How many times has the Pons-Fleischmann Anomalous Heating Event been replicated in peer reviewed journals?

  • Boy are LENR supporters adverse to defending their positions or even elucidating them. Ask any question and you are told to go read a bunch of papers. How about if you guys explain to us woefully ignorant people what you find so compelling in a paper and why it should be taken seriously. If you can't do that, then your own belief is based on blind faith. And skip the BS about spoon feeding. That is just a bogus way to say "I can't produce a cogent argument."


    However, if that is outside of the bounds of what should be going on here, then what is this website for? We have ECW where you can spend your time declaring the great victory that has already occurred for LENR and how it is going to be used in lawnmowers, helicopters and dishwashers starting next week. I thought this was a place for serious discussion, not cheerleading.

  • I'll check further when I have more time but I am pretty sure the paper KS cited is not the one that impressed me. THAT paper is probable the one I remember where I noticed three thermistors arranged *radially* in the wall of the cell, IIRC. I asked why someone would do that and did not receive a reply. Anyway, I will look some more. I am trying to remember where the knock out claims Jeff linked to came from but I am having trouble... it was maybe six months ago in a similar discussion... there were IIRC three links in the email... may have been Japan but I am very unsure about that. Anyway, it was in the range of 100W sustained for many hours and very clearly graphed, unlike most LENR documents. I will look at bookmarks again.


    Quote

    Please give him the link Jed! Everyone deserves a chance to redeem themselves...

    That is a pompous, inane and asinine remark (note to admins: I am addressing the remark, not the person)

  • 1) If you don't read it, you are worthless scum (unless you embrace it sight unseen.)


    2) If you read it and criticize it, you are a crackpot.


    3) If you accept it as the gospel according to Jed, you are golden.

    1. If you do not read it, you have no business critiquing or discussing it. It is extremely unscientific to blather about experiments you know nothing about, and if you do not read, you do not know. That is clear from the confusion and the errors in messages here from people who have not read the literature.


    2. If you read it and criticize it, join the club. There are thousands of papers and many of them are duds, as I have pointed out countless time.


    3. No one could "accept" all of the literature because it is so contradictory. Much of it is wrong, as I said. This is normal for science at this stage in its development. See:


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

  • Boy are LENR supporters adverse to defending their positions or even elucidating them. Ask any question and you are told to go read a bunch of papers. How about if you guys explain to us woefully ignorant people what you find so compelling in a paper and why it should be taken seriously. If you can't do that, then your own belief is based on blind faith. And skip the BS about spoon feeding. That is just a bogus way to say "I can't produce a cogent argument."


    However, if that is outside of the bounds of what should be going on here, then what is this website for? We have ECW where you can spend your time declaring the great victory that has already occurred for LENR and how it is going to be used in lawnmowers, helicopters and dishwashers starting next week. I thought this was a place for serious discussion, not cheerleading.


    http://journals.plos.org/ploso…69895#pone.0169895.ref007


    This is Holmlid's newest peer reviewed paper on chemically induced nuclear reactions.


    You can go through the paper and develop questions and If I can answer them then I will, but if I can't then once we have formulated the question meticulously then we can ask Holmlid directly for clarification. I am excited to interact in the exploration of such an exciting subject.

  • Louis Reed writes:


    Rossi vs. Darden aftermath discussions




    JedRothwell wrote: That was a tally by Britz, not me. It was made in the mid to late 1980s.


    What on earth are you talking about? You can't tally replications before the experiment being replicated has been performed.


    I was referring to a paper dated 2009, entitled "Tally of Cold Fusion Papers", for which you (Jed Rothwell) are listed as the only author. Britz's database is one of the sources, but so is your lenr-canr database. In that paper, there is a topic "Positive, peer-reviewed excess heat papers culled from both databases", which is presumably a superset of refereed replications of P&F. The description says "The titles are culled from both [databases]", so it was you doing the tallying, not Britz, even if you used his database. And the complete list of 153 papers is given in an appendix, and it includes a paper by Arata in 2008, so it clearly post-dates Storms' table 2, published in 2004, which you claimed represents 180 "highly reputable university and government labs" that replicated P&F.


