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

Quote from Angelo V.

"A third part room sized calorimeter" and no one focused his answer on the first two words, "third part", and this is a key part of my "silly" idea.

You mean "third party." This would be a testing facility. However, here are "third party" consulting companies, SRI is a major one. Earthtech has what they called MOAC, the Mother of All Calorimeters, a large Seebeck calorimeter. Calorimetry, though, is well understood by experts. It's relatively cheap to do it right. That is, research is not being inhibited by lack of some calorimetric testing facility.

Moving all experiments to a facility would be onerous, and unnecessarily so. What the field expects is carefully performed experiments, well-documented so that they are reproducible. And then independent replication. There is no "third party." Third party is a Rossi-ism, used to mean supposedly independent experts. Chosen by him.

That kind of thing might be done if some controversy remains after a series of independent replications. The Rossi--IH Agreement used a single ERV, a very primitive form of "third party," defective because of how the ERV was chosen. IH knew this, knew that the eRV was not necessarily neutral, but went ahead for reasons that are clear to those who knew the situation then.

Rather, a more sober business relationship would have each party choose an expert, and then the two experts choose a third, who becomes the ERV, if it is going to be one person, and the ERV report would be subject to a review process, because any expert can make mistakes. The review process might, after review, have the three chosen experts vote. Having a single ERV would only be expected to work if that single expert is trusted by both sides, and Rossi seems not to understand ordinary business, arms-length, process, and imagined that he could force IH to pay even if they were dissatisfied, after all, they had "given their word." But Rossi did not keep his own word, and that's a common saying: when you point a finger at another, there are three fingers pointing back at you.

Hi Angelo. George, world-class expert in calorimetry here. Not sure about using Tom Huxley, I think the problems he has now are:

(1) He is quite clearly biassed. He badly wants to downplay evidence of LENR. It makes his judgments of what is not proven less easy for others to believe. Were I him I would highlight, for every experiment, the ongoing "believer" arguments to show that he is carefully considering that side of things. He maybe does this - but I find his posts impenetrable now - with historic posts being hidden and comments impossible to navigate without knowing the exact search term.

(2) Since the "about post number 500" he has been proselytising as well as researching. Bad combination.

@THH AKA THC AKA Doubting Thomas ?

Tom Huxley, Bob Hooke, Jimmy Maxwell, Mick Faraday, Al Smith: Us world-class experts in stuff prefer a more informal mode of address when referring to each other.

Lord Jayjay even made it official.

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Hi Angelo. George, world-class expert in calorimetry here.

Hey, "George", since you're a world-class expert in calorimetry, who have some of your customers been, that perhaps we can email to, other than the obvious one all over the internet, Storms? What products did you provide for them? Oh and by the way, where were you born?

(PS: answers may be available on the internet, but I doubt that this idiotic pretender is likely to do the work or pay the fees to find them)

And Alain or some other moderator, I am shocked you allow anyone to assume any name of real people that they want. Can I sign on as President Clinton for example? Or as Alain maybe? If you want to discuss this with me, write me at maryyugo [at symbol] yahoo [dot] com.

Quote from Alan Smith

Hi Mary. Do you want me to get the Admins to ban GH from using that ID? Or don't you care? I ask because it is being discussed in a smoke-filled room not far from here.

The request is obvious. There are privacy issues involved, but I think it is acceptable for me to affirm that Mary Yugo knows a real George Hody. The George Hody account here pretends to be that George Hody, though sarcastically and as mockery of another participant. This is blatantly obvious, and was as soon as "George Hody" appeared, and I am also shocked that this has been allowed to continue.

The behavior of Mary Yugo is irrelevant to this. If Mary Yugo is acting to harm the site, Mary could be warned and/or blocked.

My own preference is, in general, for those who are anonymous to drop it, absent clear necessity, which is rare. Pseudoskeptics are not being assassinated. Real skeptics are participating, which is important.

