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

    Quote from maryyugo

    Why is that a problem? Or why is it my problem? If you don't want to do your homework you should believe what I say or drop the subject.


    Exactly the kind of arrogance which gives LENR a bad name and reputation. Nobody should believe what you say simply because you say it. And if you are trying to make a case, you need to point the reader to specific evidence which has been made as easy to understand as is possible yet retains information and objectivity.

    You, of all people, should not say that! I pointed you to specific information regarding the boil-off calorimetry. I explained it you not once, not twice, but three times. Yet as you yourself readily admit -- and as everyone here can see -- you do not understand it. You are a hopeless case. I cannot educate you about this matter. I cannot be held responsible for your inability to understand 18th century elementary physics.


    Along the same lines, since the person making this comment does not believe me, he must do his own homework. He must count papers or count experiments or review evidence himself. He does not believe me, so this is his problem to work through, not mine. What do you expect me to do for him? I have made the original source information available to everyone. If people don't believe me, they can find out for themselves. If they won't believe me and they won't check for themselves, nothing else can be done.

    Blech. We can go round and round on this sort of argument and achieve nothing. See, I didn't really understand what you or the author was getting at with respect to boil off calorimetry. But I did grasp Shanahan's explanation easily because it was clear. It also explained why this may not be a reliable method. I thought the whole idea weird. There have to be better ways to measure energy output.


    Your method of "explanation" is to belittle the questioner. And then you wonder why you don't get respect. Not to mention your history of being bamboozled recently by two distinct sets of crooks (Defkalion AND Rossi). You might consider being a bit more forthcoming when you make claims. Or are you now saying that the boiloff calorimetry illustrates 100W for days without input power. Even I with my, according to you, very minimal discriminating powers can tell that paper doesn't.

    Quote from JedRothwell

    Pt-D and Pt-H cathodes do not produce heat.


    The important observable in this case is helium production. But according to Ed Storms's "Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction" (p. 55), a Pd-Pt system of his own produced excess heat. And Pd is not the only substrate in which excess heat is reported; others (again from Ed's book) include Au, Ti, W, Ce, U, Ni, etc. So although palladium is a good material, it's not the only material. With regard to platinum, I suppose it has not been systematically explored yet. Another possibility is that platinum on its own doesn't provide the kind of electrochemical environment needed for its own alpha decay to be induced.


    The possibility of excess heat coming from alpha decay of platinum does not preclude excess heat coming from other, related processes in other contexts such as Arata's. With regard to the transmutations, what you find is probably heavily dependent upon what you set out to look for. But there's anecdotal evidence of transmutations all over the map.


    I'm open to excess heat and helium coming from fusion of deuterium. I consider it an interesting question and one that should be further characterized.

    Thank you Jed for straightening me out.


    All scientists in the world who have looked into LENR are convinced it is real with the following exceptions: scientists who are idiots and can't understand the data, scientists who reject the facts based on bias, and scientists who are just flat-out lying. There is no such thing as a coming up with different conclusions from the data than your conclusions. It is impossible to do so. You have checked. Although this might be the only example of this single-possibility analysis in all of human history, it must be the case because you say so and you have all the papers and even speak Japanese.


    I don't know why you even bother trying to argue. Why not just say "I am omniscient and know better than anyone else. End of story." It would save time.


    As Mary says, it is no wonder that cold fusionistas have such a bad reputation. And you are one if the most reasonable ones!

    Quote from interested observer

    All scientists in the world who have looked into LENR are convinced it is real with the following exceptions: scientists who are idiots and can't understand the data, scientists who reject the facts based on bias, and scientists who are just flat-out lying.

    Surely not all of them. I did not say that. Most of the ones I have heard from who read papers at LENR-CANR.org who looked carefully reached that conclusion. BUT, here is the important part:


    There are no scientists who concluded that cold fusion is not real and who then wrote a paper showing why and how it is not real. There are no such papers in the peer-reviewed literature or proceedings. (Except for Morrison and Shanahan.)


