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

    Quote from interested observer

    I can assure you that my comments on this forum are not moving science in any direction, nor are they intended to, nor could they.

    Then why do you make these comments? What is the point? This is a science-oriented forum. If you comments contribute nothing to science, and if -- as you say -- you have not read the papers and you know nothing about the subject, why do you muddy the waters with ignorant, baseless assertions?


    Suppose you were to visit a forum devoted to Italian Opera. Imagine you express strong opinions about a performance of La Traviata. Following that, you say: "By the way, I have never seen this performance. Actually, I have never seen any Italian opera; I don't speak a word of Italian; and I have no interest in music." That would be inappropriate, wouldn't it? It would be idiotic. The people at the forum would say: "Then what are you doing here?!? Why do you have an opinion about something you know nothing about?"


    Why do you think it is okay to do that there?

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    Personally I'm unwilling to substitute deliberate malfeasance for incompetence when we are at such a distance,

    It is often difficult to tell them apart. Sometimes both contribute to a fiasco. Or what starts off as incompetence devolves into a cover-up and malfeasance. This happens in science, and in other disasters such as failed business ventures, programming fiascoes such at the introduction of Obamacare, and military tragedies such as the Battle of the Somme.

    Quote from Jed Rothweil

    This is a science-oriented forum.


    How's the air up on that high horse? Would you care to estimate what percentage of the comments on this site are about science and what percentage (including your own comments) are personal attacks, speculations about conspiracies, musings about legal trials, personal assessments of various individuals, challenges to members being here at all, complaints about moderators, pissing and moaning about the mistreatment of LENR researchers, attacks on plasma physicists, pointless repetition of publication and replication statistics and so on? If 10% of this site is actually about science, I would be surprised. If even 50% of your posts are about science as opposed to dissing and dismissing anyone who crossed you, I would be amazed. Like many of your fellow acolytes here, you approve of anything as long as it is on "your side" and are offended and dismissive of everything else. So why do you think it is okay to do that here?

    Quote from interested observer

    How's the air up on that high horse?

    I suggest you address the issue. Why are you expressing strong opinions about a technical subject you know nothing about? You agree that you know nothing, and you are contributing nothing. You just said that!


    What are you trying to accomplish? Are you hoping to impress people?


    You mention "personal attacks, speculations about conspiracies, musings about legal trials" and so on. These subjects do come up here. They are not technical. You can comment on them with as much authority as anyone else. You may know more about legal trials than I do, because I know practically nothing. So, as long as the discussion is about one these other things, you should feel free to contribute.


    But, when the discussion turns to a technical issue in a specific experiment described in a particular paper, such as the role of the resistance heater in McKubre's calorimeter, if you have not read that paper, and you have no idea what that that resistance heater is for, then you should not express an opinion. You should certainly not make bold, general assertions about the entire field. Anyone who has read the literature can see you have no idea what you are talking about. For example, this statement of yours is completely off the wall:


    "I think the existence of LENR - to extent that there is even a well-formed definition of the phenomenon - is still an open question."


    As I said, I could give a 20-minute lecture off the top of my head describing the well-formed definition of cold fusion. Anyone who has read the literature can do this. This is not an open question at all. Granted, the experts do not all agree on every aspect of their well-formed definitions, but there is a lot of common ground.


    If you were to say: "I do not agree with the well-formed definition" then we would ask: "Why not? What aspects of it do you disagree with? What experimental evidence do you point to?" You are saying there isn't any definition. That's chaotic nonsense. Mind-boggling nonsense. It is like saying there is no theory of special relativity, so Einstein was wrong.


    Quote from interested observer

    If even 50% of your posts are about science as opposed to dissing and dismissing anyone who crossed you, I would be amazed.

    Your recent comments dissed & dismissed yourself more effectively than I can. You yourself boldly told us that you know nothing and you contribute nothing. You said that your comments, "are not moving science in any direction, nor are they intended to, nor could they." Yes! Right. We agree. So, naturally, you should shut up. Right?


    Why do you continue to comment about technical issues? Why on earth do you say things about the "well-formed definition of cold fusion" when you have no clue what that definition is, and no interest in learning about it?

    Quote from [email protected]

    Jed says that the Penon report is what turned his perspective. I keep hoping that he'll publish his own thread with a paragraph by paragraph dismantling of the report. It would appear he has better things to do.

    Murray and Smith did this. They did a far better job than I could. So I suggest you read what they wrote.


    Penon, Murray and Smith are here:


    http://coldfusioncommunity.net…/01/0197.03_Exhibit_3.pdf


    http://coldfusioncommunity.net…01/0207.65_Exhibit_65.pdf


    http://coldfusioncommunity.net…/01/0235.01_Exhibit_1.pdf

    I hardly know where to begin dissecting the off-the-rails rant from you, Jed. I used to think you were a reasonable individual, but obviously that was a smoke-screen.


