Industrial Heat to Organize ICCF21 in Raleigh, NC

What IH lacks is a single example of a working technology that produces respectable amounts of power. Abd thinks they are laughing all the way to the bank? I bet they are not very amused on the way to court and immense legal fees. Jones Day doesn't come cheap.

Quote from BBCK777

Sorry, but this is not a good idea to put an investment firm in charge, especially since we are not sure of IH motives.

Who is "we"?

The decision on the ISCMNS side would likely have been made by the Executive Committee, and the last list of members is from 2015:

Collis, William
Celani, Francesco
Dufour Jacques
Li Xingzhong
Edmund Storms
Jean Paul Biberian

Industrial Heat is the "host," not necessarily "in charge."

Edit: the speculation here -- given as such -- was likely technically incorrect. While the ISCMNS executive committee might have a kind of authority over the ICCF International Advisory Committee, the latter is probably the functional body that made the decision. See this ICCF-20 page on the IAC: http://iccf20.net/contents/Organization.html .. and it gives the members:

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International Advisory Committee

Yuri Nikolaevich Bazhutov (IZMIRAN, Russian Academy of Science, Russia)
Jean-Paul Biberian (Aix-Marseille University, France)
Francesco Celani (INFN-Frascati, Italy)
William Collis (ISCMNS, UK)
Robert Duncan (Texas Tech University, USA)
Frank Gordon (SPAWAR, retired, USA)
Igor Goryachev (Kurchatov Institute, Russia)
Peter Hagelstein (MIT, USA)
Yeong E. Kim (Purdue Universiry, USA)
Tony La Gatta (University of Ferrara, TSEM, Italy)
Xing-Zhong Li (Tsinghua University, China)
Michael McKubre (SRI, USA)
Michael Melich (Naval Postgraduate School, USA)
George H. Milley (Univ. of Illinois, USA)
David Nagel (The George Washington University, USA)
Sunwon Park (KAIST, Korea)
Akito Takahashi (Technova, Inc., JAPAN)
Zhong-Qun Tian (Xiamen University, China)
Mahadeva Srinivasan (BARC, retired, India)
Vittorio Violante (ENEA, Italy)

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Quote from AlainCo

@Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax

about need of theory, I agree that rejection cascade was based on theory, and that first there is experiments, BUT
the error I supported too long is to imagine
- that you can make experiments and replication without an embryo of theory to test, saying when it should work, and what is a replication or a non-replication (credit to Edmund Storms to have changed my mind)
- that you can make something usable without a theory, and something powerful that cannot explode or irradiate without a theory, or simply make an industry which improve process without a theory to guide engineers (credit for JF Geneste to have explained this engineering problem)

Great, Alain. There is an issue of what a "theory" is. The term can be used to refer to any hypothesis, but it is being used by Storms, in particular, to refer to a family of hypotheses. In Storms' "explanation," as he calls it, these are strung together, but they are actualls severable. In his mind, they are one piece, and that is part of the difficulty he is having communicating.

An experiment without a hypothesis to test is not really an experimental test, it is merely an exploration (which can have some use, for sure!). When I am referring to "theory" not being "necessary," I am referring to what might be called a "fundamental theory." I.e., an understanding of the root process occurring, that can then be used to predict results quantitatively (which can be statistical in nature under some conditions). It is possible to have a root theory that is still impossible to calculate (because of the complexity of the solid state), but it is not, then, testable, and the value of this theory in prediction is weak.

Storms' explanation includes, as an example, the idea that the Nuclear Active Environment is surface cracks. This is a potentially useful hypothesis that may be testable. Such hypotheses can be quite useful in guiding experiment.

However, how about his hypothesis that the heat is released through "slow fusion," a gradual process which releases heat as low-energy X-rays *before* the nuclei actually fuse, and that this process continues until there is no energy to dissipate if the nuclei fuse, and then they they actually fuse?

At this point, this provides no experimental guidance, other than something very specific -- and that appears to be missing. This would produce lower-than-ground-state-mass nuclei, a whole series of nuclear isomers. Nothing like that has ever been observed. So this hypothesis then requires additional hypotheses to explain that, besides the fact that this totally overturns our understanding of what fusion energy comes from. It does not exist until the nuclei actually fuse! This is an energy released, as I understand it, from a more efficient packing of the nuclei under the strong force, which I might call the insanely-strong force! As the nucleons collapse into this state, they get hot, the nucleus is then excited, and then stuff happens....

The "slow fusion" hypothesis does predict low energy X-rays, but so do other theories. Searching for those X-rays is of interest, for sure, but ... does not give us any guidance at all as to how to facilitate this reaction. The crack theory does that.

Are cracks a necessary component of cold fusion? No, that would be jumping ahead. When I support Storms' crack theory, it is only in the context of the FP Heat Effect with electrolytic PdD experiments. His crack hypothesis is plausible, supported by some extant evidence, but not proven.

However, if something works there, it may apply to other environments. Ed explicitly makes the assumption of a single effect. While he might be correct, this assumption then creates many difficulties that remain unexplained and unexplored, perhaps.

Any theory can be used to generate testable predictions, and there is a value in this even if the theories are incorrect.

However, I look at a different function for theory. Ed seems to believe that cold fusion cannot be accepted without explanatory theory. In my view, deficient explanatory theory was behind much of the rejection cascade, starting with a premature hypothesis from Pons and Fleischmann that their measured heat was the result of fusion (later clarified as "unknown nuclear reaction," though "nuclear" was also premature).