Anonymity is a personal choice, however, and if it is allowed, it's allowed. It is a positive effect on conversation, though, if we become personally responsible for what we say, as many of us have been for years. We've made mistakes, and these are pointed out later, and that is all part of real scientific process and true, thoughtful, negotiation of consensus.

@THH, sorry, my last post went off half-cocked. The full version is up now.

Quote from Mary Yugo

And Alain or some other moderator, I am shocked you allow anyone to assume any name of real people

I wonder what the real Mary YuGo has to say about you abusing her good name:

https://premium.whitepages.com/checkout/cbs/?record_id=72phOqxJeVF09Ra0DaVSDthRpuw3DkPQSB0NVtf93L8=&people_name=mary+yugo&people_location=,+&type=person_query&wp_source=person_results&wp_medium=SerpSBNEM&wp_term=SB_MultiR_NEM_A&wp_content=link_result_record_sb3

And why are you so interested in where I was born? It's becoming a running theme of yours

I'd just like to state, for the record, that I am not Mary Yugo, and I never have been, nor ever will be. Simple...

Hi Alan. As Abd says. I do prefer that any obviously mocking and impersonating ID be dropped/banned. And this "George Hody" certainly is one. It would also seem reasonable to delete all past posts under this supposed ID. As I said, I will be happy to discuss it with admins privately if they wish at my usual email maryyugo [at] yahoo [dot] com.

Thanks, Alan.

Quote from THHuxley

I wrote:

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

Right. Ordinary usage of the word collapses "knowledge" and "belief." In court, someone may testify a thing as "according to my knowledge and belief." This places it in a boundary zone. The testimony that is presumed true is the evidence of the senses. However, we do routinely interpret the senses, giving names to things and then talking about those names, which makes a host of learned assumptions. We call this knowledge, and some sort of knowledge is necessary even to talk aboutanything. It is when push comes to shove that things get interesting, where my "knowledge" appears to conflict with yours. This can be due to a number of possibilities: defective or interpreted memory being substituted for actual testimony from memory (very, very common), a different set of experiences (in which case discussion can broaden horizons, where the discussion gets down to the level of actually reporting the evidence of the senses, and especially if it's verifiable) , or, it's actually uncommon, one or both of us is lying, deliberately misreporting our experience and honest interpretations.

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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.

The first sentence contains a "should" which is useless in scientific process. As pointed out by Bauer in his essay on "pathological science," which is worth reading, there is no way to know, ab initio, which ideas are "wrong" without investigation. This statement demonstrates a lack of caution behind what has been called the "scientific fiasco of the century," by Huizenga, and he was right. "Fiasco" implies a context in which many mistakes are being made, and harm is caused. With a rejection cascade, the harm can continue for a long time, and, in fact, we can see it here. LENR is here presented with a picture that is inaccurate. Science is not the knowledge of the ignorant, those who have not investigated, but that of those who have investigated, and especially those who have tested. What "Most scientists think" is meaningless unless "scientist" is defined. Does this include all with any scientific training? Is it only those with relevant expertise? If the latter -- which is what I'd assume -- how is expertise defined on a particular question? Most of all, what is "cold fusion"? This problem arose at the very beginning. The original phenomenon is more accurately called the Fleischmann-Pons Heat Effect, and the expertise needed to assess it is not nuclear physics -- the presumed field because of the use of the term "fusion," and unproven theory about the origin of the heat -- but electrochemistry and calorimetry. Is there a heat anomaly in palladium deuteride?

What is the "scientific consensus" on that? This might surprise some, so I suggest reading the 2004 U.S. DoE report, and the individual review documents, all available on lenr-canr.org. The 18 reviewers in 2004 were evenly split on the reality of the heat effect. When one looks more closely, it is quite visible that the reality of the effect is being denied, not because of expertise in calorimetry, but because of the apparent conclusion, which is still strongly rejected by many. For them, it is as it remained for Richard Garwin. "They must be making some mistake!"

