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

Quote from Wyttenbach

My motives are very clear. I want to stop a silly and useless discussion between believers and deniers.

That is a damaging motive. "useless" has a lost performative. "One man's junk is another man's treasure."

To put that goal into practice requires identifying "believers" and "deniers" and "silly" and "useless." So what does Wyttenbach do to try to "stop" this discussion? Jump in to attack someone he thinks is a "denier." He's a "believer," it occurs to me.

And, yes, he attacks. He does not merely discuss. There have been some very interesting points brought up by THH and in discussion with him. If something remains after discussion, I have, in the past, taken issues to the CMNS list and have had personal discussions with the scientists.

The kind of critique that THH is engaging in is essential to cold fusion coming out of the cold. The kind of response he is getting from Wyttenbach is poisonous.

Jed is just being Jed, THH, I think you understand that. He doesn't have a lot of patience, dealing with skeptics. His attitude is the product of dealing with pseudoskeptics for two decades. Jed does not seem to hold grudges except maybe after long abuse. He will answer questions. I've disagreed strongly with him on many issues and still he is maximally helpful. He has enormous experience.

He has made some comments here that are based on impressions, not necessarily published literature. I have followed and participated in the invitation-only CMNS list since late 2009, I think it was. He's been on it forever. He is at every ICCF, for a long time, I think. (He can correct me). So he has heard Stringham discussed many times, and has met Stringham. And he has heard the opinion of other researchers about Stringham's work.

There is a serious problem in the CMNS community, and it's mentioned, as I recall, by the sociologist Bart Simon, in Undead Science. There is a reluctance to critique the work of others. This is a product of the rejection cascade. Those who have been rejected without cause, whose careful work is rejected without review by journals, based on "this is about that cold fusion nonsense," or there is similar from a reviewer (see my Current Science paper for a recent example), do not want to appear to be like the pseudoskeptics, do not want to appear to reject studies just because they see some problem in them.

I noticed that Kim and Takahashi, both of whom propose BECs in a "room temperature environment," never cite each other. I asked Kim about this at ICCF-18. He immediately rejected the question, "I never talk about the work of others."

This is not scientifically normal. It's a product of a social pathology, a social defensive reaction. Call it "circling the wagons."

Wyttenbach is naive about all this. The results look good to him and if you critique them, he attacks. In fact, THH, you know much more than he about this work, you have personal experience which he doesn't have. Wyttenbach is a Planet Rossi troll, though he is unusual in that Wyttenbach is his real name and he has a PhD. So he deserves a little respect on that basis. But cold fusion, he doesn't know, he is not in communication with the real researchers, and, yes, he is attempting to disrupt the discussion, as he admits above.

It's ironic. That would be attempted FUD, what he accuses you and others of. He will find any error or possible error in what you write and jump on it as if it proves you are an idiot.

Quote from THHuxley

It is not obscure: see my apology to Alan above, I mistook a Wyttenbach post from one from Alan.

This is one reason, I have seen for many years, why trolls can be so damaging to discussions. This kind of error is common. Trolls introduce poison and it spreads. The motive of a troll is not about the subject being discussed, it is to poke and provoke. It is "make-wrong," whereas in the best discussion the goal is "make-right," i.e,. how can I understand what you are saying so as to see the underlying experience and can agree with it, as experience if not as to conclusion. How can we find common ground? Trolls and response to them creates substantial noise, making it far more difficult to follow a discussion.

It is not necessarily easy to identify trolling when it first appears. It can look like simple disagreement, but a characteristic of it is gross incivility, a manner of speech that is hostile and provocative, accusatory.

Trolls often create uncivil response, and then there is critical response to the target of the trolling, which the troll loves. The classic advice is "do not feed the trolls," but that ignores the impact of trolling on discussions and communities. Trolls may fill discussions with what are "believable lies," and so we see the unaddressed claims of trolls being repeated by others as if fact. Trolling requires administrative attention, and if that is not prompt, damage accumulates.

