Validity of LENR Science...[split]

  • All the talk about how to get and what to do with millions of dollars of research money for LENR puzzles me. The discussions of commercialization paths and scaling up power seem completely beside the point. This is table-top science, not billion-dollar installations. How about if any of the legitimate researchers builds a reactor of any size and power and delivers it to an independent laboratory with appropriate reputation and expertise so that they can unambiguously prove that the thing works? Don't argue that this has already happened. Clearly it hasn't. If it were to happen, funding will be no problem. However, if doing that is out of the question (and please skip the usual litany of lame excuses why this should be so), why does anybody continue to think this is a real phenomenon at all?

    • Official Post

    How about if any of the legitimate researchers builds a reactor of any size and power and delivers it to an independent laboratory with appropriate reputation and expertise so that they can unambiguously prove that the thing works?


    Two problems are immediately apparent. 1. Universities won't touch it because they fear reputational damage (The Bologna EFFECT). 2. Independent testing labs like UL are very expensive places - and they don't take on jobs for fun.


    Otherwise it is a splendid idea.

  • The list should be produced by those that are doing the funding.

    However, I would of course want to mention the work at Tx Tech and SRI and perhaps even Brillouin but they seem to have independent funding.


    Celani's recent work is very interesting. I hope he starts to use redundant methods of heat output.


    But my choice would be for those who actually are in the lab trying and are willing to work with others.

    People who would welcome their benefactors and not bar them from their lab (shipping container).


    I personally think that a forum like this is best when the majority of posters remain anonymous and their status or positions do not colour their comments. Their statements should stand on their own or be referenced.


    But enough here. This should be a separate topic for another thread.

  • ANSWER TO INTERESTED OBSERVER.


    LENR has problems of understanding and of development.

    The problem- and Question is- can Bog Money help to get solutions and How?

    In other words, what is missing?


    peter

  • interested: "How about if any of the legitimate researchers builds a reactor of any size and power and delivers it to an independent laboratory with appropriate reputation and expertise so that they can unambiguously prove that the thing works?"


    That is why I said reserve 2M (i.e. 20%) for duplication, verification, and analysis and why I said 100W or 1kW levels. You can control that level on a lab bench with accurate controls and properly dump the heat. Much smaller than 100W and it is hard to convince people of scale ups.


    Today, a half $M per year is about what it takes for good lab work with material, machining, data systems and analytical support. Only a few "cold fusion" labs ever got that level of support.

  • This is table-top science, not billion-dollar installations.

    Very expensive table tops. See, for example, this machine at the ENEA:


    http://lenr-canr.org/wordpress…id=187#PhotosENEAFrascati


    This is what you need to do a cold fusion experiment. There is no point to doing one on a shoestring.

    why does anybody continue to think this is a real phenomenon at all?

    If by "this" you mean Rossi's claims, there are no reasons.


    If you mean cold fusion in general, because it has been replicated thousands of times at high signal to noise ratios in over 180 major laboratories. Replication at high s/n ratios is the only way we can ever know that a phenomenon is real. There is no other standard. When you deny that a replicated effect is real you are no longer doing science. You have rejected the scientific method. Anything might be true, and anything might be false.

  • Clearly it hasn't.

    It has possibly happened or at least is getting close! Brilliouin had SRI test a reactor that had first been tested at Brillioun's facility and then moved to SRI's facility and initial reports indicated a positive outcome. Some people will say, "no good, SRI is being paid". That is not legitimate. Someone is going to have to pay an institution to conduct expensive tests. As long as the institution is 1) legitimate 2) has expertise necessary 3) provides detailed testing and measurement protocols and 4) publishes the entire test data, then there is nothing wrong with Brilliouin paying for it. It is done all the time with new technology such as Tesla batteries etc.


    The key is how the test is performed, documented and published. Then when review takes place, any critiques is either answered or investigated with further testing and replication. Someone even has to pay CERN bills at some point!


    So, while the final conclusion has not been reached with Brilliouin/SRI, I believe so far that above steps 1 and 2 have been met. Step 3 partially. I believe that SRI stated the initial summary report is to be followed up with a complete and formal write up. If so, that could fulfill 3 and 4. Then only the review and replication needs to proceed.


    So, I would not say that it "clearly hasn't"! Not fully, perhaps, but a start?