    I mean there are no papers showing experimental errors. There are many papers saying cold fusion conflicts with theory. But you cannot disprove experimental results by pointing to theory. That violates the scientific method.


    You say that many scientists reject the claims. Of course that is true. Everyone knows that. However, until you find a scientist who gives specific technical reasons for rejecting the claims, we have no way to evaluate the rejection. We cannot tell why the scientists rejected, or whether they have good reasons or bad reasons. We cannot draw conclusions from mere opinion unsupported by facts and arguments.

    Quote from interested observer

    There is no such thing as a coming up with different conclusions from the data than your conclusions. It is impossible to do so.

    It may well be possible to come up with different conclusions. However, no one has done it up until now as far as I know. If you know of someone who has, please list the paper they wrote.



    Quote from interested observer

    Why not just say "I am omniscient and know better than anyone else. End of story." It would save time.

    I am saying the exact opposite! I said it many times. I said, quite clearly, AS FAR AS I KNOW there are no papers describing experimental errors in any major experiment. I asked you to point to such papers. If you cannot find an example, and I cannot find one, then we are not omniscient, but it seems unlikely there is one out there.


    Do you or do you not know of such a paper? You keep saying scientists reject the findings. I keep asking you to point out specifically which scientists and in specific technical terms why they reject it. It seem you are demanding that I be omniscient, and that I should know what these people are thinking without their telling me. I do not have ESP. I cannot judge evaluations I have not read, by people I have never heard of.


    I have read hundreds of cold fusion papers. I have a database of them. If there were papers describing errors, I would probably know about them. Since I do not, the ball is in your court. You should tell me WHERE ARE THESE PAPERS??? If you cannot, let us agree they either don't exist or it is not possible for you and I to take them into account or judge them.

    Quote from Eric Walker

    . I personally am highly doubtful there is any kind of fusion of deuterium going on, although I am willing to go along with the experimental finding of evolution of helium at this point....Evolution of helium is itself quite astonishing if not erroneous, but it's a more general finding, not tied to any specific mechanism. In such a context, the question of branching ratios appears premature....Are there any other possible explanations for the evolution of helium?

    Like you said, going into branching ratios is premature, especially as a way to dismiss the explanation of nuclear events. That's because there's no evidence to suggest that branching ratios for fusion within a gaseous state would be the same deeply inside a condensed solid.

    Quote from JedRothwell

    However, until you find a scientist who gives specific technical reasons for rejecting the claims, we have no way to evaluate the rejection. We cannot tell why the scientists rejected, or whether they have good reasons or bad reasons. We cannot draw conclusions from mere opinion unsupported by facts and arguments...... I said, quite clearly, AS FAR AS I KNOW there are no papers describing experimental errors in any major experiment.

    There was one suggestion that Pons and Fleischmann did not mix their cells properly. It was shown rather quickly to be in error by P&F adding dye to their cells, showing how rapidly it diffused. The hot fusion physicists did have trouble replicating P&F, mainly because they didn't know what they were doing with calorimetry and didn't have high enough loading. However, failure to replicate is NOT proving the phenomenon doesn't exist, and the hot fusion scientists proceeded directly to say that their failure to replicate was proof that the phenomena does not exist.

    Quote from JedRothwell

    That statement seems contradictory to me. If there is helium evolution (as opposed to helium leaking in) then it has to be deuterium fusion. Where else could the helium be coming from? What else in the system and what other reactions can produce alpha particles (helium)?

    Sounds a lot like the Widom-Larson theory. You start with 2 Hydrogen atoms and end up with a Helium atom, and a bunch of fascinating roundabout stuff in the middle. Then they loudly proclaim "It's NOT FUSION!" Maybe they should call it an "induced combination of 2 atoms into one virtual atom".

    Quote from [email protected]

    There was one suggestion that Pons and Fleischmann did not mix their cells properly. It was shown rather quickly to be in error by P&F adding dye to their cells, showing how rapidly it diffused.

    Yes. There have been a variety of suggestions such as this. This is a valid objection. It is possible the cell was not stirred correctly. However, we know that it was.