    First, I never stated or implied that I know nothing and contribute nothing. I did say that my comments on this forum are not moving science in any direction because that is clearly not my intent, nor is it the intent of the overwhelming majority of all posts here. Other than responding to direct questions from other posters, I mostly comment on the human elements of the topics here and, in that regard, mostly about Rossi-related matters. I don't consider anything related to Rossi to be about science at all, apart from futile attempts by anyone who knows any science to convince Rossi believers that his stuff makes no sense. But do you believe that repeatedly telling us how many replications by the top-100 electrochemist there are is moving science in some direction? Is that adding some new content to the world? I never said I know nothing. I admit that I have not read dozens or hundreds of cold fusion papers, but I have certainly read some over the years. I am no expert by any stretch of the imagination, but that is not the equivalent of knowing nothing. But all of that is beside the point.


    The whole reason you are ranting at me incessantly is that I stated that I am undecided about LENR. You equate that to expressing strong opinions on a technical subject that you say I know nothing about. What the hell option do I have then? If saying that I don't have an opinion is itself is a strong opinion, that what else can I do? Apparently your stance is either you accept the gospel of LENR or you must cease to exist. Don't fire back a smarmy retort about wanting me to not come here any more. This isn't your exclusive playpen and you don't get to decide who visits. My only reason for expressing my position about LENR at all is that I was explicitly asked by AA and others. I don't have any interest in debating LENR here or anywhere else. I don't have a side to take and I don't have an agenda. I said that I think the existence of LENR is still an open question, which other than for you and a small group of zealots is a perfectly reasonable position to hold.


    But if you genuinely want to discuss science rather than the other crap you seemed obsessed with, let's go back to your 20-minute lecture on the well-formed definition of cold fusion. How about cutting those 20 minutes down to a single paragraph of whatever length required. I can't think of a physical phenomenon that can't be defined in some reasonable way in one paragraph (defined phenomenologically, not theoretically explained.) In the hope of making me less the ignoramus you claim I am, I would love to hear a description of exactly what phenomenon those 153 peer-reviewed replications are replicating. I suppose you will just blow me off with some bullshit about spoon feeding or whatever, but I thought I would give you the chance to say something meaningful other than pointless insults.

    @ THHuxley,

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    Personally I'm unwilling to substitute deliberate malfeasance for incompetence when we are at such a distance, since incompetence is a powerful thing when combined with a charismatic figure leading one in the wrong direction. But it remains possible. those who know Levi seem to think not, but that again I cannot vouch for, and appearances can be deceptive.

    That's a laudable scruple. I'd like to see it applied also when every possible responsibility in the Ecat affair are imputed to only one and the same charismatic figure.


    However, we are now talking about public personae that, under the name of their scientific prestigious institutions, announced to the world that they did measure many kW of excess heat. In doing this, they did put themselves in the position to be scrutinized about their reliability by the same people that have been solicited to believe their claims. The estimation of the possible intentionality of their misrepresentations is preparatory for establishing how much credit should be given to any other thing they wrote or said. Doing some mistakes is human and acceptable even for the greatest scientists, but the scientific ethic requires to recognize them and to correct the wrong conclusions as soon as possible.


    Now, let's first solve your doubt about Levi: deliberate malfeasance or incompetence? Let's consider the most easily recognizable incongruence in his reported data: the claimed flow rate during the January 2011 demo (17.6 L/h) vs. the capacity of the yellow pump (max. output 12 L/h, but at 60% speed: no more than 7.2 L/h). Can you, please, explain me how this incongruence could depend upon incompetence?

    Jed has this attitude that everything has been made clear about the existence of cold fusion and that anyone with a science or engineering background who doesn't see that it a dunce. It's obvious on first principles and because of natural laws that the measurements are correct. The experiments are clearly written up and clearly show megajoules and at least dozens of Watts. There is virtually no possibility that the conclusions are in error. All the criteria someone like me has brought up have been met.


    Unfortunately, most of this is incorrect. But Jed doesn't see it and won't see it just as he did not see that Rossi was a crook until very recently and because of overwhelming evidence. And even now, Jed doesn't acknowledge that the possibility of Rossi *ever* having had truly anomalous heat production rather than calculated fraud is vanishingly small for ALL his demonstrations, tests and experiments.