Now, this needs to be understood about transformation in science, paradigm shifts. The mainstream is not going to reject its own strong ideas without strong evidence. Until Miles showed the heat/helium correlation, there was no *direct* evidence that the FP Heat Effect was nuclear in nature. Because of the premature claims, that whole mess, the mainstream was sensitized to think of cold fusion claims as bogus, experimental error, possibly worse.

Normally, without that, and once Miles was confirmed, the balance would have shifted and at that point -- with no explanatory theory -- LENR would have been accepted as a mystery to be explored. In fact, the Miles evidence and confirmations were largely overlooked, and when I came into the field in 2009 and began to learn about it, heat/helium was relatively obscure and not much discussed. As I realized this, I began to realize a major direction forward, and worked for it, starting with encouraging Storms to write a paper on it.

In fits and starts, this moved forward and now there is a steam engine running on that track. This is happening.

We need, now, what have been called "lab rats." That is LENR experiments that are reliable and reproducible. As yet, all theories are inadequate to reliably create these, this is largely trial and error. Some theories may suggest some approaches that will be tested. However, to imagine that we must have an explanatory theory first is putting the cart before the horse. We need more data to vet theories and to be able to better develop them. Are those X-rays being emitted? What is the spectrum?

It would go without saying that they should be correlated with heat (which has never been properly done with CF X-rays). "Correlation" does not mean "commensurate with." That was an early error that confused many -- and this also applies to tritium production.

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my concept of theory however is not the mathematical theory that physicist are fond of, and too much used with. The early theory involving minimum loading and current density was a beginning. It may be phenomenological or even "romantic" with loose concept, but it have to work and predict correctly.

Sure. However, the work is not done until the math is done.

There is a theory that high loading is necessary for PdD results. That's useful. It may also be incorrect, but nevertheless could lead in the right direction for a time.

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Of course experiment is the key, but even experiment need some theory to drive and interpret them, and YES since theorist are like a herd of cat, and prefer math to experiments, this is unmanageable.

Interpretation is not the first step with experimental results. Discovering correlations is crucial. (A related term is "controls.")

Theory without verifiable predictions is almost totally useless. Some think that "plausibility" is important. Maybe. It's also quite possible that the "true cold fusion theory" will appear totally implausible to us, because of unrecognized assumptions we hold.
.

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This is why LENR don't advance. we need theory to drive experiments, which will drive theories, but theory seems to develop independently from experiment in real life.
It is broken.

To some extent, explanatory theory has been demanded by journals. This is part of what kept cold fusion research suppressed. Rejections based on lack of theory has then inspired, my opinion, reaction from some researchers who have bought the idea that explanatory theory is necessary.

Anomalous heat is a fact that can be reported. Helium production is a fact that can be reported. That these correlate is a fact that can be reported.

How that actually happens is almost irrelevant, at the first level of response! It confuses everyone. The primary question is, does it happen or doesn't it? This is a far, far easier question to explore than "why does it happen?"

And then, can we make this happen reliably? If so, we can then explore what has been called the "parameter space." We can create tests of various theories, once we have standard conditions where we can see the effect and then vary one condition at a time. As we do this, knowledge will expand and more and more researchers, including theoreticians, will become involved.

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EDIT: one cause of misunderstanding is that my vision toward a theory is mostly experimental. People are too much focused on armchair theoretical research and experiments are the core of theoretical research. We need more experiments, more investigation, more instruments, more tests, more parameter space exploration... once done, theory will be natural like finding the murderer after good interviews and good forensic

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In my experience, seemingly intractable and puzzling situations resolve with increased experience, and it does not necessarily happen through "logic" and "figuring it out." It happens when some internal critical mass is reached, there is enough data for intuition to operate, and if one avoids jumping to conclusions, this can evolve and become more and more clear.

My understanding of the Patterson affair was that he wanted to retain total ownership and control.

I don't think that Industrial Heat wants total ownership and control of the entire LENR field. I think they just want their fingers in every LENR pie so they can have a stake (minority or majority) in any restaurant that opens. My thinking is that they are determined to have first access to any working LENR technology on the planet.

Quote from Hermes

Abd Ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:

As I understand the history, at ICCF14 In Washington at the ISCMNS Annual General Meeting an informal proposal was made that ISCMNS should oversee the management of ICCF conferences. At ICCF15 in Rome the matter was discussed by the International Advisory Committee (IAC) but no decision was made. Consequently it is the IAC not ISCMNS which still appoints the ICCF chairman / organizer.

It appears that Abd is speculating without checking the facts.

Incidentally, Dewey Weaver made it very clear to all at the ICCF-20 dinner that his bid to host ICCF-21 was tentative. In the unlikely event he should need to withdraw I have no doubt that other US benefactors will step in. ICCF-21 will go ahead in the USA in 2018.

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I did speculate, and that was explicit. I have now edited the original post to give the ICCF-20 IAC members, see Industrial Heat to Organize ICCF21 in Raleigh, NC

As to the rest, I do not treat the testimony of anonymous users as probative on anything, unless readily verifiable. I was able to verify the assertion about the IAC, and, I think, the assertion about the history of proposals, though Hermes did not give links. However, as to what "Dewey Weaver made clear," I have seen no acceptable testimony. This is, without an identified and responsible witness, merely a rumor. I'm not saying that Hermes is wrong, and maybe he was even there. I agree with the conclusion.