    Another example of a valid objection is the suggestion that during the boil-off phase of F&P's experiment, some water left the cell entrained in droplets, rather than as vapor. That would mean they overestimated the enthalpy. However, that was not the case, as Fleischmann showed in his response to Morrison, and as I discussed in somewhat more detail here:


    http://coldfusioncommunity.net…-blew-up-it-must-be-lenr/


    Some of the skeptical suggestions that have circulated on the internet are valid. Some may have been helpful to researchers over the years. I doubt that, because as far as I know, the researchers already knew about these potential problems, and addressed them, even before the skeptic came up with the idea.


    But here is my larger point. Somewhere out there, someone may have a coherent set of arguments and facts that call into question the results from Flieschmann, Miles, McKubre, Srinivasan, Lonchampt, Storms, Will, Bockris and the other major results. Say, the top 50 studies. Someone may know good reasons to reject all of these claims. Or they may have reasons to reject one of them, leaving the others intact. HOWEVER, I have not heard from this person. He or she has not published a paper. So I have no way of knowing what this person thinks, or why he rejects the claims. I cannot guess, and I have never read a critique from anyone address any of these claims. (Except Morrison and Shanahan!)


    Interested Observer keeps saying the scientific community as a whole rejects the claims. Yes, that is obvious. There is a consensus of opinion. Okay. But he cannot tell us: WHAT IS THE TECHNICAL BASIS for this consensus? Why do all these people think the experiments are invalid? What are their technical reasons for reaching these conclusions? Without knowing that, we have no way to judge whether these people are right or wrong. We have nothing to go on.


    Knowing only that a million scientists, or programmers, or economists, or military officers believe in assertion X does not tell us anything about the content of X. It does not give us any reason to agree with these people. Or to disagree with them. We have to look at the content of X and their reasons for believing it. Needless to say, if we are talking about a military strategy, then I would have no way to judge X since I have no military background or training. I would be helpless. I would be as incapable of judging this as Mary Yugo is incapable of judging a boil-off experiment. I could only say, "well, the consensus of experts seems to be X, so I guess that's right."


    In the case of cold fusion, I could judge a skeptical evaluation. But there aren't any as far as I know. I cannot judge an evaluation I have not seen and I have no knowledge of.


    There is one other important issue here. Suppose our hypothetical skeptical expert has a paper hidden away showing a serious error in McKubre's work. Okay, he reveals it, and I say: "Ah, ha, you are right. There is a problem here." That leaves ~49 other robust studies proving the existence of cold fusion. Unless our expert reveals 49 other papers showing errors in these other studies, he has not disproved cold fusion. The calorimeters and diagnostics are sufficiently different that there can be no single systematic error in all of them. The systems are too different for that.


    If a single good study survives, then the effect is real, and those 49 disproved studies have no significance. It is similar to the situation with aviation in September 1904. There were dozens of failed attempts to fly by people other than the Wright brothers. Not one of them succeeded. The Wrights themselves flew in December 1903 in the cold air at Kitty Hawk, but back in Dayton in summer they tried about 80 times to fly, but they usually failed or barely managed to get off the ground. They often crashed. However, despite this long track record of failure, it would make no sense to say that airplanes did not exist, or that the Wrights did not know how to fly. One flight at Kitty Hawk proved the issue. The failures before that, and the ones that followed did not -- and could not -- disprove it. Ever. One good set of cold fusion experiments proves the effect is real. It should give us great confidence that there are hundreds of good sets of experiments, but actually, one is enough.


    (After September 1904, the Wrights improved their airplane and launch technique, and the weather cooled, air density increased, so they soon began flying more successfully on a regular basis.)

    Quote from JedRothwell

    ....So I have no way of knowing what this person thinks, or why he rejects the claims. I cannot guess, and I have never read a critique from anyone address any of these claims. (Except Morrison and Shanahan!)