Then, asked about the nuclear origin of the heat, a third of the reviewers considered the evidence for that "convincing" or "somewhat convincing," or something like that. This was after a one-day presentation, which is utterly inadequate to present the evidence unless the presenters were highly skilled communicators, which they were not, they were scientists, given to very reserved speech. The written report was easily misinterpreted, and it was misinterpreted. Yet, still, the way I'd present the result is that, of those who thought the heat was real, two thirds thought the evidence for its nuclear nature to be at least "somewhat convincing."

Give them more time! (There was obviously no time in the 2004 review for serious back-and-forth, for correction of interpretive errors, etc.)

What we have seen is that when scientists are given the opportunity and cause for actually reviewing the evidence in interactive conversation, they become convinced that there is a real effect and that it is very likely nuclear in origin. Robert Duncan is a great example.

The reviewer of my paper was originally very negative. So I rewrote the paper to address his concerns (instead of flipping out over his knee-jerk rejection) and he turned 180 degrees. That experience is common. The rejection cascade persists because it establishes an adverse and self-reinforcing environment, where ordinary evidence is rejected, looking for the extraordinary, which is imagined to be some massive demonstration of heat, undeniable. And with what we know, that isn't going to happen without, it's likely, much investment in fundamental research and then in the development of applications.

"Continue to support" is aligned with a common pseudoskeptical story, that "belief" or "support" of cold fusion is the province of "die-hards," a few. However, the real state of cold fusion is shown in the journals. What is passing peer review at mainstream journals?

It is impossible to assess the state of cold fusion, objectively, without looking at the rejection cascade and the effects it created, both in the mainstream and in the cold fusion research community. It did massive damage to scientific process, this is well-known to sociologists of science (see Bauer and Bart Simon for academic publication on this), the ability to publish in mainstream journals was heavily impacted (work related to cold fusion, in some journals, is rejected out of hand, ipso facto, see my Current Science paper, I considered an experience of Peter Hagelstein to be important enough to mention.) However, publication does continue, and what is significant to note is that cold fusion is routinely considered a reality in journals, now. The extreme skeptical position has almost entirely disappeared. We know that some skeptical replies are being submitted and are rejected, usually, as not up to scientific standards.

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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.

It could be. Is it, here? What point is no longer valid?

This is a point: the idea that the established scientific consensus is that cold fusion is not real is based on impressions created "long ago," in McKubre's report. I hope you read it. It is very clear, now, that that alleged consensus was established without careful scientific process, as I mentioned. So it must be set aside. As McKubre points out, the famous "negative replications" now form a part of the body of experimental evidence as to the conditions of the FP Heat Effect. They are not "rejected," only the unwarranted conclusions some made from them.

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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.

And it is. The strongest experimental work is the most precise heat/helium measurements made, i.e., McKubre SRI M4 (1998, I forget exactly when that was done) and the ENEA Apicella et al (2005) experiment. I promoted doing more precise work with this, to be properly published in the journal system. I saw no skeptics suggesting newer or better work. That was also not a priority within the field, as heat/helium was already considered well enough established, and most considered the priority to be More Heat. However, precisely because of this idea about "recent work," and because heat/helium is the only substantial *direct evidence* that the heat in the FPHE is nuclear in origin, and because the ratio is of high theoretical interest, I found this work to be crucial and likely to break the rejection logjam.

This is not speculative work, where results could easily be useless. It is confirmation. The largest problem is setting up the FPHE, with reasonable frequency, and what we have now are two of the most experienced cold fusion researchers in the world working on the team, and they may identify other research groups. This is going to "crush the tests," as IH intended about unspecified work, I predict.

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

It is an analysis in the sociology of science, and your own thinking, THH, is influenced by that cascade, that's obvious. That's normal. But you could also increase the rapidity with which you approach this field, if you are interested, by recognizing the bias.