    Furthermore, according to your own paper, the list of 153 refereed papers represents only 51 different affiliations, and not all of those are universities or government labs, since they include e.g. BlackLight Power, Toyota's IMRA, and Swartz's JET Energy.


    Quote Not all of the 180 institutions published papers in the peer-reviewed literature.


    Yes, that's what I argued, and that's what doesn't make sense. A highly reputable university or government lab that claims replication of cold fusion would not be reputable if it didn't publish.


    Quote There were 180 institutions in Table 2. I counted them long ago.


    You may have counted them, but I don't believe you got to 180:


    1. There are only about 180 entries, and Miles accounts for 9 of them, Zhang and Arata another 9, Eagleton and Bush for 7. There are at least 7 other authors (or author groups) with 5 or more entries, and 28 others with 2 to 5. Now some entries may represent more than one affiliation, but there is no way to make up for the multiple entries from many institutions. This is obvious when you consider the following...


    2. All but about 45 of the authors listed in Storms table are accounted for in your list of principal authors responsible for the excess heat papers you tallied. The overlap is probably even stronger since Storms lists first author (and 2nd if there are only 2), and not necessarily principal author. And your list corresponds to 51 affiliations. So, that means the remaining 45 authors would have to account for 129 additional affiliations.


    So, it's clear from your own writing that 180 affiliations is not justifiable, let alone 180 highly reputable university and government institutions.


    Such a cavalier misrepresentation of the contents of your own paper kind of destroys your credibility with respect to the rest of the cold fusion literature. Of course, in the Trump era, dishonesty seems to win a loyal following.

  • Kev wrote: "Call up MIT and ask why they fraudulently chose to hide their positive results."


    They didn't. (Please don't bring up the 1999 Infinite Energy - Gene Mallove report on this. Gene didn't know what he was talking about. He assumed baseline shifts indicated CF. They might, but they also come from lots of other things. So when the MIT guys clipped their preliminary figure to include only one region where the baseline was stable, and then called that level 'zero', Gene got mad. Likewise when they averaged their data to smooth out the curves a bit. We all do things like that, all the time. No big deal. But Gene got mad. He did that a lot from what I observed over the years. as I mentioned elsewhere, if what MIT was 'wrong' so is what McKubre did with his data in his 1998 EPRI report. )

  • Kev wrote: "Call up MIT and ask why they fraudulently chose to hide their positive results."


    They didn't. (Please don't bring up the 1999 Infinite Energy - Gene Mallove report on this. ....


    That was a case of fraud, which some of the people around here as so acutely attuned to. Naturally when the fraud comes from the skeptopaths, suddenly the requirements for proving fraud are sky high.


    Yes, in LENR, the only time we’ve seen a verified fraud was from MIT when they fraudulently changed their results that were actually positive. A report by Dr. Eugene Mallove explains how MIT falsified tests of Pons and Fleishmann back in 1989 in order to squash cold fusion. They wanted to maintain their lucrative hot fusion research grants. This fraud by MIT is partly responsible for setting back cold fusion research over the past 25 years.

    http://www.infinite-energy.com/images/pdfs/mitcfreport.pdf

  • kirkshanahan wrote:

    "Kev wrote: "Call up MIT and ask why they fraudulently chose to hide their positive results."


    They didn't. (Please don't bring up the 1999 Infinite Energy - Gene Mallove report on this. ...."


    and Kev replied:

    "That was a case of fraud, which some of the people around here as so acutely attuned to. Naturally when the fraud comes from the skeptopaths, suddenly the requirements for proving fraud are sky high.


