He and other evidence, Kirk's explanation wins hands down. Of course if other evidence proves some nuclear effect, than that becomes an obvious candidate for this anomaly as well. So how you weight this explanation must depend on whether you consider the "non-heat in electrolytic cell" evidence for LENR persuasive.


    Abd is not arguing that (much) - he is arguing Kirk's suggestion is inherently impossible. That is a very strange thing for somone to do who accepts a much less detailed, and less probable, explanation for the same data.


    It is felicitous that Abd's favourite new experiment, looking at possible He generation, would be independent of this hypothesis from Kirk and would therefore prove LENR if robust and positive.


    Arguing against Kirk's explanation on grounds of implausibility seems no better to me than the way pseudo-skeptics argue against LENR. The arguments and hand-waving are very similar. The motivation (that this hypothesis is unproven and complex) quite similar.


    So: why prefer a complex NAE hypothesis rather than a less complex RAE hypothesis? It can only be if you are convinced by LENR evidence not covered by RAE.


    One point: just as specific details of LENR theories are unknown and can be adjusted to fit data, the same is true of Kirk's idea. You can take the basics - a local catalysed exothermic chemical reaction - and dress it up in many different ways. So if the details Kirk suggests don't hold up maybe there is a different set of details that do. Kirk's suggestion is slightly more testable than NAEs because standard physics is invoked and the complexity can be investigated using that as a guide - but they are both flexible hypotheses.


    That flexibility in both cases counts against them - but makes them a lot harder to dismiss.

    I think people are missing the forest for the trees. I showed that a minor change in calibration constants can have a significant effect on the computed excess power in my first publication on this subject, and I repeated the basics here:


    Quote from kirkshanahan

    As a simple example, if we have 20W input and a 700mW signal (close to what Ed reported) using a cal constant of 1.035 (i.e., Pout = 1.035*Pin, and Pex = Pout-Pin) and we change the cal constant by 1% to 1.01*1.035 = 1.04535, Pout is now 20.907, and Pex = 0.9, an almost 30% increase in 'excess power'. Tiny, almost 'trivial' changes have big effects in the small difference beteen 'large' numbers.


    No one has ever challenged the mathematical part of my reanalysis of the Storms' data, and no one will because it is as simple as what is shown above. Here's the key point though. Everyone uses the same kind of data translation to get to their excess heat signals. So if a 'CCS' can zero out Storms' results, might it not zero out someone else's? Yes, it might.


    So **EVERY** excess heat claim needs to be evaluated to see if it is sensitive to this trivial problem. But they never are. No one else has ever looked at the error on excess heat claims due to a potential 1-10% change in calibration constants. Does that seem right to you? It doesn't to me.


    I postulated a mechanism for this to occur. I like it of course, since I put it together. But if you don't like it, fine! Think up your own to explain the results I published. Then test it against the rest of the excess heat claims out there. Maybe yours will work better than mine.


    The bottom line is that the proposition is out there that *all* excess heat events might be explained by simple cal constant shifts. That should be easy to test. The data should already be in people's notebooks and computers, if not in their publications. Address the real issue, don't consume your time arguing alternative ad hoc explanations.


    But that's not what the CFers do. They carry the attack against the least significant part of what I wrote to the extreme of using faulty logic to denigrate it. And that's why they qualify as psuedoscientists. Real scientists would want to resolve the issue, instead of engaging in endless argumentation.

    Quote

    So **EVERY** excess heat claim needs to be evaluated to see if it is sensitive to this trivial problem.

    Every claim to a small to modest power ratio (out/in) but yes. Excellent point. Claims to very high power ratios at high power, like Rossi, Defkalion, Brillouin and Miley, would not be a concern with respect to this issue, right? But those claims have always been subject to either a lack of reproducibility and/or wide ranging opportunities for cheating, sleight of hand, and fraud.

    Quote from THHuxley

    Of course if other evidence proves some nuclear effect, than that becomes an obvious candidate for this anomaly as well.


    In addition to helium, there is other evidence for a nuclear effect: x-rays, apparent transmutations, low levels of gammas, low levels of neutrons, etc. It would take quite an effort to systematize the scattered experimental evidence (something Ed Storms has attempted), but it's out there for anyone willing do to some reading.