    God help you if Morrison and Shanahan are the only 2 who have published critiques. It strikes me that you could be uniquely qualified to publish all these unfinished critiques of LENR yourself. You could call it a "Rational Critique of LENR" and show all the examples of objections, who objected at what time and what happened with those objections. It could be a unique paper because most of the people reading it would expect to see that there's all kinds of rational objections to Cold Fusion but in the end, all those objections have been asked & answered and everyone (except Morrison and Shanahan!) have withdrawn their criticisms.

    Quote from interested observer

    Anyway, if one applies Jed's filters to the world, one can conclude that cold fusion is settled science.

    When the Wright brothers were flying their airplanes in 1903, and the "settled science" claimed that it was impossible, does that mean the Wright brothers were scam artists at that time?


    And when "settled science" was against the plate tectonic theory for so long, can one conclude there was not enough evidence at the time for the theory or was there some sort of magical bean sauce introduced to the theory years later that made it more palatable for scientists to consider it "settled science"?

    Quote from [email protected]

    God help you if Morrison and Shanahan are the only 2 who have published critiques.

    Let me define that more carefully.


    They are the only two that I recall who have published critiques of the experiments with specific technical reasons doubt the results. They are the only two who addressed the experimental claims. Many people have published other kinds of critiques:


    * Theorists who said the experimental results conflict with theory so they must be wrong. I suppose there are dozens of papers like this. Hundreds, maybe. I have not counted them. Many of the 2004 DoE reviews fell in this category. There are also books mainly devoted to this hypothesis, such as Huizenga's. His key conclusion is the best expression of this idea I know of:


    "Furthermore, if the claimed excess heat exceeds that possible by other conventional processes (chemical, mechanical, etc.), one must conclude that an error has been made in measuring the excess heat."


    In my opinion, this violates the scientific method. When replicated, high sigma experiments conflict with theory, the experiments always win, and theory always loses.


    * Critiques of imaginary versions of the experiments, such as Wikipedia.


    * Vague hand waving critiques that do not address any specific technical issues, or ones that make statements that cannot be tested or falsified, such as "there may be an undiscovered error." Or reviews parroting meaningless popular science tropes, such as "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Many of the other 2004 DoE negative reviews were in this category.



    Quote from [email protected]

    It strikes me that you could be uniquely qualified to publish all these unfinished critiques of LENR yourself.

    I could do that! Mike McKubre often says, "I could write a far better critique of cold fusion than any skeptic." I know far less than he does, but I expect I too could skewer many claims more effectively than a typical skeptic. However, I don't see much point to doing that. The bad papers in a field do not detract from the good ones. They don't hurt the credibility of the good papers. There are a zillion bad novels, but that does not make good literature less worthwhile. Badly written, buggy, and useless programs do not detract from good ones.

    Quote from JedRothwell

    [email protected] wrote:

    It strikes me that you could be uniquely qualified to publish all these unfinished critiques of LENR yourself.


    I could do that! Mike McKubre often says, "I could write a far better critique of cold fusion than any skeptic."

    The point is that you would be doing the scientific community a favor. Relatively young scientists who are not aware of the history behind this LENR travesty will wander over to your LENR-CANR.org website and start reading up. No doubt such a critique would be among the papers they read. And it could spur them to write a particularly good followup critique that is so missing from the literature today. I doubt that most scientists understand the true state of LENR criticism today, that the only real objections are because it violates theory in some way.

    Quote from Jed Rothweil

    Interested Observer keeps saying the scientific community as a whole rejects the claims. Yes, that is obvious. There is a consensus of opinion. Okay. But he cannot tell us: WHAT IS THE TECHNICAL BASIS for this consensus? Why do all these people think the experiments are invalid? What are their technical reasons for reaching these conclusions? Without knowing that, we have no way to judge whether these people are right or wrong. We have nothing to go on.

    Absolutely correct. I cannot speak for the scientists who reject the claims of LENR. I don't know if they are right or they are wrong. Once again, I am not arguing for their side. I am arguing that they have a side. According to Jed, this is a done deal and any opposition is simply wrong. Jed says that he has no information to evaluate their position. Nevertheless, he dismisses it out of hand because the opponents haven't written papers. That is what I call a very weak argument.


