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

    Quote from THHuxley

    Jed, no doubt he will tell me if this is untrue, thought I had said that LENR should be rejected because it is false. I've made the point many times that LENR can never be proven false, because it is as normally formulated too vague. That, for me, is a bad quality which makes it dangerously close to pseudoscience


    Oh come now. That's not a bit true. Cold fusion is a classic 19th century experiment. It is based on only two things: calorimetry, and the limits of chemical energy.


    As Martin Fleischmann pointed out, their calorimetry is the same as J. P. Joules techniques, perfected in the 1840s. Joule made thermometers capable of measuring to the nearest 0.05 deg F, so he could have detected the heat in most cold fusion experiments with absolute confidence.


    In some cases the effect is measured at 20 to 100 W, with no input power, lasting for days. Any scientist since 1600 could have measured this with confidence. As McKubre says, the effect is neither small nor fleeting.


    The limits of chemical energy were established in the 18th and 19th century. They are approximately 20 kJ per gram, or ~4 eV per atom. Many cold fusion experiments have produced thousands of times more than this, and some have produced 10,000 times more. In some cases it produces as much as several liters of gasoline. You could burn all of the furniture and books in the labs and not produce this much heat. Also, cold fusion never consumes chemical fuel or produces chemical ash. So there is not the slightest chance cold fusion is a chemical effect.


    The definition is not vague at all. Cold fusion is heat from Pd-D far exceeding the limits of chemistry. That's the full definition. The effect is difficult to create, but dead simple to measure when power exceeds 0.5 W (as it has done in hundreds of tests), and the results are as clear cut as any experiment in history. Calorimetry is one the oldest and most widely used techniques. In 1780, Lavoisier made the first modern calorimeter, used to measure metabolism in a guinea pig. He could have measured the heat from cold fusion in many experiments with a high s/n ratio and complete confidence.


    Cold fusion has many problems and deficiencies, but the ones you cite, vagueness and pseudoscience, are not among them. There is not a single scientist since 1600 who would not instantly recognize the significance of a reaction that produces megajoules of energy from a few grams of metal and some water. The only reason scientists reject the findings is because they have not read the papers, or they do not understand 19th century calorimetry.

    Quote from THHuxley

    I said "wrong ideas should be rejected". I did not say I knew which were wrong,


    Yes, you did not say you know which are wrong. The problem is not you, it is that nobody knows. Ever. No one can possibly know, even in principle. No matter how unlikely a finding may be, it is impossible to rule it out except by experiment. That is fundamental to the scientific method. The experiment is the one and only standard of truth.


    Of course we all see when a finding seems unlikely because it appears to violate theory, or because nothing like it has been observed previously. Because life is short and scientists are busy, they generally ignore such things. That is understandable. But it is not a valid basis to declare that something is wrong -- or probably wrong. There is no such basis. The history of science shows that things which seem impossible are sometimes true, and there can be no a priori way of identifying them.

    Quote from THHuxley

    But you can see that my comment has been completely misinterpreted to mean the opposite of what is my view.

    On the contingency that I misunderstood THH, I apologize. However, I'm not letting this go that easily. I had responded to the following:


    Quote from Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

    Quote from THHuxley: [...] The nature of science is that 90% of new ideas are wrong and therefore should be rejected.


    Process was completely missing from that statement. "Rejected" when and how? Within my ontology, all ideas are wrong. That is, they do not perfectly match reality, which I consider is beyond confinement by human ideas. However, ideas are more or less useful. Is Ptolemaic astronomy wrong? It was quite useful, making accurate predictions. More to the point, was Newtonian physics wrong? Let's put it this way: most now consider it incomplete, and taken as an absolute, we might call it "wrong." But it just an idea, a model, a useful one, with limitations. "Should" implies moral imperative. And, in fact, there are plenty of people who seem to believe that if people are "wrong," it is their duty to correct them. I think all of us might fall into that at times.


    But it's not empowering. The concept of "wrong ideas" and a necessary "rejection" is not useful, it creates conflict and does not encourage investigation. After all, why waste time investigating a "wrong idea"? The physicists who rejected Pons and Fleischmann believed that they had a 'wrong idea," that the density of deuterium in palladium deuteride could cause fusion. In fact, the PF idea was more sophisticated than that. Pons and Fleischmann did err, they believed they had found a bulk effect, partly because of the idea they had that was an inspiration. Their idea wasn't exactly wrong, it simply applied to a different environment than the bulk, rather to rare structures on the surface, almost certainly. Their misunderstanding caused great mischief!


    Responding to them as if they had a "wrong idea" caused the rejection of their actual experimental results. "Wrong ideas should be rejected" led to rejecting the basis for a wrong idea.