    Quote from THHuxley

    One point: just as specific details of LENR theories are unknown and can be adjusted to fit data, the same is true of Kirk's idea. You can take the basics - a local catalysed exothermic chemical reaction - and dress it up in many different ways. So if the details Kirk suggests don't hold up maybe there is a different set of details that do. Kirk's suggestion is slightly more testable than NAEs because standard physics is invoked and the complexity can be investigated using that as a guide - but they are both flexible hypotheses.


    (1) Interesting point about Kirk Shanahan's work is that he agrees with the LENR researchers that there are anomalies; he just disagrees on the causes. This is to be contrasted with arguments coming at the matter from a different direction, that LENR experiments are merely mistaking noise for signal, sometimes cherry-picking if needed. Argue against LENR research showing a signal, and you're likely to be arguing against Shanahan's conclusions. (2) The term "NAE" stands for "nuclear active environment." It is Ed Storms's thing. He will argue very strongly for it. But it is not universally accepted.

    Quote from Mary Yugo

    So **EVERY** excess heat claim needs to be evaluated to see if it is sensitive to this trivial problem.
    Every claim to a small to modest power ratio (out/in) but yes. Excellent point. Claims to very high power ratios at high power, like Rossi, Defkalion, Brillouin and Miley, would not be a concern with respect to this issue, right? But those claims have always been subject to either a lack of reproducibility and/or wide ranging oppo


    Why not? A high power in and of itself says nothing about the associated error. It is entirely possible that the error (variation is a better term, error implies a mistake was made when that's not a requirement) on a 100 MW measure is +/-200MW (1 sigma). It all depends on the measuring systems and what their inherent errors are. Routinely when you're 'working in the noise', you try to increase the signal to get up out of the noise, but that concept requires the noise level to remain constant and not scale up with increasing signal. Not all measurements do that. You should always have a good estimate of the variation of your measurements, otherwise you end up like the CFers, measuring something that looks big in relation to what they *think* is the noise, but that in fact is well with the noise level. A first shot at this come from what is known as Propagation of Error theory. It's explained on Wikipedia.

    Quote from Eric Walker

    But, please keep in mind, it is entirely plausible — highly likely, even — that there are wombas interspersed throughout the cosmic medium


    Quote from Eric Walker

    Am I doing this right?



    Yes, you're doing fine Eric. Just rembember that other terms have been applied to your wombas, such as: gremlins, bugs, strings, dark matter/energy, etc., etc., and at one point even quarks and prions... I'm partial to leprechaums myself. Little buggers just delight in confusing us humans....


    Of course the point is that the norm for scientific inquiry is to try to patch up current theories with new additions before we trash the whole theory. But when we do need to dump the old one, you get the problem of the hangers-on, who never give up the ship until they die. Thus the Heisenberg (or was it Oppenheimer) quote on old theories never dying until their advocates die off.


    The cold fusion field seems to be unique though in that the middle ground has disappeared. When CF was announced in 1989, I was in a different area and had no immediate interest in it specifically. I clearly remember saying to people that it was likely that F&P had found something and unlikely that it was what they said. Most of the people I talked to held that view. But that changed over the years. The field polarized everyone it seems, with the middle ground vanishing. My CCS proposition is a middle ground approach. As THH has noted, it presumes a real effect (that I call the Fleischmann-Pons Hawkins Effect (FPHE)) that is mundane chemistry and physics with a new little twist (at the electrode recom.). I didn't know it until later but F has already done something similar in 1973. He reported a new effect with pyridine adsorbed on silver surfaces, an enhancement in the molecule's Raman signal. The effect was real (known as SERS today) but his explanation was totally off base, such that most of the SERS workers today don't even realize he was involved.


    I believe the polarization is bad, but the personalities involved seem to promote it. As a funny side note, in 2007 I presented a poster at a Gordon Research Conference on Hydrogen-Metal Sysytems entitled "What's new in cold fusion?" It was the most attended poster I ever presented. But...all the interested parties wanted to know (with one exception) was if I believed it or not. I tried to present my ideas, but when I answered the question by saying that I didn't think it was nuclear, they all walked on. I also heard from a coworker who attended the conference that he had been approached by a few people who wanted to know if I was "OK". I asked him if he told the truth....

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