How that attention is applied is another issue. Knee-jerk banning, for example, does its own damage.

It's been fascinating to watch how Quora handles offensive comments. They are draconian, but also, sometimes, easily manipulated by trolls, who poke and provoke users while staying short of clear violations themselves. However, the swift response to clear violation of civility policy has made Quora a very safe place for excellent writers, and writers develop skill at handling trolling. Basically, on Quora, authors of Answers may delete comments on their Answers, without any question or consequences, and they may block individual users from commenting.

It's fascinating to watch the response of classic trolls. They are outraged! "You deleted my comment/question without answering! Are you afraid of the truth?" And then they have done something reportable. That behavior doesn't last long, if they keep trying, they are blocked or banned.

Quote from THHuxley

(2) I have no objection to Stringham making theoretical speculations based on his experimental work. That is what anyone would do. But it is important to separate the two. The later "theory + a section on experiment" papers are not relevant to the matter of validating the experimental results. Wyttenbach would do well to make this distinction and instead of quoting 23 papers, quote the number of real initial write-ups of experiments that exist. The theory stuff is a separate matter and not relevant to replication.

Fleischmann later wrote that mentioning "fusion" was a mistake. My own analysis is that what Pons and Fleischmann should have published, and might have published if there wasn't such a rush, if there had been time to consult with nuclear physicists, a paper strictly on a heat anomaly. The consultation would have led them to dump their mention of the (weak) radiation artifact, it created much confusion. They would have emphasized from the start, "no significant radiation." And then the extensive work showing no neutrons above barely detectable levels would have been a detail. Actually confirmation, whereas it was considered "negative."

Just fact in the paper, and practically no speculation about theory, maybe one sentence mentioning "unknown nuclear reaction," given the apparent energy density. Then response would have focused almost entirely on calorimetry, where they were true experts. There may not have been the (funded!) rush to replicate (and reject, this was clearly a political motive, probably around protecting the billion dollar a year hot fusion projects, which would have many entrenched interests). It would have all been obviously premature.

So there is a heat anomaly? What is causing it? Is it error, artifact? As Jed notes, recombination is a common, knee-jerk objection, but recombination was addressed by Pons and Fleischmann. Unexpected recombination is a theme of the only standing (or sitting and almost prone, though still kicking) published skeptic, Kirk Shanahan, and he is essentially agreeing that there is an anomaly, just disputing the nuclear nature of it. Recombination is easy to address and test, and has been addressed, so Shanahan has other Rube Goldberg objections. I love his "shock waves that blow plastic off of the back of CR-39 chips in triple-track patterns." Creative. Never say die.

So, as to Stringham, the papers I read were mostly noise. He has invented theory, which we do as humans, but the focus on theory -- where the theoretical problem is enormously difficult -- vastly distracts from his results, and overwhelms them. When someone is focused so much on theory, we then do not trust their balance in evaluating the theoretical work, and confirmation bias can easily be suspected, and the file drawer effect.

Heat/helium, if confirmed with a reproducible ratio, is direct evidence of a nuclear reaction. Stringham found, in a set of three samples (which might have been from a single experiment), helium a hundred times higher than ambient. If that result had been repeated by him, with more careful attention to possible artifacts in energy and helium, and if a consistent ratio had been shown, not just a single experiment where some ratio appeared, this would have been a stunning result. This would be publishable in a mainstream journal, and would be far more likely to see replication attempts and sober response.

Now, apparently, from what THH has written, there were attempts to replicate. They failed. Again, I point to a pathology of the field. Negative replications are often not published. Storms has attempted to replicate the SPAWAR codeposition claims. He reports failure, but he never published that. It could then have been critiqued, more experimental work might have been done, and we might actually know something instead of the pile of unconfirmed reports getting larger.

If we need to, I can ask the CMNS community about Stringham (as could Jed or any other reader here who is on the CMNS list, there is at least one other).