    I do not blame the 1989-1990 scientific community for rejecting "cold fusion" claims. The original ERAB report actually stated it correctly (for the time, and setting aside some details):


    Quote

    The Panel concludes that the experimental results on excess heat from calorimetric cells reported to date do not present convincing evidence that useful sources of energy will result from the phenomena attributed to cold fusion. In addition, the Panel concludes that experiments reported to date do not present convincing evidence to associate the reported anomalous heat with a nuclear process.


    Once we realize how rushed that report was, how incomplete was the evidence that they considered, and then know that the necessary evidence for "nuclear process" did not appear until over two years later, the real problem is that the ERAB report was considered more or less the final word, yet that word was actually only temporal and temporary. The major missing result, that could have been done cheaply, would have been to set up some ongoing process for reviewing the field as it developed. Perhaps a desk at the DoE. Instead, it was shelved, and in spite of recommendations for further research, it was not funded by the DoE.


    I explained the rejection cascade, and then claimed that THH was affected by it to some degree. That comment does not ignore the many statements he has made with which I agree, it is narrow and specific and does not deny the other side, which is that THH is actively considering and investigating and considers that proper. He is not claiming that cold fusion is a "wrong idea."


    (I would actually say that there is a wrongness to it. We do not know what the reaction actually is, it is a mystery. I consider it reasonably well established, preponderance of the evidence, that it is the conversion of deuterium to helium, but .... that is fusion as to result, not as to reaction sequence. At this point I often introduce the "gremlin theory." Gremlins take deuterium and break it down into quarks, using their access to subspace, which I just made up. They are required to maintain overall compliance with the laws of thermodynamics, and can only borrow these quarks for a short time. They then reassemble and return the quarks as helium and energy, perhaps in the form of a burst of low-energy photons. Would that be "fusion"?)


    Words are imperfect and will shift in meaning as our experience expands or shifts.


    But we call it cold fusion. We use tags that work. Those who are more careful call it Low Energy Nuclear Reactions. With more care and precision, the Fleischmann-Pons Heat Effect, or a bit more generally, the Anomalous Heat Effect, which obviously is contextual, that is not what it will be called a hundred years from now, I suspect.

    Quote from Abd

    Process was completely missing from that statement. "Rejected" when and how? Within my ontology, all ideas are wrong. That is, they do not perfectly match reality, which I consider is beyond confinement by human ideas.


    And much else.


    Others reading will say that the differences being drawn here are as counting angels on the head of a pin, but...


    In his latest post Abd makes the point that "rejecting wrong ideas" is unhelpful - citing as example the rejection (by mainstream science) of a right idea. I mentioned this in the context of 90% being wrong. A probabilistic idea of belief in which hypotheses exist, can be assigned probabilities, which then change as the result of experiments.


    In that framework nothing is ever completely right or completely wrong, but some things attain such a level of confidence (right or wrong) that we speak of them as true or false. The earth continuing to rotate at roughly once every 24 hours would be one such we would call true. The earth being flat would be one such we would call false and reject.


    My statement was emphasising the fact that before experimental results, each idea is uncertain. After experiments the idea can gain more support or less support and in time move to wards either true or false.


    So I'd agree with Abd that we should in principle always keep all ideas on the table.


    My comment about LENR being "nearly a pseudoscience" is because as a hypothesis I can't think of an experiment that would reduce the probability assigned to LENR. There is just no way to show it wrong. And that is because it is too vague (I'm answering Jed here). Were the theory better understood and more predictive those predictions could be contradicted, so reducing confidence in the theory. But we have no such predictions.


    Of course, as a hypothesis, LENR could easily and scientifically be proved. That is obvious, and if it happened LENR would clearly be science, though of a very imperfect sort due to the lack of precision in its predictions.


    The fact however that no experiment can reduce its likelihood, in the case that it is false, allows attention to continue indefinitely.

    Quote

    There is not a single scientist since 1600 who would not instantly recognize the significance of a reaction that produces megajoules of energy from a few grams of metal and some water. The only reason scientists reject the findings is because they have not read the papers, or they do not understand 19th century calorimetry.


    That is surely not true. Many scientists reject experiments seemingly showing megajoules of excess energy because they claim their are deficiencies in the experiments, calibration errors etc. Such debates are proper, and there is to my knowledge no single LENR experiment that is reproducible and convincing. One-off historic claims properly must be rejected, because people are not perfect and mistakes happen.


    There is then a fascinating question of whether lots of half convincing experiments add up to proof. Were there evidence independent it would.


    Proving that a collection of calorimetric results on a specific type of system (say electrolysis) do not have possible unsuspected systematic error mechanisms is then necessary if you want those results to be the clear proof you claim. That is tough.


    OTOH - with nuclear level energies involved one might expect Rossi-claim levels of excess energy to exist - in that case sure detection with adequate calorimetry would be pretty easy.