    In our latest exchange, as always, I tried to remind Jed that to deserve respect, LENR proponents have to show a number of important factors and meet important criteria IN THE SAME STUDY OR TEST. Power level, high out/input ratio if there is input (it's better if there isn't any), accurate calorimetry rather than point temperature measurement, long enough duration to rule out both error and alternative sources of the appearance excess heat, work originating from trustworthy experimenters with appropriate backgrounds and long histories of proven veracity, and clearly written reports with simple and clear coordinate graphs of results, carefully stated materials and methods so they can be replicated, and so on. Jed provides one of the criteria here, another or a couple there, and others in other research but never all of them in one place and in one "best" experiment. Jed accuses me of shifting the goals when what I am really doing is responding the best I can to the attempted snowjobs by adjusting and clarifying the goals.


    Jed then accuses me of not understanding, not being capable of understanding, not appreciating... etc. etc. the work. He (and others) accuse me of deliberately trying to damage LENR. The truth is and has always been that I would love to see convincing proof of anomalous heat, that I think it's possible, albeit remotely, and that what I am doing is trying to get at the best and most convincing work which, strangely, does not seem to be what Jed and other proponents like to put forward.


    This whole interchange (and that with the other skeptics here) is mainly productive in demonstrating some of the reasons LENR is not widely known and supported in the scientific community. A few people seem to get the hint. Mizuno is apparently trying for self-sustaining (or very high COP) very high power but Jed doesn't like him. George Miley claimed to have bench top power sources in the hundreds of Watts but these have never been seen. At least one person who spoke with him wrote me that Dr. Miley is well past his prime and may no longer be thinking clearly (I have NO evidence of that however). Anyway, those high power efforts would seem to me (but not to Jed) the right direction to go but unfortunately, both of these claimants made the claims more than two to three years ago and no reports of progress have been published.

    Quote
    • Now, let's first solve your doubt about Levi: deliberate malfeasance or incompetence? Let's consider the most easily recognizable incongruence in his reported data: the claimed flow rate during the January 2011 demo (17.6 L/h) versus the capacity of the yellow pump (max. output 12 L/h, but at 60% speed: no more than 7.2 L/h). Can you, please, explain me how this incongruence could depend upon incompetence?


    Ok... thanks to explanation by others I sort of understand Aescoli's theme a bit better. This is all a conspiracy. To do what, exactly, I don't get. Discredit cold fusion? Promote hot fusion? What?


    Anyway, I do think Levi could be so incompetent as to claim a flow rate beyond a pump's capability. It could have been a typographical error that worked its way into his calculations unnoticed or just plain negligence and incompetence. But IIRC, Levi's experiment written up in NY Teknik in early 2011 where he got 135kW peak power from a small ecat was done without a pump. The coolant was tap water at tap water temperature and whatever pressure the water system in that building dispensed. I could be wrong but that is how I remember it and I am not looking it up again. That detail was not in the article and was given, with photographic confirmation IIRC, in a later forum post somewhere, maybe Vortex, maybe not.


    BTW, the so-called COP in Levi's experiment was reported as >10 at all times. A factor of two error in the flow would not have accounted for that. A misplaced thermocouple would. I don't think we'll ever know unless we get a confession from Rossi or Levi.

    @maryyugo

    According to other posts he's made (also elsewhere) the point of this would ultimately be making people believe there is a cheap, limitless, safe and pollution-free energy solution ready to come, distracting them off from the imminent global collapse that will be caused by rising CO2 levels, resource depletion and lack of any real alternative to fossil fuels.


    He might have not used these exact words, but I think that's more or less what he's often suggested. Did I get it right Ascoli65?

    can: that is certainly one way to make sense of Ascoli65's long-standing and very insistent postings on multiple websites. If it isn't exactly right, it is close. He sees Rossi as an (paid?) actor in a broader-based charade designed to fool or distract the public. I am not sure if it is for the exact reason you cite, but it may well be. Ascoli65 is fond of being as oblique as possible, so he may not deny or confirm this interpretation of his theory.


    However, if this is truly what he is saying, one would have to say that as a way to distract the world from impending disaster, or from anything for that matter, it has been a colossal failure. There are perhaps a few thousand people globally who have paid any attention at all to the Rossi circus, and those numbers continue to dwindle. Whether the 7+ billion other people on the planet are paying attention to what they should is an entirely different question, but if they are distracted, it ain't by Rossi.

    Quote from maryyugo

    In our latest exchange, as always, I tried to remind Jed that to deserve respect, LENR proponents have to show a number of important factors and meet important criteria IN THE SAME STUDY OR TEST. .... Jed accuses me of shifting the goals when what I am really doing is responding the best I can to the attempted snowjobs by adjusting and clarifying the goals.

    Jed is right, you just keep moving the goal posts. The goal posts were set and met more than 20 years ago when the top hundred or so electrochemists of the day replicated the Pons-Fleischmann Anomalous Heat Effect and submitted their findings to >150 peer reviewed reports. No matter what rhetorical tricks you play, it still amounts to moving the goal posts and trying to apply your own Humpty Dumpty ex post facto to the process. Rational people will see this for what it is and acknowledge that this anomalous effect has been replicated.