    I don't know how to make my point in yet another way. My objection is the hubris and arrogant superiority in which LENR fans proclaim that they are the keepers of the ultimate truth and anyone who disagrees is an idiot. Sorry, you don't get to hold that sort of view without sounding like a religious fanatic. Even if you end up being right, you haven't earned the right to declare your position the unassailable truth. You ain't even close to holding the cards for that.

    Quote from interested observer

    My objection is the hubris and arrogant superiority in which LENR fans proclaim that they are the keepers of the ultimate truth and anyone who disagrees is an idiot. Sorry, you don't get to hold that sort of view without sounding like a religious fanatic. Even if you end up being right, you haven't earned the right to declare your position the unassailable truth. You ain't even close to holding the cards for that.


    My objection is the hubris and arrogant superiority in which anti-LENR advocates proclaim that they are the keepers of the ultimate truth and anyone who disagrees is an idiot. And Jed has pointed to the information about how simply wrong these Luddites are, there are NO scientific papers that dismantle or disprove LENR. But these guys act like there are, and they hold LENR to a standard that no other science is held to and they go out of their way to ignore good evidence.

    Quote from interested observer

    I cannot speak for the scientists who reject the claims of LENR. I don't know if they are right or they are wrong.

    You could try reading what they say. I suggest you do that before discussing this issue. You cannot know if they are right or wrong if you don't even read what they say.


    Quote from interested observer

    Jed says that he has no information to evaluate their position. Nevertheless, he dismisses it out of hand because the opponents haven't written papers. That is what I call a very weak argument.

    There is no information on their positions! They don't even have positions! They have published no technical justification for what they say. Other than Morrison, they have never discussed the experiments or given any reason to doubt the results. The weakness is on their end, not mine.


    I say they have not published any papers with technical content to justify their claim that the experiments are wrong. All they do is assert the experiments are wrong, without offering a shred of evidence to back up their assertion.


    After all this time I think we can safely conclude these people do not have a leg to stand on. They have no reason to doubt that cold fusion is real. If they had reason, they would have stated it by now.


    Quote from interested observer

    Even if you end up being right, you haven't earned the right to declare your position the unassailable truth.


    What a ridiculous thing to say! Of course my position is assailable. Assail it! Go ahead. Feel free. Show us a mistake in one of the major experiments, or point to a paper describing errors. That's how science works. I am not saying it is unassailable. I am saying that NO SKEPTIC HAS TRIED TO ASSAIL IT. Do you see the difference?


    If you know of a problem, or a paper listing problems, tell us what it is. If you do not know of any paper, then what are you talking about? What is your point? Are you saying that hypothetically if someone did publish a problem, by golly, there would be a published problem. So based on what might hypothetically might happen, I have no business pointing this event hasn't actually happened, here in the real world.


    I should meekly admit I am wrong because in your imaginary world someone might publish an error. I should admit that if things were not the way they are, they might be very different.

    Quote from JedRothwell

    They have published no technical justification for what they say. Other than Morrison, they have never discussed the experiments or given any reason to doubt the results. The weakness is on their end, not mine...I say they have not published any papers with technical content to justify their claim that the experiments are wrong. All they do is assert the experiments are wrong, without offering a shred of evidence to back up their assertion.... That's how science works. I am not saying it is unassailable. I am saying that NO SKEPTIC HAS TRIED TO ASSAIL IT.

    Even Polywater had a paper or 2 written that disproved it. These anti-LENR skeptopaths have shown themselves to be anti-Science by remaining mum and hiding behind political activity.

    Quote from interested observer

    as anyone with even a shred of intelligence would realize to be the case a priori.


    Experiments can never be evaluated a priori. The skeptics often act as if this were possible, when they pontificate about research they have not studied. Right now, you are pontificating a priori about what the skeptics think and what their positions are without bothering to read them. This is a mistake that I do not make. I never discuss scientific topics I have not read about.

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