    So my view:
    (1) fund university-level projects with the work proposed by LENR guys but critiqued and selected by skeptics, with a given project having at least two iterations (proper write-up and evaluation of results after each - same methodology and materials but better instrumentation/controls on second), with a skeptic critique of initial methodology and of first iteration.


    This would differ from typical LENR research only in that the focus would be more on integrity and artifact elimination, and less on "optimising the effect".


    If such a project came up with negative results, due to the uncontrollable nature of NAEs etc, that is OK. Just run more of these projects.

    Quote from THHuxley

    That is surely not true. Many scientists reject experiments seemingly showing megajoules of excess energy because they claim their are deficiencies in the experiments, calibration errors etc. Such debates are proper,


    No, that is not "proper." There are no deficiencies in the best experiments, which number in the hundreds, from about 150 labs. The deficiencies cited by skeptics are imaginary. The techniques are mainstream calorimetry, well established by the late 19th century. The test were performed by experts, and no skeptic has ever found a significant error in them.


    Quote from THHuxley

    and there is to my knowledge no single LENR experiment that is reproducible and convincing.


    "Reproducible" is a different story. Cold fusion is difficult to reproduce, but convincing when it is reproduced. In that regard it resembles sending a robot explorer to Mars: difficult to do, but when you do it, there is no question you have succeeded.


    All of the major experiments are convincing. If you do not think so, you have not read them carefully, or you do not understand them. There has not been a single credible peer-reviewed critique of the calorimetry published. Not one. The best the skeptics came up with is here:


    http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmanreplytothe.pdf


    I think it has no merit. Judge for yourself.


    ADDENDUM: I should have said that Shanahan published critiques as well. I do not think they have any merit. See:


    http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/MarwanJanewlookat.pdf

    Quote from Mats002

    I am intrigued by this video:


    <a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3wENFciq1-Q&amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;a=" class="externalURL" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">m.youtube.com/watch?v=3wENFciq1-Q&amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;a=</a>


    It is a very simple way of making a high electron density at a tungsten rod, giving a COP &gt; 10 (!) over 30 minutes and with enough error margin to use simple garage…


    Mats002:
    There are several places where the results in that video can be incorrect. First, the dissimilar metal electrodes (tungsten and stainless steel) with a NaOH electrolyte become a battery. That energy input is not accounted. Second, 12V Pb-acid batteries are not exactly 12V. Their voltage is nominal, with 13.2V at full charge and 10.8V discharged. The actual voltage was not measured, at least in the video. Third, the rectified AC voltage still had a substantial AC component. The hand held meter probably did not measure true RMS voltage, so that measurement could have been off by as much as 40%. Fourth, the amount of water loss was measured with good precision, but how much water was lost pouring from one container to another? How much wetted the container wall? Calculated energy output is very sensitive to the amount of water loss. Fifth, how accurate is that thermometer? Just because it indicates +/- 0,1C doesn't mean it is accurate to that precision.


    If you try to replicate this demonstration, I recommend you quantify the error bars associated with each step in the process and each measurement.

    Quote

    No, that is not "proper." There are no deficiencies in the best experiments, which number in the hundreds, from about 150 labs. The deficiencies cited by skeptics are imaginary. The techniques are mainstream calorimetry, well established by the late 19th century. The test were performed by experts, and no skeptic has ever found a significant error in them.


    Start a different thread perhaps. You have the burden of proof the wrong way round. It is very easy to do an experiment without obvious errors, simply by leaving out details and cross-checks. I would be interested if you could find one experiment with an adequate level of checking amongst these hundreds. Remember, flow calorimetry (which will be what you reference) if relying on calibration - can suffer potential calibration errors as the operating conditions change - and classic LENR involves quite extreme changes in operating conditions. Neither my comment, nor yours, can be convincing as a summary. Dig out your one best (of these hundreds) experiments, and I will be interested to see how convincing it is.


    Quote

    "Reproducible" is a different story. Cold fusion is difficult to reproduce, but convincing when it is reproduced.


    I don't mind at all if the same experiment, run 10 times, gives results only on 2 of those 10. That would indicate some uncontrolled stochastic process, but the two successes would be reproduction. OTOH, an experiment with varied conditions each time might give positives in some due to "optimising the artifact" or the classic "measure 10 things and find anomalies in a few" so beloved of medical tests. So you see, to convince me is not so hard.

    Quote from THHuxley

    It is very easy to do an experiment without obvious errors, simply by leaving out details and cross-checks. I would be interested if you could find one experiment with an adequate level of checking amongst these hundreds.


