SS-ICCF20: Independent labs confirm Vladimir Vysotskii et al. 70% reduction of radioactive, Cs137 gamma-activity observed in some biological based plastic containers inside 2 weeks!

The results reported here are:

(A) 12% reduction in Cs-133 sample assay relative to (near constant) control over 192 hours, using same sample protocol. The "active bottles" had biocultures added.

(B) 100% increase in Ba-134 sample assay in active bottles. No information about control behaviour.

(C) 20% average reduction in Cs-137 gamma activity (measured via energy of gammas) in a set of bioreactors. In selected bioreactors this went up to 70%. Over 20 days.

When you analyse the details all three results are highly flawed. That is, the reporting contains very obvious loopholes, things not checked that could likely lead to a mundane explanation. In some cases there is the implication that these things would be available in the raw data, so the fact that they are not explicitly ruled out or noted is annoying (to me - personal reaction). I will endeavor to overcome any bias that this lack of respect for readers of the report (as it seems) engenders in me. It is of course possible that this is just a bad report, and that the work is reported elsewhere with more salient detail and in a way that settles the doubts raised here.

Both (A) and (B) (taken from the same run) suffer from the fact that the samples are located in specific parts of the bottle (top, middle,bottom). All it needs is for the bio-reaction - which clearly has a large physical effect - to reduce the amount of Cs, and increase the amount of Ba in these samples and we have no transmutation. Furthermore, the lack of control data for the (B) result is anomalous. There is no reason why it should not be generated - or - if there is - the lack of control makes this methodology less useful. Even with control the methodology is not good, because of the obvious spatial changes caused by the biochemical reaction.

The linking of (A) and (B) is motivated by a proposed reaction Cs-133 -> Ba-134. This would indeed be interesting, if the experimental evidence bore it out. However the Cs-137 reduction is 20mg/l. The Ba-134 increase is 0.15mg/l. The discrepancy here is so very large that no plausible linkage can be made. The write-up however does make this linkage, suggesting proton capture as the reason for the results.

Now there are details here about how the Ba-134 and Cs-133 samples are taken. Although from the same experiment they are not comparable and processed in very different ways before being tested for concentration. So even if there were some thought-provoking quqntitative linkage the lack of uniformity in what was tested introduces much uncertainty. If anyone here feels these results deserve more examination we could go into the details more. I have not done this as much as I could yet, on the basis that there are these obvious defects that contaminate the data making more detailed examination worthless. Perhaps, though, that makes me a pseudo-skeptic? I'd hope not.

(C) is a more interesting result. There is no sampling here, hence no sampling spatial errors. Instead Cs137 gamma activity is monitored. Unfortunately there is still a potential spatial error, acknowledged by the authors:

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In order to reduce measurement errors of gamma activity, associated with a spatial redistribution of Cs137 isotope in the bottles, the measurements were performed at small and at large distances and averaged

It is this one sentence that has caused an emotional reaction in me that may alas make me biassed here. They admit that the "near field" measurement may have spatial error. They state that they also take a "far field" measurement (which would not suffer the error). Then they average the two.

This is not as stupid as it sounds. Unstated, but clear, they have two different error sources. The near field measurement suffers difficult to quantify spatial errors. The far-field measurement suffers easier to quantify error due to low signal and high noise (they mention noise issues). The motivation for averaging the two would therefore be to reduce the overall error by combining two independent sources of error.

What makes me so annoyed is that they provide no details of how this process is done. Is it arithmetic average - if so how normalised - or (a better strategy) is it geometric average? Nor what are the individual results are, so that the soundness of this method, and the likelihood for error, can be evaluated. It is treating readers as though they are idiots. And neglecting basic sanity checks.

<polite mode>
If the authors could provide more detail of their precise methodology and intermediate results in this second experiment it might be possible to evaluate whether the results do in fact indicate some unusual transmutation - or at least an anomaly that could be explained by that - or whether the results show expected spatial and noise errors added together.
</polite mode>

Regards, THH

Quote from THHuxley

The linking of (A) and (B) is motivated by a proposed reaction Cs-137 -> Ba-134.

Is that your private assumption? Or just a late evening freudsch' typo???

Thanks for the correction, though not the tone. As you well know, given the three context, it is a typo. Cs133 -> Ba134.

I will edit the original.

Quote from Abd

That may not have been what that sentence meant. This is not a formal paper, has not been subject to peer review and editing.

I agree. As a normal conference paper it is not up to scratch. High quality conferences that incorporate peer review would not accept it. As a record (in conference proceedings) of research it is too poorly written to be useful. That does not mean the author would be unable to write it up properly: I indicated as much above. And this BTW is one example of why peer review is so important, it catches most of the times like this where a writeup is so poor that it is no use to the readers.