    Yes, in LENR, the only time we’ve seen a verified fraud was from MIT when they fraudulently changed their results that were actually positive. A report by Dr. Eugene Mallove explains how MIT falsified tests of Pons and Fleishmann back in 1989 in order to squash cold fusion. They wanted to maintain their lucrative hot fusion research grants. This fraud by MIT is partly responsible for setting back cold fusion research over the past 25 years.



    http://www.infinite-energy.com/images/pdfs/mitcfreport.pdf "


    You really can't read can you Kev. I ask you to not bring up the Mallove report because he was wrong, and explain in detail, and then you bring up the Mallove report. You're a hopeless fanatic. I think we have to name anew planet after you and Jed. How about Planet Kevijed...


    You wrote "verified fraud". Please explain this and document your explanation with evidential references.


  • You really can't read can you Kev. I ask you to not bring up the Mallove report because ...

    You can't read either, can you? It was proven that MIT lied about their positive results but you keep coming back for more and more, crackpot that you are. There's a difference between not being able to read and choosing not to answer a crackpot on his own terms.

  • That was a tally by Britz, not me. It was made in the mid to late 1980s.


    What on earth are you talking about? You can't tally replications before the experiment being replicated has been performed.

    Obviously, I meant to write "late 1990s." Please do pretend you have found a significant error when anyone can see it was typo. Surely you do not think I believe in time travel.

    In that paper, there is a topic "Positive, peer-reviewed excess heat papers culled from both databases", which is presumably a superset of refereed replications of P&F. The description says "The titles are culled from both [databases]", so it was you doing the tallying, not Britz,

    Good catch. It was from both.


    I counted 180 institutions somewhere. Probably my own database, since it is easier to count things with an EndNote file than by hand.

  • Kev wrote (as expected): "You can't read either, can you? It was proven that MIT lied about their positive results but you keep coming back for more and more, crackpot that you are. There's a difference between not being able to read and choosing not to answer a crackpot on his own terms. "


    So, I prepared a detailed response based on the referenced document (http://www.infinite-energy.com/images/pdfs/mitcfreport.pdf ).


    This is a 57 page document, but on pg 16 is the following: “The preceding is the basic story of what went on at MIT in 1989-1992.”

    So I’ll stick to the basic story and not worry about what follows. Most of it is just copies of letters sent and received, and other communications. Not too relevant to the technical issue of fraudulent data, which is the only part I want to discuss. Gene really gets off on describing the ‘goings on’ of the time, but they hold no interest to me. There was ‘bad behavior’ on both sides of the fence then, as well as now. It doesn’t impact the data and data analysis.


    Gene Mallove’s “fraudulent data” case is summarized on page 12 (entitled “Graphic Proof of Serious Scientific Misconduct at MIT in 1989”). He shows two sets of data figures, one from a draft of a paper he obtained, the other from the published version. He refers to an analysis by Dr. M Swartz (Mitchell, co-teaches the “MIT” cold fusion course, "Nanor"-man) that purports to show the data has been falsified.


    Two things were done to the data between the draft and final version. First, it was averaged, and a smooth curve was replaced by the averages plotted as round points. Big deal, this is typical data workup practice. The only thing it does is make it harder to see the very prominent noise spike in the data. Since noise spikes are normally considered noise, which is why they are called ‘noise’ spikes, that influences nothing. I suppose some CF advocate would say “But that was cold fusion!” To which I’d respond, “Only if it is at least partially reproduced.”, which it isn’t. It’s noise, so no big deal. Ed Storms had one in his data too. Nobody made anything of it either. So the averaging is No Big Deal.


    The second thing done was to clip the data to a constant baseline region, and define the average of that baseline as 0. Swartz finds this awful. Mallove quotes him as saying “- The Phase-II methodology is flawed because it masks a constant [steady-state] excess heat. “ As I’ve mentioned before, baseline shifts arise from multiple causes. Yes, it *might* be CF, but it is might also be due to noise. Until control is demonstrated over this baseline shift via CF-related variables, the shift should be taken to be caused by noise and not a specific cause like “CF”. So Swartz’s (and Mallove’s) predisposition to see CF everywhere prejudices their analysis. The MIT folks knew this kind of thing could happen which is why they simplified the data presentation to avoid silly questions from amateurs about the shift. There were of course scads of amateurs commenting on this stuff back then (kinda like now). Also recall that I pointed out Ed Storms also had baseline shifts in his data going in the wrong direction!