  • Well, lots of answers with the party line of the LENR community. LENR has already been proven and replicated and it is just the entrenched and biased mainstream science community that has rejected the overwhelming evidence. Do you seriously believe this or does it just feel good? If anybody had an LENR device that actually works, they could stick it in a box and send it to NIST or NREL or any of a number of other places and tell them to repeat the experiment. Do you really think they wouldn't do it? They have tested lots of other "free energy" devices in the past but alas, they didn't work. Let someone who says they have a working LENR reactor step forward and offer to have it tested by interested laboratories and see what happens. I dare them. You really think they won't get volunteers? If they have something that works, it will work for someone else in a different place. Or does it require magic and a special stethoscope?


    And don't howl about intellectual property or other lame excuses. And Jed, I don't think you really understand the term "replication" as applied to science. When an experiment is replicated, other people can follow the recipe and get the same results. I'm not even sure that anybody in this field can follow their own recipe and get the same results. Does this show that the phenomenon doesn't exist? Hardly. Perhaps there is a real effect. But what has happened so far sure doesn't provide any confidence that there is even if there are 10,000 unrelated and irreproducible reports (see UFOs). What is it you claim has been replicated in 180 laboratories? I mean specifically. Doing some sort of experiment with palladium or nickel and measuring "excess heat" of some magnitude by some method or another does not constitute replication of anything.


    And I am of course speaking in general. As for Rossi, he is unequivocally a fraud and probably has done more damage to legitimate research in LENR than any perceived conspiracy or suppression effort. There is nothing like a con man to taint an entire field and there is nothing like believing a con man that destroys the credibility of anybody who does so.

  • Plenty of LENR experiments have been replicated...


    You just haven't bothered to do enough research before opening your mouth.


    One strategy at this stage of a trial might be to provide a minimum of evidence needed to get an allegation into the pleadings, so that the other party can be wrongfooted later on with further evidence.

    I belive ambushing with evidence would be heavily frowned upon (It is in England).


    The point of discovery (or disclosure as we call a similar phase), is to allow the other side the time to prepare counter-arguments, in the interests of fairness.


    The only way round this rule AFAIK, is to not use a lawyer, then adduce whatever 'hidden' evidence you please from the witness stand. The court will assume you just didn't know the rules ;) Very useful when you know opposing witnesses (for the plaintiff/Crown only) intend to perjure themselves...


    Your mileage in Federal Court may vary.

    Edited once, last by Zeus46 ().

  • Replicated thousands of times in over 180 laboratories? Maybe so. But I wonder what the average COP is. Most of all I wonder if any one particular method has been replicated in a laboratory independent of the original workers.

  • they could stick it in a box and send it to NIST or NREL

    Actually not. NIST or NREL does not conduct testing simply because someone asks.
    There are costs involved there as well. Plus they also test to established standards. What standard will one provide to tell them to test a CF / LENR device to?

    I do not believe NIST tests theoretical matters at all. They test calibrations, accuracy of equipment, etc. So to conduct a "COP" test would not fall under their scope to my understanding.


    I agree, that there are institutions that could test a LENR reactor. But it is not as simple as packing one in a box and sending it out. Any proper test by a proper institute would cost a significant amount of money, probably in the tens of thousands minimum, and there would have to be much upfront collaboration on exactly what was being tested. Fixture design, controls, safety, protocol, etc. etc.


    Follow MFMP and see what all they have done and they find errors after much planning.


    Not a simple or easy task for sure. To pay, very expensive as well!

  • Quote

    When an experiment is replicated, other people can follow the recipe and get the same results. I'm not even sure that anybody in this field can follow their own recipe and get the same results.

    The Brillouin experiment has been replicated, but with the same experimental setup so any systematic calorimetry errors could lead to replicable false positives. Since there is an obvious possible cause for these not yet considered by SRI (at leat not mentioned in the preliminary report) that is a hole that will need to be closed before the work can be evidence of LENR.

  • if I had the 10 million that Rossi was given, I wouldspread about 8M around to about 4 researchers allocated over about 4 years with thepurpose of developing something that can be engineered to levels above 100 W oror better to 1k

    If there's one lesson we have learned over the last 28 years, it is that developing excess heat producing reactors without any attempt to understand the underlying processes producing that heat, is hugely unproductive and time wasting. Science proceeds by devising experiments to test hypotheses. Little progress has been made, or will be made by randomly changing parameters or scaling up a device. The top priority should be elucidating the basic science not blindly racing towards an improbable commercial reactor. Once we understand the basic science (e.g. the reactions responsible) it will be obvious how to engineer safe reliable working devices.