    Quote from interested observer

    First, I never stated or implied that I know nothing and contribute nothing. I did say that my comments on this forum are not moving science in any direction because that is clearly not my intent, nor is it the intent of the overwhelming majority of all posts here.

    That's one of those ridiculous statements that should just sit there for a while and generate its own gravitational field of ... stupidity.

    Where can I find the back & forth discussion on those documents? For instance, Rossi pointed out that there was a lot of back & forth on flow rate and that it was a minimum at a certain pressure, but that at lower pressures that he was using the flow rate fit the facts.

    @ maryyugo,

    Quote from maryyugo

    Ok... thanks to explanation by others I sort of understand Aescoli's theme a bit better. This is all a conspiracy. To do what, exactly, I don't get. Discredit cold fusion? Promote hot fusion? What?

    Please, let's leave apart this kind of speculation. I'm talking about facts only, experimental and mediatic facts.


    Quote

    Anyway, I do think Levi could be so incompetent as to claim a flow rate beyond a pump's capability.

    Come on, you are talking about the Ecat, without knowing the basic facts of the test that triggered all the interest for this incredible story. There is no incompetence that can explain the misrepresentation of the flow rate in the calorimetric report of the January 2011 test. The max output rate is written on the label placed on the front panel of the pump (1), and Levi declared (2) that he, and others (he said "we"), calibrated the pump for 2 weeks before the demo.


    Quote

    It could have been a typographical error that worked its way into his calculations unnoticed or just plain negligence and incompetence.

    Could you explain which type of "typographical error" could have lead to attribute to a dosimetric pump a flow rate much larger than its capacity? Flow calorimetry is indeed very simple: just multiply the flow rate by the specific enthalpy increase. Those experimental data have been revised by many physicist in Italy, and US. Do you really think that none of them did care to verify the soundness of a couple of parameters, on which the astounding announcement of a tabletop device capable of producing 12 kW of excess heat was based?


    Quote

    But IIRC, Levi's experiment written up in NY Teknik in early 2011 where he got 135kW …

    Please, let's give the priority to the January 2011 demo. This early test is much better documented that any other Ecat test. Later, if you want, we could reexamine the February 2011 test, which is also very interesting. But it is successive, and in order to understand a test you need first to better figure out the role played by the protagonists in the previous ones.


    Quote

    I don't think we'll ever know unless we get a confession from Rossi or Levi.

    For the January 2011 demo, no confession is required. There is a plenty of documentation provided by the testers themselves, and by those who contributed to write and revise the reports. This test can be considered a test on the reliability of the Ecat people, rather than on the performances of the Ecat device.


    (1) Prominent Gamma/L 0232 Flow Rate Test (see detail C on the jpegs)

    (2) Prominent Gamma/L 0232 Flow Rate Test

    @ can,

    Quote from can

    He might have not used these exact words, but I think that's more or less what he's often suggested. Did I get it right Ascoli65?

    Not exactly. That's only one of the many possible and concurrent explanations, and not directly suggested by me, but insistently attributed to me by some readers on ecatnews.com on the basis of the facts that I put at their attention in order to confute the "Rossi's scam" theory. Now that blog is no more available on internet, but, for what it's worth, an echo of that debate is present in some comments (1-3) posted last year on L-F, and which still reflect my position. Nothing to add about. Let's stick now to the plain facts.


    (1) Jed Rothwell on an Unpublished E-Cat Test Report that “Looks Like it Worked”

    (2) Jed Rothwell on an Unpublished E-Cat Test Report that “Looks Like it Worked”

    (3) Jed Rothwell on an Unpublished E-Cat Test Report that “Looks Like it Worked”

    Quote from interested observer

    Actually, I have shown such exchanges to friends, particularly scientists. Their universal response is "why do you waste your time talking to these nutcases?"


    In your desperation to hurl insults my way, perhaps you hadn't noticed that I am not trying to persuade you of anything. All this whole exchange has been about is your insistence that I am not entitled to be undecided about LENR.

    If you think it is rational for a person to rant and rave at someone for being undecided about something when that indecision has absolutely zero effect on them or anyone else for that matter, then you are many tacos short of a combination plate. But you are beyond understanding that, so feel free to respond with another set of bon mots about skeptopaths and the rest of your litany.

    It looks like Jed already shredded your position, yet again. You're obviously the one with a few tacos short of a combination plate here, and it's kinda scary that scientists would consider the top hundred electrochemists of their day to represent nutcases when their findings have passed peer review >150 times. Something about that suggests that your friends are .... social scientists.

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