    If one is going to get incensed over this manipulation, one should surely accuse Dr. M. McKubre of fraud too. His 1998 EPRI report contains a run designated as the M4 run. My analysis of his data showed big baseline shifts in the vicinity of his only excess heat peak in that run, but his published figures shows a perfectly flat baseline extending beyond where I saw baseline shifts. So, by Mallove’s standards, McKubre is fraudulent. I rather suspect that Mallove’s standards (and Swartz’s) are wrong. At least the MIT folks didn’t extend the flat baseline beyond its actual range.


    So in conclusion, the two manipulations performed were a) usual, and b) non-impactful.


    The actual baseline shift we are talking about in the MIT data might be as much as 20 mW based on a comment on a meeting that Gene writes: “January 25, 1991 Mallove has lunch at “Networks” in MIT Student Center with Dr. Luckhardt. Luckhardt can’t explain how “bias” was taken out. Luckhardt said there could be 20 milliwatts excess power in the MIT PFC results, but “not the 80 mW that Fleischmann was talking about.””


    Also note from that, as per the reports of the time, the MIT guys were looking for a jump in signal, an onset, as per this comment, not a simple baseline shift.


    Gene also writes:

    “There was likely no grand “conspiracy” to suppress a positive finding for excess heat in the MIT PFC Phase-II calorimetry,”


    “So, the data was “fudged.” I can think of another F-word—beyond “fudging”—that applies. It is closer to the truth.”


    “My conclusions about the inappropriate data manipulation at the MIT PFC are my own and my opinions about the implications of this data mishandling are to be considered distinct from Dr. Swartz’s.”


    Reading the document, it is clear Mallove has an axe to grind, and he tries to use the data manipulation to put a sharp edge on his beliefs. Unfortunately, it really just dulls it.



    So what we have in this forum is Kevin spouting standard CF propaganda without the ability to defend his position, and then immediately descending into ad hominem attack. Typical true believer behavior.

  • Uhh, what we have here is that you posted your rebuttal and Mallove is dead


    On April 20, 2012, the Norwich Bulletin stated that: "An ongoingmurder trial came to an abrupt halt Friday when Chad Schaffer, of Norwich, decided to accept an offer of 16 years in prison, pleading guilty to the lesser charge of first-degree manslaughter in the 2004 beating death of Eugene Mallove."

    Eugene Mallove - Wikipedia

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




    so he can no longer answer your nonsense. But it's good to know where you posted your stuff so that anyone interested in what you have to say can go over there and be fascinated by it.

  • That'a way to avoid answering the question... so once more... no verified fraud hey? So again, what did you think of Defkalion?



    https://matslew.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/defkalion-demo-proven-not-to-be-reliable/

    No, it's a way of expressing that I suspect your post is probably going to be moved to the junkyard thread. If you want me to answer and have confidence it will stay up, you can post it on the Cold Fusion DISQUS site.


    https://disqus.com/home/channel/coldfusion/

  • I counted 180 institutions somewhere. Probably my own database, since it is easier to count things with an EndNote file than by hand.

    Actually, it was Louis Reed who wrote that. He seems to be whittling down your 180 institutions number, and I'd like to know what that gets whittled down to. He did a similar thing to the 153 peer reviewed replications number. I just want to know what an ordinary scientest would accept as the number of peer reviewed replications and how many labs...

  • I just want to know what an ordinary scientest would accept as the number of peer reviewed replications and how many labs...

    What does it matter? If this were treated rationally, like any other experiment, five replications at places like Los Alamos, China Lake and BARC would convince everyone. There would be no argument. Debating whether it has been replicated at 180 labs or only 90 is absurd. Either number is far greater than any rational scientist would demand for proof. It is like arguing whether you should spend $100 million repairing your Toyota Corolla transmission, or only $52 million.

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