    • Official Post

    The top priority should be elucidating the basic science


    And what kind of armchair would you be sitting in while you did that? Right now, we have a territory but no maps worth a damn. If we had a map we could make faster progress for sure. But we are stuck with an unknown and unexplored continent, LENR Land. There are theories galore about what we might find there, and how we might find it - but few if any have proven to be reliable with (perhaps) some of the Pd/D work - which has a relatively long history of course. That helps.


    So we need to explore and pencil in a few features on the map -ho? By exploring the territory - you see, exploration and map-making walk hand in hand.

  • @Bob: of course I did not literally mean to stick the reactor in a box and Fedex it to a lab. It would take some back-and-forth communications to arrange a test. My point is that if a researcher had an LENR reactor that he/she was confident demonstrated the effect, they could send their data to a lab along with the offer to send the reactor to that lab for independent testing. I know enough scientists in such places to confidently say that they could easily find someone to do a test under those circumstances. On the other hand, finding someone to do an orchestrated piece of nonsense a la Rossi is an entirely different matter. And yes, everything costs money but lack of budget would not prevent such a test from happening if the opportunity was presented appropriately.


    I really don't understand where this wildly distorted view of scientists comes from on LENR websites. Scientists are the most curious and most interested people in the world in new phenomena. Show them something with real promise and they go nuts (see superconductivity in 1986/7.) Given the opportunity to get their hands on a device displaying an exciting new phenomenon, any scientist worth beans would jump at the opportunity. The notion that only a bunch of internet science groupies are the only truly openminded people in the world is just dumb.

  • interested observer,


    What you're asking for is often called a "lab rat" experiment in LENR circles. Everyone would like for there to be such an experiment. There is little to no dispute that there currently is not such an experiment. Different people will have different views of what can be concluded from this fact. But people are trying to get such an experiment sorted out.

  • Eric Walker,


    It isn't necessary to conclude anything from the lack of such an experiment. My only contention is the the claim that LENR been proven and replicated and so forth is not backed up by the facts. If it was true, funding and widespread research would be a no-brainer. Coming up with conspiracy theories, claims of suppression, and the idea of some sort of locked-arm intransigence by all of science are just ways of avoiding the fact that the existing evidence is not convincing to almost anyone who looks at it (apart from the frankly cultish group that frequents sites like this one.) The knee-jerk reaction is that if you don't agree, then you didn't really look at the data. These days, it seems as if the societal norm is that if somebody disagrees with your point of view, they must either be an idiot or corrupt. There is always the alternative, however: they might also be right and you might be wrong.

  • LENR has already been proven and replicated and it is just the entrenched and biased mainstream science community that has rejected the overwhelming evidence.

    LENR was proved and replicated by the mainstream science community, and the results were published in mainstream peer-reviewed journals. Other mainstream scientists rejected it. That often happens in science.

    Do you seriously believe this or does it just feel good?

    Facts are facts. You can read the peer-reviewed papers at LENR-CANR.org.

    If anybody had an LENR device that actually works, they could stick it in a box and send it to NIST or NREL or any of a number of other places and tell them to repeat the experiment.

    U.S. National Laboratories were among those who did the experiments. NREL did not, as far as I know, but they do engineering, not experimental physics.

    Do you really think they wouldn't do it?

    NREL is free to read the literature and replicate cold fusion anytime they like. Anyone with a few years, a staff of experts, and several million dollars can do it. It is much easier than replicating the Higgs boson, for example, or sending a robot explorer to Mars. Texas Tech. is spending $6 million. That is probably enough, if they have good people.

    Let someone who says they have a working LENR reactor step forward and offer to have it tested by interested laboratories and see what happens. I dare them. You really think they won't get volunteers?

    "Volunteers" can no more replicate a cold fusion experiment than they could perform a heart transplant. You seem to have no idea what it takes to do these experiments. Have you read the literature? Have you, at least, looked at the photos of laboratories here:


    http://lenr-canr.org/wordpress/?page_id=187


    Does that stuff look like a "volunteer" would have it?

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