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This is what I will say about Vysotskii:

He is a physicist, with prior established reputation.

He has shown biological transmutation in many different experiments, this is only one approach. He's unlikely to be making some obvious error -- but, of course, this cannot be completely ruled out.

I would not make such assumptions. I'm judging (and always will judge) work on its quality. The author, and his qualifications, is not the point.

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If this becomes a formal publication, that may be a time when it is more appropriate to go over it.

Well, if whomever wrote this wanted to make it a formal publication, they would find my comments helpful. Perhaps as you say they fully realise my comments, but in that case I question the tone of the paper, which reads more into these results than they merit as described here. Someone aware of this issue would, even in an informal write-up, give some indication of what was left out or show some more understanding of the gaps.

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As I have written, if someone is exercised to support this research, becoming familiar with it would be the first step. As part of this, the publications would be studied. It is amazing what one can find through this!

This was highlighted as important and ground-breaking work. If it is that it certainly deserves a much more complete write-up, probably by a different person since as a say someone conscious of the gaps here, even writing informally, would have indicated their existence and the fact that more needed to be communicated.

I'm completely open to the possibility that more significant write-ups are available elsewhere, not so highlighted here.

From the publications, the most recent (Current Science) reference:

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The cultures were grown at 20C. Activity of all closed flasks was measured every 7 days by precise large-sized Ge detector. The results of investigation of change in relative activity Q(t)/Q(0) of the isotopes are presented in Figure 4. We have observed increased rates of decay (more precisely – accelerated rate of utilization) of Cs137 isotope in all experiments with MCT and in the presence of different additional salts during 100 days. In the control experiment (flask with active water but without MCT), the ‘usual’ law of nuclear decay applies, and the half life was about   30 years. The most rapidly increasing decay rate, which occurred with effective half life  *  310 days (involving an increase in rate, and decrease in lifetime by a factor of 35 times) was observed in the presence of Ca salt. In the presence of an abnormal (redundant) quantity of potassium in the nutrient medium, the process of cesium transmutation became weak and the half life of the decay was 10 years.

With no mention of distance between detector and reactors, nor details to substantiate this. The details could well be interesting. What worries me is that the experiments are first written up (as here) in conference talks. Now, you point out these are informal presentations and lack rigor. Then there are summary papers (as the one I've just quoted) that are much better written but lack details or detailed discussion of details.

So where is the substantive write-up I can get my teeth into? This is a matter of plain courtesy to other researchers. If work is significant it needs to be accessible in some form other than ringing up the author and having a conversation. Sure, I'd do that. But not unless I had some write-up that raised significant questions and got me interested. I have not put enough time into reading the above current science paper - just tracked to the results similar to the (C) result above that we were considering. I'm open to correction from someone who has read this stuff more deeply. And always open to the possibility that a slight acquaintance with this material means I am missing something crucial. But less open to correction merely because the writer is a famous scientist and I should believe what he says. If there is merit here it can surely be written up and made accessible. If all merit resides in informal communications that is dangerous - too prone to human bias and fallibility.

I put significant time into reading the conference paper since it had details I could process. I did this for fun, and am not complaining. But if scientists are to do this, they may become discouraged if what they find is insubstantial. This is one of the perils in writing up ground-breaking research in a way that looks superficially very flaky.

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Questions will arise, and then Vysotskii can be asked. He's communicative.

To me, it is obvious that this careful process is necessary before attempting to facilitate replication.

Absolutely. But the initial stage is getting a casual reader interested enough to contemplate further study and replication, and that (for a careful reader) would require a much more sophisticated write-up than is here.

It takes a lot of time to do a good write-up, but you can quickly protect yourself by noting all the areas where you are skipping over details, or where there is some complex analysis you do not have time to cover. People may not believe your summary conclusions then, but they will realise that you are considering the matter fully and therefore be much less likely to dismiss the matter as worthy of no further work. This is not needed if you are preaching to the converted, and your readers already know or suspect that your work is significant. LENR writers perhaps are in that position, but in as far as they stay there they should not complain about mainstream scientists dismissing their work.

Maybe what LENR needs is more respect towards other people when writing stuff up?

Regards, THH

Quote from THHuxley

It takes a lot of time to do a good write-up, but you can quickly protect yourself by noting all the areas where you are skipping over details, or where there is some complex analysis you do not have time to cover. People may not believe your summary conclusions then, but they will realise that you are considering the matter fully and therefore be much less likely to dismiss the matter as worthy of no further work.

Here we fully agree! We can just ask (the Japanese?) for a replication outside Russia/Ukrainia.

The reputation trap will soon reverse: The ones who don't know about LENR will be questionned soon...