    See any experiment by McKubre, Fleishmann, Bockris or Miles. This one is described in detail, in this paper and elsewhere:


    http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHisothermala.pdf


    Quote from THHuxley

    Remember, flow calorimetry (which will be what you reference) if relying on calibration - can suffer potential calibration errors as the operating conditions change


    All methods of calorimetry use calibration. Flow calorimetry has the added benefit of being an absolute method, that does not depend only on calibrations. Experts such as Fleischmann and Miles used isoperibolic calorimetry which they analyzed on first principles, making it an absolute method. Of course they also calibrated. See, for example:


    http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/Fleischmancalorimetra.pdf


    Quote from THHuxley

    I don't mind at all if the same experiment, run 10 times, gives results only on 2 of those 10.


    Fleischmann et al. ran 4 boil off experiments at a time, hundreds of times. They all worked as far as I know, both in the initial stage and the boil-off. They are described in the paper I listed above. Here is the time lapse video of the boil off:


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    Storms, Cravens and others have published reliable recipes that give high success ratios. The only problem is, it takes a few years to do the procedures they describe. That is if you work manually. If you have expensive equipment you could probably do it in a few months.


    The ENEA and McKubre have achieved high reproducibility, as you see here, in Fig. 3:


    http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/McKubreMCHcoldfusionb.pdf


    And in the graphs shown in my video:


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    "First principles" are, I believe, overrated:


    [email protected]/msg55865.html">https://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-[email protected]/msg55865.html


    Having said that, it is indeed good when measurements of heat are backed up by two methods -- one a calculation based on physics and the other, a pragmatic calibration. In my opinion, isoperibolic calorimetry is really just a point temperature measurement, does not constitute "genuine" calorimetry and is very error prone if calibration conditions vary in any way (as they must) from run conditions. Flow calorimetry, as Jed noted, as well as envelope (Seebeck) calorimetry and even sparging steam if steam is involved, all are comparatively reliable methods if calibration is carefully designed and performed.



    his may not be the appropriate place to argue this so I will try not to when Jed, predictably, disagrees and starts insulting me.

    Dan21, thanks for all your advice. If I perform this experiment I will follow them and also Wyttenbach advice on radiation safety.


    The learnings from MFMP - who I think is very intellectually honest - is that with higher accuracy the COP gets lower but still > 1.

    Quote from Angelo V.

    To stay in the spirit of the thread I started, I would ask one or two questions:


    Suppose a tycoon is one of the readers of this forum, fascinated by research on LENR wants to give an important economic contribution, let's say 10 million USD


    [What could…


    This is similar to what Rob Duncan did at the University of Missouri with the SKINR lab. Rob was a skeptic until he looked into the state of the art. I think it was a definite step in a good direction.

    Quote from Mary Yugo

    In my opinion, isoperibolic calorimetry is really just a point temperature measurement, does not constitute "genuine" calorimetry and is very error prone if calibration conditions vary in any way (as they must) from run conditions.


    The method has been widely used for 180 years. It works quite well when done by experts. Calibration can be made over the full range of conditions the experiment produces. It is not a point source method when done correctly. For example, Fleischmann and Pons measured with an array of sensors a few centimeters long, as I recall, getting an average temperature. That's not a single point. Miles measured outside the cell and outside of the copper jacket surrounding the cell. A copper jacket conducts heat quickly and uniformly, so that is not a point source either. You will see that all of the other major experiments addressed this issue, and every other issue you will come up with. They know how to address these issues because people have been using this technique for 180 years, as I said.


    Other methods of calorimetry have been used to confirm the effect. I think every major method listed in Hemminger and Hohne have been used. It is not possible that every major method of calorimetry has major errors that experts are unaware of.

    Quote

    Fleischmann et al. ran 4 boil off experiments at a time, hundreds of times. They all worked as far as I know, both in the initial stage and the boil-off. They are described in the paper I listed above.


    I'll look at that paper, if it is challenging enough, on another thread (and if not I'll say why the methodology does not cut it for safe results here).

    Quote from THHuxley

    I'll loom at that paper, if it is challenging enough, on another thread (and if not I'll say why the methodology does not cut it for safe results).


    McKubre is easier to understand, and there are additional papers and books about it. It is flow calorimetry, but I do not think your concerns about that method are warranted. That method is not 180 years old, but it has been around since the late 19th century. Hemminger and Hohne describe a flow calorimeter made by Junkers in 1895 (p. 239).


    Nearly all commercial HVAC calorimetry with air and water is flow calorimetry.


    The oldest method used in modern science was ice calorimetry, Lavoisier and Laplace, 1781. That has also been used to confirm cold fusion. Lavoisier's own instrument was sensitive enough to detect many cold fusion reactions. See:


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorimetry


    Because scientists have been measuring reaction on this scale with confidence for 235 years, I think the skeptical claims that this is too difficult to measure with confidence, or that the measurements are unreliable and so on are far fetched. I think people who say such things know nothing about calorimetry.

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